18th century CE

The 18th century CE appears as a period of contradiction in the account of women’s historical position. Custom still directed girls toward marriage or convent life and offered them little education, while Enlightenment ideals encouraged some thinkers to regard women as human beings with claims to equality. Women of the upper classes gained room to participate in intellectual and political life, but such freedom was neither broadly available nor equivalent to full independence.

Customs and the Limits of Freedom

Girls generally received only a cursory education and could be married off or sent to a convent without being consulted. The rising bourgeoisie reinforced strict morality for wives. At the same time, the weakening of the nobility allowed women of the world greater freedom of behavior, and examples set by the upper classes reached into the haute bourgeoisie. Neither convent nor conjugal home entirely contained these women, but for most, freedom remained negative and abstract: it meant pursuing pleasure rather than establishing an independent public or economic life.

Salons, Learning, and Political Influence

Women with intelligence and ambition made use of the opportunities available to them. Salon life flourished around figures including Mme Geoffrin, Mme du Deffand, Mlle de Lespinasse, Mme d’Epinay, and Mme de Tencin. Women served as protectors and sources of inspiration for writers, while also taking a personal interest in literature, philosophy, and science. Mme Du Châtelet, for example, had her own physics workshops or chemistry laboratory, where she experimented and dissected.

Women also intervened in political life, often through influence at court. Mme de Prie, Mme de Mailly, Mme de Châteauneuf, Mme de Pompadour, and Mme du Barry successively governed Louis XV; the account observes that scarcely a minister lacked a female adviser. Montesquieu described women as forming a new state within the state. Such influence could be substantial, but it was exercised through access to powerful men and institutions rather than through equal formal authority. Actresses and prostitutes, including Sophie Arnould, Julie Talma, and Adrienne Lecouvreur, also achieved considerable public fame.

Enlightenment Arguments About Women

The period’s arguments about women were divided. In 1744, the author of Controverse sur l’âme de la femme argued that women had been created solely for men and would cease to be useful at the end of the world, concluding that their souls were therefore not immortal. Rousseau likewise assigned women to the service of husbands and motherhood, insisting that their education should be relative to men and that women should yield to men and bear their injustices.

Other thinkers challenged women’s supposed inferiority. The democratic and individualist ideal of the century encouraged many philosophers to regard women as human beings equal to men. Voltaire denounced the injustice of women’s lot, while Denis Diderot treated their inferiority as largely produced by society. Helvétius and d’Alembert also connected it to defective education. Montesquieu’s position remained divided: he opposed women’s authority in the home yet considered them suited to governing an empire. These disagreements show how arguments for women’s capacity could coexist with assumptions that kept them subordinate in family life.

Education, Work, and the Meaning of Progress

Calls for women’s education made the contradiction particularly clear. Earlier arguments for equal education had already challenged the belief that women’s past achievements could establish their inferiority: women, such critics maintained, had never been given equal chances in either freedom or education. In the 18th century CE, reformist views coexisted with proposals for sharply limited schooling and with claims that women existed only for men. The period’s intellectual debate thus did not itself remove the restrictions imposed by custom.

The book frames this history through a distinction between repetitive labor and projects that open a future. It argues that childbirth and breastfeeding, treated as natural functions rather than projects, were used to justify women’s confinement to domestic labor. Housework repeated itself from day to day and generation to generation, while men’s work was represented as invention and the transformation of the world. This contrast clarifies why access to education, professional activity, and political action mattered: they offered routes beyond a life defined solely by the repetition of domestic responsibilities.

The century’s new freedoms therefore did not amount to a general emancipation. Social standing could allow some women to cultivate learning, influence political decisions, or gain public distinction, while prevailing expectations continued to limit girls’ education and wives’ independence. The period’s importance lies in that unresolved contest: arguments that women were socially made inferior challenged inherited assumptions, even as customary arrangements continued to restrict the means by which women might act as independent subjects.