Women in the 19th Century - Susan K. Grogan (Essay Date 1992)
SUSAN K. GROGAN (ESSAY DATE 1992)
SOURCE: Grogan, Susan K. Introduction to French Socialism and Sexual Difference: Women and the New Society, 1803-44, pp. 1-19. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
In the following excerpt, Grogan discusses how the idealized roles and proper lifestyles of French women were debated by the French clergy, philosophers, and doctors during the nineteenth century in an effort to maintain domestic and national stability.
The place of woman in early nineteenth-century French society was fraught with contradictions. She was worshipped as ‘Muse and Madonna’ of the society,1 but was legally a non-person. She was the symbol of Truth and Justice, of Liberty and the Republic, yet she was simultaneously exploited and despised. In fact, the idealisation of ‘Woman’ as abstract entity contrasted dramatically with the subordinate position of real...
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Primary Sources
- Charles Fourier (Essay Date 1808)
- Nellie Weeton (Journal/Letter Dates 26 January 1810 And 15 September 1810)
- Emma Willard (Address Date 1819)
- Parisian Garment Workers (Petition Date August 1848)
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Speech Date 1848)
- The Sibyl (Letter Date February 1857)
- Louisa Bastian, Mary Hamelton, And Anna Long (Petition Date July 1862)
- Harriet H. Robinson (Report Date 1883)
- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Essay Date 1893)
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