SOURCE: May, Gita. “Rousseau's ‘Antifeminism’ Reconsidered.” In French Women and the Age of Enlightenment, edited by Samia I. Spencer, pp. 309-17. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.

[In this essay, May considers how women authors such as Roland could be inspired by the ideas of Rousseau despite his consistent depiction of women as inferior to men.]

As most of us have come to realize, feminist revisionist criticism has demonstrated impressive vitality in the last decade and at least as much validity as a mode of inquiry as structuralism, marxism, and psychoanalysis.

When one approaches the eighteenth century, one encounters the two main vexing problems facing the condition of womanhood: the angel-devil images and stereotypes already described in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex and the entrapment of woman within prison-like spaces (the home, marriage, the convent).

The all-too-rosy picture the Goncourt brothers painted of the eighteenth century as one that consecrated the reign of women, by now, has been largely superseded by feminist criticism. Yet the traditional clichés of the eighteenth-century woman as dominating court life and politics, as well as the intellectual and artistic salons of the day, are far from dead.

That women under the Old Regime were imprisoned in one way or another since birth was an existential given widely, if covertly, recognized even then. No wonder, therefore, that the family, the convent, marriage, and even the exotic metaphor of the harem are so prevalent in the eighteenth-century novel as literary representations of the sequestered young woman. The toil that went into household duties was, of course, backbreaking (even with the help of servants); but childbearing, with its attendant risks and burdens, contributed most heavily to the subjection of women. Education for women was, of course, nonexistent, or extremely perfunctory at best. Those women who, under such unpropitious circumstances, succeeded in cultivating their minds and in taking an active part in the intellectual and artistic circles of the time were looked upon with condescending benevolence, curious amusement, or outright hostility.

That women were regarded by even the most enlightened men as inferior in intellect, as weaker vessels that had to be both disciplined and protected, will be illustrated by Rousseau's ambivalent stance.

Rousseau's attitude toward women and his theoretical, fictional, as well as autobiographical treatment of the subject present a rather provocative paradox. On the one hand, some critics and commentators have stressed what they viewed as the antifeminist features that, at least from their vantage point, seem to pervade his thinking on the role of women in the home, in society, and in public affairs and the arts.¹ Yet some of the most independent-minded women who played a leading part in revolutionary politics and on the European literary stage—the names of Mme de Staël, Mme Roland, and George Sand come readily to mind—remained loyally steadfast disciples and admirers of Rousseau throughout their turbulent lives, which, in so many ways, belied the model of perfect womanhood that constituted his legacy to the members of the “second sex.”²

Why did such highly intelligent and strong-willed women respond to Rousseau with uncritical fervor? What was it in Rousseau's writings that carried such a special meaning for these and other women? There is no doubt that, for several generations of women readers, the personality and works of Rousseau afforded an unparalleled opportunity for self-revelation.³ Rousseau somehow assumed the guise of a magician capable of throwing a blazing light on their hidden malaise and discontent. After reading his writings, they dared expect something more from life than self-abnegation in the performance of their duties as wives and mothers. Already before the Revolution, Rousseau came to be regarded by countless women readers as that rare, sensitive soul capable of comprehending their innermost needs and aspirations. To twentieth-century feminists, however, Rousseau's ideas regarding the status, education, and role of women appear considerably less liberal and enlightened than those of such philosophes as Montesquieu, Diderot, Helvétius and Condorcet.⁴

Yet it was to Rousseau that the most remarkable women of the eighteenth and even the nineteenth centuries turned for inspiration, encouragement, and reassurance. That the author of the Enlightenment who explicitly exhorted women to seek their personal fulfillment as chaste and virtuous wives and mothers, especially in the fifth book of the Emile, should have been singled out as a spiritual guide by women whose own unconventional conduct and political and literary activities would have undoubtedly baffled and displeased him constitutes a unique case of influence through subjectively perceived affinities. Rousseau fired the hearts of these women because they saw in him the victim and the outcast, and it is precisely what Simone de Beauvoir has defined as the “otherness” of the “second sex,” the profound sense of alienation that is the hallmark of the female condition in society, that caused this transfiguration of Rousseau's own persona into a privileged symbol and an ever-ready spring of spiritual renewal and moral regeneration.⁵

That readers of Rousseau of both sexes have generally found in his works what they were looking for and have all too often interpreted them to suit their subjective needs, rather than to seek an objective understanding of his own ideas, cannot be denied. This is especially the case with women readers such as Mme de Staël, Mme Roland, and George Sand when they reverently turned the pages of the Emile, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and the Confessions. The powerful appeal of these books was largely due to the fact that they reflected, on an existential rather than theoretical or intellectual level, the deepest concerns and yearnings of these women.

While present-day feminists may balk at Rousseau's portrayal of a Julie or especially a Sophie as rather pliable, docile, and passive creatures, earlier women readers thought them admirable, moving characters, capable of ennobling their lives and of endowing courtship, marriage, and motherhood with a new moral seriousness and dignity. Although Rousseau had hardly advocated equal rights for women, he had painted an extremely appealing picture, through Julie in the hugely popular La Nouvelle Héloïse, of a beloved and highly respected companion, wife, and mother. And it is mainly through this novel, with its potent combination of passion and didacticism, that women readers had their first, unforgettable intimations of the happiness and status to which they were entitled to aspire. If nature did not destine them to be the intellectual equals of men, it conferred on them the more precious privilege of exerting a moral ascendancy over the family by their innate aptitude for love and unselfish devotion. Thus, their sphere of influence would be far greater than if they attempted to compete with men and to arrogate some of their authority. That they were necessary for the happiness of men made them their indispensable mates and trusted friends rather than their subservient vassals. Those women who sought personal achievement through involvement in social or political activities or in a personal career in the arts or letters did so at the cost of their most sacred trust. A woman's fulfillment could only be found in her role as guardian of the home and hearth, since the natural order of things has preordained her, both physically and mentally, for this place in society.

It is hardly necessary to review Rousseau's arguments and examples in support of his theory. Suffice it to say that, for him, nature had fashioned woman to be dependent upon her male companion; hence, the importance of those agreeable qualities in woman that will please man. Women who swerved from their essential calling as wives and mothers and strove to compete with men in the community and public affairs betrayed their very nature.

It is not my purpose to reexamine Rousseau's conception of womanhood, either through a reassessment of his theoretical and philosophical ideas, as they are especially set forth in the fifth book of the Emile, or through an analysis of his portrayals in the Confessions of the real women who entered his life or of the ideal one he so lovingly created for La Nouvelle Héloïse. Be it mentioned in passing, however, that, as Jean-Louis Lecercle has convincingly shown, a more sympathetic, less “sexist” image of woman emerges from Mme de Warens and Julie than from Sophie.⁶ This is probably because, in his educational treatise, Rousseau conceived in Sophie the theoretical embodiment of a philosophical model, whereas Julie was brought into being by his imagination and sensibilities as a writer and dreamer and Mme de Warens is particularly compelling because she represents a real human being. Her femininity is all the more appealing because little idealization or theorizing has gone into her depiction.

The purpose of determining whether the charge of “sexism” so frequently leveled by modern feminists against Rousseau is a fair one would be better served by scrutinizing the impact he had on earlier women readers. To this effect, the reactions of the three women already cited in this essay, Mme de Staël, Mme Roland and George Sand, can serve as useful examples. As highly perceptive, articulate readers, they have left us a detailed record of the thoughts and feelings they experienced when, as independent-minded yet impressionable young women, they first came across Rousseau's controversial writings. Curiously enough, these exceptionally intelligent women obediently and unquestioningly subscribed to those views of Rousseau that no modern feminist in her right mind would endorse. Touchingly loyal in their admiration and affection for the one writer who had unlocked the door to their inner selves, they would refuse to acknowledge the discrepancy between their avowed espousal of Rousseau's conception of womanhood and some of their most irrepressible aspirations as women who yearned to play a significant part on the stage of the world. Even when it was too late to change the course of their lives, they continued to evoke Rousseau's principles on how women could achieve happiness. They sighed for the inner peace and tranquillity of mind that domesticity, depicted in such enticing colors in La Nouvelle Héloïse, could not fail to bring them, yet they could not resist the powerful urgings of their literary, social, and political ambitions. Finding themselves in the limelight, they hankered for a more private, hidden existence and blamed circumstances, rather than their own doings, for their controversial celebrity. Their Rousseauistic fervor would not permit these women to recognize that theirs was a nature that needed a broader sphere of activity than the one their master had prescribed for members of their sex, thus making matters more difficult for themselves by creating a conflict—of which most of the time they could not even be consciously aware—between their beliefs and their actions.

Of the three women, Mme Roland is the one who followed most unswervingly Rousseau's restrictive views on women. Manon Phlipon (the future Mme Roland) had the revelation of Jean-Jacques in 1776, a relatively late date, for by then she was in her early twenties and had already read a vast number of books, including the major works of such authors as Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Helvétius.⁷ At a time of stress and crisis in her own life, when she had practically given up the hope of finding a suitable husband because of her modest personal circumstances, Rousseau renewed her faith in mankind by depicting in La Nouvelle Héloïse the conjugal and domestic happiness to which a virtuous woman was entitled. In a passionate, eloquent language to which she responded with her whole thinking and sentient being, Rousseau gave full expression to those painfully repressed longings and resentments Mme Roland had thus far secretly harbored both as a woman and as a member of the struggling petty bourgeoisie. At last, she had found a kindred soul who knew how to speak directly to anguished, sincere women; and to Sophie Cannet, her confidante, she wrote, “Rousseau is the friend of humanity, its benefactor and mine. … I fully realize that I owe him the best part of myself. His genius has warmed me, I have felt elevated and ennobled by him. … His Héloïse is a masterpiece of sentiment.”⁸ Going further than her master, Manon Phlipon fervently upheld the moral usefulness of the novel against the author's stern warning that the book should not be allowed into the hands of innocent young girls lest it kindle their imagination and senses: “The woman who has read it without becoming a better person, or at least without having that desire, has a soul of mud and a listless spirit. She will never rise above the common level.”⁹ In her own quest for happiness through marriage and motherhood, she subconsciously patterned her behavior after that of Julie by choosing as her husband an older, more world-wise man, Roland de La Platière, rather than an impetuous young lover. Passionate love would eventually triumph in tragic circumstances that would leave Mme Roland no other option than heroic self-sacrifice and a glorious martyrdom.

While in prison and awaiting her execution, Mme Roland came to the realization that absolute, fearless candor and straightforwardness had been among the qualities she had most admired in Rousseau's Confessions. She would prove a worthy disciple. She would not even allow traditional scruples of feminine pudeur to prevent her from revealing her inmost self, even in the most embarrassing situations. As a result, her blunt frankness, especially on matters of a sexual nature, shocked some of her nineteenth-century admirers, especially Sainte-Beuve, who found some of her revelations most unladylike.¹⁰ Mme Roland's untimely death enabled her to keep intact her Rousseauistic ideals. The guillotine spared her the confrontation with the bittersweet lessons of experience and allowed her to preserve until the end her faith in Rousseau as the best friend of women and their most sincere spokesman. The self she had so patiently elaborated was essentially a private one and a scrupulous duplication of Rousseau's image of ideal womanhood. It is indeed one of the ironies of history that, despite her desperate efforts to preserve the privacy of her inner world, she ended up playing a notoriously political and public role during the Revolution.

Already as a young girl, Manon Phlipon liked to take refuge in the protective, enclosed area of a recess in her parents' parlor. She became especially fond of what she liked to refer to as her “cell,” which had been converted into a small separate room for her convenience. The furniture of this cubicle was the simplest: a bed, a chair, a writing tablet, and a few bookshelves. Manon's “cell” was to become the center of her private, secret world.

At the age of eleven, Manon felt irresistibly attracted to a religious vocation. The silence and serenity of monastic life assumed the most seductive colors, and she fondly pictured herself spending the rest of her days in a convent. In 1793, when awaiting the guillotine, her memories of this episode in her life were made all the more poignant by the fact that she found herself confined in a prison only a few streets away from the convent that had been selected for her as a young girl.

Women who dared interfere in revolutionary politics paid a heavy price for their activism. Soon, Mme Roland, who greeted the Revolution with unbounded enthusiasm, found herself in prison in the company of counterrevolutionaries, common criminals, actresses, and prostitutes. Yet, as her memoirs and letters attest, it was in prison that she at last found a measure of serenity and peace of mind. Once more an enclosed area became a refuge from the stresses and strifes of life, a means of transcending her physical limitations. Taking her cue from Rousseau's Confessions, she sought a better understanding of herself by retracing her life from her girlhood to her eventual involvement in revolutionary politics.

Germaine Necker, the future Mme de Staël, published in 1788 an essay, Lettres sur les ouvrages et le caractère de J. J. Rousseau, which gives clear evidence of her enthusiastic admiration.¹¹ Despite the fervent, hyperbolic tone of this youthful work, however, one senses a less uncritical stance than in the case of Mme Roland. A strong personality, endowed with a powerful intellect, is obviously asserting itself in this perfervid panegyric.

Yet Germaine Necker had this in common with Manon Phlipon: books had largely conditioned her intellectual outlook; and she, too, would, despite her own independence of mind about the conventions attached to her sex, reveal a rather surprising conservatism and ambivalence in her views on the role of women in society. Like Mme Roland, she espoused Rousseau's endorsement of masculine superiority in the intellectual and creative realm. In her own novels, Delphine and Corinne, she does not concern herself with the rights of women in general but pleads the case of the exceptional woman whose talents and genius set her apart from the other members of her sex while exposing her to the hostility and incomprehension of men.¹² Thus, she would always look upon Jean-Jacques as a kindred spirit, for he, too, had been a misunderstood and persecuted genius.

Mme de Staël was far less reluctant than Mme Roland to take on a political battle or a literary controversy if her sense of justice or her active intellect was sufficiently aroused. Rather than seeking excuses for her activism, she welcomed, indeed thrived on, conflict and controversy. A loyal, fearlessly outspoken disciple of the liberal, melioristic principles of the philosophes, she continued to uphold them through tumultuous, dangerous times; and she fulfilled her difficult roles as inheritor of the spirit of the Enlightenment and as prophetess and spokeswoman of the Age of Romanticism.

When the young Aurore Dupin, the future George Sand, came across Rousseau's works, this discovery turned out to be the high point of her restless intellectual and spiritual quest.¹³ Like Mme Roland and Mme de Staël before her, she had been a voracious reader; but the revelation of Rousseau marked, in her own words, the end of her search. Henceforth, she would always consider herself a spiritual daughter of Jean-Jacques, in her political and moral philosophy, as well as in her religious beliefs. And like her predecessors, she never missed an opportunity to justify his personality and character against his posthumous adversaries, who continued to be as numerous and as vociferous as in his own lifetime.¹⁴ She viewed him as a man of passion and sensibility and as a dreamer, and she was fond of associating him with her own ecstasies and euphoric moods when beholding the beauties of nature.

For George Sand, Rousseau played a catalytic role as the author of the Confessions when she undertook to write the story of her own life; instead of following his example as obediently as a Mme Roland, she boldly challenged his concept of sincerity, for as a woman autobiographer she felt with special acuteness the responsibilities and limitations of her prerogatives. Rousseau was wrong, she proclaimed, in believing that the autobiographer's essential duty was to tell all.¹⁵ Integral truth can be harmful to others; and a woman, who is especially vulnerable to the libelous and defamatory interpretations of scandalmongers, must be on her guard. Hence, George Sand was determined to avoid at all cost sensational revelations about her celebrated love life, and she did not hesitate to give stern and clear warnings to those of her readers who would be looking for titillating disclosures that her book was bound to be a great disappointment to them.¹⁶

Whatever reservations Mme Roland, Mme de Staël, and George Sand ultimately came to express about Rousseau's personality and works, it is highly significant that at no time did they feel compelled to question his views on the “second sex.”

Notes

1. See Richard A. Brooks, “Rousseau's Antifeminism in the Lettre à d'Alembert and Emile,” in Literature and History in the Age of Ideas, edited by Charles G. S. Williams (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975), pp. 209-227.

2. See Madelyn Gutwirth, “Madame de Staël, Rousseau, and the Woman Question,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (January 1971):100-109; Gita May, De Jean-Jacques Rousseau à madame Roland; essai sur la sensibilité préromantique et révolutionnaire (Geneva: Droz, 1964); idem, Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); idem, “Des Confessions à l'Histoire de ma vie: Deux auteurs à la recherche de leur moi,” Présence de George Sand (May 1980):40-47.

3. For Rousseau's impact on women of the French Revolution, see Ruth Graham “Rousseau's Sexism Revolutionized,” in Woman in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Paul Fritz and Richard Morton (Toronto: Samuel Stevens, Happert and Co., 1976), pp. 127-139. Also see G. D. Kelly, “Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Rousseau,” Women and Literature (Fall 1975):21-26.

4. See Paul Hoffmann, La Femme dans la pensée des Lumières (Paris: Editions Ophrys, 1977); Jeannette Geffriaud Rosso, Montesquieu et la féminité (Pisa: Libreria Goliardica Editrice, 1977); and Arthur M. Wilson, “Treated like Imbecile Children (Diderot),” in Fritz and Morton, pp. 89-104.

5. For three portrayals of women in the Emile, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and the Confessions, see Jean-Louis Lecercle, “La Femme selon Rousseau,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Quatre Études, by Jean Starobinski, et al. (Neuchâtel: A la Baconnière, 1978).

6. Lecercle, “La Femme selon Rousseau.”

7. May, De Jean-Jacques Rousseau à Madame Roland; see also Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution.

8. Lettres de Mme Roland, nouvelle série (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1913-1915), vol. 1, p. 392. Translated quotations are my own.

9. Ibid. See Rousseau's famous preface for the warning that his novel should not be placed within reach of chaste young girls.

10. See Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, “Madame Roland,” in Nouveaux Lundis (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1896), vol. 8, pp. 198-200.

11. Madelyn Gutwirth, “Mme de Staël, Rousseau and the Woman Question.” See also Jean Roussel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau en France après la révolution: 1795-1830 (Paris: Colin, 1972), pp. 315-358; Raymond Trousson, Rousseau et sa fortune littéraire (Paris: Nizet, 1977); and Paul de Man, “Madame de Staël et J. J. Rousseau,” Preuves (December 1966):35-40.

12. Madelyn Gutwirth, Madame de Staël, Novelist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978). See also Gita May, “Le Staëlisme de Corinne,” Symposium (Spring-Fall 1958):168-177; and idem, “Madame de Staël and Stendhal: A Case of Grudging Recognition,” Women and Literature (Fall 1978):14-24.

13. George Sand, Histoire de ma vie, in Oeuvres autobiographiques, edited by Georges Lubin (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléïade, 1970), vol. 1. p. 1061. See also May, “Des Confessions à l'Histoire de ma vie,” pp. 40-47.

14. Raymond Trousson, “Les Confessions devant la critique et l'histoire littéraires au XIXe siècle,” in Oeuvres et critiques, edited by Roland Desné (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1978), pp. 51-62.

15. See Sand, vol. 1, pp. 10, 12.

16. Ibid., pp. 13, 15.