Three Late Eighteenth-Century Women's Journals

Three Late Eighteenth-Century Women's Journals: Their Role in Shaping Women's Lives Helga Madland The eighteenth-century discussion concerning the role of women grounded its assumptions in "nature." Since the Graeco-Roman period, women had been perceived as inferior to males in the social hierarchy; the enlightened supposition, however, that no "man" has the "natural" right to dominate another propounded by political theorists beginning with Hobbs (1588-1679),1 saw the emergence of arguments extending the implications of these new democratic ideas to women. The advocates of natural law argued that there is "a law which antedates all human and divine power and is valid independently of such power" (Cassirer 239). In practical terms it meant that women should have equal rights to education (and subsequent participation in the public sphere),2 an idea suggested as early as 1505 by the philosopher Agrippa von Nettesheim3 but not really becoming a serious issue until the late seventeenth and particularly the eighteenth century.4 To contest these claims a sustained and successful enterprise, whose primary objective was the establishment of "scientific" evidence attesting to women 's "natural" inferiority, took place. For example, in France and Germany, anatomists' "depiction of a smaller female skull was used to prove that women's intellectual capabilities were inferior to men's"5 thus justifying their social inequality. Similarly, "the larger female pelvis was used ... to prove that women were naturally destined for motherhood, the confined sphere of hearth and home" (Schiebinger 43). These efforts were successful , for German women remained excluded from participation in the public sphere, the arena of discourse concerned with politics, throughout the eighteenth century and well into the twentieth century.6 Since education was a central concern of the Age of Enlightenment, however, the voices supporting the notion that women too had the potential to be educated were not totally silenced. During the early decades of the eighteenth century, the idea of "weibliche Gelehrsamkeit" 16 7 became fashionable and was postulated in, among other literature, Gottched's journal Die vernÃ1⁄4nftigen Tadlerinnen J The best-known treatise in support of women's education written by a woman is Dorothea Christiane Leporin's dissertation "GrÃ1⁄4ndliche Untersuchung der Ursachen die das weibliche Geschlecht vom Studieren Abhalten " published in 1742. Leporin, the first woman to be awarded a doctoral degree from a German university, unmasks arguments against the education of women as prejudices and demands that women be permitted to attend universities, a right German women did not gain until 1900 although, as in the case of Leporin, there were occasional degrees awarded to women. During the second half of the eighteenth century, the notion of the intellectual female fell into discredit and women who aspired to a scholarly education became objects of ridicule (Bovenschen 158). While the concept of "Bildung," the idea that women should be trained in the "feminine" arts and letters, which included the study of French, English , painting, and music, remained influential, abstract knowledge, that is knowledge for its own sake such as Latin and philosophy, which would not contribute to the formation of a delightful and entertaining bourgeois wife, was discouraged.8 Educational policy for women during this time was strongly influenced by Rousseau who in his Emile (Emile ou de l'éducation, 1762) projects the properly educated female to be a woman who has been trained to be a passive and subordinate appendage of her husband. At the same time, the redefinition of the house as a "haven from the hostile world" placed greater value on the woman as a beautiful and erotic object9 who was expected to have a serene temperament and an inviting exterior.10 The women's journals, a source accessible to middle-class women,H played a major role as an educational medium filling the "vacuum" created by the early discontinuation of a young girl's limited education . Evident in all the journals is their manipulation of women, their attempt to shape them into passive and decorative objects, and their lack of respect for women's viewpoints. It is particularly well illustrated by two letters discussing the wearing of corsets printed in the Journal des Luxus und der Moden. The arguments presented

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• Madchenliteratur

  Ruth P Dawson, Dagmar Grenz•German Studies Review•1984

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• Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit

  Jürgen Habermas•Strukturwandel Der Offentlichkeit•1990

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• Skeletons in the Closet

  L Schiebinger•Representations•1986

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• The Philosophy of the Enlightenment

  Ernst Cassirer•Philosophy of the Enlightenment•2009

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