During the 18th century, the population of Europe grew significantly due to advances in nutrition, hygiene, and reductions in epidemics. Society was very young, with half the workforce under 20, and nuclear families became more common. Enlightenment ideas spread new notions of rationalism and tolerance, strengthening early feminism and arguments for women's equality. However, most thinkers still believed in traditional gender roles and women's subordinate status to men. Salons run by women provided an acceptable social and intellectual space for women's education and participation in philosophical debates.

1. 18 th. Century Society

2. During the 18th. Century, the population of Europe
increased steadily:
Between 1700 and 1800, it grew from about 95 million
people to about 146 million.
This was due to
• scientific advances
• improvements in nutrition
• hygiene.
• a reduction in the number of epidemics.

3. DEMOGRAPHY
Due to its high fertility, the population of the 18th century was very
young, with half of its workforce under twenty years old, in which over sixty
years old were not reaching the tenth of the total.
• By gender, there used to be a slight
female predominance.
• For example, in France, in 1740, the
ratio of -number of men per 100 women
was 96.4.
• Born, however, more boys than girls.
The greater intensity of mortality
affects men over the life. Except for the
stage of women fertility due to birth-related
problems.
• Women lived longer.

4. FAMILY
Socio-economic changes of the eighteenth
century, and its continuation in the nineteenth, consolidated
the nuclear family.
The diffusion of rural industry in the
world, providing employment and non-agricultural
wages, tended to crack the
foundations of complex families.
Population growth, increasing the
number of dependent unmarried siblings of
the heir, and the inevitable need to finish
fragmenting patrimonies.
Nuclear family, made exclusively by the couple
and their unmarried children, who at marriage
left the parental home forming your own
Against them, the greater flexibility of the
nuclear family:
• increased viability in the urban
environment,
• its assimilation of the spirit of business-every
marriage should start his own
hacienda made more adapted to modern
times.

5. STATES OF REALM
European Society continued to be based on the States System but
Enlightenment wanted to introduce reforms
Nobility
The aristocracy played an important role in political life and institutions;
continued to occupy the apex of the social pyramid and having huge economic
resources and, more cultured, educated and refined, spread throughout
society a lifestyle that would last and would be imitated long after its
disappearance as privileged class

10. Clergy
They would still having great influence in social and religious life.
Enlightened Despots created laws to limit the influence of the clergy. Some Church lans
and buildings were confiscated, and the number of convents was reduced.

11. Bourgeoisie
The so-called Middle Class was inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment such as the
value of work and progress.

14. Peasants
The peasants’ living conditions did not improve, even after agricultural reforms.
However, de Domestic System enabled somo peasants to earn additional money.
Domestic System, was an industry that combined rural character of
agricultural work with home textile manufacturing. It is not developed in
factories.

17. Perceptions of Women
• There were other feminists prior to the
Enlightenment, but not many
• Feminism began to gain momentum in the
Age of Enlightenment.
• Why?
1. Notions of rationalism & tolerance
2. Print culture

18. Montesquieu
• Supported equality for women in society and
was sympathetic to the obstacles they faced
(The Persian Letters)
• However, he held traditional beliefs as to a
man’s dominance in marriage and family

19. Rousseau’s “Emile” (1762)
• Men and women occupy separate spheres
Worldly
Sphere =
Men
Domestic
Sphere =
Women

20. Rousseau (cont.)
• Women should be educated to be
subordinate to men – there is little else for
a woman to do but make herself pleasing
to men

21. Rousseau (cont.)
• A woman’s purpose was to bear and raise
children
• Weaker/inferior to men EXCEPT in their
capacity for feeling and giving love
• No political rights

22. Mary Wollstonecraft
• Mother of the feminist
movement
• Born in London, England.
• Her first book, A
Vindication of the Rights of
Women (1792) caused
much controversy because
she stated that men and
women were created
equal, but women received
less education

23. A Vindication of the Rights of Women
• Celebrates the rationality of women
• Attacks the view of female education put forward by
Rousseau and countless others who regarded women
as weak and artificial and not capable of reasoning
effectively
• Rejects the education in dependency that Rousseau
advocated for them in Emile
• A woman must be intelligent in her own right, as she
cannot assume that her husband will be intelligent!

24. • She caused further controversy when she
chose not to marry the father of her first
daughter
• She did eventually marry William Godwin,
another English philosophe
• Sadly, she died days after giving birth to their
daughter, Mary Shelley (future author of the
book Frankenstein)

25. Salons

26. Salons
• Pleasure was not the objective of the Enlightenment salons
• The philosophes that had rejected the academy and the
university as their institutional bases for their work turned to
the Parisian salons to continue their conversations and
practices
• The salonnières served to listen attentively to the philosophes
and fill in during the silences of the conversation, if needed
• A main purpose of the salons of Paris for the salonnières
during the Enlightenment was to satisfy the self-determined
educational needs of the women who started them

27. • For the salonnières, the salon was a socially
acceptable substitute for the formal
education denied them

28. Salon Bleu – Louis XV

29. Salon Jaune

31. Marie -Therese Geoffrin
• To many, her salon
was the premier
salon
• In her twenties, she
began apprenticing
at the salon of her
neighbor, Madame
de Tencin

32. • Two innovations Geoffrin contributed to the
salon:
1. Switched the traditional late night dinner to a
1:00 dinner to fallow for an entire afternoon of
conversation
2. Created a regular, weekly salon dinner schedule,
with Monday assigned to the artists, Wednesday
for the men of letters, and so forth

33. Geoffrin (cont.)
• Mme. G was a very generous woman as she
was quite wealthy and willing to share
• She often helped young authors struggling
to make ends meet and on Sundays she
didn’t open her salon. Instead she put
together large sums of money in little bags
to distribute among the poor

34. Madame Geoffrin’s Salon

35. In the 18th century girls from well off
families went to school but it was felt
important for them to learn
'accomplishments' like embroidery and
music rather than academic subjects.
Nevertheless there were a number of
famous women scientists and writers in the
18th century.

36. Maria Kirch (1670-1720) was a famous astronomer

37. Laura Bassi (1711-1778)
became professor of anatomy at Bologna University in 1732

38. Maria Agnesi (1718-1799)
was a famous mathematician

39. Emilie du Chatelet (1706-1749) was a
woman physicist and mathematician

40. Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)
was a famous astronomer

41. Madame Anne de Stael (1766-1817)
was a famous writer

42. Catherine Macaulay
was a famous historian