Society 18th Century

18 th. Century Society

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.

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.

DEMOGRAPHY

Socio-economic changes of the eighteenth century, and its continuation in the nineteenth, consolidated the nuclear family.

FAMILY

Nuclear family, made exclusively by the couple and their unmarried children, who at marriage left the parental home forming your own

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.

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.

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

ClergyThey 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.

Bourgeoisie

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

PeasantsThe 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.

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 & tolerance2. Print culture

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

Rousseau’s “Emile” (1762)

• Men and women occupy separate spheres

Worldly Sphere =

Men

Domestic Sphere = Women

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

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

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

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!

• 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)

Salons

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

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

Salon Bleu – Louis XV

Salon Jaune

• To many, her salon was the premier salon

• In her twenties, she began apprenticing at the salon of her neighbor, Madame de Tencin

Marie -Therese Geoffrin

• 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

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

Madame Geoffrin’s Salon

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.

Maria Kirch (1670-1720) was a famous astronomer

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

Maria Agnesi (1718-1799) was a famous mathematician

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

Caroline Herschel (1750-1848) was a famous astronomer

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

Catherine Macaulay was a famous historian