"Freeing Women's History from the Yoke of Male Periodization:" How Women Shaped Europe Between 1648 and 1948
By Emma Taline
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Period: to
Special exhibition for the Museum of Europe
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Maria Theresa (Empress of the Hapsburg Empire)
The primary source that accompanies this entry on Maria Theresa is her autobiographical "Political Testament," which was written c.1749-1750 in the Austrian Haspburg Empire. (Note that the painting is not the text in question.) This document publicly stated her evaluation of her predecessors' mishandling of the Empire as well as the reforms she implemented to prevent their political errors from reoccuring. It demonstrated her ability to effectively hold a male-prescribed role as a woman. -
"Salonnières"
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1758 "Lettre à M. d'Alembert sur les spectacles" was a response to d’Alembert’s proposal to establish a comedy theatre in Geneva. Rousseau's referral to the salons as “prisons” for men suggests their subjection to the "salonnières," and thereby to women's successful break from the popular belief of the ‘natural’ dominance of men over women. Allan Bloom's "Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theatre (1968) provides the English translation. -
Mary Wollstonecraft
English writer. Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Women:with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects" (1792) was written in response to her contemporary scholars' rejection of education for women. Her essential argument may be summarized as follows: since women are as rational as men yet “inferior to them, through poor education,” they should be given the same educational and political opportunities as men in order to flourish in their intellectual capabilities. -
George Sand
George Sand's "Indiana" was a novel that largely mirrored the author's personal life andexperiences. It particularly presents Sand’s rupture with European female conventions on the inappropriateness of love outside of marriage. The protagonist, Indiana, symbolizes Sand’s Romantic aspirations for a love outside of marriage that is so passionate as to liberate her from her oppressive husband.The English translation is provided by George Burnham Ives in "Indiana" (1900). -
The English women’s rights movement
"Why We Are Militant" was a speech given by Emmeline Pankhust, one of the leading militant suffragettes of the English women's rights movement, in New York on 1913. Pankhurst argued for for the equality of legal and political rights between men and women that underpinned The English women’s rights movement, rejected the notion of women as belonging to the private sphere, and ultimately stressed that women are deserving of the same rights as men by virtue of their shared humanity. -
Socialist Feminism
"Only in Conjunction with the Proletarian Woman Will Socialism Be Victorious” was a speech given by Clara Zetkin, a German socialist feminist, at the Party Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Gotha, in 1896. It provided a summary of the steps to achieving women’s demands through socialism as well as an eradication of the notion of men’s alleged institutionalized dominance over women.
