Abstract

In my dissertation, I compare two models of gendered morality put forth as appropriate for citizenship in the eighteenth century: detached men and passionate women. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Germaine de Stael complicate and challenge the Enlightenment philosophy in which they were steeped by seeking to embody women and men in their claim that subjectivity, and hence moral sensibility, is gendered. The political theory they develop includes the determination that our bodies have a profound impact on the construction of our identities, and in particular, our identities as citizens. ;I focus my comparison of Rousseau and Stael not on their political works, but rather, on the women they brought to life in their novels. It is in their novels that political theory, particularly that which relates to women and citizenship, is embedded. I discuss Rousseau's Sophie, Julie, and Claire, and Stael's Delphine and Corinne, each in turn. ;Rousseau posits that the moral political self must be a man: detached, autonomous, rational. Yet, Rousseau is keen to valorize women in their virtuous reign over the household. In describing men's and women's conflictive yet complimentary moralities, Rousseau articulates a morality for women derived from their situation in the home that is at the heart of the dynamic of democratic politics. My focus on this aspect of Rousseau's portrayal of gender distinction is subversive in articulating his alternative conception of morality. This vision of moral action completely alters the structure of the patriarchal family and restructures Rousseau's vision of the polity to be truly participatory. ;Stael was attracted to this subversive Rousseau, the Rousseau who advocates a feminist sensibility. Stael immediately rejects Rousseau's prescription for women's complete confinement to the home and his delineation of a boundary between thinking and feeling in defining an epistemology appropriate for the general will. In detailing the nature and morality of the woman who Stael identifies as exceptional , she carves out a legitimate space for women as moral democratic citizens and deconstructs the division between reason and feeling in moral deliberation