Modern Political Theory

Rousseau and Women: Modern Political Theory

If there is any one refrain or argument that recurs throughout Rousseau it is that "nature never lies", what nature tells us is best. When Rousseau discusses the education of a young person, he argues that education should draw our the individuals natural goodness. We need to be educated in opposition to a corrupting civilization. While it is not possible to return to the state of nature nature still provides the guidelines for individual and social behavior. The General Will is natural in that it returns us to community and links together our public and private selves.

Female Subordination & Nature

Throughout history perhaps the most common argument to justify women's subordinate sex role is to argue that it is natural. As the argument goes women's subordinate position is not imposed on her by social, economic, or cultural institutions, it is rather a reflection of women's more passive, chaste, dependent nurturing characteristics that have been bestowed on her by nature.

Rousseau provides a history of male/female relations. In the state of nature Rousseau tells us that sexual love is at first merely the satisfying of an instinct. There is no talk in this account of marriage, family or any other signs of dependence of one sex on the other. In the state of nature there is also a rough equality of the sexes.

Property and Female Dependence

The real change occurs in the relation between men and women and in his characterization of women with the introduction of property. While previously the sexes had been self-sufficient and independent, Rousseau argues with the coming of property "the first revolution" occurs. He talks about the use of rudimentary tools and in same breadth introduces a complete division of labor. Whereas previously the way of life of the two sexes had been identical, now women become sedentary and grow accustomed to tend the home and children, while the men go into nature to seek sustenance for the family. The man as hunter and gatherer the women as home maker.

This division of labor meant that women were no longer self-sufficient. The male is engaged in productive outside and the female stays home to tend the family. Rousseau has established a patriarchal society with women in a subordinate role and has done this with almost no argument or recognition of how important this assumption of this division of labor is. Important in that one half of the race is being defined in terms of one job description housewife with no alternative possible or natural. [I don't mean to imply that the role of a housewife is not a worthwhile and meaningful one. This is not a criticism of the religious right and family values. I am suggesting that it is repressive when one takes as a given that this is women's natural role and that anything else goes against nature.]

Sexual Needs

In his later writings Rousseau treats the nuclear family and monogamy as a natural institution a God-given destiny for humankind. In his later writings Rousseau will argue further that women are defined almost solely with respect to their sexual needs. While he acknowledges that both sexes have sexual needs, Rousseau implies that the male will be aroused only if the female makes herself pleasing to him, and lures him by bashfulness, coquetry and with genuine or simulated advances. The women as aggressor the man as passive agent. The sex act is not mutual or spontaneous, but rather one where the male the supposed pursuer must be aroused by female wiles.

Rousseau's arguments for the and the subordinate and submissive role of women are all the more damaging and troubling because he implies that this is somehow women's natural role. She is foreordained to this secondary position by her nature, by her instincts. It is useless for society to think of reform to equalize the relation between the sexes. To attempt to alter the patriarchal relation is to go against nature to go against what is good and right.

Women's Qualities

Rousseau offers a long list of qualities that he says our natural to women. You have all heard this list in various forms before.

Shame

Modesty

Love of Finery and Embellishment

Desire to Please and be Polite to Others

Skillful Shrewdness tending to Duplicity

These are all instincts of the female sex.

Children and Games

He finds support for his discussion of men and women in the games that children play.

These are a series of quotes from Rousseau:

"Boys Seek Out Movement and Noise"

Whereas "the doll is the girl's special toy, there we see her taste obviously determined by her purpose in life"

Almost from birth girls love adornment and as soon as they can understand what people say they can be controlled by what people think of them. Such control will not work on a small boy however.

Education and the Sexes

Rousseau compounds and reinforces these distinctions between the sexes in his discussion of education.

"Women" he says "in general do not like any art and have no genius. They can succeed in work which requires only quick wit, taste, grace, sometimes even a little bit of philosophy and reasoning but they never have the celestial flame of genius.

Sadly, Rousseau, echoes the arguments of many previous philosophers. Rousseau contends that

"Reason in women is a practical reason which enables them to easily discover how to arrive at a given conclusion, but which does not enable them to reach the conclusions themselves. Women can not discover principals, a man can, but they have a better head for details.

Rousseau reinforces these supposed differences between men and women in his educational theories. Whereas he sees education for men as a way for them to reach their full potentiality for women education is dictated by their natural functions. Education is expansive for men, it merely reinforces tendencies in Women.

In Emile the education of women he says

The entire education of women must be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to be loves and honored by them, to rear them when they are young, to care for them when they are grown up, to counsel and console, to make their lives pleasant charming, these are the duties of women at all times, and they should be taught them in their childhood. To the extent that we refuse to go back to this principle, we will stray from our goal, and all the precepts women are given will not result in their happiness or our own.

In the end Rousseau message is quite simple.

Women's place is in the home, domestic life is her forte. Freedom and equality are values relevant for men not women. Women can not function as citizens in the community. Public man Private Women. Their nature foreordains them for family life, a life of the instincts.

Sadly the great philosopher of equality and the truths of nature relegated women to a wholly subordinate position. Life's opportunities are not to be offered to her.

It's little wonder if some of the West's greatest philosophers's held such views, the general public could hardly be expected to see the relation between men and women any differently.

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