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A Republican Housewife: Marie‐Jeanne Phlipon Roland on Women's Political Role

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sandrine Bergès
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Abstract

In this paper I look at the philosophical (and sometimes personal) struggles of one eighteenth‐century woman writer to reconcile a desire and obvious capacity to participate in the creation of republican ideals and their applications on the one hand, and on the other a deeply held belief that women's role in a republic is confined to the domestic realm. I argue that Marie‐Jeanne Phlipon Roland's philosophical writings—three unpublished essays, published and unpublished letters, as well as parts of her memoirs—suggest that even though she adopted a Rousseau‐style rural republicanism that relies on complementarity of men and women's virtues, she somehow succeeds in proposing a less sexist picture of the republican family, one that makes it possible for men and women to take an equal part in family business and politics.

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Articles
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Hypatia , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , Winter 2016 , pp. 107 - 122
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Copyright © 2016 by Hypatia, Inc.

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