Provocative assessment of how new ideas about motherhood and domesticity in pre-Revolutionary France helped women demand social and political equality later on
In this lively interdisciplinary blend of history, education, and material culture, Jennifer J. Popiel examines ideological and cultural shifts in French child rearing and maternity from pre-Revolutionary France to 1833. She shows how ideals promoted in Rousseau’s educational treatise Emile (1762) anchored women more firmly in private life by emphasizing their critical role in their children’s early education and development. Emile marked the beginning of a widespread shift toward domestic nurturing, with an emphasis on self-control, autonomy, and gender difference. This “domestic revolution” not only drove new genres of literature, clothing styles, and toys, but as Popiel persuasively argues, it also set the stage for greater civic participation of women
and children.
“In this beautifully written and deeply researched book, Jennifer Popiel overturns much of the conventional wisdom about women, the family, and education in the pivotal period, 1760–1830. The new insights leap out from every page and together they add up to nothing less than a fundamental revision of the history of the modern self.”—Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, University of California, Los Angeles
“Rousseau’s Daughters closely follows the influence of Rousseau’s masterpiece on education, Emile, upon the generation who experienced the French Revolution. Popiel’s sympathetic, personal, and readable account demonstrates to us how women, in particular, could find such solace in a vision of education and domesticity that appears heavily sexist to us today. Popiel’s imaginative revisionist account is more than simply a cultural history of post-Enlightenment France. By the end of her study, it is clear that Popiel is proposing a kind of Rousseauian critique of her own regarding contemporary feminism’s general dismissal of domesticity as contributing to a “separate spheres” ideology. In her conclusion, Popiel forcefully urges feminists to reclaim domestic child rearing as part of the larger project of educating modern citizens.”—Gary Kates, Professor of History, Pomona College
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JENNIFER J POPIEL is assistant professor in the Department of History, Saint Louis University, Missouri.
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