Enlightenment thinkers could confine women to the home while still backing female political rule.

Evidence

Rousseau is the spokesman of the bourgeoisie and dooms woman to her husband and motherhood. “All the education of women should be relative to men … Woman is made to yield to man and to bear his injustices,” he asserts. … Montesquieu, paradoxically, believes that women should be subordinate to man in the home but that everything predisposes them to political action. “It is against reason and against nature for women to be mistresses in the house … but not for them to govern an empire.” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 237

Categorization

• XREF: This privatized-yet-political split connects to the reader’s existing work on the public/private divide; also echoes the complaint-sumptuary threads about women’s designated sphere. — connects to: Colonial women’s-rights rhetoric coexisted with active antifeminism at home.

Broader Connections

• Colonial women’s-rights rhetoric coexisted with active antifeminism at home. #exemplifies (0.82)