Women image in Enlightenment period

Lucrare de licenta despre Women image in Enlightenment period
In the next chapter I decided to write about the women characters from the 18th century novels. I chose to focus on Defoe's Moll Flanders, Richardson's Pamela and Jane Austen's Emma. They all three are different, their social ranks and possibilities in life were different, but each of them was fighting for their happiness.

They were somehow independent, and sometimes dependent, but their life depended only on themselves and they had done all in order not to become victims of a story with an unhappy ending.Moll Flanders renders her introspective self-consciousness as a means of separation from actuality. Moll acquires a greater ease and learns rather quickly the tricks of self-preservation and plausible self-invention, defining herself as someone who learns quickly to analyze social possibility in generalized terms and to situate herself accordingly.

Lucrare de licenta despre Women image in Enlightenment period

Lucrare de licenta despre Women image in Enlightenment period
Cuprins

Introduction..................5

Chapter I - The Woman's Evolution from the Middle Ages to the Classical Period (18-century).............10
1. Defining terms and concepts..................10
2. The medical understanding of woman's body.............11
2.1. Sex and gender.............11
2.2. Menstruation...............14
2.3. Parturition................16
2.4. Changes and continuities.................17
3. Religious teaching...........18
4. The law and its administration.............20
4.1. Marital status.............20
4.2. Marriage, separation, child custody......21
4.3. Crimes by and against women..............22
5. Stereotypes..................23
5.1. Maid, wife and widow.......23
5.2. The scold, the whore and the witch...............25
6. Adult life...................26
6.1. Marriage...................26
6.2. Maternity..................28
6.3. Single women...............31
7. Female friendship............32
8. Female consciousness and feminism................35

Chapter II - Women in the century of the Enlightenment ............37
1. The concept of the Enlightenment.................37
2. Aristocracy in the 18th century..................39
3. Woman as "the other" for men in the 18th century................41
3.1. Brief critical view................41
3.2. Men's glance.......................45
3.2.1. The feminine nature..............45
3.2.2. The woman's reason...............46
3.2.3. The role of women................46
3.3. Married women......................47
3.3.1. Marriage in contradiction........48
3.3.2. The Enlightenment couple.........49
3.3.3. The folk couple..................49
3.4. The women at work..................50
3.4.1. Workers..........................50
3.4.2. Women with unequal status........51
3.5. Education of the Enlightenment's daughters.........51
3.6. The women of culture...............52
3.6.1. Reading.................52
3.6.2. Writing.................53
3.7. Prostitution..............54

Chapter III - Moll Flanders - the woman's identity derived from the fight for life................57

Chapter IV - Pamela: the woman hero as a refusal of the objective "realities" of social rank and the symbol of virtue..............70

Chapter V - Jane Austen's Emma: Independence vs Marriage.........88

Conclusions..................100

References.................103