Brown, Susan E. “Rational Creatures and Free Citizens: The Language of Politics in the Eighteenth-Century Debate on Women”. Historical Papers [Canada], 1988, pp. 35-47, https://doi.org/10.7202/030980ar.

Genre

  • Journal Article
Contributors
Author: Brown, Susan E.
Date Issued
1988
Abstract

Discusses debates on the rights of women in the 1790's in England, contrasting the positions of radicals and conservatives. In the use of political concepts such as liberty, equality, and rights applied to women, each side defined these terms on the basis of their own presuppositions. For radicals, these terms were a call for political reform; for conservatives they represented the importance of women as moral reformers in the home whose influence would lead into civil society.

Note

Documentation: Based on Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, and other primary and secondary sources; 45 notes.; Abstracter: F. Schubert

Source type: Electronic(1)

Language

  • English

Subjects

  • Politics.
  • 1790's
  • Civil Rights
  • Debates.
  • Great Britain.
  • Women.
Page range
35-47
Host Title
Historical Papers [Canada]
ISSN
0068-8878