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ENLIGHTENMENT SOCIETY

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GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

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  • Social Context

Uniquely civilized: Salon society presided over by educated women hostesses. [Most of the men were anti-feminist but this was a time when aristocratic women did have a lot of power in society.]

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PRINT CULTURE

  • Books/journals/newspapers/pamphlets reached their own status before, movements spread by preaching
    • sharp increase of printed docs in 18th
  • Everyday life concerns rose w/printed docs – toward 1600, ½ of docs religious; by 1780s, only 1/10 were
  • Books not cheap, but they circulated:
    • Private/public libraries grew, authors used different methods
      • Samuel Johnson - as books collections of essays
  • The Spectator - Joseph Addison/Richard Steele
    • Fostered value of polite conversation and reading of books
    • Coffeehouses, Freemason lodge and clubs became meeting places

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PRINT ECONOMY

  • Expanding market let writers earn living:
    • Authorship became occupation
      • Alexander Pope and Voltaire became wealthy
      • Status based on merit and commercial competition,
  • “High” authors addressed themselves to monarchs, nobles, professionals
    • Other authors lived marginally,
    • Bred Enlightenment ideas to radical extremes and exposed them to the lower class audience

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PUBLIC OPINION

  • Social force, collective effect on political/social views, created by expanding literate public
      • writers could write to nation, respond only to their readers – governments couldn’t act in secret, had to explain/discuss views openly
  • Continental European governments sensed political power
    • Regulated/censored books/newspapers, imprisoned offending authors
    • Expansion of freedom of press = Expansion of print culture and its challenge to authorities

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WOMEN IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT

  • Women, especially France, helped promote careers of philosophes
    • in Paris salons (Marie-Therese Geoffrin, Claudine de Tencin, Julie de Lespinasse)
      • Gave philosophes access to social/political contacts/respective environment to circulate ideas
      • Gave them socials status/luster of ideas, enjoyed being center of attention, could boost sales of their works
      • Women were connected to major political figures

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  • Marquise de Pompadour
    • mistress of Louis XV, helped overcome the Encyclopedia’s censorship/block circulation of works attacking philosophes
    • bought writings/distributed among friends

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WOMEN V. PHILOSOPHES

  • Confusing mix of equal rights and traditional roles in many Enlightenment thinkers- Montesquieu and Rousseau
    • Rousseau portrayed wives and motherhood as a noble profession for women
    • Started the theory women occupy the “domestic” sphere and men occupy the political/civic sphere
    • Deeply influenced French Revolution
    • Rousseau had a vast following of women, convinced to breast-feed own children
  • Mary Wollstonecraft attacked Rousseau’s ideas as being an attempt to limit women’s role in society

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BIG IDEAS: LIFE DURING THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

  • During period of high inflation nobility reasserted privileges over lower classes.
  • Overall standard of living improved,
    • People on the bottom of the social ladder lived on the edge of starvation.
  • Enlightenment offered middle class intellectual and social improvement.
    • Middle class shared many of the same cultural interests as the nobility
    • Growing middle class embraced new concepts of childhood.
  • Lower classes enjoyed various forms of popular culture.
  • Mobility led to increased births outside of marriage,