A Woman's Philosophy of Woman or, Woman Affranchised

Héricourt, Madame d‘, 1809-1875Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
499K words
Chapters
50

Tags

English Originals Western PhilosophyCulture Individual FreedomHumanistic CareIntellectual EnlightenmentGender EqualityPower OppressionSocial CritiqueWestern ThoughtIntellectual CommentaryTraditional EtiquetteFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Woman's Philosophy of Woman; or, Woman affranchised. by Madame d' HéricourtAuthor: Héricourt, Madame d', 1809-1875,Language: English, Class: HQ: Social sciences: The family, Marriage, Sex and Gender, Release Date: Jan 10, 2017

Editor's review

This is the English translation of a treatise by the nineteenth-century French woman thinker Madame d'Héricourt on women's condition and rights. The word "affranchised" in the title means "liberated," indicating that her central concern is women's autonomy and equality. The author responds in philosophical argument to prevailing views of her time on women's nature, education, marriage, and social role; it is a primary text in the early feminist intellectual tradition and can be read against contemporary polemics. Its value lies in showing how a nineteenth-century woman author used rational argument to claim discursive authority; the language carries the polemical flavor of its era, the argument is clearly structured, but the examples and context are remote from today's readers. Suitable as supplementary reading in women's history, gender studies, or intellectual history; read chapter by chapter to grasp the arguments, and note the specific opponents and era premises the author addresses rather than treating it as an introduction to modern gender theory.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the preface and chapter titles first to map the author's core claims and targets before entering the main text
  2. Read by theme—education, marriage, civil rights—and summarize the chain of argument for each group
  3. Mark the era's assumptions the author uses, distinguishing historical context from arguments that still resonate
  4. Compare with contemporary women's-rights works to see differences in argumentative strategy and framing of the problem

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
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  11. 11
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  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
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  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
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  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50

FAQ

Who is the author, and what is the background of the book? The author is Madame d'Héricourt (1809–1875), a nineteenth-century French woman author. According to the source data, this is her philosophical treatise on women's emancipation, released in English translation by Project Gutenberg. The data provides no further biographical detail, so readers should not infer her full life from this book alone.
What does "affranchised" in the title mean? The word means "liberated" or "set free." The subtitle "Woman affranchised" states the book's central thesis: that women should be freed from old constraints and inequality. Understanding this wording helps grasp the author's starting point and the context of her argument.
Is it suitable as an introduction to feminism? Not really as an introduction. It is a nineteenth-century polemical text whose framing of issues and argumentative language bear the marks of its era, lacking modern conceptual frameworks and background explanation. It is more effective as intellectual-history material for readers who already have some grounding in gender studies.

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About the author

Héricourt, Madame d‘, 1809-1875 Author

Madame d'Héricourt (1809–1875) was a nineteenth-century French feminist thinker and the author of A Woman's Philosophy of Woman and the two-volume La femme affranchie (The Emancipated Woman), works centred on women's emancipation and gender equality. Drawing on philosophical argument, she criticised the social constraints placed on women and argued that women should attain independence in education, law and personhood. Her writing is lucid and forcefully argued, combining Enlightenment rationalism with early feminism. Three of her works are held in the collection, including A Woman's Philosophy of Woman or, Woman affranchised and volumes one and two of La femme affranchie. Because public information is limited, details of her life, nationality and education remain to be verified, and scholarly attention to her focuses mainly on these feminist writings.