Louise Dupin's Work on Women: Selections

The eighteenth-century text Work on Women by Louise Dupin (also known as Madame Dupin, 1706-1799) is the French  Enlightenment's most in-depth feminist analysis of inequality--and its  most neglected one. Angela Hunter and Rebecca Wilkin here offer the  first-ever edition of selected translations of Dupin's massive project,  developed from manuscript drafts. Hunter and Wilkin provide helpful  introductions to the four sections of Work on Women (Science,  History and Religion, Law, and Education and Mores) which contextualize  Dupin's arguments and explain the work's construction--including the  role of her secretary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Dupin's central claim in Work on Women is that French jurists have gradually disenfranchised women through  reductive interpretations of Roman law. As a result, modern marriage is  founded on an abusive, illegitimate contract that enriches one party and  impoverishes the other. This manifest injustice is enabled by the  "masculine vanity" that aggrandizes men, diminishes women, and distorts  all realms of knowledge. Dupin shows how the most reputable scientists  incorporate old notions of women's weakness into new understandings of  the body, while historians denigrate female rulers or erase them  altogether. Even in everyday conversation, men assert their entitlement  to social dominance through casual misogyny. Thus, although Dupin  advocates for meaningful education for girls, she insists that the  upbringing of boys must also be reformed.

This volume fills an  important gap in the history of feminist thought and will appeal to  readers eager to hear new voices that challenge established narratives  of intellectual history.