Woman's Education According to Rousseau and Wollstonecraft
"Give, without scruples, a woman's education to women, see to it that they love the cares of their sex, that they possess modesty, that they know how to grow old in their m�nage and keep busy in their house."
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile
"The neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore."
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
The salons of Jean Jacques Rousseau's day greatly admired his theories, including his advocation of breast-feeding and his concept of natural education. Today he has enormous influence on accepted educational doctrines. Rousseau describes his methods in Emile, the story of a boy's upbringing in natural state. Admiring his sentiment, Mary Wollstonecraft applauded Rousseau's scheme for Emile but deplored the neglect of Emile's perfect wife, Sophie. Her disappointment in Rousseau was a main influence on Wollstonecraft's best-known work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Rousseau outlines his theories for the ideal education for women in Chapter V of Emile written between 1757 and 1761. These so contradict his plan for Emile that it becomes necessary to place them in the framework of his time and the particular prejudices of Rousseau. Certainly he broke no ground regarding the topic of women. Nearly a hundred years before Emile, Mrs. Makin published An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen. In her Serious Proposal to Ladies of 1694, Mary Astell advocated a convent where serious-minded women might retire for study and contemplation. In his Essay on Projects , Daniel Defoe suggests an academy for women where they might study whatever they chose. He observes as early as 1697, "We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves."1 As women and their education were very popular topics among the frequenters of the salons, Rousseau was often drawn into their discussions as a consultant. After publication Rousseau realized some recognition as a spokesman for the rights of people, although there was a decided rise in the intensity of demands for recognition of women's state.2
Rousseau describes his passionate feelings for several women in his life in his Confessions, the first of which was the strange feelings he had as a boy when Mademoiselle Lambercier punished him. "Who would have believed that the chastisement I received at eight from a thirty-year-old girl would have determined my tastes, desires, and passions for the rest of my life?"3 Having left Protestant Switzerland for Catholic France, Rousseau began to meet the women who would support and influence his work for the rest of his life. One of his first encounters was with Madame de Warens, whom he referred to as maman, also a convert to Catholicism and an escapee from Geneva. Because of her support he was able to take part in knowledgeable conversations, philosophical discussions, and intellectual pursuits. From her privileged position he was able to observe with fraternal pity the people whose fate he might have shared.
At the age of thirty, Rousseau left Madame de Warens' residence. He wished to be accepted in the intellectual circles of the salons, and to gain entrance to the Academie des Sciences. He succeeded at the Academie but failed to be accepted socially at the salons. One of his sponsors, P�re Castel, advised, "Since musicians and servants will not sing together with you, change your tactics, and try the women."4 He took this advice and made the acquaintance of several intelligent and influential women.
According to Claude Fervel in Jean Jacques Rousseau et les femmes, Rousseau's feelings of inferiority among these women induced his unnatural attachment to a twenty-three year old servant girl, Th�r�se Levasseur. "She is so limited," says Hume, "that she knows neither the year, the month, nor the day of the week; she is unaware of the value of money and in spite of all that, she has o