"Women's political thought": is there such a thing? Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green have no doubt that there is, at least in the European tradition. Scanning from 1400 to 1700, the foundational period for our modern political landscape, they look at a diverse range of women, from the obvious, Christine de Pizan, Margaret Cavendish, Marie le Jars de Gournay, to women you'd not normally think of as political theorists, from Queen Elizabeth I of England to Mary Astell.
Their thesis, in A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1400-1700, is that these women first of all share a consciousness of gender: "these women defend their capacity for political virtue, they argue for women's prudence, they defend female monarchs, and they call for female liberty of conscience against the tyranny of men." Yet, the authors have to admit their story isn't all good news: "many are intolerant and conservative, critical of those who bring about social disorder for the sake of religious freedom and they are committed to individual virtue and passive obedience to authority."
They divide the period, and their writers, into two broad groups: those who celebrate heroic and even actively fighting women, such as Joan of Arc, exceptional examples of their sex who nevertheless demonstrate what women are capable of. The authors broadly locate this approach in the earlier period and then identify a rival, and largely supplanting, more "feminine" model of female excellence, including in political life, dating from around the middle of the 17th century.
The authors see this as driven particularly by Madeleine de Scudery, who "was enormously influential in developing a form of feminism that became so acceptable as to cease to be recognised as feminist. Indeed, it is arguable that Rousseau's romantic conception of the place of love in society, and his representation of feminine difference, were influenced by Scudery, whose novels he read with his father at a very young age."
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