ABSTRACT
Many writers took on the task of defining woman during the Enlightenment, but in many respects Jean Jacques Rousseau had one of the deepest impacts. His views on the role of woman, while deeply misogynistic, also captured much of the Enlightenment validation of motherhood and reflected newer ideas on children and their upbringing. The extract on Sophie captures these two threads. Catherine Macaulay was only one of many who responded, in her Letters on Education, as did Mary Wollstonecraft, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1.2) and Charlotte Nordenflycht (1.57).
