ABSTRACT
Throughout the early modern period, the social role and place of women were contested through the development of theories about beauty, taste, and the relation of women to both. At the same time, theories of beauty and taste often used assumptions about women’s place or nature as evidence for their claims. This chapter analyses how this relationship appears in the work of Lucrezia Marinelli, François Poulain de la Barre, Frances Reynolds, and Mary Wollstonecraft, paying special attention to Wollstonecraft’s claim that both beauty and the role of women have subjugatory power as their bases.
