ABSTRACT
We have already seen that, in what amounted to a veritable paradigm shift, the eighteenth century witnessed a transformation in beliefs concerning women’s ‘nature’ and in representations of femininity. From the ‘dangerous’ sex of medieval and early modern times, ‘woman’ came to be represented as a ‘spiritual’ and morally superior being. By the high Victorian period, in France as in the United Kingdom, the new image had become one of the commonplace assumptions of the day. As a consequence, the discourse on ‘woman’ was invariably permeated by ‘moral’ considerations, whatever the precise subject at issue— be it women’s work, women’s civic and political rights, or, our immediate concern in this chapter, women’s education and women’s sexuality.
