Enlightenment and the Uses of Woman
- In 1937 Theodor Adorno, in a letter to Erich Fromm, described women as exemplars of commodity fetishism, >agents of the commodity in society<. Adorno wanted Fromm to join him in a study of the invidious psycho-social effects of this phenomenon. Fromm did not respond to this invitation, possibly because his own views on women were diametrically opposed to Adorno’s. To Fromm, women were not agents of capitalist corruption but avatars of altruism, their nurturing qualities providing models for socialist morality. These polarized images of women have their roots in Enlightenment gender theory. This essay outlines the myths of Woman promulgated by Enlightenment intellectuals, in particular the Janus-faced doctrine of ‘female influence’ that dominated eighteenth-century writings on women, which portrayed them simultaneously as acquisitive hedonists and as paragons of self-sacrificial benevolence.
MetadatenAuthor: | Barbara Taylor |
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Parent Title (English): | History Workshop Journal, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Autumn 2012), pp. 79-87. |
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Document Type: | Articles |
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Language: | English |
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Year of first Publication: | 2012 |
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Release Date: | 2024/04/04 |
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Format: | no download and copy possible |
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IdNo: | Taylor_B_2012 |
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Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature): | Articles / Artikel |
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Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive: | Articles / Artikel |
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Licence (German): | |
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