This book reconstructs a decisive and neglected aspect of modern social thought: the evolution of modern gender theory from Mary Wolstonecraft at the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century and Max Weber. It examines the responses of major intellectual figures - Comte, Marx, Engels, Mill, Durkheim, Enfantin and Nietzsche - to the 'new' woman and 'women's emancipation' in the period immediately following the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The pressure for social equality between man and women, and the fact that writers like Mary Wollstonecraft actually produced first-class political and social theory, created new tensions within both the private lives of the theorists and within social theory itself. The crisis was suppressed in the writings and lives of Marx and Durkheim, who remained attached to the traditional framework, but all the other menexamined in this book sought to evolve new ways of living in gender relations. Some of these variations involved a neo-conservatism (Comte), others a new liberalism (Mill), others a version of a new communism (Enfantin, Engels) while some sought pure transcendence (Nietzsche).
This book seeks to develop a fresh look at these writers by examining some of the continuities and discontinuities between theory and lived practice. The bok will appeal to a general readership as well as to students in theory, gender, women's studies and the history of ideas.