Women and Republicanism in the Eighteenth Century: Completing the Historical Record

Republican political theory has a rather poor track record in terms of its historical treatment of women and femininity. Classical republicans, such as Livy and Cicero, excluded women from full citizenship by characterising the ideal citizen as male. In his Discourses on Livy (1531), Machiavelli continued the tradition by highlighting the masculine qualities that a citizen must uphold if a republic is to retain its freedom and advance toward civic greatness. His ideal citizen was expected to cultivate virtù, the defining characteristic of a virile man who has purged himself of the so-called ‘effeminate’ qualities of passivity, dependence, and lack of determination [Pitkin 1999: 25]. The man of virtù was bold, brave, active, decisive, and self-reliant. This historical emphasis on manly heroism has made some feminists reluctant to embrace the ideals and principles of republican theory. While some have endorsed the republican concept of freedom as non-domination [see Broad 2014, 2015], others have rejected those aspects of republicanism that denigrate dependence, the domestic sphere, and private interests (traditionally associated with women) by contrast with independence, the political sphere, and public spiritedness (traditionally associated with men); they have been critical of both the literal and figurative exclusion of women from civic virtue and active political participation [Phillips 2000: 284–5; Pateman 2007: 3–4]. Anne Phillips [2000: 293] observes that ‘All this adds up to a perception of republicanism as an uneasy ally. When the tradition was born out of such resolutely masculine origins, this is hardly a surprising finding’. This issue of Australasian Philosophical Review addresses the uneasy alliance between women, feminism, and republicanism, from new and varied historical perspectives. Sandrine Bergès’s lead article expertly exorcises much of the past uneasiness by drawing attention to the republican commitments of three women writers of the French Revolution: Olympe de Gouges, Marie-Jeanne Phlipon (Manon) Roland, and Sophie de Grouchy. Far from being hostile to women, Bergès points out, these eighteenth-century figures actively endorsed republican ideas for the sake of advancing women’s citizenship. Building on the work of recent theorists [Green 2012; Halldenius 2015; Coffee 2017, 2018], Bergès further demonstrates that republicanism was not an exclusively male enterprise after all—a political theory penned solely by men, for the sake of securing men’s interests. Rather, if we take a more gender-inclusive historical approach, republicanism might be seen as amenable to women and their specific concerns.