Conventional wisdom has presented the Enlightenment Period as a watershed in artistic and intellectual development, marking the beginnings of the 'modern,' in terms of cultural views and practices. For women, particularly, this period was even more liberating than to men. Great advances were made in art and literature for women, and finally after years of oppression, the female voice was to be heard. Did women have a Renaissance?
Literature reflects not only the author's thoughts, but also the society in which the author lived. A close study of the lives of women in literature of the pre-modern world shows they suffered from increasingly repressive social constraints. In early societies, women bore children, cared for the home and helped maintain the family's economic production. Men hunted, made war, assumed primary responsibility for the family's economic welfare. The patriarch figure Orgon in Tartuffe is a good example of how the Father of the house has absolute power and is a basic belief of the Enlightenment Era. …
