The entire treatise is mere theorising, and being produced at a time when the public mind on the subject was one mass of inveterate prejudice, brushing aside any speculations of the kind it contained as ridiculous and "paradoxical", it is not astonishing that Marie de Gournay spoke to the winds, and that the practical results of her labour were nihil.
One gets the impression that the author herself was fully convinced of the hopelessness of even obtaining a hearing, and wrote chiefly to relieve herself of the burden of her glowing indignation. To this circumstance it may be attributed that she refrains from formulating any practical claims, or drawing up a scheme of an ideal society in which women were given their due. But her zeal and devotion to the cause she believed to be just were above suspicion, and she has a claim to the gratitude of her sex for having asserted the female equivalence.
If Mlle de Gournay combined in her person some of the elements of the social reformer, there certainly is nothing sensational about her personality and way of expressing her views, and she must be described as revolutionary in a limited sense. Apart from her extreme feminism, her social and political views were quite conventional, and in her preface to "De l'Egalité" she even seeks the patronage of Queen Anne, as the most prominent and influential member of her sex. François Poullain de la Barre, however, who half a century later became heir to her spiritual legacy, was an out-and-out revolutionist, whose theories of female equality proceeded from generally revolutionary tendencies. Like Mlle de Gournay, he was a theorist, but he differed from her in being above all a philosopher of the school of Descartes, and the first to apply the doctrine of Cartesianism to social problems. This consideration renders him important not merely as the direct advocate of the cause of woman, in which capacity his efforts met with no success whatever, but as the forerunner of J. J. Rousseau in his theory of human rights, which in its turn became the basis of the feminist movement in England in the last years of the next century, inaugurated by Mary Wollstonecraft. As M. Piéron puts it, "le chemin réel ira de Descartes au féminisme par la Révolution, et non de Descartes à la révolution par le féminisme."
M. Rousselot, in drawing attention to Poullain de la Barre, refers to his works as "now almost forgotten."[8] The utter obscurity in which this author remained buried for two centuries is probably due to his life of retirement,—as M. Henri Grappin has pointed out in opposition to M. Piéron's opinion, who, basing himself upon evidence of style and language, adjudged him to be a frequent visitor to salons—to his complete indifference to worldly fame, and to this freedom from worldly ambitions. His work, like that of Mlle de Gournay, was received with a mixture of scorn and ridicule, and soon forgotten. A century later, some of the works of the Encyclopedians, which developed the same social ideas—with a striking difference in the matter of female education,—were burnt by the common hangman by order of the authorities, who could not, however, prevent the new ideas from taking root and bearing fruit. In striking contrast, Poullain, whose revolutionism found few sympathisers and was consequently adjudged harmless, was left at peace, and brought out his revolutionary treatises "avec privilege du Roy", and "avec permission signée de la Reynie", for which he paid with disregard and oblivion. Both Mary Wollstonecraft and Poullain should have been born in the nineteenth century, but whereas the former was the embodiment of that indomitable spirit of rebellion which had taken almost a century to mature, Poullain stands revealed to the modern reader, a living anachronism. There is something in his "fanaticism of ideas" which anticipates the intellectual "tours de force" of William Godwin, whose eccentric genius, however, was made subservient to the larger cause of mankind.
Born at Paris in 1647, it seems that Poullain chiefly studied theology at the University of his native city, until the discontent which was roused in him by the system of education followed there, made him yield to the intellectual allurements of Cartesianism. Descartes had been dead some dozen years when the great vogue of his philosophy began. Poullain became a fervent Cartesian and after some years turned Protestant, which religion he felt to be better suited to his philosophical ideas. He lived mostly at Paris and at Geneva, and died at the latter place in 1723.
Although Poullain seems to shrink from openly confessing himself influenced by Descartes, his works show the rationalist tendencies of pronounced Cartesianism, to which we shall often have occasion to refer in coming chapters. He may be called one of the forerunners of the Encyclopedians, anticipating their imperturbable rationalism, their contempt of tradition and custom,—which, by a somewhat sophistic turn of reasoning, they call superstition and prejudice,—their habit of referring to original principles, and above all their absolute faith in the perfectibility of mankind through the education of the mind and in the certainty of unlimited human progress. No theory had ever been put forward which contained brighter promises for the future of the human race, and the enthusiasm which it awakened was not damped by the fatal experience of the failure of former experiments. To this circumstance must be ascribed the boundless optimism of the partisans of the new philosophy and their radicalism.
The three feminist treatises, in the order of their publication, were:
1. "De L'Egalité des deux sexes, discours physique et moral ou l'on voit l'importance de se défaire des préjugés." (1673);
2. "De L'Education des Dames, pour la conduite de l'esprit dans les sciences et dans les moeurs." (1674);
3. "De l'Excellence des Hommes, contre l'Egalité des sexes, avec une dissertation qui sert de réponse aux objections tirées de l'Ecriture Sainte contre le sentiment de l'Egalité." (1675).