To What Extent Did The Various Contributors To The 'Debate On Woman' In Eighteenth-Century Spain Promote The Recognition Of Women’s Rights? Discuss With Reference To At Least Three Essays That You Have Studied.

Candidate no. 37741 17/05/12

To what extent did the various contributors to the 'Debate on Woman' in eighteenth-century Spain promote the recognition of women’s rights? Discuss with reference to at least THREE essays that you have studied.

Prior to the eighteenth century, women in Spain had been regarded as inferior beings to men in many ways and the thought of allowing them their naturalrights was considered alien to them. In this misogynistic environment women were controlled through the use of chastity belts and it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that people started to question the role of women in society. Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro was one of the first to notice the importance of accepting women as equals, primarily on moral grounds but also for the good of Spain.I will discuss the influence of Feijoo’s arguably most influential essay ‘Defensa de las mujeres,’ published in 1726 and then go on to discuss two other works. One by José Clavijo y Farajo from the periodical El Pensador in 1762 and the other by Ignacio de Ayala, written shortly after the official admittance of women into the Economic society in 1786. Throughout this essay I will be assessing thesignificance of the works of all three contributors and to what extent they influenced the people of Spain, including those in positions of authority. Although they all have different ways of promoting the rights of women in Spain, I will eventually come to the conclusion that Ayala was the most thorough and modern in his persuasion and consequently the most accomplished contributor in promotingthe recognition of women’s rights.
Feijoo wrote ‘Defensa de las mujeres in 1726 which was ‘the first significant text in eighteenth century Spain dedicated to the discussion of central aspects of the nature, character and social role of women.’ The text provoked widespread debate amongst the people and it achieved something Feijoo had been looking for, he wanted the people of Spain to be aware ofthe idea that women were intellectually equal to men. He is known as an enlightenment thinker because he brought about the notion that custom and habit had a depreciatory effect. He wanted people to begin questioning why women had held an inferior position in society for the previous five centuries; he wanted these questions to be discussed in people’s homes as well as publicly in order totrigger a nationwide debate. He achieved this to a great extent and we can see this in the responses he received in essay form, from many furious misogynists, but also from the erudite, one being Laurencio Manco de Oliveras. The evidence of such controversial debate demonstrates Feijoo’s contribution to the promotion of women’s rights.
Feijoo defends women on three levels: moral, physical andintellectual. He declares that it is ‘los mas torpes del vulgo’ who see women as completely vice-ridden and only men as virtuous. Here he is referring to those who subscribed to the school of thought from Genesis in the Bible. These people believed women to be intrinsically evil seeing as it was Eve who deceived Adam in the Garden of Eden. Feijoo dismisses this argument in ‘Defensa’ stating that Eve wasin fact deceived by the snake, a superior intellectual being while Adam was merely deceived by an equal. Feijoo defends women on a physical level, refuting Aristotle’s view that woman is an imperfect male produced only when nature makes a mistake. Feijoo also rejects the view of the time that women were born only to weak or sinful parents. Feijoo defends women on intellectual grounds stating thatthey would be equal to women intellectually if it wasn’t for the state of society, which doesn’t allow them to thrive. Feijoo attaches great importance to the education of women, stating that ‘nobody can be expected to know what he or she has never been taught.’ Women were deemed to be irrational, lying and intellectually inferior beings; with the introduction of proper education, women would be...