TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction1
Chapter I The Womans Social Image from the Middle Ages to the Classical Period
(18-century)...6
1. Defining terms and concepts.6
2.Religious teaching .7
3. The law and its administration .9
3.1. Marital status9
3.2. Marriage, separation, child custody..10
3.3. Crimes by and against women .11
4. Stereotypes.12
4.1. Maid, wife and widow..12
4.2.The scold, the whore and the witch...................14
5. Adulthood .15
5.1. Marriage15
5.2. Maternity...17
5.3. Single women ...20
Chapter II Women in the century of the Enlightenment 22
1. The concept of the Enlightenment.22
2. Woman as the other for men in the 18th century............24
2.1. Brief critical overview..24
2.2. Mens glance28
2.2.1. The feminine nature.28
2.2.2. The womans reason29
2.2.3. The role of women...29
2.3. Married women.30
2.3.1. Marriage in contradiction.31
2.3.2. The Enlightenment couple...31
2.3.3. The folk couple32
2.4. The women at work.33

2.4.1. Workers33
2.4.2. Women with unequal status.34
2.5. Education of the Enlightenments daughters ..34
2.6. The women of culture..35
2.6.1. Reading35
2.6.2. Writing.36
2.7. Prostitution...36
Chapter III Women and Eighteenth-Century English Literature....................................40
1. Moll Flanders a womans identity derived from the fight for life........ 40
2. Pamela: the woman hero as a refusal of the objective realities of social rank
and the symbol of virtue....53
3. Jane Austens Emma: Independence vs Marriage...71
Conclusions...83
References.86