1727 · Châlon sur Saône
by FEMINISM
Châlon sur Saône: chez Antoine Delespinasse Marchand Libraire, 1727. 12mo (142 x 78 mm). 10 pp., [1] leaf. Woodcut printer’s mark on title, type ornament headpiece, verso of final leaf with two different woodcut devices (recto blank). (First and last leaves slightly soiled.) Partly untrimmed, two deckle edges. 19th-century half hard-grain morocco, title gilt-lettered along spine (rubbed, cracks in front cover). ***
One of two undated editions of an anonymous defense of the superiority of women, impressively wide-ranging in its ten pages. Citing the Bible and the Church Fathers as well as classical philosophers, the author claims that women are more saintly, more beloved to God, more heroic, more beautiful, cleverer, more diligent, kinder, more rational and more peaceful than men. The erudite author opens with Genesis, arguing that the Biblical names for man and woman imply the former’s lesser nobility, as the word for man is derived from “dead and inanimate earth” (Adam, which literally means “red,” derives from adamah, ground or earth), while woman “was taken from the living substance of man, and her name bears the meaning life” (the Hebrew name for Eve, Chavah, means living one or source of life). This daring polemicist affirms that men are more at fault for the arrival of sin in the world, since the grace brought into the world by the Virgin outweighed Eve’s error; moreover since a woman was the Mother of God, while no man can claim His paternity, “the glory of her sex is infinitely higher than that of men” (p. 6).
The classical references are equally selective: although Aristotle often spoke ill of women, he was “obliged to say much good of them, and to prefer them to men, saying that women are much more diligent and careful than men in the domestic sphere, that men are more prone to acquiring goods, but that women are better at keeping them... that women are more adept than men at finding solutions in business, that they are more ingenious and more astute, more inclined to do good, and more compassionate” (pp. 8-9). In the Republic (the author adds), Plato said that women of merit should be allowed in government, as did Lycurgus.
The pamphlet ends on a prosaic note: “If one should object that women make noise at home, one may answer that perhaps men don’t, but they fight and spread disorder everywhere, which women do not do; they are content to use words to remind men of their duty.” While one may think that only a woman could have written this last comment, a scholar of the subject cautions that “it must be noted that almost all of the apologists of women’s superiority from 1480 to the Revolution were men” (Angenot, p. 4).
Little is known of the libraire Antoine Delespinasse (ca. 1682-1771), who in 1714 married the daughter of the printer-bookseller Jean Nanty (data.bnf.fr). He seems to have sold mainly popular literature; what survives includes satires and a very rare collection of Christmas Noels. His descendants were still booksellers in Châlon sur Saône well into the 19th century (cf. C. Nodier, Description raisonnée d'une jolie collection de livres, 1844, no. 594).
Probably the woodcut device on the title of a serpent (almost an ouroboros) wrapped around a tree was Delespinasse’s, and the uppermost of two devices on the last page, showing two birds flanking a tree, most likely identified the printer. The second device on that page is a close copy of that used by the 16th-century printer Jean Bonfons (Renouard 61), using the same serpent and tree motif. The presence of these attractive woodcuts on the last, outer page may indicate that this colportage pamphlet was distributed with the conjugate title-leaf and last leaf functioning as self-wrappers.
OCLC locates copies at UCLA and the British Library. The BL copy has an extra leaf containing a reimpression of the title device and a woodcut vignette, both printed sideways. The BnF holds a copy of a different undated edition, with the same title and the ?false imprint “Nuis: Henry Baptiste Bec.”
Conlon, Prélude 9891; Gay-Lemonnyer III: 1262; Brunet, Supplément II: 802 (”pièce rare et curieuse”); Lever, La Fiction narrative en prose au XVIIe siècle, p. 409 (a mistake, since this is not narrative fiction); cf. M. Angenot, Les champions des femmes: examen du discours sur la supériorité des femmes, 1400-1800 (Montreal, 1977). (Inventory #: 4416)
One of two undated editions of an anonymous defense of the superiority of women, impressively wide-ranging in its ten pages. Citing the Bible and the Church Fathers as well as classical philosophers, the author claims that women are more saintly, more beloved to God, more heroic, more beautiful, cleverer, more diligent, kinder, more rational and more peaceful than men. The erudite author opens with Genesis, arguing that the Biblical names for man and woman imply the former’s lesser nobility, as the word for man is derived from “dead and inanimate earth” (Adam, which literally means “red,” derives from adamah, ground or earth), while woman “was taken from the living substance of man, and her name bears the meaning life” (the Hebrew name for Eve, Chavah, means living one or source of life). This daring polemicist affirms that men are more at fault for the arrival of sin in the world, since the grace brought into the world by the Virgin outweighed Eve’s error; moreover since a woman was the Mother of God, while no man can claim His paternity, “the glory of her sex is infinitely higher than that of men” (p. 6).
The classical references are equally selective: although Aristotle often spoke ill of women, he was “obliged to say much good of them, and to prefer them to men, saying that women are much more diligent and careful than men in the domestic sphere, that men are more prone to acquiring goods, but that women are better at keeping them... that women are more adept than men at finding solutions in business, that they are more ingenious and more astute, more inclined to do good, and more compassionate” (pp. 8-9). In the Republic (the author adds), Plato said that women of merit should be allowed in government, as did Lycurgus.
The pamphlet ends on a prosaic note: “If one should object that women make noise at home, one may answer that perhaps men don’t, but they fight and spread disorder everywhere, which women do not do; they are content to use words to remind men of their duty.” While one may think that only a woman could have written this last comment, a scholar of the subject cautions that “it must be noted that almost all of the apologists of women’s superiority from 1480 to the Revolution were men” (Angenot, p. 4).
Little is known of the libraire Antoine Delespinasse (ca. 1682-1771), who in 1714 married the daughter of the printer-bookseller Jean Nanty (data.bnf.fr). He seems to have sold mainly popular literature; what survives includes satires and a very rare collection of Christmas Noels. His descendants were still booksellers in Châlon sur Saône well into the 19th century (cf. C. Nodier, Description raisonnée d'une jolie collection de livres, 1844, no. 594).
Probably the woodcut device on the title of a serpent (almost an ouroboros) wrapped around a tree was Delespinasse’s, and the uppermost of two devices on the last page, showing two birds flanking a tree, most likely identified the printer. The second device on that page is a close copy of that used by the 16th-century printer Jean Bonfons (Renouard 61), using the same serpent and tree motif. The presence of these attractive woodcuts on the last, outer page may indicate that this colportage pamphlet was distributed with the conjugate title-leaf and last leaf functioning as self-wrappers.
OCLC locates copies at UCLA and the British Library. The BL copy has an extra leaf containing a reimpression of the title device and a woodcut vignette, both printed sideways. The BnF holds a copy of a different undated edition, with the same title and the ?false imprint “Nuis: Henry Baptiste Bec.”
Conlon, Prélude 9891; Gay-Lemonnyer III: 1262; Brunet, Supplément II: 802 (”pièce rare et curieuse”); Lever, La Fiction narrative en prose au XVIIe siècle, p. 409 (a mistake, since this is not narrative fiction); cf. M. Angenot, Les champions des femmes: examen du discours sur la supériorité des femmes, 1400-1800 (Montreal, 1977). (Inventory #: 4416)
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