Abstracts

ABSTRACTS Freiheit, Gleichheit, Weiblichkeit. Aufklärung, Revolution und die Frauen in Europa. Marieluise Christadler, ed. Opladen, Germany: Leske and Budridi, 1990.175 pp. ISBN 3-8100-0845-1 (pb). These nine essays explore the ambivalent goals and inconsistent appUcation of the prindples of the French Revolution. The bourgeois state, born of EnUghtenment prindples, had at once an emandpatory and a regressive charader. It advanced certain sodal groups but left others, notably women and the proletariat, unsatisfied. At least rhdoricaUy, though, human rights have become a universal requirement of poUtical legitimacy. Christadler examines the process of women's enfranchisement by comparing their poUtical experiences after 1789 in France, Germany, and England. In particular, the essays focus on: the varied roles women played in the French Revolution; the reactions of Mary WoUstonecraft and Mary SheUey to the Revolution; the Uterary career of Thérèse Huber; diff erences between Madame de Staël and Heinrich Heine on the nature of freedom; the Napoleonic Code and prostitution in France and Holland; the increasingly luxurious culinary culture of bourgeois men; gender and dass inadequades of the French experiment as expounded by Louis Otto-Peters and Clara Zetkin; and the influence of markd economies on women. At first French women seemed very much in the vanguard of emandpation . But by 1850 their enthusiasm had not proven entirely effective. Ultimately, Frendi women would not gain the vote until considerably later than many of their European peers, in part because their country's centralized state organization left less room for unofficial poUtical activity. French women also were not viewed as an alternative moral voice as in England. The country as a whole was less devdoped industriaUy than England or Germany. And, finaUy, French women labored under a strid ferninine ideal, espedaUy strong after the Revolution itself adopted an ostensibly emandpated female figurehead. Sources for the essays indude works of Uterature, poUtical declarations , letters, and labor documents, as weU as many secondary works touching on sodalist and gender theory, art, sodology, economics, and Uterary criticism. ©1992 Journal of Women-s History, Vol 3 No. 3 (Winter) 1992 Abstracts 127 "Durch Erkenntnis zu Freiheit und Gluck..." Frauen an der Universität Wien (ab 1897). Waltraud Heindl and Marina Tichy, eds. Vienna: WUV-Universitatsverlag, 1990. 261 pp. ISBN: 3-85114-049-4 (pb). The University of Vienna graduated no women until 1897. This coUection of essays explores the struggle of women to gain admission to the University . It also analyzes the processes by which they came to represent over half of today's enrollment of 80,000. Individual chapters focus on topics such as: the stubborn opposition to women students; the role of foreign students and universities in changing admissions poUdes; the ethnic, class, and reUgious background of the female students; and course sdection. The text is weU-supplemented by charts, photographs of students, and reproductions of documents. A central premise of the work is that whüe female enrollment grew steadüy and the graduates often exceUed in their fields, far too few women lecturers and professors have served on the faculty. Also, the enrollment patterns have favored the middle class, with an underrepresentation of workers, peasants, and high aristocrats. Induded are four fairly detaUed biographies of female "pioneers." The first female graduate, Gabriele Possanner von Ehrenthal (1860-1940), grew up in Budapest and Ljubljana, the daughter of an important dvü servant. After completing her medical degree in 1897, she worked for decades as a doctor in Vienna. EUse Richter (1865-1943), a linguist, became the University's first woman lecturer in 1907. The daughter of a Jewish doctor, she died in the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. Lise Meitner (18781968 ), also of middle-dass Jewish origin, graduated in 1906. She became an important atomic physicist in Berlin, the United States, and Western Europe. SibyUe von Bolla (1918-1969), the University's first female law professor, descended from a noble German miUtary famüy. She grew up in Slovakia. The essays are based on University archives as weU as some pubUshed biographies and coUeded works. Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort. L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République. Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des...