Abstract

If feminist hopes during the French Revolution were betrayed by the wide gap between egalitarian rhetoric and actual gains for women, they were all but quashed following the Terror, when a pan-European conservative backlash snuffed out public debate over improving woman's status and social conditions. Amalia Holst was one of few women willing to put her reputation at stake to rekindle this debate. In her book-length treatise on advancing women's education, Holst traverses a precarious tightrope between feisty rhetoric and cultural accommodation. To walk with her is to witness a dazzling display of innovative strategies that would, she hoped, both inspire contemporaries to take action and deflect those quick to censure her as scandalous. (CSS)

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