Revolutions spin on the conviction that men can perfect themselves as well as their social institutions.
The French expressed less confidence in the social virtues than the British.1 In the early eighteenth century they seemed more open to women's rights than their British or American counterparts.
Perhaps the very strength of French patriarchy encouraged sons and daughters to make a common cause. Once they had executed their symbolic father, however, the sons found republican governance more difficult than they had imagined and rejected political cooperation with their sisters.France’s most celebrated eighteenth-century thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, provided rhetorical support for this rejection. He described economic development as a disruptive and corrupting force, particularly in its effects on women, who could be tempted to pursue their own interests at the expense of the common good. A less famous thinker, the Marquis de Condorcet, developed a more optimistic and egalitarian view. At the opposite end of the individualist spectrum, rejecting the very concept of the common good, were the writings of the Marquis de Sade, a believer in immoral sentiments.