Rousseau's ideas are indeed revolutionary when compared to the state of children's rearing and educational methods of the 18th century as described in the following quote:

The fashionable practice was for [babies] to be looked after by wet-nurses. . . who frequently neglected them horribly. Hygiene was virtually non-existent. . . as they continued to be protected from such evils as fresh air and exercise, while being beaten for disobedience. . . Whether or not they were happy was . . . largely irrelevant.[2]

Rousseau opposed every aspect of this form of education, suggesting breast-feeding babies, loose clothing, learning by experience, and, most importantly, the goal of making children happy. One of Rousseau's major revolutionary contributions is that he sees children as children, that he believes they are good by nature, and that education should be "negative." That is, an educator should further these good inclinations in a child, not by overtly instructing and directing but by helping the good to come out. In Émile, such an exemplary tutor raises the ideal child Émile to perfection. Instead of mechanistic modes of education, the tutor uses the "negative" method. In addition, he has the function of protecting the child from the corrupting influence of society.[3]

What about women, then? In Émile, Rousseau introduces Sophie, the girl educated to become the perfect woman as Émile's partner. After establishing that women are not equal to men--woman "has the same organs, the same needs, . . . [the same] machine,"[4] but men and women "ought to be unlike in constitution and in temperament"[5]--Rousseau outlines a very different education for women. Outwardly, the education of women seems to be based on a similarly "negative" principle as male education. In a "negative" manner, Rousseau desires that a woman's natural inferiority and her tendencies to be coquettish, cunning and passionate by nature be respected and directed into desirable channels. This giving of direction already indicates that the actual process of education is much more positive than "negative:" the teachers "teach her, restrict her, form her, explain to her."[6] Girls "should early be accustomed to restraint."[7] A woman's most important lesson is to learn about her duties and, moreover, "to love those duties."[8] The duties include household tasks, but not necessarily reading or writing at a very early age. The domestic nature of women's education emphasizes the role of mother and household caretaker. The only other duty a woman has is to be a wife.

Whereas Émile (read: a man) is the representation of Romantic individualism and freedom from society, women are dependent creatures. They depend on their families, their husbands and on society. A woman has to learn submissiveness because she will have "to endure even injustices at . . . [her husband's] hand"[9] and any wish for freedom, "would only multiply the suffering of the wife and the misdeeds of the husband."[10] In contrast to Émile and men, women are not free from society. On the contrary, their highest goal must be to preserve their honor, something they cannot do alone since "a woman's honor does not depend on her conduct alone, but on her reputation."[11]

Even in the context of his time, Rousseau emerges as a very conservative voice among contemporaries such as Fénélon, and Madame de Maintenon who propagated a more emancipated view of women.[12] Although some aspects of his treatment of women are borrowed from earlier works and reflect reactionary attitudes, Rousseau points to the future with his portrayal of the perfect and ideal woman, Sophie--Émile's future wife. Sophie is in many aspects a prototype of the Romantic heroine of the early nineteenth century, represented here by the idealized Lotte in Goethe's The Sufferings of Young Werther. The astonishing conclusion that must be drawn from this comparison is that some aspects of Romanticism are very reactionary, since, as has been pointed out, Sophie is portrayed in such a way and bears resemblance to the Romantic heroine Lotte.[13]

Rousseau attributes many characteristics to Sophie and to women in general that are those most highly prized by the Romantics. Women have intuition, passion and imagination. Instead of reason, like Émile, Sophie possesses sensibility. This is exactly the shift between the "Age of Reason" and the "Age of Sensibility":

If not the passions in our sense of the word, at least sensibility came to supersede reason as the touchstone to life when the emotional susceptibility of a tender heart was valued more highly than the sound judgment of a cool head.[14]

In Rousseau's opinion, Sophie is "too sensitive."[15] Although he does not yet value sensitivity, as later Romantics will do, he already attributes this characteristic to Sophie. Lotte is also very sensitive, so much so that Werther sees her future husband as unfit to be with her since he lacks a similar sensitivity.[16]

A characteristic similar to sensitivity is intuition. Women, according to Rousseau, live by intuition, and they should use their intuition to "have a thorough knowledge of man's mind" [17] and to "read more accurately in the heart of man."[18] Reading the heart--an organ which takes on unprecedented prominence in Romantic thought--is a capacity which Sophie shares with the Romantic heroine Lotte. When it becomes clear how desperately in love Werther is, Lotte makes a "firm resolve" to keep him away but cannot quite manage to tell him: "and if she delayed, then it was a heartfelt, friendly desire to spare him, because she knew how much it would cost him, indeed that it would be almost impossible for him."[19]

Besides intuition, passion is another aspect of sensibility now substituted for reasons and rationality. Both Sophie and Lotte have passion to a high degree. According to Rousseau, women can "barely conceal the passion which devours them,"[20] which he sees as a fact supporting his demands for restraint exercised upon women. However, when Sophie is "devoured" by passion, she is not restrained, but she settles on an imaginary hero and "love[s] . . . him with a passion which nothing could cure."[21] Lotte is equally "disturbed"[22] by her emotions and passions as Sophie. Having warded off Werther's advances for so long, Lotte finally succumbs to his passion: "Her sense grew confused, she pressed his hands, pressed them against her breast."[23]

Both women react as any Romantic would have in the face of impossible or rejected love. When Sophie is unsuccessfully in love with an imaginary hero, her "temper" changes and she becomes melancholic: When Lotte realizes that she cannot have Werther but that she does not want anyone else to have him, she has feelings similar to those of Sophie: "her spirit . . . felt the burden of a melancholy which knows that the prospect of happiness is sealed off."[24] Melancholy is another aspect of sensibility and an ideal in Romantic thoughts.

Rousseau considers emotions, and outpourings of tears in particular, in positive terms. Similarly, these were the characteristics most idealized by the Romantics. When Émile comes to Sophie's house, he hears the story of Telemachus and sheds some tears of feeling for the protagonists. Sophie, "seeing him weep, is ready to mingle her tears with his."[25] The emotion comes from Sophie's and Émile's strong empathetic capacity. Both of them show the kind of empathy later to be so venerated by the Romantics. Lotte and Werther are very similar in their emotional reaction to a work of literature. They both cry upon hearing Ossian, and they lose themselves in tears upon the mere invocation of the name of a German Romantic poet--Klopstock.[26] Literature evokes tears in both Sophie and Lotte.

More strikingly, they resemble each other in their imaginative capacities. Both women have much imagination, incited by reading literature. Rousseau presents us with two alternative endings for Sophie's strong imaginative feats. She has learned so much about virtue that the only man who attracts her is "the imaginary hero"[27] Telemachus from her reading. In Rousseau's happy ending, Sophie manages to shift her love from Telemachus to Émile who is captured by Telemachus himself. However, in the alternate version that he only states as a possible outcome, her angry environment considers Sophie mad, she becomes an outcast, and she finally dies because of the strength of her imagination. This Sophie is too sensitive and Romantic and therefore dies.

Lotte also has a very strong imagination, which leads her to identify with events described in Ossian, for example. Upon hearing Werther read this work to her, she starts crying. She can now imagine what Werther might be going through and "a premonition of his terrible intention seemed to flit through her soul."[28] Lotte is also too "sensitive and Romantic," as shown when "There were fears for Lotte's life"[29] when Werther killed himself.

The similarities between Sophie and Lotte go further than the emotional qualities they share. They are also both educated for the same future role--that of wife and mother. During the eighteenth century, it was not uncommon for women, at least in the urban centers, to give their children away to wet nurses. At the same time, extramarital affairs were rather normal occurrences.[30] It was not until the end of the century with the rise of Romanticism that the state of motherhood and wife were idealized to entice women to see more importance in them.[31] Rousseau is an advocate of such Romantic notions insofar as he sees the importance of children, and the importance of motherhood and of being a perfect wife. In his description of Sophie, he establishes those virtues of motherhood and of being a wife that would become important during the nineteenth century and that have been regarded as reactionary in recent criticism. Women should be raised and educated for two purposes, as nature dictates. They are to become mothers, domestic caretakers and wives.

Sophie is specifically raised to prepare her for her domestic functions in the household. Rousseau is attacked precisely for advocating this "domestic apprenticeship" planned for Sophie.[32] Sophie learns at an early age to do needlework, an activity that conforms to the practical utility expected of education for girls, since Sophie will need to be able to sew her own dresses. More importantly, she studies the "details of housekeeping; she understands cooking and cleaning; she knows the prices of food, and also how to choose it; she can keep accounts accurately, she is her mother's housekeeper."[33] In fact, she is supposed to learn mathematics before reading and writing, since the former is more important to calculating a household budget. Rousseau expressly denies women any other form of leisurely occupation such as "writing verses at her toilet table surrounded with pamphlets of every kind and with notes on tinted paper?"[34] It is the domestic activities that make a woman valuable in a man's eyes.

Again, Lotte is very similar to Sophie, since males, whether Albert, Werther, or her father, value her for her domestic capacities. What captures Werther's fancy about Lotte is not only her beautiful outer appearance but, more importantly, her domestic gesture: "holding a loaf of black bread and cutting for the little ones around her slices appropriate to their age and appetite."[35]

Both Sophie and Lotte are supposed to perform domestic duties caring for the household and the family. Their most important function is that of a mother in the household. AS a mother, Sophie keeps a family together: "she forms a bond between father and child . . . What loving care is required to preserve a united family!"[36]

The idealization of motherhood is even stronger in Lotte's case because she becomes a mother prematurely. When her mother dies, she promises to be a mother to her many siblings with "the heart of a mother and the eyes of a mother" and with "the loyalty and the obedience of a wife" to console the father.[37] As the men in her life observe Lotte "has become a true mother, . . . not a moment of her time has been spent without loving action, without some toil."[38]

Both Lotte and Sophie are destined to become mothers and household caretakers. The idealization of motherhood started in the late eighteenth century. The Romantic notion of the ideal mother is so strong that it still exists today. As critic Nancy Senior points out, the notion of a mother's love for her children is a "cultural concept"[39]:

A great attempt was made to persuade mothers that they would be healthy, happy and respected and would find fulfillment in devoting themselves to their children.[40]

Both Rousseau's description of women and Sophie in particular and the description of Lotte's "motherhood" seem to be part of that attempt. Although Rousseau appears reactionary and conservative, he seems to advocate something that is new to the eighteenth century, which would take on great importance in Romantic idealism and remained of highest value during the nineteenth century in many countries.[41] In addition to the tasks of motherhood and domestic duty, women have that of being a wife.

The problem with being a woman is that a dichotomy exists between the wife as an object of sexual desire and at he same time as untouchable virtuous angel. This dichotomy, already described by Rousseau, becomes even stronger during the later Romantic movement. A woman could either be a demon or an angel.[42] At this early stage, a woman like Sophie had to be both. On the one hand, she had to be the seductress who is physically enticing to the man. On the other hand, she had to be virtuous and with a spotless reputation as the perfect woman/angel.

Let us examine women as seductresses first. The power to seduce a man gives a woman great strength:

For nature has endowed woman with a power of stimulating man's passions in excess of man's power of satisfying those passions, and has thus made him . . . compelled him in his turn to endeavor to please her.[43]

When Émile meets Sophie, "the charms of this maiden enchantress rush like torrents through his heart, and he begins to drain the draughts of poison with which he is intoxicated."[44]

Similarly, Lotte inspires desire in Werther. Although he will make no claim on her, he feels it is almost impossible not to "desire so lovable an object" as Lotte.[45] Lotte seems to have the same power over man that Rousseau grants Sophie. Sophie is to resist any advances, but her resistance is what draws men even closer. In a similar manner, Lotte seems to manipulate Werther's passion for her. When Werther touches Lotte accidentally, it arouses his desire for her. In his eyes, she is innocent of any encouragement, however. In a similar instance of saying no but seemingly encouraging intimacy, Lotte tells Werther to stop kissing her but at the same time carries on. It seems that the same principles Rousseau described about Sophie's manipulations hold true for Lotte.

Against all convention, Rousseau encourages the practices of singing, dancing, and playing the piano for women. Sophie learns all these arts as a young girl.[46] Lotte has also acquired these skills: when she is in a bad mood, she "sing[s] . . . a couple of quadrilles, prancing up and down the garden, right away it's gone."[47] Like Sophie, Lotte plays the piano to express her emotions, and again she admits that "if anything troubles me and I hammer out a quadrille on my old piano, out of tune as it is, that makes everything all right again."[48]

Not only does Rousseau advise young girls to learn these arts in order to be able to please the men, but he encourages parents to let their daughters go to balls and such events. Rousseau fears that if these pleasures are denied young girls, they will try to make up for their lack of entertainment during marriage. Lotte is also fond of dancing, and she attends a ball with Werther. She is lively and happy in the entertainment which only takes place before she is actually married to Albert. It is during this ballroom dancing that Werther most notices Lotte's physical charm. The way in which Sophie's "little feet step lightly, easily, and gracefully"[49] is similar to Lotte's movement full of "charm . . . [and] fleetness."[50] Both Sophie and Lotte learn to be seductresses.

On the other hand, most of their education is geared toward creating perfect wives out of them. In order to become a perfect wife, Sophie has learned the tasks of the household, the strong form of submissiveness that will make her capable of accepting any of her husbands injustices. Her education has made her the perfect "helpmeet" for Émile. Sophie expects to become a perfect wife, but she also expects to find a perfect husband. Lotte has similar feelings about being a wife as her first duty, and having a "good" husband:

She [Lotte] saw herself now united forever with the husband whose love and loyalty she knew,. . . a good wife might found the happiness of her life upon [him] . . .[51]

Although this description sounds like a perfect relationship, one should not forget, as Rosenberg points out, that "women were marketable commodities:" wives were considered objects and property.[52] According to Rousseau, it should be in a woman's interest to become valuable property, as she can only be taken care of in the right manner if she finds a man. Sophie's urgent need to find a husband emphasizes this point. Lotte also considers herself Albert's "property."[53]

Despite these rather conservative notions about marriage, Rousseau adopts a very Romantic ideal about marriage as well. He allows Sophie to choose her own husband, as her father explains to her:

There is a natural suitability, there is a suitability of established usage, and a suitability which is merely conventional. Parents should decide as to the two latters, and the children themselves should decide as to the former.[54]

This is a Romantic notion of marriage, contradictory to the one held before that gave the parents the absolute power to choose a husband or wife. It does not give complete freedom to Sophie because the image of the perfect husband has been carefully planted in her imagination, but it does allow for happiness and love between two people instead of money and power as reasons for a union.

Lotte also seems to have chosen her own husband. She describes Albert as a "fine person."[55] When her mother dies, she gives her blessing to this union, as Lotte describes to Werther:

Albert, you were in the room. She [the mother] heard someone's footsteps and inquired, and had you come to her, and when she looked at you and me, with the calm and comforted gaze that knew we would be happy, happy together--[56]

Both Sophie and Lotte choose their husbands, but of course with the consent of their parents. Rousseau is very Romantic in his notions about love. However, it is interesting to note that he does not predict a happy outcome. Émile ends with the happy announcement that Sophie, now married to Émile, is pregnant and that the tutor will stay on to help with the education of the new child. However, in a sequel, Les Solitaires, Rousseau describes how Émile loses interest in his wife after the child's death, and how Sophie finds a lover and eventually dies. After all her education and the perfect choice, the marriage did not work. Lotte's marriage also seems to be problematic, since she cannot deny her attraction to Werther. When she sees him for the last time, her husband Albert does not know about it, and she does not speak to him about her feelings and worries. Consequently, nobody stops Werther from his suicide and the book ends with the mention of fear for Lotte's life. These events do not foreshadow a very positive future for the married couple. Although Rousseau postulates notions of Romantic love, he also sees the possibility of drama and tragedy in it. Lotte's fate proves how closely Rousseau depicted a Romantic heroine in his Sophie.

The question asked at the beginning remains. Rousseau has an ambivalent attitude towards Romantic ideas. On the one hand, his hero Émile is endowed with Romantic attributes such as natural goodness, individualism and freedom. On the other hand, Rousseau paints a very conservative and reactionary picture of Sophie and women in general. Upon closer examination, however, Sophie has many Romantic traits that make her very similar to Lotte, a true Romantic heroine. If Rousseau is so reactionary and at the same time Romantic about women, could it be then that Romanticism, at least when it comes to women, held reactionary and conservative values? Could there be a difference between what Romanticism envisions for men in terms of freedom and individualism and for women?

Given much of the literature of Romanticism and the greater part of the nineteenth century, I posit that at least one form of Romantic idealization of women imprisoned them, made them dependent, and restricted them to the image of angel or perfect mother and wife--precisely to contain the potential danger that lies in the female aspect of seductress or demon.[57] Much of nineteenth-century American, French and German literature still contains some of these notions originating in the Romantic movements. Victorian domesticity emphasized a similar image of women: Effi Briest and Emma Bovary fail precisely because they are Romantic at heart but cannot conform to the Romantic idealized vision of womanhood.

Rousseau's influence has been immense, and he continues to excite opinions in the twentieth century. Some aspects of the image of the ideal woman are still emphasized in the same manner to the present day. Women are to be good mothers, marriage is the goal to attain, and some even suggest in the 1990s to educate men and women separately again.[58] Are we reverting back to the idea of "separate spheres?"