Jacquees Rousseau and Madame Du Coudray

Jacquees Rousseau and Madame Du Coudray

Many individuals have attempted to change the course of history, be it successful or not; and women’s rights has often been on the agenda. Jacquees Rousseau and Madame Du Coudray are two people that helped to mold the thoughts and beliefs related to women’s rights in their society.

Jacquees Rousseau is known as a teacher and a philosopher- a brilliant thinker. Throughout his studies, he developed strict gender divisions and a precise opinion on education for girls and women. Rousseau saw men and women to be equal as human beings; however, because of their gender, he saw them as both similar and different. Coudray is a Parisian midwife of high esteem. She traveled from city to city in order to pass on her knowledge and skills of birthing practices to other women.

Coudray quickly won the respect of women, as she was one who both cared much and demanded much. She was a woman of self-assurance and educated thought, which did not always translate well into sympathy for the lower class. She was trained in a three-year apprenticeship program in Paris before she began work with young women in the impoverished villages of Auvergne. In realizing the girls’ low level of education, Coudray sought to raise the standards. She started teaching not through books, but through the “hands-on”, using a premiere obstetrical model of woman. In educating the novice midwives, Madame du Coudray may have contributed to the decline in infant mortality, as well as to France’s population increase in the 18th century.

Rousseau was a prominent figure in his time. His distinct views on the way sexes should behave and their role in life caught peoples’ attention. Rousseau did not necessarily discriminate against women, as he notes that in everything other than gender, woman is man; but in addition, each sex has a different function. He thought that good sense and education belonged equally to men and women, but that women should be educated only on such things like household duties and childcare.