Description
Book SynopsisJames Smith Allen explores the two-hundred-year struggle to initiate women as full participants in the masonic brotherhood that shared in the rise of France's civil society and its civic morality on behalf of women's rights.
Trade Review“James Smith Allen presents readers with an engaging, kaleidoscopic account of the uphill and contentious struggle to include select women as full participants in the arcane brotherhood of French freemasonry.”—Karen Offen, author of
Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870–1920“
A Civil Society is important because it connects the activism and writing of major figures in French women’s history with masonic networks and impulses. It accomplishes all of this by providing copious evidence presented with clarity.”—Bonnie G. Smith, author of
Women in World History: 1450 to the Present“In this ambitious new study, James Smith Allen seeks to understand how masonic sisters and their fellow travelers contributed to a more liberal republic and open society and engaged civic culture in the Old Regime and modern France.
A Civil Society is a welcome addition to all those interested in the history of sociability, progressive politics, and civil society.”—Kenneth Loiselle, author of
Brotherly Love: Freemasonry and Male Friendship in Enlightenment France Table of ContentsList of Figures
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
List of French Masonic Orders / Obediences
Introduction: French Women in Public Space
Freemasonry Writ Large
How Else Civil Society – and Freemason Women – Matter
Chapter 1: Masonry’s Gendered Variations Before and After 1789
The Eighteenth Century’s Mixed Orders and Adoption Lodges
Freemason Women’s Social Networks in the Old Regime
Revolution: The Communities of Freemason Women Transformed
Chapter 2: The Craft’s Long March to Mixed Orders, 1799-1901
Variations on Mixed Orders and Adoption Lodges
Freemason Women’s Changing Social Networks in the Nineteenth Century
Revolution(s): The Successive Redefinitions of Women’s Masonic Communities
Chapter 3: Women’s Freemasonry and the Women’s Movement, 1901-1944
Renewed Mixed Orders and Adoption Lodges at Home and Abroad
The Feminist Networks of Freemason Women
The Communities of Freemason Women During Two World Wars
Chapter 4: Contestatory Imaginaries: The Representations of Freemason Women
Serafina, Comtesse de Cagliostro
Pamina and Balkis
Consuelo, Comtesse de Rudolstadt
Diana Vaughan and Others
Conclusion: Civic Morality in Modern France
Themes
Between Theory and History
A Social Conscience
Appendices
Endnotes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
