Clemson University TigerPrints All Theses Theses 5-2012 To Live, To Love, To Labor: Challenging the Rigidity of the Public and Private Spheres Mallory Neil Clemson University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Neil, Mallory, "To Live, To Love, To Labor: Challenging the Rigidity of the Public and Private Spheres" (2012). All Theses. 1349. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/1349 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. TO LIVE, TO LOVE, TO LABOR: CHALLENGING THE RIGIDITY OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES A Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts History by Mallory Caroline Neil May 2012 Accepted by: Dr. Alan Grubb, Committee Chair Dr. Stephanie Barczewski Dr. Michael Meng ABSTRACT Jürgen Habermas’s bourgeois public sphere theory led many historians to adopt new categories of social divisions. More specifically, gender historians utilized the theory in order to explain the exclusion of women from the political realm. Imparting male and female classifications onto the public and private spheres, in turn, led to the claim of complete social immobility for women. In the 1990s and 2000s, however, gender historians began to question the rigidity of the gendered spheres. This study adopts this line of argument by looking at the lives of Madame de Staël, George Sand, and Lucie Aubrac.