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Article
“La Mère Humanité”: Femininity in the Romantic Socialism of Pierre Leroux and the Abbé A.–L. Constant
History
  • Naomi J. Andrews, Santa Clara University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-1-2002
Publisher
University of Pennsylvania Press
Abstract

It was during the July Monarchy in France, in the era immediately preceding the Revolution of 1848, that the ideology we call socialism became more than an abstraction held by isolated intellectuals and conspirators. A series of individuals, loose-knit associations, and more formal écoles were active during the 1830s and 1840s, developing a varied agenda of social reform, economic cooperation, or association, mystical Christianity, and women's liberation. Roughly lumped under the pejorative rubric of utopian socialism, and perhaps more accurately called romantic socialism, this movement was ultimately unsuccessful in achieving its diverse goals, but contributed significantly to the political discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Citation Information
Andrews, Naomi J. (2002). La Mère Humanité: Femininity in the romantic Socialism of Pierre Leroux and the Abbe A .L. Constant. The Journal of the History of Ideas, 63:4, 2002.