To Live, To Love, To Labor: Challenging the Rigidity of the Public and Private Spheres

JŸrgen Habermas\u27s 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 Sta‘l, George Sand, and Lucie Aubrac. These women present three different instances of female participation in the political realm