“Persons of the Sex are True Wonders”: Gabrielle Suchon on Difference and Political Wonders

Abstract

Gabrielle Suchon’s Treatise on Ethics and Politics offers surprising descriptions of sexual difference for an ostensibly feminist work. Stereotypically feminine traits—such as excessive emotions, chattiness, and deception—are compared to earthquakes, storms, wildfire, and apparitions. Although these descriptions may seem off-putting to modern readers, I argue that in offering these unflattering descriptions of women, Suchon is making a novel intervention in debates about the nature of sexual difference. In the Renaissance and Early Modern period, the salient question about feminine difference was whether it was a preternatural deformity, and specifically a monstrosity. While most pro-woman authors argued that women were not preternatural, Suchon argues the affirmative, claiming that “persons of the sex are true wonders.” In doing so, Suchon presses on a tension at the heart of scholastic conceptions of women while also provoking an emotional response that might encourage men to reconsider whether patriarchal practices are truly to their advantage.

Suchon’s (1693) Treatise on Ethics and Politics offers a blistering critique of patriarchal practices that force women into either marriage or the convent. Having lived as a cloistered nun for decades, only to be disowned by her family when she renounced her vows, Suchon was personally motivated to explain the harms women endure by being pressured into these male-controlled institutions. ¹ Suchon divides her 600-page treatise into three parts; each part dedicated to identifying one of the three goods constitutive of human flourishing: freedom, knowledge, and authority. Throughout the treatise, Suchon consistently compares these goods with their antitheses, showing how patriarchal practices keep women in a state of constraint, ignorance, and perpetual dependence. ²

Despite growing interest in women’s contributions to the history of political thought, Suchon remains a relatively neglected figure. ³ This may be due to some strange and off-putting aspects of her work. Various commentators have described her argumentation as a laborious and long-winded scholasticism and that her conclusions are disappointingly conservative. ⁴ These two evaluations seem to be reflected in Suchon’s descriptions of feminine differences. Suchon frequently describes stereotypically feminine traits with exaggerated and unflattering imagery. Women’s emotions are compared to earthquakes and storms (Suchon 1693, 1:125; 2010, 119). Their quarrelsomeness and propensity for deception is compared to mythic upheavals (Suchon 1693, 3:64–65; 2010, 218). In the hands of Suchon, even seemingly trivial vices, such as chattiness, become a demonic poison that spreads like apocalyptic hellfire (Suchon 1693, 2:196; 2010, 177). For someone ostensibly writing in defense of women, it seems surprising that she would describe them in this way.

Although these descriptions may seem jarring to modern readers, I argue that in describing women in this way, Suchon is making a novel intervention in debates about the nature of sexual difference that were so popular in the Renaissance and Early Modern period. In this period, the salient question about feminine difference was whether it was preternatural—a deformity or even monstrosity. In comparing women to earthquakes, storms, and hellfire, Suchon is establishing that feminine difference is a wonder—a phenomenon outside the ordinary workings of nature.

I argue that there are at least two reasons for Suchon’s use of wonders. First, by describing women as wonders, Suchon makes an ontological argument about the nature of women. In doing so, she exploits a tension at the heart of the scholastic conception of sexual difference. Second, I argue that Suchon's use of wonder is also rhetorical. Wonders refer not just to the preternatural phenomena but also to the passion that those objects inspire. By describing women’s imperfections as wonders, she encourages her reader not to look upon women’s flaws with contempt but with the passion of wonder—a mixture of awe and fear.

This essay will proceed as follows: in the first section, I will highlight the recent reception of Suchon’s Treatise on Ethics and Politics and explain why some of her descriptions of sexual difference have contributed to her negative reception. The second section will offer an explanation of the debate about the nature of sexual difference and highlight a typical pro-woman position found in the work of Lucrezia Marinella. The third section will explain Suchon’s unique contribution to this debate—she claims that feminine difference is a political wonder. In the fourth section, I will defend Suchon’s approach to sexual difference by highlighting its rhetorical benefits. I will then conclude with some reflections on the possible lessons for contemporary feminist theory that can be drawn from Suchon’s work.

Section 1: Reception of Suchon

Within a few months of publishing her first major feminist work, A Treatise on Ethics and Politics, Gabrielle Suchon received a glowing review in France’s most prominent scholarly journal: “This work, composed in less than a year without any foreign aid or advice, is not the least evidence this author gives us to prove the advantages of her sex” (Le journal des sçavans 1694, 469). Despite the initial success of her work, Suchon’s reputation as a first-rate philosopher did not last long. Today, in an era of growing scholarly interest in women in the history of political thought and philosophy, Suchon remains a relatively understudied figure. Only selections of her 1200-page opus are translated into English, and there are no book-length studies of her work; indeed, she has not even warranted a Stanford Encyclopedia entry.

Her obscurity may well have been secured by a prominent twentieth-century evaluation of her work. Shortly after her rediscovery, Hoffman (1978) claimed that her feminism is marred by the conservative implications of her Catholic scholasticism (269–77). Noting Suchon’s unflattering descriptions of feminine difference, Hoffman argues that she offers an “interior, spiritual feminism” that is ultimately conservative. By admonishing women for being emotional, slanderous, and rebellious, Hoffman (1978) argues that Suchon strengthens patriarchal hierarchies, encouraging women to be docile, quiet, and patient (270–71).

Since Hoffman, recent literature has offered more positive evaluations of Suchon’s legacy, highlighting how her work offers valuable discussions of key concepts in political philosophy. ⁵ There is still, however, a certain embarrassment over her apparent conservatism. Eileen O’Neill, for example, comes to a similar conclusion as Hoffman in a recent entry for the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in the Early Modern Period. ⁶ Although Suchon critiques patriarchal institutions, O’Neill, like Hoffman, points out that she is ultimately disparaging of any attempt to overthrow them. Suchon admonishes women for being deceitful and hateful toward men. She even characterizes the rebellion of the Amazons as something that should not be emulated: “Women today should never undertake to dispossess men of their power and authority” (Suchon 1693, 3:forward; 2010, 84). In a chapter that is otherwise broadly appreciative of Suchon’s approach to the woman question, Broad and Green (2009) apologetically admit that Suchon’s Catholic orthodoxy means that she “does not completely challenge the appropriateness of women’s subjection” (256). For these commentators, Suchon’s political conservatism is something of a stain on her otherwise interesting feminist treatise.

The only commentators who do not seem to lament her conservatism are those who deny it is even there. Offering a criticism of Hoffman’s (1978) reading, Pierre Ronzeaud suggested that Suchon’s treatise might be read in light of what is “unsaid” and that she could be covertly endorsing the actions of those women who transgress male domination (1975, 276–77). Desnain (2012) and Conroy (2016) offer similar readings, suggesting that Suchon’s comments on the Amazons’ rebellion are merely to deflect censure, and she is instead offering women the tools to emulate them.

There are, then, two very different trends in secondary literature: those who lament Suchon’s political conservatism, and those who believe it is insincere. In both cases, however, her conservatism, whether real or apparent, is treated as something that needs to be explained away. If Suchon is to be worthy of study alongside other great political thinkers, her politically conservative comments should be bracketed, whether by treating these comments as ironic or simply ignoring them.

Of course, this suggestion that Suchon’s views ought to conform with contemporary feminist ones seems like something of an unfair double standard to which we hold women thinkers, perhaps contributing to the phenomena O’Neill (1997) diagnosed as women’s disappearing ink. ⁷ After all, Suchon’s comments on rebellion are not some lapse in reasoning but are consistent with her overall approach to sexual difference. Suchon is reluctant to celebrate or revalorize feminine differences—such as women’s excessive emotions, chattiness, deceit, or even rebelliousness—because these differences are produced by patriarchal practices. These traits, she insists, are caused by living in oppressive conditions that stunt their growth and capacity for virtue. Thus, it is not purely her commitment to Pauline principles that leads Suchon to these conclusions. Suchon is conservative because she does not want to celebrate feminine differences, including rebelliousness, but this is true of many feminists who are reluctant to celebrate traits produced by domination.

We might still wonder why Suchon chooses to magnify these imperfections in women’s characters by comparing them to earthquakes, storms, and demons. We cannot, however, answer this question by bracketing her conservatism or attempting to have her conform to our contemporary standards. To understand her comments on rebellion, and sexual difference more generally, we must put Suchon’s work in context. In doing so, we can see that she is making an important contribution to a debate about feminine difference that recurred throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern period. By describing women’s imperfections with this dramatic imagery, Suchon is establishing that feminine difference is a wonder. This choice is ingenious because it (1) responds to a tension at the heart of scholastic understandings of sexual difference and (2) inspires the passion of wonder in her male readers. Thus, Suchon is not attempting to straightforwardly celebrate or condemn women’s rebelliousness by describing them in this way; she is instead attempting to make her readers feel both admiration and fear toward the dangers women pose when they are dominated by men.

Section 2: The Context

To appreciate Suchon’s approach to sexual difference, we need to first be attentive to the context in which she was writing. This section shows that the salient question about feminine difference asked whether it was a preternatural deformity, specifically a monstrosity. In this section, I briefly highlight the aspects of scholastic thought that produced this puzzle about sexual difference and how pro-woman authors responded to this question.

Suchon’s work is typically situated in the querelle des femmes—a philosophical, political, and literary debate that began in the fourteenth century and continued throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern period. ⁸ The querelle was diverse, spanning a variety of genres and temporal-linguistic contexts. Despite diversity, questions about the nature and worth of sexual difference characterized many writings of the querelle. ⁹ In seventeenth-century France, pro-woman contributions were made by Gournay’s (1622) The Equality of Men and Women; de Scudery’s (1642) Illustrious Women; Le Moyne’s (1665) Gallery of Heroic Women; Buffet’s (1668) Observations on the French Language . . . With Praises of Illustrious Learned Women, both Ancient and Modern; and Poullain de la Barre’s (1673) The Equality of the Two Sexes, while misogynist contributions included Olivier’s (1617) Alphabet of the Imperfections and Malice of Women and Molière’s (1673) satirical play Les Femmes Savantes. Suchon demonstrated her familiarity with many other writers of the querelle, citing many of them at the outset of her treatise (Suchon 1693, 1: preface; 2010, 76).

Suchon wrote in a particularly transformative period in the querelle, as the new Cartesian science began to displace older scholastic beliefs about the nature of the sexes. While Suchon showed some familiarity with Cartesian feminists like Poullain de la Barre, ¹⁰ she continued to write in the still-dominant scholastic tradition. ¹¹ And this is understandable enough. Besides the fact that Suchon would have been educated in this tradition, ¹² Suchon explains in her preface that, as a woman, she feels compelled to use scriptural and ancient authorities, precisely because “everything from a woman’s mind is always suspect to men” (Suchon 1693, 1: preface; 2010, 85), and hence she tries to prove that her views are “consistent with those of so many learned people who were venerated in past centuries” (Suchon 1693, 1: preface; 2010, 79). While male feminists such as Poullain de la Barre might easily embrace the new science, the scholastic method of argumentation, with its reliance on exegesis on ancient authorities, was a more practical method for a woman writer in this context.

The scholastic understanding of sexual difference was largely inherited from Aristotle. For Aristotle and his followers, temperature was the important difference between men and women. ¹³ Women were produced by an incomplete generative event that lacked the heat required to see generation to its full conclusion—a man (GA, 775b). As a consequence, women are colder than men throughout their lives, have weaker hearts, and have blood that is not as thin and pure as men’s. This difference in temperature affected the characters of men and women. Although Aristotle himself seemed to waver on the consequences of temperature—at times suggesting that excessive heat leads to hasty and reckless behavior (NE, 1149a25-34)—misogynist writers of the querelle focused on the negative effects of cooler temperatures. ¹⁴ They argued that the cooler temperature of women explains their weaker characteristics: thin blood allows for quick, subtle reasoning, while a strong heart allows one to control their passions (PA, 651a12-17). Thus, the peripatetic science of Suchon’s day held that women’s temperature prevented them from reaching the same heights as men: women are the product of an imperfect generative event that results in imperfect men. To use Aristotle’s phrase, “the female nature is, as it were, a deformity” (GA, 775a15-16). ¹⁵

This comment still received a lot of attention from scholastics because it raised the question of whether women were monsters (GA, 767b). The Aristotelian view of natural order was that the various elements of the universe were brought into harmony and perfection by universal rules. Monsters, and other wonders, are a sign of some disorder in the perfect natural world. They are an exception to nature’s intention, produced when things in the natural order are out of place (GA, 767b). Since women’s imperfections were understood to be caused by, and a sign of, an incomplete generative event, it would seem that they too are wonders. Yet, the generation of women, so necessary for reproduction, clearly could not be an exception to nature’s intention ¹⁶ —hence the tension: how could women be both the monstrous product of some disorder in the generative event while also being a necessary part of the perfect natural order?

This was a very real problem. During the Renaissance, there was a great deal of ink spilt over the question of whether women are wonders and, more specifically, monsters (Mclean 1980, 30). No one in this period seriously argued that women were monsters—it was often presented as a satire—but the satirical suggestion prompted a flurry of responses because it raised a serious problem about the ontology of women’s imperfections (31).

It is in this context that debates about the nature of sexual difference in the Renaissance emerged. There were two typical strategies adopted by pro-woman authors in response to this claim. One strategy was to simply deny that women are monsters. If sexual difference is a necessary part of the perfect natural order, then feminine difference could not be considered monstrous or imperfect. The other strategy was to claim that it is masculine difference that is monstrous.

Italian philosopher Lucrezia Marinella (1999) exemplifies these strategies in her text The Nobility and Excellence of Women. As the daughter of a renowned physician and natural philosopher, she was well-acquainted with these debates and offers one of the most complete and systematic responses to the claim that women are monsters. ¹⁷ After citing Passi’s (1599) description of women as monstrous—which Passi himself buttressed with reference to Aristotle—she offers this refutation:

I concede that things which are born against the intention of nature are flawed and monsters, but I deny that woman was born in that way, first because monsters are seen rarely, and second because women are in fact generated by nature. . . . Furthermore, if nature wishes to perpetuate the human species, she must intend the generation of the female as much as that of the male, since both are needed in order to procreate (Marinella 1999, 135).

Since nature’s intention is clearly for the species to be perpetuated, sexual difference is a part of the natural order and women cannot be monstrous.

Somewhat puzzlingly, however, Marinella then proceeds to suggest that it is only male difference that is monstrous: “Since more women are born than men I would say that man is the monster, since nature always generates a greater abundance of the better creature” (135). For the bulk of the treatise, Marinella abandons the claim that sexual difference is the intention of nature and instead pursues a second strategy—that masculine difference is monstrous. While she agrees with Aristotle about the relative differences in temperature between men and women, she argues that it is men’s excessive heat, in both generation and in their bodies, that is the aberration of nature. As Marguerite Deslauriers has shown in her work, Marinella highlights discrepancies in Aristotle’s own account of the effect of temperature on the character and moral virtue (Deslauriers 2017).

These two strategies exemplified by Marinella’s text are repeated beyond the Italian context. As both Kelly (1982) and Wilkin (2019a,b) note, the querelle is characterized by a kind of redundancy: “the repetitiveness of misogynist tradition nonetheless affected pro-women ones. Called again and again to rebut a flood of [misogynist arguments] . . . feminists reiterated their ideas” (Kelly 1982, 13). In the French context, pro-woman authors felt compelled to respond to the question of whether women were monsters, and their answers often paralleled Marinella’s. Buffet (1668), for example, acknowledges the scholastic conception of women as deformed: “They say that women are mistakes of nature, and that the Prince of Philosophy called them monsters” (217). Buffet insists that since women are needed for the “maintenance and survival of men,” they cannot be contrary to nature’s intention (217). Indeed, she proceeds to point to many ways in which masculine differences might be considered deformed. Even Poullain de la Barre (2002), who otherwise rejects the scholastic approach to the nature of the sexes, addresses the question of whether women are monsters: “Aristotle, who to this very day is known in the Schools by the glorious name of Genius of Nature . . . claims that women are nothing but monsters” (118). Poulain too rejects this reasoning on Aristotelian grounds: “To be a monster, even in Aristotle’s view, you have to have something singular and startling about you. Women have no such thing” (118).

In sum, the question of whether women were monsters was one that dominated the querelle des femmes. We see again and again pro-woman authors argue that women cannot be considered monsters, since they are a perfect part of the ordinary course of nature. While Italian philosopher Marinella offers one of the most comprehensive rebuttals of this suggestion, these themes recur in seventeenth-century France. It is against this argumentative backdrop that Suchon writes and, as I shall argue in the next section, makes an original contribution to the debate.

Section 3: Feminine Difference as a Political Wonder

Unlike earlier thinkers of the querelle, Suchon never claims that feminine difference is perfect. Throughout the treatise, she warns her readers that she describes women in a rather unflattering way by speaking out “against some of women’s mannerisms, such as slander, vanity, coquetry, and greed” (Suchon 1693, 2:267–8; 2010, 187). She insists, however, that she describes women this way in order to prove that women “are naturally capable of great things” (Suchon 1693, 2:267–8; 2010, 187). This claim may seem somewhat cryptic: how does describing women’s imperfections prove their capabilities? In this section, I argue that Suchon is describing women as not only imperfect, but wondrous. Unlike Aristotelians, who claim that women’s deformities are produced by a disorder during conception, Suchon introduces the idea of a political wonder—a deformity produced when the political world is disordered. In doing so, Suchon shows that women’s imperfections are a sign of sexual equality.

Suchon first makes the connection between women’s imperfections and their capacities for great things in the preface of her treatise. Here, Suchon claims that she will describe women’s debasement while also making them appear illustrious (Suchon 1693, preface: 10–11; 2010, 75). In doing so, she claims, she will prove that “persons of the sex are true wonders” (les personnes du Sexe sont de veritables prodiges) and that they will be able to “say with the crowned Prophet, we are wonders before many” (dire avec le Prophete couronné, nous sommes faites des prodiges devant plusieurs) (Suchon 1693, preface: 10–11; 2010, 75).

I follow Stanton and Wilkin in translating most instances of Suchon’s use of the word prodige as wonder. This may seem like a less intuitive translation than to simply translate prodige as prodigy. Wonder is often taken to have a positive connotation in contemporary English. In these passages, however, Suchon is not describing women in a positive way by calling them vertiables prodiges. In the previous quotation, Suchon is citing a passage from scripture, Psalms 71:7. In this reading, prodige has been variously translated as portent and even monster. ¹⁸ The crowned prophet, David, writes of becoming old and diseased. Because of his imperfections, he is viewed as an object of divine disfavor and someone to be avoided lest he be contagious. Clearly, the writer does not view a prodige as a good thing.

Yet, I choose to translate these passages as wonder because of the broader meaning of wonder in secondary literature. In their foundational work Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750, Daston and Park argue that wonders are preternatural phenomena—some deviation in the ordinary course of nature. Prodigies are a specific subcategory of wonders, which they distinguish from marvels. Prodigies, they argue, refer to anomalous individuals, such as “two-headed snakes mentioned by Aristotle, which occur by ‘a monstrosity of birth’” (Daston and Park 1998, 48). They contrast these wonders with marvelous species found usually at the edge of the known world, such as races of “Cyclops, Sirens, and Seahorses” (Daston and Park 1998, 48). While both categories are wonders, marvelous species typically evoking a sort of appreciative wonder, anomalous prodigies tended to produce a more negative reaction.

Suchon’s use of prodige cuts across both of these subcategories of prodigies and marvels. Prodige, in Suchon’s text, has both positive and negative connotations, depending on the context. ¹⁹ Further, Suchon is quite willing to compare women’s differences with both individual anomalies and exotic species. After all, feminine difference is not an individual anomaly but a phenomenon that occurs across a species of individuals. Thus, I choose to translate these passages with the term prodige as wonder because Suchon uses the term to refer to phenomena that are broader than what the term prodigy usually captures. As we shall see, it is by appealing to these other types of wonder, beyond monstrous conceptions, that her critique of Aristotle gains traction.

Immediately following her comparison between women and the crowned prophet in her preface, Suchon proceeds to disambiguate three types of wonder (prodige):

. . . if grace and nature perform wonders, ethics creates its own wonders, with these differences: whereas the wonders of grace always work to perfect their subjects, natural wonders often cause the ruin of their subjects, and those of politics and ethics do not destroy them entirely but . . . prevent them from reaching the sublime heights they are capable of. It is in this sense that persons of the sex are true wonders, because they possess the kind of reason, intelligence . . . that can learn and know everything. Nonetheless, these sparks, lights, and flames are hidden and buried under the ashes of bad customs and of the conduct of those who cannot bear that women shine.

. . . si la grace a ses prodiges aussi-bien que la nature, la morale ne manque pas d’avoir les siens; avec ces differences que les prodiges de la nature causent souvent la ruine de leurs sujets, que ceux de la grace tendent toûjours à perfectionner les leurs; pendant que ceux de la politique & de la morale ne les detruisent pas entierement, mais . . . empêche qu’ils n’arrivent pas à l’état sublime dont ils sont capables. C’est en ce sens que les personnes du Sexe sont de veritables prodiges, par ce qu’elles possedent la raison, l’intelligence, l’esprit, le jugement, & la volonté qui peuvent tout apprendre & tout sçavoir; & néanmoins ces lumieres, ces brillans & ces flâmes sont cachées & ensevelies sous la cendre des mauvaises coûtumes & de la conduite de ceux qui ne peuvent souffrir qu’elles éclattent. (Suchon 1693, preface; 2010, 75).

Here, Suchon offers a typology of wonders, distinguishing divine, natural, and political wonders. The two former categories represent a familiar distinction in the literature on wonder. ²⁰ Divine wonders, or miracles, occur when God intervenes in the order of nature. Miracles may represent a disorder in the natural world, but since that disorder is caused by the direct intervention of God these wonders “perfect their subjects.” Other wonders occur when things in the natural world get dislodged from their proper place by chance or accident, producing destructive consequences. Suchon, however, is innovative by introducing the idea of a political wonder—she claims that when humans intervene in the natural order, and remove things from their natural places, this too can have destructive consequences.

The distinction between natural and political wonders is clearly illustrated in Suchon’s discussion of freedom and constraint. Suchon explains how women’s excessive emotions are caused by the constraints placed upon them by the cloister and marriage. She compares this emotional volatility to natural wonders, such as earthquakes and thunderstorms:

All things in nature know no more deadly effects than when they are . . . out of their place. Where do thunder and lightning that clatter over our heads come from if not the exhalations and vapors that rise from the natural and ordinary abode in the ground and water? . . . And what of earthquakes, which cause so much fright and such great damage? They are nothing but winds trapped in caverns and subterranean places that have no exit, thus causing the earth horrible movements and jolts. (Suchon 1693, 1:125; 2010, 119)

Suchon makes clear her view that wonders are produced by some disorder or reversal of nature (renversemens de la nature). She is following from her roughly Aristotelian view of the universe as being composed of elements, all with their own inclinations, appetites, or tendencies based on their natural place. Suchon explains this earlier in the same chapter: “A body gravitates to its rightful place by its own weight, which always moves downward to seek its centre, says St. Augustine, while fire, on the other hand, never fails to rise upward” (Suchon 1693, 1:123, 2010, 117). The universe, therefore, comes into perfect harmony when the elements that make it up satisfy these natural tendencies. When beings are “out of their place” (hors de leur centre) according to Suchon, “they suffer continual anxiety” until they erupt, producing wonders such as earthquakes and thunderstorms (Suchon 1693, 1:125, 2010, 119).

While earthquakes are caused when air naturally becomes trapped underground, Suchon explains that women’s emotional eruptions are caused by human social and political arrangements. She argues that the common practices of forcing women into a place or vocation that is not of one’s choosing causes eruptions in human passions. “Among the most natural human sentiments,” Suchon claims, “we feel none more keenly than the love of freedom. Conversely, nothing is more disturbing than the fear of constraint” (Suchon 1693, 1:124; 2010, 118). Suchon uses “natural” here to mean that it is a desire by virtue of their nature. Just as a rock has an inclination to move toward the earth because it is made of earth, so humans have an inclination to be free because they are by nature free creatures.

Suchon even goes on to explain how constraints produce lower body temperatures and make the victim vulnerable to emotional outbursts:

As venom is completely contrary to the human complexion, because it corrupts the moods and vital spirits, seizes the heart, penetrates the brain, weakens the senses . . . and extinguishes the blood and all natural heat; so this pernicious poison of constraint places costs on the persons whom they hold captive. Because the whole interior becomes unregulated, the person is tormented with a thousand passions that agitate and corrupt him. This unfortunate venom causes an extreme coldness for all spiritual things. (Suchon 1693, 1:168)

For Suchon, constraints, especially those women face when they are forced into and confined to a cloister or marriage, act like a poison that causes extreme coldness in them. This temperature weakens their hearts and makes them less capable of restraining their passions. Thus, women’s lower temperatures, and inability to control their passions, is a wondrous imperfection, but it is not produced naturally. Instead, it is the result of the political system that deprives them of freedom.

Suchon’s description of women as wondrous is not limited to her discussion of freedom but is repeated in every main part of her treatise. After discussing in the first part how constraint makes women emotional, like thunder and earthquakes, Suchon explains how being deprived of knowledge and authority also produces wondrous feminine differences. In the second part, she explains how ignorance makes women gossipy and slanderous, comparing them to demons and wildfires (Suchon 1693, 2:196; 2010, 177). In the third part, she explains how perpetual dependence produces insubordination, comparing women’s quarrelsomeness to mythic rebellions (Suchon 1693, 3:64–65; 2010, 218).

By calling women wonders, then, Suchon exploits the tension at the heart of the Aristotelian understanding of women’s inferiority. In her discussion of constraint, and throughout the treatise, Suchon uses the idea of political wonders to offer a more consistent account of women’s deformity than the Aristotelian account. Rather than suggest that women’s imperfections are the result of an incomplete but necessary generative event, she shows that the disorder producing them must be political. Thus, women’s imperfections are not a justification for their subordination but a sign that there is something out of place in the political order.

Section 4: Wondrous Rhetoric

Wonder refers not only to the ontological category of preternatural phenomena but also to the passion that those wonders inspire. In this section, I argue that Suchon uses wondrous imagery to build this emotional reaction in her reader. In this way, Suchon is able to describe women’s difference without inspiring contempt but instead inspiring the fear necessary to invoke change.

Suchon is keenly aware that her approach to the woman question faces a kind of rhetorical risk. Although she describes women’s “unflattering facets,” she insists that she does not “hold her sex in contempt” (Suchon 1693, 2:267–8, 2010, 176). Of course, Suchon does not celebrate feminine differences, given that she believes these differences are the product of patriarchal practices that stunt women’s development. Moreover, she does not believe that praising or revalorizing feminine differences is an effective way to inspire change. While most contributions to the querelle offered long enumerations of women’s virtues, Suchon insists that men would not change their behavior even if they were convinced of women’s equality—they would “perish, rather than change or eliminate any of the laws that are to their advantage” (Suchon 1693, 3:107).

Rather than treat sexual difference as either contemptible or laudable, Suchon instead uses exaggerated and dramatic imagery to inspire a different reaction—wonder. Wonder is an emotional response to the unfamiliar, those phenomena that are outside the ordinary course of nature. As Daston and Park (1998) note, wonder has an iridescent quality; it can be fused with pleasure, when the wondrous object appears worthy of veneration, or fused with horror, when the unfamiliar object is seen as a portent or sign of worse things to come (20). In many cases, this horror and veneration is mixed, for instance, when the wonder is a sign of divine wrath. By describing women as wonders, Suchon unsettles her readers’ familiarity with sexual difference, encouraging them to view it as something outside our ordinary understanding of nature. In so doing, the reader treats women’s differences not as trivial vices but as a sign of women’s power and a portent of worse things to come.

Suchon builds this reaction in each major part of her treatise, particularly inspiring a wonder fused with horror. As discussed previously, the treatise is divided into three parts—freedom, knowledge, and authority—each of which includes several chapters dedicated to its antonym: constraint, ignorance, and dependence. In these chapters, Suchon concentrates on vices that are produced by these deprivations. In the first part, she discusses women’s excessive emotions, then she moves on to discussing their gossip and slander in the second, and finally turns to a discussion of women’s insubordination in the third part. In each section, she compares these vices with wonders, suggesting first that women’s imperfections are a dangerous reversal of nature and gradually building to the idea that they pose a direct threat to men.

In the first part of Suchon’s treatise, on freedom and constraint, Suchon begins to hint that the deprivations women face may be threatening to men. When discussing the anger and agitation that results from the constraints women face, she warns readers that these passions could escalate. Just as “wind appears nothing but a feeble vapour,” she warns, “it produces tumultuous commotions and frightful storms to rid itself of the tyrants that restrain it” (Suchon 1693, 1:125; 2010, 119). If women are constrained, the effects of their passions will be “incomparably more malignant and dangerous than wind . . . [bringing] changes and troubles to families and typically [turning] the order and conduct that must exist in the world topsy-turvy” (Suchon 1693, 1:125; 2010, 119). Thus, even seemingly ordinary vices might pose an extraordinary threat.

Suchon continues to encourage this emotional response in the second part of her treatise on knowledge and ignorance. She argues that the ignorant state in which women are kept causes their “most familiar and ordinary faults” (Suchon 1693, 2:196; 2010, 177). Suchon condemns the many practices that keep women uneducated: unmarried women were barred from schools, married women were only allowed to study at the behest of their husbands, and nuns could only read scripture in the presence of a priest. With nothing else to occupy their minds, women turn to “slander and excessive chatter” to busy themselves (Suchon 1693, 2:196; 2010, 177). Despite calling chattiness an “ordinary” vice, Suchon goes on to describe it as anything but. Women’s gossip is the reason “the poets represent Lamia in the shape of a woman” (Suchon 1693, 2:198; 2010, 178). Lamia is a child-eating monster with a bust of a woman and tail of a serpent from Greek mythology. ²¹ Zeus gave Lamia the ability to remove her eyes, which, Suchon suggests, represents the sin of gossip. Just as Lamia pulls out her eyes when she is in her own home, only to put them back in when she goes outdoors, gossipy women are overly focused on the lives of others, and not their own. ²² Like demons, ignorant women cause apocalyptic havoc with their “slandering tongues.” Their tongues produce “a fire, from an unrighteous world, a member that stains our bodies and inflames the course of our lives, and is itself set on fire by hell . . . we can tame every beast, but there is no human who can tame the tongue” (Suchon 1693, 2:196, 2010, 177). Gossipy women, then, are not ordinarily imperfect. They are monsters who threaten to set the world on fire with their slander.

In the third part of the treatise, Suchon makes explicit that men are the ones who are threatened by women’s imperfections. In this part of the treatise, Suchon explains the consequences of depriving women of authority and relegating them to a life of perpetual dependence. Perpetual dependency, with no opportunities for authority or dignity in any sphere, makes subjects hate their superiors, transgress their laws, and even rebel. ²³ As we have seen, Suchon’s discussion of rebellion has perplexed contemporary commentators. Veronica Desnain argues that the purpose of Suchon’s discussion of rebellion is “to furnish the female reader with the intellectual weaponry necessary to challenge her condition”. ²⁴ Suchon, according to Desnain, excuses, and to a certain extent promotes, women’s insubordination in order to encourage women to stand up for themselves. This reading, however, sits uneasily with Suchon’s frequent clarifications that “Despite my many arguments in favor of women, it is not my intention to persuade them that they should . . . usurp the dignities men possess” (Desnain 2012, 266). Even though she believes that “the power men exercise over women is usurped more often than it is legitimate” (Suchon 1693, 3:7; 2010, 198), Suchon still clearly refrains from telling women to take back the power that rightfully belongs to them. This reluctance may be attributed to Suchon’s faith, and the Pauline belief that Christians should accept their condition. ²⁵ Taking Suchon’s faith seriously, then, other commentators have argued that Suchon’s discussion of rebellion is meant to encourage women to accept their condition, and bear their subjection gracefully (Hoffman 1978; O’Neill 2011). Suchon describes women’s insubordination to convince them that it is a vice and encourage them to live more peacefully with their superiors. This reading, however, ignores the fact that while Suchon disavows militarism, she does not discuss it as wholly contemptible. As her translators note, there are some hints of admiration, when she discusses past rebellions (Stanton and Wilkin 2010, 72).

Both of these interpretations misunderstand the purpose of Suchon’s discussion of rebellions. She does not describe rebellions in order to celebrate them and to encourage women to be quarrelsome. Nor does she discuss their rebellious behavior in order to illustrate the lamentable behavior of women under the painful conditions of dependence. Instead, Suchon describes rebellion as a wonder; in order to inspire her reader, and especially her male readers, to feel both awe at women’s power and horror at the possible outcome of their own inequitable arrangements between the sexes. No matter how petty women’s insubordination may seem, it is something to be feared.

Suchon warns her readers that the current inequitable arrangements between the sexes make women particularly prone to rebellion. While women often appear to love men, she argues that they actually may harbor some resentment: “If the persons of the sex were not led by reason and assisted by divine grace, there would often be complaints and murmurs against the authors of their debasement and . . . they would often find themselves inclined to wish them harm” (Suchon 1693, 3:116). This comment is particularly threatening, having come after a paragraph in which Suchon explains how the majority of the population is not led by reason. If women experience the opportunity, and any lapse in judgment, they may very well seek to unseat their masters. Thus, while Suchon does not encourage women to take up arms, she discusses rebellion because it may be inevitable: “We should note that law, policies, and traditions established in favor of persons of the sex stay in existence much longer than those that oppose their elevation. We saw this in the republic of Lycurgus, which favored women in all things and which lasted several centuries with great luster” (Suchon 1693, 3:25). If men refuse to give up their advantages and to make room for women to hold positions of authority, then women’s petty quarrels may be a sign of terrible rebellions to come.

Rebellions are obviously not preternatural wonders; though they are rare, they are still human phenomena. Yet virtually every time Suchon discusses rebellion in detail, she references the Amazons, a tribe of women warriors from Greek mythology. While the Amazons were hardly considered mythological in the early modern period—the details of their society were disputed, but they were certainly believed to exist—Amazons were still wonders. “Wherever the Amazons are located,” Peter Walcot tells us, “whether it is somewhere along the Black Sea in the distant north-east, or in Libya in the furthest south, it is always beyond the confines of the civilized world. The Amazons exist outside the normal range of human experience” (Walcot 1984, 42). Like many wonders, Amazons are physically located at the boundaries of the civilized world, reflecting their epistemological status as being on the boundaries of the scientific worldview.

We can see that Suchon intends to describe this matriarchy as a wonder by comparing her discussion of the Amazons with other authors. The Amazons were a fairly ubiquitous trope in seventeenth-century literature. Pro-woman authors of the querelles des femmes often drew on the history of the Amazons to prove the strength, wisdom, and valor of women. Others discussed the Amazons in order to rethink customs surrounding reproduction. ²⁶ Suchon’s discussion of the Amazons, however, is not a utopian discussion of the different possible ways the social order could be organized but instead a dystopian one. Her purpose for discussing the Amazons is not to spark readers’ imaginations about how a matriarchal society could work but instead to focus on the horrific ways it could come into being:

The origin of these illustrious conqueresses can be traced to the defeat of their husbands, killed by enemies in a cruel battle, and the wives’ resolve to avenge their deaths. In fact, they put a sword through all those who had had a part in killing their husbands. And so, after they had taken away their husbands’ remains, and because they regarded marriage as a servitude whose intolerable yoke deprived them of freedom, they established their own empire themselves. They chased the remaining men out of their country, and unable to tolerate men’s domination any longer, they elected two queens, one to lead the armies, the other to govern the kingdom. In a short time such was their power that they conquered a large part of Asia and Europe. (Suchon 1693, 3:64–65; 2010, 219)

While Suchon obviously agrees that the Amazons were strong and wise warriors, she does not straightforwardly celebrate them. The Amazons’ matriarchy was the product of a “revolt against men” so that they could “shake off the yoke of their obedience” (Suchon 1693, 3:forward). After years of servitude, the Amazons exiled men from the community at the first opportunity, and went on to conquer the world.

Suchon also clarifies that she understands the Amazons to be wonders when she disavows their militarism. “Women today,” Suchon claims, “should never undertake to dispossess men of their power and authority: it would be a mental aberration to aim for such a morally unbearable goal. Although other women have succeeded in a similar enterprise—the ancient Amazons, for instance—and . . . have done many wonders, but I am not talking here about the extraordinary conduct of God, which only produces miracles” (Suchon 1693, 3:forward). The Amazons’ rebellion is not a miracle; it is not an example of the divine intervening to produce perfection, and therefore she cannot condone or encourage her contemporaries to rebel. Instead, it is a political wonder—a dangerous consequence of a disordered world.

Suchon does not discuss women’s slander, transgressions, and general quarrelsomeness to encourage them to engage in this sort of vicious behavior. But that does not mean she is encouraging women to be more submissive. Her purpose in discussing women’s rebelliousness is to sow awe and fear: women’s quarrelsomeness is a wonder that may be a sign of a coming danger that threatens the whole social order. Her discussion of the Amazons shows how this may happen. By being kept in perpetual dependence, the Amazons found a way to exile men. Thus, keeping women in perpetual dependence stands to produce wonders “more frightful than all the reversals of nature” (Suchon 1693, 1:125; 2010, 119). Rather than framing her defense of sexual equality as a proposal to radically change the social order, she instead frames it as a way to maintain stability. Since constraint, ignorance, and dependence produce wonders, we must “protect ourselves from its domination” and cease the cruel and oppressive practices that create them.

Conclusion

There is a tendency to try to ignore the strange and off-putting aspects of Suchon’s work. The dramatic, unflattering, and often religious imagery that Suchon uses to describe women has been seen as something we ought to excuse if she is to be instructive to contemporary feminist theory. When read against the backdrop of debates about women’s monstrosity, however, Suchon’s comments on women’s wondrousness offer a sophisticated and original contribution to the querelle des femmes.

The idea of wonder as an important passion for feminism is not a historical oddity. Several recent feminist theorists have argued that wonder is an important emotion for feminists to use as it encourages us to look at the familiar as new and surprising. The suggestion was first made by Luce Irigaray. In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, Irigaray (1993) argues that wonder is the appropriate response to the other: “This other, male or female, should surprise us again and again, appear to us as new, very different from what we knew” (74). Young (1997) builds on this idea, suggesting that this response to difference is the appropriate foundation for deliberative democracy because it involves “an openness to the newness and mystery of the other” (56). In a slightly different vein, Sara Ahmed has also stressed the importance of wonder for feminist pedagogy. Wonder, she argues, “works to transform the ordinary, which is already recognized, into something extraordinary” (Ahmed 2004, 179). In so doing, wonder provides feminists with a “critical gaze” so that one can begin to be surprised by the quotidian power relations between the sexes that are otherwise taken for granted (182). Like Suchon, each of these thinkers believe that wonder is important in transforming mundane features of sexual difference into something surprising.

All of these thinkers are, however, inspired by Descartes’s use of wonder. For Descartes ([1649] 1985), wonder is a pleasurable stupefaction at the new and unfamiliar that is accompanied by a kind of curiosity (350). For these contemporary thinkers, wonder is an appropriate response to sexual difference because it is overwhelmingly positive emotion—the fact that it is accompanied by joy, curiosity, and openness makes it an appropriate reaction to difference. Yet wonder is a passion with many faces. The unfamiliar and extraordinary can be met with horror and not just openness. ²⁷

Suchon’s descriptions of sexual differences remind us of this iridescent nature of wonder. Yet, Suchon also teaches us that this quality does not make wonder any less useful for feminists. To describe feminine difference—which is so often seen as mundane, trivial, and contemptible—as not only unfamiliar but horrifying is something that feminists might think deploy. And it is only by engaging with the strange and off-putting parts of her work that we can begin to appreciate this use of wonder.