Emile: On Education

Emile is now a grown man, and Rousseau’s task is to provide Emile with a worthy companion—a wife.

In most respects, Rousseau finds women and men to be similar in physiology. The sexual differences, however, extend not only to body but to mind. As a couple, “The man should be strong and active; the woman should be weak and passive” (172). In courtship, the woman brings out the man’s strength by resisting him; ironically, this involves “the shame and modesty with which nature has armed the weak for the conquest of the strong” (172).

A woman can dominate a man through her resistance. “For nature has endowed woman with a power of stimulating man’s passions […] and compelled him in his turn to endeavour to please her” (173). This power over men comes from Nature and inviolate. As a mother, the woman must be faithful; if she strays, “she destroys the family and breaks the bonds of nature,” especially when “she gives her husband children who are not his own” (174). A father does not want to be burdened with children not his. Thus, the wife must be faithful, modest, and of good reputation.