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

• Published date: 01 June 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231200828
• Author: Mary Jo MacDonald
• Date: 01 June 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231200828

Political Theory

2024, Vol. 52(3) 490 –516

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00905917231200828

journals.sagepub.com/home/ptx

Article

“Persons of the Sex

are True Wonders”:

Gabrielle Suchon on

Difference and Political

Wonders

Mary Jo MacDonald1

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.

1University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Mary Jo MacDonald, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, Room 3018, 100 St. George

Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada.

Email: maryjo.macdonald@mail.utoronto.ca

1200828PTXXXX10.1177/00905917231200828Political TheoryMacDonald

research-article2023

MacDonald 491

Keywords

feminism, wonders, equality, Gabrielle Suchon, history of political thought

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 fam-

ily when she renounced her vows, Suchon was personally motivated to

explain the harms women endure by being pressured into these male-con-

trolled 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 trea-

tise, Suchon consistently compares these goods with their antitheses, show-

ing how patriarchal practices keep women in a state of constraint, ignorance,

and perpetual dependence.2

1. The little we know of Suchon’s life comes from her own works and an entry in

the Bibliothèque des auteurs de Bourgogne by Abbé Philibert Papillon in 1745,

although many of the details are unknown or unconfirmed. She was born in 1632

in Semur-en-Auxois, Burgundy, to a relatively affluent family of the minor gen-

try. She entered the convent, and later left it. After she left, Suchon suggests that

she was abandoned by her family who attempted to force her back to the cloister.

She spent the remainder of her days supporting herself as a teacher until she died

in 1703. Many of the facts about her studies and influence are still unknown—it

is not known how widely read her published works were (although her works

had subsequent editions), nor how she had access to the variety of texts she cites.

Unlike most extant writings from women in the seventeenth century, Suchon had

no close connection with male philosophers and academic circles. By her own

account, her unconventional life and studies left her deeply isolated. For more

details about Suchon’s biography, see Bertolini (2000).

2. Suchon (1700) has another major treatise On the Celibate Life. If Suchon’s first

treatise diagnoses the harms done to women by being forced into the convent

or a marriage, her later work provides a solution: to live the life of a “neutral-

ist” without committing to either marriage or the convent. I will not discuss

this work in this article because of my focus on difference and wonders. Since

Suchon does not diagnose the cause of women’s difference in that work, there

is no discussion of wonders. Subsequent citations of Suchon’s Treatise will be

in-text. I will refer to her original manuscript and, where possible, the English

translation of selections of her work provided by Stanton and Wilkin (2010) .

The in-text citation will take the following form: (Suchon 1693 [part]: [page];

2010 [page]).