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Women In The Great Cat Massacre

222 Words1 Pages
The lack of traditional sources pertaining to the lives of the ordinary people at social historians’ disposal, combined with the gendered expectations deeply embedded in eighteenth century European society, truncates one’s understanding of the lives of ordinary women. Regardless of where such a method falls short with men, there is little to be gleaned from examining the reading habits of women, as, despite the surge in literacy from 1600 to 1800, women “lagged behind men in most countries”(McKay 669). There is even less clarity in Darnton’s Great Cat Massacre, as the closest Darnton gets to unearthing the lives of eighteenth century French women occurs in the connection he finds between cats and female sexuality (Darnton 95). Albeit this connection
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