This is an exploration of such universal terms as "people", "man" or "human" in early modern England, from the Civil War through the Enlightenment. Such language falsely implies inclusion of both men and women when actually it excludes women. Recent scholarship has focused on the "Rights of Man" doctrine form the Enlightenment and the French Revolution as explanation for women's exclusion from citizenship. Accoring to Hilda Smith, we need to go back further, to the English Revolution and the more grounded (but equally restricted) values tied to the "free-born Englishman". Citing educational treatises, advice literature to young people, guild records, popular periodicals, and parliamentary debates, she demonstrates how the "male maturation process" came to define the qualities attached to citizenship and responsible adulthood, which in turn became the basis for modern individualism and liberalism.

All Men and Both Sexes: Gender, Politics, and the False Universal in England, 1640-1832 PDF

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