The Signs of an Art

In this chapter, the author Marisa Forcina sheds light, from the point of view of the history of political thought, on the most salient aspects of the experiences created by the female elites studied in the book. She focuses on the art of work well done, seen as a symbol of emancipation for women. Through the concepts of Kant’s subjective happiness and Arendt’s public happiness, she finds in the history of political thought the roots of the idea that work can be the basis of a new model of women’s liberation: whether it was needlework or social work, for the female protagonist of this book it became the art of cultivating themselves. Thanks to a search in undeservedly little known writings, she shows that the art of work well done was seen as a revolutionary political project by writers of the period, such as Nikolaj Chernyshevsky, with his vision of equality and happiness reached through work; Charles Péguy, with his insistence on art as an exercise of marvellous precision as well as the basis of a project imbued with history and culture; and William Morris, with his idea that ‘good work’ can bring excellence and personal fulfilment. By recalling the philosopher Françoise Collin’s claim that every woman artist is a feminist, the author of this chapter highlights, in a perceptive and evocative way, the political meaning of the actions undertaken by the women dealt with in the present volume, not so much in their explicit engagement in social movements, as when they acted in their pre-political domains.