Ilustradas

Literary salons were one of the most important forms of socialization among the upper classes of the 18th century. At their head were a series of women who could not be classified as feminists in the current sense of the word, but who knew how to take advantage of the advantages granted to them by social customs to open the doors of their mansions to thinkers, scientists or artists and thus decisively influence the evolution of their time. Contemporaries of the Enlightenment, the social and cultural movement that paved the way for the great bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century, the enlightened women claimed their status as thinking beings, demanding their right to intellectual training on an equal footing with men, and undoubtedly sowed the seeds that would hatch into 19th century feminism. The French salonnières, the English bluestockings, the German salungërinden or the members of the Junta de Damas de Honor y Mérito in Spain, together with their Italian, Portuguese or Latin American counterparts, placed their salons at the service of the Age of Enlightenment and sometimes, as happened in America or Italy, their gatherings ended up becoming a melting pot for political demands. Distant, then, in their modes and purposes, the salons of these enlightened ladies had their own particular geography.