“People worried about the independence of women, about the destabilization of the institution of marriage, about the educated woman.”

In the salons, there were new definitions of gender roles and new forms of communication and rules of the game between the sexes, because in the protected space of the salon women and men could deal with each other informally, with honourable freedom.

The salonière was an essential element in the communication network and thus brought with it the positive aspects of the previously discredited abilities of mediation (procuress), spinning (hearing the grass grow), madness (possibility of an extraordinary change of perspective), gossip and the gossip to the fore.

The salon as a woman’s domain had become an instrument to fight against the disenfranchisement of women. The private sphere has always been the woman’s sphere of power. While men exercised their power in public life, women did so in private at home. The role of eighteenth-century women was that of mother and wife. The emancipation of women began with the salon. The salon gave the women of elite society the opportunity to participate in public life, even to influence it significantly, while the men did so in public.

The salon was a place where the educated woman built up her new domain of power, women of the nobility had lost their feudal rights through the constitution and less opportunity to participate in public life. The salon was an opportunity for the salonière to visibly move and influence within the patriarchal system and to challenge the asymmetrical axis of power between man and woman.

Most influential salonières were charismatic women, champions of women’s rights and an egalitarian society. The salon as a feminist but also feminine place was characterized by the art of communication, the occasional intrigue, mediation, bridge building, peace settlement and above all it was a place that was politically and socially neutral. It enabled people of different financial status, different religious backgrounds, social ranks, political affiliations and national origins to have a place of exchange and communication.

Within this framework, women were able to assume their role as mediators, the “power brokers”. Men had opportunities to take on these roles in public life, as political representatives, impresarios, etc. The salon was the only place where women could take on these roles as well. The Political Salon was particularly evident with Berta Zuckerkandl and Anna Kuliscioff.

Another intention of the salon was to establish a university for women. Women competed intellectually with men in their salons. The woman had learned legal subordination, marriage without love, degrading upbringing. The salon gave her a place of autonomy, a place where she could make her own decisions.

This aspect is particularly relevant to the Salonières of the late 18th century, whose main protagonists were Jewish women who stood up not only for their rights as women but also for their freedom within Jewish religious education. You fought not only for emancipation as a woman but also for your emancipation as a Jewish woman.

The salon was the domain of women, in which educational differences were dissolved and women were even considered to be the ones who cultivated and formed men. The merits of the salonières also consisted in the work against a renewed establishment of the exclusion of women. They claimed for women the right to the highest learning. The salonières were mostly self-taught, and they took satisfaction in shaping the social form of the salon.