charles moyer wrote:
>
> ----------
> > Could someone
> offer an example of a writer from the period who had "a profound
> understanding of women"?
>

The question is wrong -- it implies that there exists some sort of
essence of womanhood to be understood. There is not, any more than there
is an essence of "man" or of "humans" to be understood.

Carrol

VI. Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the _human_ essence.
But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single
individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.
        Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real
essence, is consequently compelled:
        1. To abstract from the historical process and to fix the
religious sentiment [_Gemut_] as something by itself and to presuppose
an abstract -- _isolated_ -- human individual.
        2. The human essence, therefore, can with him be comprehended
only as a "genus," as an internal, dumb generality which merely
_naturally_ unites the many individuals.
                        K.M. _Theses on Feuerbach_