The Right to One’s Own Voice: The Formation of Female Autonomy in G. E. Lessing’s Miss Sara Sampson, Emilia Galotti and Marianne Ehrmann’s Leichtsinn und gutes Herz oder die Folgen der Erziehung

Normatively speaking, autonomy is one of the foundations of modern constitutional states. It refers to a form of freedom that allows individuals to act in a self-determined manner according to their own ideas and interests – that is, without being restricted by arbitrarily imposed social or legal boundaries. This kind of freedom was fundamentally denied to women in the patriarchal social system of the eighteenth century in so far as their lives were marked by social dependence on men and an obedience to male authority imposed on them by law.