In the early 18th century, women began to enter the literary sector in larger numbers for the first time. They embodied the type of the "learned woman"; some of them gained access to author status and advanced to "crowned poets." By the middle of the century, another type of woman was favored: the sensitive one, the "beautiful soul." The peak and provisional conclusion of this initial advance of women into literary discourse was Romanticism. Silvia Bovenschen discusses, using concise examples, the connection between the extensive exclusion of female imagination from the sphere of cultural production and the male-normative representation of women in literature, aesthetics, and philosophy. Her book deals with the "history of women's lack of history." It uncovers the long trail of a prohibition on thinking and speaking.