Women are largely absent from the economic system Smith lays out in The Wealth of Nations. This account of women in Smith thus focuses primarily on analysis of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and its discussion of women as subjects and objects of sympathy; and on the Lectures on Jurisprudence, Smith’s account of the development of socio-economic systems and the forms of private or domestic life that evolve along with them. I argue that Smith’s accounts of the evolution of social (...) forms in the Lectures and of ethical practice in the Theory are shaped by his distinctive conception of women’s experience as exceptional and non-normative, and of marriage and romantic love as insignificant in the history of private life before the rise of the Catholic church. (shrink)