EDUCATING WOMEN: THE PRECEPTRESS AND HER PEN, 1780-1820 RUTH ALEXANDRA SYMES Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of D.Phil. University of York Centre for Women's Studies 1995 ABSTRACT The period 1780-1820 saw changes in ideas about education, literature and the "nature" of women. These ideas were in themselves mutually interdependent. The writings of women in this period have recently been recovered and reanalysed by critics keen to theorise their "literary value." This thesis suggests that these works might be more profitably evaluated by a consideration of the pedagogical ideals underpinning their production. I trace the religious and philosophical ideas informing educational discourse and suggest that in this period, the figure of the preceptress, British, middle-class and rational, infiltrated the popular imagination as writer, reader and character. The majority of female writer/educators in this thesis were working within a rationalist philosophy of experience dependent upon the world of Enlightenment and Dissent. My study considers a range of fictional and non-fictional material by women writers both well-known and obscure, including school textbooks, stories for children, works of advice, works of literary criticism, self-histories and novels of the period. I show the ways in which these works were connected through pedagogical discourse and consider how the development of particular genres in this period was shaped by the notion of educating womanhood. I show how, by reinstating pedagogy as an aspect of literary production and appreciation, women writers may obtain a fairer hearing. 2 CONTENTS page Abstract 2 Contents 3 List of Appendices 7 Introduction: Educating Women, 1780-1820 10 1) The Preceptress and the Domestic Woman 17 2) Retrieving the Preceptress 20 a) Histories of- Education 20 b) Women in Enlightenment Thought 24 c) Histories of the Family and Childhood 28 d) Histories of Feminist Politics 30 e) Religion and Enlightenment 32 0 Biographical Approaches 42 3) Defining the Preceptress 51 i) Issues of Class 51 ii) Issues of Nationality 59 4) Literary Criticism and Women's Education 64 5) Methodology 73 Chapter One: "The Wand of Reason": the Preceptress in Writing for Children 79 1) Women Writers and the Preceptress in Works for Children 83 2) "There Must be a Dame": Women Writing Textbooks 88 3 i) "Young Girls Don't Read Prefaces" 88 ii) "The Magic of Ryme": Books of Poetry 96 3) Fantasy, Reason and The Preceptress 100 i) Fairy Tales 104 ii) Fables 110 4) "Nature" and the Preceptress 114 5) Educating and Authorship in Works for Children: 124 Some Conclusions Chapter Two: The Absent Mrs Gregory: The Preceptress in Advice Literature 133 1) The History of Educational Advice: Some Considerations of Gender 135 i) "In the Eye of My Own Sex": Prescription and the Paternal Preceptor 142 ii) "Silken Fetters": The Maternal Model of Advice 146 a) "A Regular Plan" 147 b) "The Most Proper and Attractive of all Teachers" 151 2) The Woman Writer and the Possibilities of Prescription 156 3) Parodying Prescription: Maria Edgeworth's Letters for Literary Ladies (1795) 162 4) Prescription and the Novel of Education 173 Chapter Three: "A Judicious Person with Some Turn For Humour": The Preceptress as Literary Critic 178 1) Women, Literary Criticism and the Late Eighteenth-Century Context 181 2) "Strong Markings of the Female Mind": Clara Reeve: Literary Critic and 4 Educationalist (1729-1807). 189 3) The Progress of Romance (1785): From Literary Criticism to Pedagogical Project 194 i) "To Talk of Romance": Some Notes on Form 204 ii) "The Regulation of Reason": Some Recommended Reading 208 4) Conclusion 210 Chapter Four: The Educative "I": The Preceptress as Self-Historian 213 1) "In Everything Follow My Example": Educational Discourse and Self-History: A Dialogue 217 2) The Memoir of Catharine Cappe (1812) 222 i) Unitarianism and Life-Writing 227 ii) Cappe's Memoir and Educational Discourse 233 a) "Another End in View" 234 b) Association and Autobiography 237 3) Conclusion 245 Chapter Five: "A More Perfect Plan": Emma and The Preceptress in 249 Fiction 1) Educating Emma 255 2) Educating Women in Emma 261 i) Mrs Goddard's Academy 261 ii) Mrs Weston: "Poor Miss Taylor That Was" 263 iii) Emma: "Mrs Weston's Faithful Pupil" 270 iv) Jane Fairfax: "Brought up for Educating Others" 275 3) Jane Austen as Educating Author 279 4) Later Preceptresses in Fiction 282 5 Conclusion: "Having Made Education My More Particular Study" 284 Appendices 293 Bibliography 308 6 LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix A: Elizabeth Hamilton. Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education, 5th edition. Bath, R. Cruthwell, 1816. 12-21. Appendix B: Charlotte Smith. "Preface" to Conversations Introducing Poetry on the Subjects of Natural History for The Use of Children and the Young. London, T. Nelson and Sons, 1804. Appendix C: The Grasshopper i) Cowley's Translation of Anacreon's The Grasshopper (translation made between 1638 and 1652). In J. F. Taafe, Abraham Cowley. New York: Twayne Publishers Inc., 1974. 45. ii) Charlotte Smith's .Version of The Grasshopper in Conversations Introducing Poetry: Chiefly on the Subjects of Natural History for the Use of Children and Young People. London, T. Nelson and Sons, 1804. 116-117. Appendix D: Maria Edgeworth. "The Good French Governess" in Moral Tales for Young People. London: J. Johnson, 1801. 112-113. Appendix E: Clara Reeve. "To my Friend Mrs X. On her Holding an Argument in Favour of the Natural Equality of Both of the Sexes." In Original Poems on Several Occasions. London: T. and J. W. Pasham, 1756. 4-11. Appendix F: Clara Reeve. The Progress of Romance Through Times, Countries and Manners, with Remarks on the Good and Bad Effects of it on Them Respectively in A Course of Evening Conversations, 2nd vol.. Colchester: W. Keymer, 1785. 102-104. Appendix G: Catharine Cappe. "Introduction" to Memoir of the Life of the Late Mrs Catharine Cappe Written by Herself. 2nd ed.. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, Paternoster Row, 1823. 2-4. 7 My chief delight is to learn and to be with those who know how to teach. It is not often my lot to meet with living instructors, but there are plenty of the dead and I am satisfied. Ellen Weeton, Nov. 15th 1809. The Journals of Ellen Weeton 1807-1822, ed. Edward Hall with a new intoduction by J.J. Bagley (Newton Abbot: David and Charles Reprints, 1969). 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the British Academy for funding my research and especially for allowing me to make several research trips to London and Cambridge. Thanks to the staff of Wigan Record Office, Leigh; Suffolk County Archives, Ipswich; York University Library; Leeds Brotherton Library; the British Library, Boston Spa; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the British Library, London; the Borthwick Institute, York; and Cambridge University Library. My chief thanks go to my two female mentors, Treva Broughton and Jane Rendall whose unfailing enthusiasm, interest and criticism of my work have been the mainstay of my time at York. Thanks to them also for showing me the borders between "literature" and "history" and for helping me in the attempt to cross them. Thanks also to all the staff and students of the Centre for Women's Studies at York who gave me the space and encouragement to teach, to learn, and to write. Thanks to the Women's History Research Group at York for many stimulating discussions over the years. Thanks also to the organisers of the Erasmus Student Exchange on both sides of the Channel who allowed me to participate in a fascinating course entitled Fact and Fiction in a Feminist Perspective held at the University of Utrecht in the summer of 1992. Thanks to all those teachers from Warrington, Cambridge, and London who have encouraged my enthusiasm for literature. These were particularly: John Brown, John Nutter, lain Wright, Julia Swindells and Yvonne Browne. Thanks also to all my fellow teachers in Warrington, London, Cambridge, Leeds and York whose line of work provides the inspiration for this thesis. I am grateful too to all my own students who have given me the opportunity to play the role of preceptress! Thanks to old friends for their sound advice at times of stress, particularly Anne Sheinfield, Susan Harkness and Cathy Ward. Thanks to my parents for their support and particularly to my father and sister, Naomi, for their patient proofreading. Final and especial thanks to Zainul Sachak for the years of reassurance and belief: without him this project would never have been completed. 9 Introduction Educating Women, 1780-1820 [To Miss C. Armitage, Upholland, Wigan, July 1823]. My heart ached to discover a very wrong system of education pursued for my child; but I must submit to it in silence. No father is fit to educate a daughter and Mary is only preparing for a sickly life, filled with vanity, pride and trifles -- and a premature death. Poor, poor Mary, thy lot and mine is very sad... [emphasis mine] [To Mr Stock, Upholland, Wigan, July 1st 1823]. Do you not love my Mary? Why then deprive her of the comfort of a mother? If you sincerely loved her, you would study her comfort and satisfaction. When in your house, what comfort and satisfaction has she, capable of giving her proper instruction? -- none. Too ignorant are they, and of language and manners not for her to copy; and when she leaves school, she must come home to be the companion of servants. Do not educate her thus, I earnestly urge, but let her have the advantages of a mother's solicitude... [emphasis Weeton's] Ellen Weeton, The Journals of Ellen Weeton, 1807-1825 1 In July 1823, the Lancashire governess and schoolteacher, Ellen Weeton, wrote passionately to her friend, Miss Armitage, and to her estranged husband, Aaron Stock, on the subject of the education of her daughter.