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Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction Du Branch Patrimoine De I'edition The "Masculine Mind" and the Woman's Body: Exploring the Strategies of Seventeenth- Century Female Philosophers Anne Conway and Damaris Masham to Reconcile Domesticity and Intellectualism by Leslie Baker Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August 2008 © Copyright by Leslie Baker, 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-43505-2 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-43505-2 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY To comply with the Canadian Privacy Act the National Library of Canada has requested that the following pages be removed from this copy of the thesis: Preliminary Pages Examiners Signature Page (pii) Dalhousie Library Copyright Agreement (piii) Appendices Copyright Releases (if applicable) For Nan Lorraine June Digdon (1928-2008) iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract vi Acknowledgements vii Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Husbands, Mentors, and Friends: Invaluable Relationships in the Lives of Conway and Masham 20 Chapter Three: To Put the Mind Over the Body: Examining the Relevance of Cartesianism and Its Uses for Women 48 Descartes's System 49 Anne Conway 60 Damaris Cudworth Masham 72 Conclusion 84 Chapter Four: Stronger for Her Weakness: Medicine, Melancholy and the Conflict Between the Female Body And the Masculine Mind 87 Anne Conway 94 Damaris Cudworth Masham 112 Conclusion 123 Chapter Five: One Matters of the Soul: Theology, Philosophy and Understanding 127 Anne Conway 135 Damaris Cudworth Masham 147 Conclusion 150 Chapter Six: Conclusion 152 Bibliography 158 v Abstract In seventeenth-century England women were believed to be socially, physiologically, and psychologically inferior to men. Yet individual women occasionally found ways either to bypass or to use to their advantage the constraining characteristics that they were supposed to share with their sisters. Lady Anne Conway and Lady Damaris Masham were two such women. Furthermore by reconciling their domestic roles and intellectual endeavours they contradict the modern belief that historically women had to choose between marriage and study. In this way these two women are the exceptions among exceptions and this thesis explores the ways in which these female philosophers were able to negotiate the societal obstacles to their intellectualism while successfully fulfilling the domestic roles expected of women of elevated status. Through the comparison of Conway and Masham this thesis examines the strategies employed by these two women who denied neither their socially endorsed roles nor their intellectual calling. VI Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) who generously funded this thesis through a Canada Graduate Scholarship. In the brief year that I have spent at Dalhousie I have met and enjoyed the support of many great people, faculty and students alike, but most especially I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Krista Kesslering for always remaining calm in the face of catastrophe (both major and minor) and being more patient than humanly possible. I would also like to thank Dr. Jerry Bannister for his support and editing and Dr. Adriana Benzaquen for her endless encouragement and willingness to jump onboard at the last minute. I cannot express how deeply grateful I am for everything. I would also like to thank Tina Jones and Valerie Peck, who I am fairly certain are responsible for keeping many people sane, for helping to keep me sane these last few weeks. On a more personal level I am fortunate enough to have had the support of a phenomenal group of people in my family. My grandmother, Lorraine Digdon, listened to my many rants and raves and was always willing to discuss my work; many of my realizations and revelations happened in conversation with her and it saddens me that she did not live to see this thesis complete. My partner and best friend Dwayne Oxner, and my children, Josh and Sam have lived with me through the ups and downs, panics and lulls, and still love me anyway. My Mom and Dad, Lloyd and Joyda Digdon, have always been willing to help in any and every way possible and for all those times, past, present and future, I am grateful. I am also endebted to Dale Oxner whose help, with everything from watching the kids to helping me catch up on my housework, has saved my sanity more than once. To Ashlee Feener, Vicki Gesner and Kelly Smith - THANK YOU! for your enthusiasm and support. To Dr. Roni Gechtman, Dr. M. Brook Taylor, Dr. Janet Guildford, Dr. Francis Early, and Dr. Arthur McCalla - your support and well wishes have meant the world to me. vii 1 Chapter One Introduction Seventeenth-century England was tumultuous. Revolution rocked the country's identity and belief systems; the king as father was rejected and God as father was reinvented. What were the implications of this restructuring for the learned woman who was required by her perceived biological deficiencies to be in subjection to the patriarch? In seventeenth-century England, as in much of the early modern world, the family unit was the model for both political and social order.1 While status could allow women authority over men of lesser means, ultimately, women were believed to be socially, physiologically, and psychologically inferior to men. These beliefs were reflected in the sexual division of labour which was based in the societal acceptance of "conventional characteristics." These characteristics, in turn, resulted in the household having two heads: the female head bore responsibility for the private, internal functioning of the household and its economy and the male for its public, external functions.2 Yet individual women sometimes found ways either to surpass the constraining characteristics that they were supposed to share with their sisters or to use them to their advantage. This thesis seeks to contribute to the scholarly discussion of how this was so through the examination of the lives of Anne Conway and Damaris Masham, two female philosophers of the late seventeenth century who succeeded in combining both domesticity and intellectualism. 1 Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 1. 2 Ibid., 43. 2 The "learned woman" of the past and her relative obscurity has already attracted some scholarly interest. Gerda Lerner has estimated that as of 1993 there were fewer than three hundred educated women in Western history known to modern historians. Of these three hundred, only a handful belongs to the seventeenth century. These few intellectual women, who persisted in acquiring an education and established themselves by reputation, if not by employment, as philosophers in their own right, were those who were able to push past both social and economic barriers. They often engaged in intellectual debate in the private forums of home and correspondence, though at times they entered the public arena through the publication and circulation of their own ideas or of their defences and critiques of the publications of male philosophers. Still, they were forced to acknowledge their femaleness, often in order to be heard at all, and subsequently they individually had to make the decision as to how and to what extent they would engage with "the woman question" and how they would address their own perceived intellectual inability. Theories regarding conditions and patterns either necessary or expected for the creation and sustenance of the early modern female intellect abound; most often they point to the apparent incompatibility of domesticity and intellectualism. Both Margaret L. King and Gerda Lerner have
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