Rediscovering the Rhetoric of Women's Intellectual
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―THE ALPHABET OF SENSE‖: REDISCOVERING THE RHETORIC OF WOMEN‘S INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY by BRANDY SCHILLACE Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Adviser: Dr. Christopher Flint Department of English CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY May 2010 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the thesis/dissertation of ________Brandy Lain Schillace___________________________ candidate for the __English PhD_______________degree *. (signed)_____Christopher Flint_______________________ (chair of the committee) ___________Athena Vrettos_________________________ ___________William R. Siebenschuh__________________ ___________Atwood D. Gaines_______________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ (date) ___November 12, 2009________________ *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. ii Table of Contents Preface ―The Alphabet of Sense‖……………………………………...1 Chapter One Writers and ―Rhetors‖: Female Educationalists in Context…..8 Chapter Two Mechanical Habits and Female Machines: Arguing for the Autonomous Female Self…………………………………….42 Chapter Three ―Reducing the Sexes to a Level‖: Revolutionary Rhetorical Strategies and Proto-Feminist Innovations…………………..71 Chapter Four Intellectual Freedom and the Practice of Restraint: Didactic Fiction versus the Conduct Book ……………………………….…..101 Chapter Five The Inadvertent Scholar: Eliza Haywood‘s Revision of the Richardsonian Heroine……………………………………...138 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………....179 Appendix A Chronology…………………………………………………196 Appendix B Figures 1-4………………………………………………….201 References. ……………………………………………………………...204 iii List of Figures (To be found in Appendix B) FIGURE 1………………………………………………………………………….201 Extraction of child from uterus with forceps, Tab. XVI. Smellie, William. A sett of anatomical tables, with explanations, and an abridgment, of the practice of midwifery, with a view to illustrate a treatise on that subject, and collection of cases. London: [s.n], 1754. Courtesy of Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections. FIGURE 2………………………………………………………………………….202 Tab IV: ―Foetus in utero‖ Hunter, William. The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, Exhibited in Figures, by William Hunter, physician extraordinary to the Queen, professor of anatomy in the Royal Academy, and Fellow of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies. Birmingham: By John Baskerville, Sold in London by S. Baker and G. Leigh, in York- Street; T. Cadell in the Strand; D. Wilson and G. Nicol, opposite York-Buildings; and J. Murray, in Fleet-Street, 1774. Courtesy of Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections. FIGURE 3………………………………………………………………………….203 Tab. XVI. Smellie, William. A sett of anatomical tables, with explanations, and an abridgment, of the practice of midwifery, : with a view to illustrate a treatise on that subject, and collection of cases. London: [s.n], 1754. Courtesy of Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections. FIGURE 4………………………………………………………………………….203 Chart, demonstrating rhetorical progression. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dissertation adviser, Dr. Christopher Flint, and my dissertation committee, Drs. Athena Vrettos (English Dept.), William Siebenschuh (English Dept.), and Atwood Gaines (Anthropology Dept.) for their help and support throughout the process. Their time and attention has been much appreciated. I would also like to acknowledge a number of readers who kindly offered feedback and inspiration: Nadia El-Shaawari (CWRU), Dr. Robin Inboden (Wittenberg University), Stephanie McClure (CWRU) and Anne Ryan (CWRU). Finally, I would like to recognize the invaluable support provided by the Baker Nord Center, the Eva L. Pancoast Memorial Fund and the Arthur Adrian Dissertation Fellowship. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the Special Collections Library at Glasgow University, Glasgow, UK and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, Oxford, UK for access to their collections. To all, thank you. v List of Abbreviations (in order of appearance in the text) PWS A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies, Jane Barker ICM Instruction of a Christian Maide, Juan Luis Vives ERAEG Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, Bathsua Makin IED Instructions for the Education of Daughters, François Fénelon ST Some Thoughts Concerning Education, John Locke SP A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Mary Astell EDFS Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, Judith Drake LD The Ladies Defence, Lady Mary Chudleigh SACV The Strange Adventure of Count de Vinevil, Penelope Aubin LMB The Life of Madam de Beaumount, Penelope Aubin BT The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Eliza Haywood TS The Spectator, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele vi ―The Alphabet of Sense‖: Rediscovering the Rhetoric of Women‘s Intellectual Liberty ABSTRACT by BRANDY SCHILLACE “The Alphabet of Sense”: Rediscovering the Rhetoric of Women‟s Intellectual Liberty redresses a critical blind spot in current scholarship on early British women‘s writing on female education. In the prevailing critical paradigm, only treatises directly addressing women‘s rights have been considered part of the ―feminist‖ tradition. The result has been the neglect of authors who do not produce self-conscious feminist discourse, but subtly merge proto-feminist goals with a more conservative discursive approach. This neglect has led to a perceived ―gap‖ between the works of an early writer such as Mary Astell (educationalist and proto-feminist) and later acknowledged feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft. For many critics, 1740 marks the point after which the history of feminist educational reform begins, an approach that elides seventeenth-century polemical, rhetorical and narrative projects, and overlooks radical explorations of (and alternatives to) developing ideological constructs. This project examines the rhetorical landscape of this earlier period in order to explore proto-feminist responses to educational inequality—and reassess the frequently politic method adopted by educationalists such as Astell and her contemporaries, Bathsua Makin, Judith Drake and Mary Chudleigh. By resisting narrow conceptual categories for proto-feminist contributions, this work recuperates early modern women‘s rhetorical productions and their use of innovative strategies that do not merely mimic those of men. Additionally, it traces those strategies in eighteenth-century fiction where claims for women‘s moral and intellectual equality were employed by a rising generation of female fiction writers. In charting this historical process, the first part of the dissertation offers a detailed exploration of proto-feminist rhetoric, while the second part demonstrates the transition (and transmission) of this rhetoric in later fictional forms, offering a corrective to the supposed hundred-year silence in pro-woman rhetoric between Astell and Wollstonecraft. The Alphabet of Sense thus contributes to the current rhetorical and feminist reclamation of early women writers; coupling rhetoric with feminism enriches both concepts, allowing us to see these authors in their proper light as pivotal advocates for women‘s intellectual advancement. vii “The Alphabet of Sense”: Rediscovering the Rhetoric of Women’s Intellectual Liberty Brandy Lain Schillace ____________________________________________________________ Preface “The Alphabet of Sense” …Command of both Words and Sense […are] Advantages the Education of Boys deprives them of, who drudge away the Vigour of their Memories at Words, useless ever after to most of them, and at seventeen or eighteen are to begin their Alphabet of Sense, and are but where the Girls were at nine or ten. — Judith Drake, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex I have chosen to title this project ―The Alphabet of Sense,‖ a christening borrowed from an obscure 1696 polemical tract. The phrase was coined by Judith Drake, a relatively unknown writer from the late seventeenth century, and refers to an education in social relations and the maturity of common sense. As the designation for a reclamation of female rhetoricians and educationalists, however, this choice of title requires some explanation. Drake‘s polemic (which I will treat more specifically in Chapter Three) essentially questions the primary importance of a ―masculine‖ education in Greek and Latin, suggesting instead that a woman‘s introduction to society, to manners, and to the conversation of her elders teaches her the invaluable ―alphabet of sense‖ as the core of rational understanding. Young men, by contrast, are thrust into the wide world ―without a Compass to steer by.‖1 In Drake‘s account, women are presented not only as gaining wisdom more quickly than men, but also by a different—and inherently ―feminine‖— means: the inculcation of conversational rhetoric (also called sermo).2 Drake thus exonerates a female form of education, and further demonstrates its efficacy by making 1 Judith Drake, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. In a letter to a lady. Written by a lady. (The fourth edition, corrected. London, 1721), 52. Hereafter cited in the text as (EDFS p) except when refering to the dedication, which records no pagination. 2 A more full description of sermo and its counterpart, contentio, appears in chapter one. 1 revisions to—and even reinventing—a more masculine rhetorical form.3 Drake‘s innovative means of ―reducing the sexes to a level‖