"Born to know, to reason, and to act": Samuel Johnson's attitude toward women as reflected in his writings Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors O'Donnell, Sheryl Rae Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 04/10/2021 14:17:57 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/565430 "BOHN TO KNOW, TO REASON, AND TO ACT": SAMUEL JOHNSON'S ATTITUDE TOWARD WOMEN AS REFLECTED IN HIS WRITINGS by Sheryl Rae 0 ’Donnell A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the _ DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1 9 7 9 Copyright 1979 Sheryl Rae O'Donnell THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my direction by _________Sheryl Rae O'Donnell__________________________________________ entitled "Born to Know, to Reason, and to Act": Samuel Johnson's Attitude toward Women as Reflected in his Writings________ be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of __________Doctor of Philosophy__________________________________________ Dissertation Direct Date ' ' As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read this dissertation and agree that it may be presented for final defense. g / 7 7 ? Date+ - q /G Date *ASCJ>1 L h Date -P. / ) ? + > , / /-? y l) Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent on the candidate's adequate performance and defense thereof at the final oral examination. STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to bor­ rowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made., Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduc­ tion of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder, SIGNED: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my dissertation director. Professor Oliver Sigworthg for encouraging me to think about Samuel Johnson’s attitude toward women and for providing a model of humane scholarship, cosmo­ politan good sense, and personal integrity which I unabashedly admire. Heather Sigworth, who heads the Civil Rights Division of the Arizona Attorney General’'s Office, kindly reviewed my chapter on the legal status of eighteenth-century English women. Professor Charles Scruggs made helpful suggestions for revision, and Professor J, Douglas Canfield meticulously read the penultimate draft. Professor Gene Koppei’s comments on eighteenth-century education were also helpful. To Professor Myra Dinnerstein and ;to other members of The University of Arizona Women’ Studies Theory Group, I owe strength and sanity. To Patrick Payne, who has kept me honest these last three years, I owe love. Part of the discussion of Johnson’s attitude toward prostitution in Chapter 3 is reprinted, with alterations, by permission of the editors of the Transactions of the Samuel Johnson Society. This material appeared as ’’’Tricked Out for Sale’: Samuel Johnson’s Attitude toward Prostitution, ’’ On Eighteenth-Century Literature: Transactions of the Samuel Johnson Society of the Northwest 1978 (Victoria, B.C.; The Queen’ Printer, 1979), 119-135. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ...................... v 1. THE. FEMALE WORLD ........ 1 2. JOHNSON'S ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN'S EDUCATION .......... 43 3. SAMUEL JOHNSON'S ATTITUDE TOWARD PROSTITUTION . .......... 79 4. JOHNSON'S ATTITUDES TOWARD FEMALE DOMESTICITY .. ,. ... 114 5. ENLARGING INNOCENCE TO VIRTUE ................ 155 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY .................... 189 iv ABSTRACT This study challenges the popular notion of Johnson’s attitude toward women by examining what his own works say about them and to them. Modern assessments of Johnson’s empirical habits of thought hold true for his writings on women’s education, marriage and prostitution, the cult of domesticity, and the relationship between beauty, power, and virtue. Johnson’s works, especially his moral essays, letters, auto­ biographical writings, and prose narratives, show that Johnson thought ) women were people, not metaphysical entities of one sort or another. As a moral psychologist, Johnson uses the principle of dynamic growth, not adjustment to a prescribed social role, as a norm against which women’s experiences may be evaluated. He rejects the middle-class Ideal of female isolation and exposes the fallacious equation of women’s virtue with their ignorance and confinement. Because Johnson had no abstract notion of "the female mind," he accords women’s learning its own significance. He draws a disturbing analogy between wives and prostitutes, and he castigates the cultural demand, made by Christians and libertines alike, that women be trained to please men. Johnson’s writings on domesticity expose the morally reprehensible dimension of female isolation at the same time that they take serious and sympathetic interest in "women's work." And his writings on beauty explore the destructive effects of covert power— the only kind available to women— upon its practitioners, Johnson rejects ■ v vi conventional standards of female delicacy for the "heroick virtues" of wisdom, courage, and intelligence acquired by experience in the world. But, by insisting upon the tragic contradiction between women’s status as moral beings and their vocation as females, Johnson constructs a radically ironic analysis of the vanity of human wishes. CHAPTER 1 THE FEMALE WORLD This essay on Johnson's attitude toward women as reflected in his writings contributes to the work of two academic groups with whom I identify, Johnsonians and Women's Studies scholars. To my knowledge neither group has explored what both could learn from: the complex and startling analysis of women's lives contained in Johnson's writings. The last book-length study of Johnson's attitude toward women, W. H. Craig's Dr. Johnson and the Fair Sex, appeared in 1895.1 And, although Women's Studies has been academic discipline for some ten years, most feminist scholars, when speaking of Johnson at all, speak disparagingly. Like many general readers, they seem more familiar with the literary character created by James Boswell than with the author of the Rambler, Idler, Adventurer, or Rasselas. Boswell's Life of Johnson presents a lively portrait of a loveable, kindhearted dogmatist who likens women preachers to dancing dogs or wittily exposes a woman's pretentions to classless society by Suggesting that she invite her footman to dine with the assembled company. But this mixture of condescension and chivalry toward women is Boswell's, not Johnson's. After all, it is Johnson who wrote of women in Rambler 39 that "the custom Of the world seems to 1W. H. Craig, Dr. Johnson and the Fair Sex (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1895). 2 have been formed in a kind of conspiracy against them."2 This observation, no news to feminists, is a major theme in Johnson's writings on women, and should go unnoticed no longer. In making the distinction between Boswell's Life of Johnson and the Johnson canon per se, I align myself with contemporary Johnson scholars who recognize the Life as a consummate literary achievement in its own right but who study Johnson's works to discover his views bn a given subject. Uncritical praise and condemnation of Johnson— what Bertrand Bronson calls "the double tradition"3 of Johnson criticism— has given way to serious examination of the Johnson canon. William K. Wimsatt’s The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson (1941); Walter Jackson Bate'S The Achievement of Samuel Johnson (1955); James L. Clifford's Young Sam Johnson (1955); Robert Voitle's Samuel Johnson the Moralist (1961); Arieh Sach's Passionate Intelligence: Imagination and Reason in the Works of Samuel Johnson (1967); Paul Alkon's Samuel Johnson and Moral Discipline (1967); Paul Fussell's Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing (1971); George Irwin's Samuel Johnson; A Personality In Conflict (1971); Carey McIntosh's The Choice of Life: Samuel Johnson and the World of Fiction (1973); and Richard B. Schwartz's 2Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 39, The Yale Edition of The Works of Samuel Johnson, eds. W. J. Bate and Albrecht B . Strauss, III (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1969), 211. All subsequent references to Johnson's writings are from the Yale edition, unless otherwise signified, and will be cited parenthetically in the text. 3Bertrand Bronson, "The Double Tradition of Dr. Johnson," ELK, 18 (June 1951), 90-106. Reprinted in Eighteenth-Century English Literature: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. James L. Clifford (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 285-99.' Samuel Johnson and the Problem of Evil (1975) are only a few studies which redefine Johnson for the modern reader. As Clifford and Greene observe, "Instead of the proverbial bigoted reactionary, the author­ itarian and traditionalist, which the nineteenth century drew out of Boswell’s anecdotes, the new critics find him largely a scientific empiricist, moving with M s time in the