11853 Female Spectator - Spring 09:Layout 1 4/6/09 09:22 Page 1 The Female Spectator CHAWTON HOUSE LIBRARY VOL .14 No.2, SPRING 2009 ISSN1746−8604 THE CHAWTON HOUSE LIBRARY BOOK FAIR An Appeal for Donations wenty−five years ago, in 1984, the independent books fit our acquisitions policy; broadly, women’s writing research library the Newberry Library in Chicago from 1600−1830. If you would like to enquire whether a held a book fair to support the library. A quarter of donation is suitable for our main collection, please contact our Ta century later, the Newberry Library is currently preparing librarian Jacqui Grainger. for a four−day sale in July 2009. An expected 110,000 books which are being donated by friends, supporters and the Finally, and perhaps the easiest way to donate is to consider general public, will be sold to raise funds for the library. The giving us some second−hand books that we will then sell on. Newberry Book Fair manager has an amusing online diary We know that our supporters love to read, and that they read that provides anecdotes in the run more widely than the period with up to their book fair. One entry which Chawton House Library is includes a snapshot of the diverse most closely connected. We would types of people who donate therefore like to encourage second−hand books: ‘You meet donations for our own Book Fair, people who ask you to call them to be run on the model of the but hang up if a man answers Newberry Library Book Fair, but because Dad doesn’t know we're on a smaller scale (we’re not quite cleaning out his books’. sure how we would deal with the logistics of 110,000 second−hand We at Chawton House Library books arriving in Chawton!). We would not recommend donating are currently accepting donations Dad’s books without his of second−hand books and audio− knowledge, but we are looking to books in every genre, and the Newberry Library model to published at any time. We ask only both enhance and expand our that they be in reasonable collections, and would like to condition. You can post these appeal to our supporters for help. books for the attention of our There are several ways in which operations manager, Emma you can do this. Heywood, or indeed bring them in person if you are able to make the We know that many of the trip to Chawton. All donations will readers of The Female Spectator be collected in the library, and are academics and scholars who then offered for resale at the have published critical works on Chawton House Library Book early women’s writing, on the Fair, to be held on Saturday, 5th literature and culture of the long December. eighteenth century more generally, or indeed have edited modern editions of Please put the date in your diary, and come and join us for a eighteenth−century texts. If you have published this kind of browse, tea and conversation, and leave having supplemented work, and would like to donate to the library, we would be your own book collection, and knowing your money has gone extremely glad of a copy of your book to enhance our to a good cause. secondary collection. All proceeds from the Chawton House Library Book Fair will Perhaps you own early editions of women’s writing yourself – go directly into our acquisitions budget, to enable us to anything from novels, poetry and drama, to works on expand our collection of early women’s writing, and improve education, history, writing for children and domestic our secondary collection. manuals. If this is the case, and you are looking for a safe home for your collection, we can provide such a home if your Gillian Dow 11853 Female Spectator - Spring 09:Layout 1 4/6/09 09:22 Page 2 LIVES NOT LIBERTIES: FINDING FEMINISM AMONG THE TRADITION VENERATING THE WORTHY FEMALE urrently a PHD candidate at the European University neglect of our immediate ancestors in the education of their Institute in Florence, Wendy Robins’ research daughters’. 2 concentrates on the work of Catharine Macaulay and Cearly feminism. She was a Visiting Fellow at Chawton House This belief that women had lost educational opportunities Library in November 2008. ties many educational treatises, such a prevalent genre of the period, with the tradition of venerating the ‘female worthies’ I verily think, Women were formerly educated in the of the past: from history, mythology and scripture. The 1696 knowledge of Arts and Tongues, and by their Essay in Defence of the Female Sex by Judith Drake, begins in Education, many did rise to a great height in a similar vein: Learning. Were Women thus Educated now, I am confident the advantage would be very great: The … there have been Women in All Ages, whose Women could have Honour and Pleasure, their Writings might vie with those of the greatest men, as Relations Profit, and the whole Nation Advantage. 1 the Present Age as well as past can testifie … I pretend not to imitate, much less Bathsua Makin’s concerns to Rival those Illustrious over lost educational ladies, who have done so opportunities for women was much honour to their expressed at the end of the Sex, and are seventeenth century, but this unanswerable Proofs of, fear regarding the supposed what I contend for ... 3 decline in girls’ education lasted well into the Makin and Drake’s nineteenth century, and was contemporary, the republican expressed from both the theorist John Toland, also aristocratic and the middling considered the role of the classes. This is in contrast to worthy female as one spike in much current scholarship his heterodox attitude to that has made significant Christian authority. In A leaps demonstrating the lady’s religion in a letter to the variety and extent of Honourable My Lady Howard women’s literacy, scholarship (1697), he inferred ‘that and authorship during the women were potentially long eighteenth century. capable of apprehending the highest philosophy, virtue Makin tied women’s and religion’, 4 and hence education to the benefit of possibly capable of the nation at large, placing priesthood. A later work by the issue of women’s situation Toland, Hypatia (1720) ‘was and knowledge within a intended to celebrate the vast social and political context. numbers of women who have With this rhetorical device, distinguished themselves by Makin allows for women to their professions and have significant force within performances in learning’, 5 the creation of state and and to use the legend of the society. Makin followed her life and brutal death of the point with examples of ancient female philosopher as female worthies and a commentary on the church. educated ladies that included This rhetorical use of the royal and aristocratic notables The Female Worthies: or, Memoirs of the Most Illustrious Ladies, female worthy to build an such as Elizabeth I, Queen of All Ages and Nations, … (1766) argument against authority Christiana of Sweden, and Makin’s contemporary, Margaret and highlight other forms of inequity was one strain of Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle. This lost experience and debate, although not a common one among the genre. More education of women is alluded to by the radical historian consistent is the use of the female worthy as a device whereby Catharine Macaulay in her Letters on Education (1790) a the attacks on women’s nature are countered by concrete hundred years later, when she complained of the ‘entire examples. 2 The Female Spectator Vol. 14 No. 2 Spring 2009 11853 Female Spectator - Spring 09:Layout 1 4/6/09 09:22 Page 3 The idea of the worthy female was enshrined in the two volume eponymous history, The Female Worthies, Or, The Female Spectator Memoirs of the Most Illustrious Ladies of all Ages and Nations , from 1766. In the preface the editor considered that Spring 2009 historical evidence undermined the assumed sexual hierarchy: Should we look into history for parallels and In this issue of the Female Spectator, two of the comparisons between the two sexes, we shall find, Library’s recent Visiting Fellows present articles that nature has been no less indulgent to the female on research themes that they were able to explore sex than to the male with respect to those noble faculties of mind ... and if there are not so many while at Chawton. The Library’s activities past and instances of the former as of the latter, various reasons future are highlighted by a review of the successful may be assigned for such deficiency. one−day symposium on the eighteenth−century garden, and a look ahead to the Library’s As with so many texts, the source of the problem remains the forthcoming book fair. woeful state of modern female education, which, spurred on by the demands of the competitive marriage market, is geared to developing female accomplishments and adornments. Underlying the problem is the lost humanist education of a previous era, which many commentators appear to have Editors: believed had been widely available to gentle and aristocratic Academic: Gillian Dow women. It is this lost education and the modern fashion for General: Helen Scott trifling accomplishments that has added fuel to ‘The vulgar prejudice on the supposed incapacity of the female sex, in regards to works of learning and genius’. The preface claims that the soul resides in the human mind and since the former can have no sex, then it surely follows that the intellectual Contents Page capacities of both sexes should be the same.