Essays in Defence of the Female Sex Essays in Defence of the Female Sex: Custom, Education and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England By Manuela D’Amore and Michèle Lardy Essays in Defence of the Female Sex: Custom, Education and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England, By Manuela D’Amore and Michèle Lardy This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Manuela D’Amore and Michèle Lardy All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4248-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4248-8 To our daughters Maria Elena and Maëva TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword .................................................................................................... ix Paula Backscheider Preface..................................................................................................... xvii Manuela D’Amore Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xxi List of Abbreviations..............................................................................xxiii A Note on Editorial Policy ...................................................................... xxv Part I: From Texts to Context Women’s Writings under the Stuarts: Sources, Forms and Issues Michèle Lardy Chapter I ...................................................................................................... 3 “The English Gentlewoman, drawne out to the full Body” From Passive Objects of Conduct-Literature to Active Subjects of their own Writings: A Wide Spectrum of Complex Female Figures Chapter II................................................................................................... 57 “Had God intended Women onely as a finer sort of Cattle, he would not have made them reasonable” Nature vs Nurture: The Debate around Women’s Education Part II: From Context to Texts Signs of Proto-Feminism at the End of the Century: Tradition and Innovation Manuela D’Amore Chapter III ................................................................................................. 97 Beyond “Modesty and Handsome Decorum” [Hannah Woolley’s] The Gentlewomans Companion (1672-1673) viii Table of Contents Chapter IV ............................................................................................... 115 “To ask too much is the way to be denied all” Seeds of (Moderate) Feminism in [Bathsua Makin’s] An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673) Chapter V ................................................................................................ 133 At the Roots of Women’s “Folly”: [Mary Astell’s] A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694-1697) Chapter VI ............................................................................................... 151 Sharing “the Burthen of Vice with the Men” [Judith Drake’s] An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696) Chapter VII.............................................................................................. 169 On the Eve of the Enlightenment Gender, Faith and Patriarchy in Eugenia’s The Female Advocate (1700) Conclusion .............................................................................................. 185 Michèle Lardy Appendices ............................................................................................. 191 Manuela D’Amore Textual Sources ....................................................................................... 193 Appendix A ............................................................................................. 195 From [Hannah Woolley,] The Gentlewomans Companion Appendix B.............................................................................................. 203 From [Bathsua Makin,] An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen Appendix C.............................................................................................. 217 From [Mary Astell,] A Serious Proposal to the Ladies Appendix D ............................................................................................. 231 From [Judith Drake,] An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex Appendix E.............................................................................................. 239 From [Eugenia,] The Female Advocate Appendix F .............................................................................................. 251 From Lady Mary Chudleigh, The Ladies Defence Bibliography............................................................................................ 259 Name Index ............................................................................................. 285 FOREWORD PAULA R. BACKSCHEIDER STEVENS EMINENT SCHOLAR , AUBURN UNIVERSITY USA Eliza Haywood begins The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751) with a brief satire of Samuel Richardson’s great novel Clarissa (1747-48). She recalls the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, who exchanged love letters through a crevice in a wall as Clarissa and Lovelace had, then eloped, and then died tragically. In her comic opening, “Master Sparkish” had read the Pyramus and Thisbe story and, following its lead, “intrigues with” and ruins Betsy’s friend Miss Forward. How did Haywood know that myth? Or other myths that she incorporates into her novels, plays, and periodicals? The subtitle of Essays in Defence of the Female Sex: Custom, Education and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England points to the major battles that many women joined together to fight. There was, perhaps, the most at stake with “custom”; certainly it was the most powerful determinant of education and authority. Throughout the long eighteenth century, women waged a desperate struggle to have their sex primarily defined by what “custom” had done to them rather than by what patriarchal thinkers and common opinion believed that “nature” made them. They sought to reduce the number of limitations that sprung from the category “nature,” thereby allowing women to be defined as having greater capacities and, therefore, greater opportunities. They relentlessly expanded and then questioned “custom.” Sarah Fyge Egerton wrote, Shall I be one, of those obsequious Fools, / That square there [sic] lives, by Customs scanty Rules; […] That all the business of my life must be, / Foolish, dull Trifling, Formality. Mary, Lady Chudleigh, went further: “Those who are govern’d by Opinion, inslav’d to Custom, […] are Objects of Pity” 1. Education for men and women was dominated by “custom” normalized by conceptions of “nature.” In a time when women in the West have almost equal access to higher education and in the U.S.A. women outnumber men enrolled and x Foreword graduating at the undergraduate level, it is hard to remember seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women’s struggle for education. In fact, we should be alert to moments that reveal extraordinary learning and pause for a few seconds in silent tribute. Catherine Trotter Cockburn was a philosopher and polemicist praised for her defences of John Locke and her participation in debates now seen as crucial to the Enlightenment 2. Elizabeth Elstob was one of the most impressive Anglo-Saxon scholars of the century and assisted her brother and members of the Oxford Saxonists in such projects as an edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws while she completed the first grammar of Old English in English. Elizabeth Carter’s translation of Epictetus was the standard English translation until at least 1966. Elizabeth Montagu’s Essay on the Writing and Genius of Shakespear (1769) was a ground-breaking book characterized by deep learning and experience with performances of his plays. It included a “ferocious” defence of Shakespeare against Voltaire’s criticisms and took an approach still too rare today, considering plays as much as performance pieces as literary texts 3. Mary Robinson undertook impressive research before writing Sappho and Phaon (1796). One of the most striking things about women’s writing in the long eighteenth century is how clearly they understood the benefits of education. Few were as acerbic as Egerton, who wrote in 1703: They fear we should excel their sluggish Parts, / Should we attempt the Sciences and Arts, / Pretend they were design’d for them alone, / So keep us Fools to raise their own Renown; / Thus Priests of old their Grandeur to maintain, / Cry’d vulgar Eyes would sacred Laws Prophane. / […] / And shall we Women now sit tamely by, / Make no excursions in Philosophy, / Or grace our thoughts in tuneful Poetry? / We will our Rights in Learning’s World maintain, / Wits Empire, now, shall know a Female Reign; / Come all ye Fair, the great Attempt improve [….] 4. Perhaps accidentally, she is echoing Hannah Woolley’s “Hence I am induced to believe, we are debarred from the knowledge of human learning, lest our pregnant Wits should rival towring conceits of our insulting Lords and Masters” 5. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, complained that women were told that fashion, dancing, dressing, and activities such as card-playing composed their proper “accomplishments,” while “To write, or read, or think, or to enquire/ Wou’d cloud our beauty, and exaust [ sic ] our time”. She continued in The Introduction , Essays