Chapter III · EDUCATION (continued 2)

She then who Marries, ought to lay it down for an indisputable Maxim, that her Husband must govern absolutely and intirely, and that she has nothing else to do but to Please and Obey. She must not attempt to divide his Authority, or so much as dispute it; to struggle with her Yoke will only make it gall the more, but must believe him Wise and Good in all respects the best, at least he must be so to her. She who can't do this is no way fit to be a Wife, she may set up for that peculiar Coronet the antient Fathers talk'd of, but is not qualified to receive the great Reward which attends the eminent Exercise of Humility and Self-denial, Patience and Resignation, the duties that a Wife is call'd to.[410]

Education can fortify and guide married women and can give them unending private satisfaction, but can in no way alter their status or secure them any freedom.

To the unmarried woman the college offered the only means so far devised whereby they could not only escape from the odium of a single life, but could have a chance for activity along lines chosen in accordance with their tastes and capacities.

The aims of the college and the plans as outlined were so reasonable and put forward with so much eloquence that they attracted favorable attention. Part II of the Proposal was dedicated to the Princess Anne, and it is to her that we must give the credit for a subscription of £10,000 for the necessary buildings.[411] And it is practically certain that Bishop Burnet, at this time tutor to the young Duke of Gloucester and so of easy access to Anne, is the one to whom we must ascribe the withdrawal of that subscription and along with it the royal sanction so essential an element in the success of the plan. Bishop Burnet saw in this proposed "Lay Monastery" a source of plots and cabals dangerous to the Church. And Anne was too devout and narrow-minded a churchwoman to run any such risks. So the plan came to no practical realization.

Though the time was probably not ripe for such a college, it is significant that in the aristocratic circle where Mary Astell moved there was apparently considerable favorable discussion of the project. In 1697 Thomas Burnet wrote to the Electress Sophia of Mary Astell as "a young Ladie of extraordinary piety and knowledge as any of the age" and comments on her "two little books of proposals to the Ladies" as showing "both her zeal and judgment in thee advyces given to her sex, for the reformation of manners, living, studies, and conversations of the ladies."[412] In the same year Defoe, in his Essay on Projects, referred with praise to Mary Astell, though not agreeing with her plans in detail. In 1697, also, Evelyn commented favorably on Mary Astell: He said that he could not omit some acknowledgment of the satisfaction he had received from her "most sublime" writings, and he adds concerning her college, "Besides what lately she has proposed to the Virtuous of her Sex, to shew by her own Example, what great Things, and Excellencies it is Capable of, and which calls to mind the Lady of that Protestant Monastery, Mrs. Farrer, not long since at Geding in Huntington-shire."[413] George Wheler, in A Protestant Nunnery, refers to "A Serious Proposal written by an ingenious Lady" and gives it the further compliment of adopting some of its ideas.[414] George Hickes, in his Instructions for the Education of a Daughter (1708), gives A Serious Proposal and The Christian Religion, by Mary Astell, in the list of books which he commends to young women. Robert Nelson, in an Address to Persons of Quality (1715), also praised the Proposal to Ladies as made "by a very Ingenious Gentlewoman, which was then well approved by several ladies and others."[415]

The wits of the time are usually accredited with derisive laughter at the female college. But the chief attacks were from Swift in The Tatler in 1709, fifteen years after the Proposal, Part I, and twelve years after the second part. Swift's Tatler articles followed immediately on Mary Astell's Bart'lemy Fair, and were really not so much an attack on a college for women as an attempt to answer Mary Astell's satiric commentary on the Kit-Kat Club, and on Steele and Swift in particular. It was a sort of quid pro quo in which Swift seized upon the weapons most available. The coarseness of the description of the college must have been very offensive to Mary Astell as a similar vulgarity of attack in Three Hours after Marriage must have offended Lady Winchilsea. Swift represents the professors of the college to be Madonella (Mary Astell), Epicene (Mrs. Manley), and Mrs. Elstob, a union that would probably have been as irritating to Mrs. Manley as it was to her virtuous co-adjutors in academic chairs. The break-up of the college is due to a company of rakes to whom the ladies collegiate give joyous welcome.

Steele's attacks on Mary Astell are much milder. He represents her as "Mrs. Comma, the great Scholar," who defends her desired seclusion by herself announcing to would-be callers that she is "not at home." Again, she is put in as the foreman of a jury in a Court of Honour, and is described as a "professed Platonist that had spent much of her time in exhorting the sex to set a just value upon their persons, and to make the men know themselves."

That the attention attracted by Mary Astell's writings was not all contemptuous has been already indicated. Her books were, however, but one source of her influence. In her later life not only was she of sufficient repute to make her home in Chelsea a sort of minor learned salon, but she had considerable personal influence among younger women of like aspirations. Of three of her friendships with learned women we have some knowledge. The most intimate of these was with Lady Elizabeth Hastings, twenty-two years her junior. Lady Betty went to Ledstone to live in about 1705 and was thereafter only occasionally in London, so they could not have had much continuous personal association, but they apparently found themselves in immediate accord on vital subjects. Lady Betty and her sisters on the remote Yorkshire estate almost realized in a small way Mary Astell's ideal of a religious retirement. If the correspondence between them were only extant it would be invaluable. Elizabeth Elstob is also given as one of Mary Astell's friends. Miss Elstob was in London from 1709 to 1715 and came to know Miss Astell during this period. It was to Miss Elstob that Ballard wrote for information about Miss Astell when he wished to write her biography, which might seem to argue a known friendship between the two. But against any theory of real intimacy is the fact that Miss Astell, a woman of substance and wide influence, did not exert herself in Miss Elstob's behalf when she was left penniless and driven into obscurity. The most noted of Mary Astell's literary friends was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The culmination of that friendship in the indignant championship by Mary Astell of Lady Mary's Turkish Letters appears in an essay dated 1724, but the friendship was of much earlier date. It was not by wealth or position or beauty or social charm that Mary Astell gained and held her friends. In person she was "ill-favoured and forbidding," in manner she was abrupt and even rough in repelling what displeased her. She defended her own leisure and followed her own plans with defiance of all social conventions. She had the instincts of a recluse. She was deeply religious, austere to the point of asceticism, and her friendships were no matter of mutual admiration and easy compliances. She was a flaming advocate of Lady Mary against all detractors, but she stoutly combated Lady Mary's religious indifferentism. It was by sheer force of intellectual ability, moral earnestness, and profound convictions that Mary Astell gained her general repute and by sincerity and an unexpected ardor of devotion that she held her friends.

An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696)

Mary Astell's Serious Proposal appeared in 1694 with a second edition in 1695. In 1696 there appeared another feminist pamphlet the full title of which was An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex in which are inserted the characters of A Pedant, A Squire, A Beau, A Vertuoso, A Poetaster, A City-critick. C. In a Letter to a Lady by a Lady. A second edition in 1696, a third in 1697, a fourth in 1791, and an undated but later edition, testify to its popularity. This pamphlet was long attributed to Mary Astell, but both internal and external evidence are against her authorship. There seem to be reasons for ascribing it to Mrs. Drake, the sister of the Mr. James Drake who wrote the commendatory poem and essay published with the Defence of the Female Sex.[416] Whoever the author was she certainly deserves the credit of being the most brilliant woman writer of her period. In her Preface she says:

There have been women in all Ages, whose Writings might vie with those of the greatest Men, as the Present Age as well as past can testifie.... Their names are already too well known, and celebrated to receive any additional Lustre from so weak Encomiums as mine.... I pretend not to imitate, much less to Rival those Illustrious Ladies who have done so much Honour to their Sex, and are unanswerable Proofs of what I contend for. I only wish, that some Ladies now living among us (whose names I forbear to mention in regard to their Modesty) wou'd exert themselves, and give us more recent Instances, who are both by Nature and Education sufficiently qualified to do it, which I pretend not to.

The Essay opens with a statement that women must plead their own cause, since men no longer enter the lists in their behalf. The most recent woman's advocate, William Walsh, she dismisses with scant praise:

Those Romantick days are over, and there is not so much as a Don Quixote of the Quill left to succor the distressed Damsels. 'T is true a Feint of something of this Nature was made three or four years since by one; but how much soever his Eugenia may be oblig'd to him, I am of Opinion the rest of her Sex are but little beholding to him. For as you rightly observ'd, Madam, he has taken more care to give an Edge to his Satyr, than force to his Apology; he has play'd a sham Prize, and receives more thrusts than he makes.... He levels his Scandals at the whole Sex, and thinks us sufficiently fortified, if out of the Story of Two Thousand Years he has been able to pick up a few Examples of Women illustrious for their Wit, Learning or Vertue.... I have neither Learning nor Inclination to make a Precedent, or indeed any use of Mr. W's labour'd Common Place Book; and shall leave Pedents and School-Boys to rake and tumble the Rubbish of Antiquity, and muster all the Heroes and Heroins they can find.

The Essay takes up no such serious and practical topics as Mary Astell discusses. The curious question proposed is, "Whether the time an ingenious Gentleman spends in the Company of Women, may justly be said to be misemploy'd, or not." The opinion to be combated is that of men who declare the company of women to be irksome and unprofitable. The author gives the old argument that in souls there is no male and female, and brings Scripture proof that woman was expressly created as a companion for man. If the divine plan has been interfered with by the disqualification of women the cause is to be found not in their minds or natures but in their lack of education. Men should no more exult over being wiser than women than they would congratulate themselves on conquering a man whose hands were tied.

But women, even without regular education, know more than they are supposed to know. At boarding-schools, to be sure, they learn only needlework, dancing, singing, music, drawing, painting, and other accomplishments; and of languages they know only their mother tongue and French, "now very fashionable and almost as familiar amongst Women of Quality as Men." But after school days they have abundant leisure and the world of classic literature is open to them in translations. Ovid, Tibullus, Juvenal, Horace, Plutarch, Seneca, and Cicero may be read by the woman who knows only her mother tongue, and Dryden has already given "Divine Samples" of the sweetness and majesty of Virgil. The graces of France and Italy are equally at woman's command. Following this account of foreign, especially classic literature, is an energetic passage, very modern in tone, attacking the conception dominant in the Augustan age that the term "learning" applied only to a knowledge of the dead languages.

Nor can I imagine for what good Reason a Man skill'd in Latin and Greek, and vers'd in the Authors of Ancient Times shall be call'd Learned; yet another who perfectly understands Italian, French, High Dutch, and the rest of the European Languages, is acquainted with the Modern History of all those Countries ... shall after all this be thought Unlearned for want of those two Languages. Nay, though he be never so well vers'd in the Modern Philosophy, Astronomy, Geometry, and Algebra, he shall notwithstanding never be allow'd that honourable Title.... Thus you shall have 'em allow a Man to be a wise Man, a good Naturalist, a good Mathematician, Politician, or Poet, but not a Scholar, a learned Man, that is no Philologer. For my part I think these Gentlemen have just inverted the use of the Term, and given that to the knowledge of words, which belongs more properly to Things. I take Nature to be the great Book of Universal Learning, which he that reads best in all, or in any of its Parts, is the greatest Scholar, the most learned Man.

Furthermore, ignorance of Latin is no such drawback when one considers the English language and its riches. Who is nobler than Mr. Shakespeare? Whose grief more awful than Mr. Otway's? What tenderer Passion than in the Maid's Tragedy? Whose thoughts more beautiful and gallant than Mr. Dryden's? Her "Indignation, Compassion, Grief, are all at the Beck of these dramatists." Who can rival Sir George Etheredge, Sir Charles Sedley, for "neat Raillery and Gallantry"? Who has such strong "Wit and pointed Satyr" as Mr. Wicherley? Who can offer such "sprightly, gentile, easie Wit" as Mr. Congreve? For critics, who can more justly point out beauties and defects than Mr. Dennis and Mr. Rymer? If for poetry we are inclined, what more ravishing than the fancy of Cowley and the gallantry of Waller? For elevation of soul and reverence are there not the Fairy Queen and Paradise Lost? Then as for "satyrists," there are Mr. Butler and Mr. Oldham. For morals there are sermons, pious, solid, eloquent. For essays, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Osborn, Sir Wm. Temple, Sir George Mackenzie, Sir Roger L'Estrange.

The second portion of the Essay answers those who accuse women of inconstancy, dissimulation, impertinence, and vanity. These, the author maintains, are imperfections of human nature, not especially of women; and her method of proof is to show typical masculine exemplifications of these defects. Under vanity are a "Bully," a "Scourer," a "Fop Poet," a "Beau," a "Sloven"; these being men who disqualify themselves for agreeable social intercourse by a too emphatic and egregious desire to bring themselves into notice.

Of these the most voluminous Fool is the Fop Poet who ... has always more Wit in his Pockets than any where else, yet seldom or never any of his own there. Esop's Daw was a Type of him; for he makes himself fine with the Plunder of all Parties. He is a Smuggler of Wit, and steals French Fancies without paying the customary Duties. Verse is his Manufacture; For it is more the labour of his Finger than his brain.... He talks much of Jack Dryden and Will Wycherley, and the rest of that Set, and protests he can't help having some respect for 'em, because they have so much for him, and his Writings.... Once a Month he fits out a small Poetical Smack at the charge of his Bookseller, which he lades with French Plunder new vampt in English, small Ventures of Translated Odes, Elegies and Epigrams of Young Traders, and ballasts with heavy Prose, of his own.... He is the Oracle of those that want Wit and the Plague of those that have it.... Men avoid him for the same Reason they avoid the Pillory, the security of their Ears.

The "Pedant" and the "Country Squire" are both blockheads, and thus unfitted for rational society. "For my part, I think the Learned and Unlearned Blockhead pretty equal; for 't is all one to me, whether a Man talk Nonsense, or unintelligible Sense." These characters are especially effective. Not Pope himself has a more trenchant and sharply antithetic picture of the "Vertuoso." Contemporary public opinion as to the uselessness of the students of grasses, flies, bugs, shells, coins, etc., received concise and picturesque statement in the Defence.

What improvements of Physick, or any useful Arts, what noble Remedies, what serviceable Instruments have these Mushrome, and Cockel-shell Hunters oblig'd the World with? For I am ready to recant if they can shew so good a Med'cine as Stew'd Prunes, or so necessary an Instrument as a Flye Flop of their own Invention and Discovery.... I wou'd not have any Body mistake me so far, as to think I wou'd in the least reflect upon any sincere, and intelligent Enquirers into Nature, of which I as heartily wish a better knowledge, as any Vertuoso of 'em all. You can be my Witness, Madam, that I us'd to say, I thought Mr. Boyle more honourable for his learned Labours, than for his Noble Birth; and that the Royal Society, by their great and celebrated Performances, were an Illustrious Argument of the Wisdom of the August Prince, their Founder of Happy Memory; and that they highly merited the Esteem, Respect and Honour paid 'em by the Lovers of Learning all Europe over. But though I have a very great Veneration for the Society in general, I can't but put a vast difference between the particular Members that compose it.

The character of a "Beau" is keen and minute in observation. No coquette was more admirably dissected. The later Tatler pictures are inferior in brightness and pointed detail. The whole account is readable, laughable. Impertinence is defined as the quality of busying one's self with the trivial, and forcing these petty affairs on the attention of the uninterested. The author responds in lively fashion to those who count this a peculiarly feminine trait:

Thus, when they hear us talking to, and advising one another about the Order, Distribution, and Contrivance of Household Affairs, about the Regulation of the Family, the Government of Children and Servants, the provident management of a Kitchin, and the decent ordering of a Table, the suitable Matching and convenient disposition of Furniture, and the like, they condemn us for impertinence. Yet they may be pleased to consider, that as the affairs of the World are now divided betwixt us, the Domestick are our share, and out of which we are rarely suffer'd to interpose our Sense. They may be pleased to consider likewise, that as light and inconsiderable as these things seem, they are capable of no Pleasures of Sense higher, or more refin'd than those of Brutes without our care of 'em. For were it not for that, their Houses wou'd be meer Bedlums, their most luxurious Treats, but a rude confusion of ill Digested, ill mixt Scents and Relishes, and the fine Furniture, they bestow so much cost on, but an expensive Heap of glittering Rubbish. Thus they are beholding to us for the comfortable enjoyment of what their labour, or good Fortune hath acquir'd or bestow'd, and think meanly of our care only, because they understand not the value of it.

The Essay is, in reality, hardly more than a frame for the "Characters." It defends the female sex, by the method of denouncing the "Adversaries of the Sex." Its result as argument is, therefore, on the whole, negative. But the positive value of the book is great in its spirited exemplification of a woman's power to form independent judgments and to write vigorous English.

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731)

In 1697, the year in which the fourth edition of Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies appeared, Defoe published his Essay on Projects. Among plans for joint-stock banks, repairing and widening of highways, assurance societies, sick clubs, pensions for widows, etc., comes "An Academy for Women":

I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to our women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. One would wonder indeed how it should happen that women are conversible at all, since they are only beholden to natural parts for all their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew, or make baubles; they are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps to write their names, or so, and that is the height of a woman's education; and I would but ask those who slight the sex for their understanding, what is a man (a gentleman I mean) good for, that is taught no more?... The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear; and 't is manifest that, as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes, so education carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than others. This is too evident to need any demonstration. But why, then, should women be denied the benefit of instruction?... I would ask any such, what they can see in ignorance that they should think it a necessary ornament to a woman? Or how much worse is a wise woman than a fool? Or what has the woman done to forfeit the privilege of being taught?... Shall we upbraid women with folly, when 't is only the error of this inhuman custom that hindered them from being made wiser?

The capacities of women are supposed to be greater, and their senses quicker, than those of the men; and what they might have been capable of being bred to, is plain from instances of female wit, which this age is not without; which upbraids us with injustice, and looks as if we denied women the advantage of education for fear they should vie with the men in their improvements. To remove this objection, and that women might have at least a needful opportunity of education in all sorts of useful learning, I propose the draught of an academy for that purpose.... I doubt a method proposed by an ingenious lady, in a little book called Advice to the Ladies, would be found impracticable.... When I talk, therefore, of an academy for women, I mean both the model, the teaching, and the government different from what is proposed by that ingenious lady for whose proposal I have a very great esteem, and also a great opinion of her wit; different, too, from all sorts of religious confinement, and, above all, from vows of celibacy.

Wherefore the academy I propose should differ but little from public schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study, should have all the advantages of learning suitable to their genius....

The building should be of three plain fronts, without any jettings or bearing work, that the eye might at a glance see from one coin to the other; the gardens walled in the same triangular figure, with a large moat, and but one entrance.

Having thus provided against intrigues and escapades he would have no guards, no eyes, no spies, set over the ladies, but would expect them to be tried by the principles of honor and strict virtue.

Defoe's arguments in favor of the higher education of women represent the most advanced thought of his age.

Methinks mankind, for their own sakes, since, say what we will of the women, we all think fit one time or other to be concerned with them, should take some care to breed them up to be suitable and serviceable, if they expected no such thing as delight from them. Bless us! what care do we take to breed up a good horse, and to break him well! And why not a woman?...

But to come closer to the business. The great distinguishing difference which is seen in the world between men and women, is in their education; and this is manifested by comparing it with the difference between one man or woman and another.

And herein is it I take upon me to make such a bold assertion, that all the world are mistaken in their practice about women; for I can not think that God Almighty ever made them so delicate, so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and delightful to man, with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men, and all only to be stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves.

Not that I am for exalting the female government in the least; but, in short, I would have men take women for companions, and educate them to be fit for it....

I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to the sex, nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice: it is a thing will be more easily granted than remedied. This chapter is but an essay at the thing; and I refer the practice to these happy days, if ever they shall be, when men shall be wise enough to mend it.

Defoe asserts that his ideas on this subject were not derived from Mary Astell, and is even slightly irritated that she was ahead of him in publication, since he had long before mentally elaborated the scheme he suggests.

"Sophia Pamphlets" (1739-40)

The feminist argument was carried on in what are known as the "Sophia Pamphlets." The first of these appeared in 1739 and was entitled Woman not inferior to Man: or a short and modest vindication of the natural right of the fair sex to a perfect equality of power, dignity and esteem with the men. By Sophia a person of Quality. There was an immediate answer under the title, Man superior to Woman; containing a plain confutation of the fallacious arguments of Sophia in her late Treatise intitled Woman not Inferior to Man. In 1740 Sophia responded with, Woman's superior excellence over Man or a reply to the author of a late treatise entitled Man superior to Woman. In which the excessive weakness of that Gentleman's answer to Woman not inferior to Man is exposed. The three pamphlets were published together in 1757 under the collective title Beauty's Triumph. These pamphlets give an interesting little passage at arms in the feminist controversy. The subjects taken up in the first pamphlet are closely modeled on The Woman as Good as the Man. "In what esteem the women are held by the men and how justly"; "Whether women are inferior to men in this intellectual capacity, or not"; "Whether the men are better qualified to govern than women, or not"; "Whether the women are fit for public offices, or not"; "Whether the women are naturally capable of teaching sciences, or not"; "Whether women are naturally qualified for military offices, or not,"—these are the topics discussed. With regard to the education of women Sophia says:

Men, by thinking us incapable of improving our intellects, have entirely thrown us out of the advantages of education, and thereby contributed as much as possible to make us the senseless creatures they imagine us. So that for want of education, we are rendered subject to all the follies they dislike in us.... And as our sex, when it applies to learning, may be said at least to keep pace with the men, so are they more to be esteemed for their learning than the latter: Since they are under a necessity of surmounting the softness they were educated in; of renouncing the pleasure and indolence to which cruel custom seem'd to condemn them to overcome the external impediments in their way of study; and to conquer the disadvantageous notions, which the vulgar of both sexes entertain of learning in women. And whether it be these difficulties add any keenness to a female understanding, or that nature has given women, a quicker more penetrating genius than to men, it is self-evident that many of our sex have far out-stript the men. Why then are we not as fit to learn and teach the sciences, at least to our own sex, as they fancy themselves to be.... We may easily conclude then, that if our sex, as it hitherto appears, have all the talents requisite to learn and teach these sciences, which qualify men for power and dignity, they are equally capable of applying their knowledge to practice in exercising that power and dignity. And since, as we have said, this nation has seen many glorious instances of Women, severally qualified to have all public authority center'd in them, why may they not be as qualified at least for the subordinate offices of ministers of state, vice-queens, governesses, etc.?

Sophia has, however, one reservation. Women may not enter the ministry:

Thus far I insist there is no science or public office in a state which women are not as much qualified for by Nature as the ablest of Men. With regard to divinity, our natural capacity has been restrain'd by a positive law of God: and therefore we know better than to lay claim to what we could not practice without sacrilegious intrusion.

The Gentleman, in his answer to Sophia, takes up her claims seriatim and disposes of them to his own satisfaction.

Neither Juvenal nor I [he says] deny that Women may acquire some superficial Learning. All we contend for is that it is ever evil bestowed upon them, inasmuch as it renders them useless to their own sex, and a nuisance to ours.... I grant Greece has shewn its Sappho, Rome her Cornelia, France has produced a Dacier; Holland has brought forth a Schurman; Italy a Doctress; and England now boasts an Eliza and a Sophia.

But the whole serio-comic tone of the Gentleman's Essay makes it difficult of interpretation. Sophia writes as if she were in genuine earnest in her protest and propaganda. But it seems much less certain that the Gentleman is not merely playing with the situation.[417] The identity of the writers has not been discovered. Miss McIlquham[418] believes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to be Sophia. But this is hardly likely, since 1739 is the year Lady Mary went to Italy. A writer signing himself "Medley," in Notes and Queries, suggests that "Sophia" was Lady Sophia Fermor, the second wife of Lord Cararet, and thinks she may also have been the "Sophia" of Letters of Portia to her Daughter Sophia, though these were not published till years later.[419]