II. The Novel-Reading Girl as a Comic Type
The learned-lady theme had an interesting variant in the novel-reading girl. This type, as it appeared in comedy and fiction, is also of French origin. It finds its direct ancestry in Molière's Les Précieuses (1659), a satiric representation of the vogue of the French romances, most of which appeared in the twenty-five years before Les Précieuses.[492]
Along with the vogue of the romances came the critical comment. Scarron's Roman Comique (1651) burlesqued La Calprenède. Boileau's Héros de Romans (1664) and L'Art Poétique (1674) satirized especially the romances of Scudéry. The two satires that showed the effect of the romances on the minds of young girls were Molière's Les Précieuses and later Furetière's Roman Bourgeois (1666).
These romances and satires were almost as well known in the original to cultivated Englishmen as they were to Frenchmen. There were also numerous translations. Between 1647 and 1660 Polexandre, Cassandre, Ibrahim, Artemène, Clélie, Almahide, Cléopâtre, all appeared in English versions, and some of them several times. And the satires were also promptly translated. There is no better illustration of the general English familiarity with those romances than that furnished by the letters Dorothy Osborne wrote to Sir William Temple in 1652-54. The Hôtel de Rambouillet coterie itself could hardly have been more nearly letter perfect in the details than was this young English lady. Her reading becomes so absorbing that her grave lover finds it necessary to caution her against the "late hours" reported to him. She is penitent, but her enthusiasm is unabated. Parts of Cléopâtre, she says, pleased her more than anything she had ever read in her life. She confesses that she cried an hour together over the sad story of Almanzor, and was so angry with Alcidiana that she could never love her after. But she is no uncritical admirer of the heroes and heroines. Her sense of humor does not forsake her. She laughs at L'Amant Jaloux, in Cyrus, as one who seeks his own vexation, and L'Amant mon Aimé was "an ass." Sir William's interest in the romances is hardly less than Dorothy's. She sends him the separate volumes as she completes them, and there is a lively interchange of impressions and comments on various characters and situations.[493]
After the Restoration the fondness for romances may have been somewhat lessened by the new passion for the theater. But romance-readers were still numerous. Pepys tells us that his wife sat up till twelve over the Grand Cyrus. Again he says, "I find my wife troubled at my checking her last night in a coach in her long stories out of the Grand Cyrus which she would tell, though nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner." However, he must have repented of his rigor, for we find him later calling at Martin's his book-seller's, where he bought Cassandre and some other French books for his wife's closet. And Mr. Pepys himself confesses to at least one Sunday devoted to French romances.[494]
That Mr. and Mrs. Pepys were not alone in their tastes is made evident by contemporary arraignment of the romances as harmful influences. Mr. Pepys records a conversation with a Mr. Wilson who protested passionately against them as perverters of history. The Ladies' Calling (1673) brings the matter home to daily life:
There is another thing to which some devote a very considerable part of their time, and that is the reading Romances, which seems now to be thought the peculiar and only becoming study of young ladies. I confess their youth may a little adapt it to them when they were Children, and I wish they were always in their event as harmless; but I fear they often leave ill impressions behind them. Those amorous passions which 't is their design to paint to the utmost life are apt to insinuate themselves into their unwary Readers, and by an unhappy inversion a Copy shall produce an Original. When a poor young Creature shall read there of some triumphant Beauty, that has I know not how many captiv'd Knights prostrate at her feet, she will probably be tempted to think it a fine thing; and may reflect how much she loses time, that has not yet subdued one heart; and then her business will be to spread her nets, lay her toils to catch somebody who will more fatally ensnare her. And when she has once worried herself into an amour, those authors are subtil Casuists for all difficult cases that may occur in it, will instruct in the necessary artifices of deluding parents and friends, and put her ruin perfectly in her own power. And truly this seems to be so natural a consequent of this sort of study, that of all the divertisements that look so innocently, they can scarce fall upon any more hazardous. Indeed 't is very difficult to imagine what mischief is done to the world by the false notions and images of things: particularly of Love and Honour, those noblest concerns of human life, represented in these mirrors.[495]
The popularity of the French romances and the protests they aroused would naturally make the romance-loving girl a type of genuine social interest, and it is surprising that this element of Molière's Les Précieuses was not sooner taken up in English comedy. There were, to be sure, occasional references to romance-reading something in the style of Molière. In Shadwell's Bury-Fair (1689), for instance, Gertrude is apparently familiar "with Romances and Love and Honour Plays," and she complains that all the lovers talk so in the style of the romances that a girl knows in advance just what compliments she must listen to.[496] And in Wright's Female Vertuosos (1693) Sir Maurice says, "O' my Conscience, Women's Heads, now-a-days, are so stuff't up with their Trash of Romances and Poetry, that there is no Room left in 'em for Reason, or Common Sense." Later he bewails his fate more bitterly: "This Plague of Wit has infected all my Servants, even my little Boy, forsooth, can not turn the Spit now without a Pharamond or a Cassandra in his hand." But it was not till Steele's Tender Husband in 1705 that the romance-reading girl appeared in England as a developed type. Steele's Biddy Tipkin[497] is nearly half a century later than Molière's Madelon and Cathos, but they are her unquestioned ancestors.
In Molière's play the two country girls endeavor to apply to real life the ideas they have gained from the romances. Gorgibus, the father of Madelon and uncle of Cathos, is a worthy citizen whose common-sense views of life subject him to the scornful raillery of the young ladies. He endeavors to provide them with good husbands, but his straightforward methods shock their romance-tutored minds. To be greeted at the first interview with marriage proposals is a crude and coarse proceeding. If Cyrus had married Mandane, and Clélie had married Aronce at once, what would have become of Mademoiselle de Scudéry's romances Artemène and Clélie? The dull Gorgibus, and the lovers he has brought are hopelessly ignorant of le carte de Tendre, ignorant of the regions known as Billets-doux, Petits-soins, Billets-galants, Jolis-vers, and the other exactly marked stages of a well-wrought courtship. The young ladies even doubt the reality of their relationship to Gorgibus, and they reject the names Cathos and Madelon in favor of Polixène and Aminte. Gorgibus attributes all their vagaries to the reading of romances, and in the climax of his irritation exclaims to the stock of offending volumes, "Et vous, qui êtes cause de leur folie, sottes billeveseés, pernicieux amusements des esprits oisifs, romans, vers, chansons, sonnets et sonnettes, puissiez-vous être à tous les diables!"
The fundamental idea and many of the satiric details in the presentation of Biddy Tipkin in Steele's The Tender Husband exactly follow the French model. Biddy's reading is identical with that of Madelon and Cathos, but wider in scope. She refers familiarly to passages or characters in Cléopâtre, Cassandre, Pharamond, Ibrahim, Artemène, Clélie, and Almahide, showing that she had practically covered the field of romance. She is an heiress under the charge of her uncle, Hezekiah Tipkin, a banker of Lombard Street, and his sister, "an antiquated virgin with a mighty affectation for youth." Pounce, a lawyer on the lookout for a rich match for his client, the impecunious Captain Cleremont, describes Biddy thus: "Well then, since we may be free, you must understand, the young lady, by being kept from the world, has made a world of her own. She has spent all her solitude in reading romances, her head is full of shepherds, knights, flowery meads, groves, and streams, so that if you talk like a man of this world to her, you do nothing." But Cleremont, quite equal to the situation, responds, "Oh, let me alone—I have been a great traveller in fairy-land myself, I know Oroondates; Cassandra, Astræa, and Clelia are my intimate acquaintance." Pounce predicts success for the fluent Captain, but there are other plans for Biddy. Her guardians wish her to marry her cousin, Humphry Gubbin, a country lout, familiarly known as "Numps." Her attitude towards him and towards her prosaic aunt appears in the following conversation:
Niece. Was it not my gallant that whistled so charmingly in the parlour before he went out this morning? He's a most accomplished cavalier.
Aunt. Come, niece, come; you don't do well to make sport with your relations, especially with a young gentleman that has so much kindness for you.
Niece. Kindness for me! What a phrase is there to express the darts and flames, the sighs and languishings, of an expecting lover!
Aunt. Pray, niece, forbear this idle trash, and talk like other people. Your cousin Humphry will be true and hearty in what he says, and that's a great deal better than the talk and compliment of romances.
Niece. Good madam, don't wound my ears with such expressions; do you think I can ever love a man that's true and hearty? What a peasant-like amour do these coarse words import! True and hearty! Pray, aunt, endeavour a little at the embellishment of your style.
Aunt. Alack-a-day, cousin Biddy, these idle romances have quite turned your head.
Niece. How often must I desire you, madam, to lay aside that familiar name, cousin Biddy? I never hear it without blushing—Did you ever meet with a heroine in those idle romances, as you call 'em, that was termed Biddy?
Aunt. Ah! cousin, cousin, these are mere vapours, indeed; nothing but vapours.
Niece. No, the heroine has always something soft and engaging in her name; something that gives us a notion of the sweetness of her beauty and behaviour; a name that glides through half-a-dozen tender syllables, as Elismonda, Clidamira, Deidamia, that runs upon vowels off the tongue; not hissing through one's teeth, or breaking them with consonants. 'T is strange rudeness those familiar names they give us, when there is Aurelia, Sacharissa, Gloriana, for people of condition; and Celia, Chloris, Corinna, Mopsa, for their maids and those of lower rank.
Aunt. Look ye, Biddy, this is not to be supported. I know not where you learned this nicety; but I can tell you, forsooth, as much as you despise it, your mother was a Bridget afore you, and an excellent house-wife.
Niece. Good madam, don't upbraid me with my mother Bridget, and an excellent house-wife.
Aunt. Yes, I say she was; and spent her time in better learning than you ever did—not in reading of fights and battles of dwarfs and giants, but in writing out receipts for broths, possets, caudles, and surfeit-waters, as became a good country gentlewoman.
Niece. My mother, and a Bridget!
Aunt. Yes, niece, I say again, your mother, my sister, was a Bridget! the daughter of her mother Margery, of her mother Sisly, of her mother Alice.
Niece. Have you no mercy? Oh, the barbarous genealogy!
Aunt. Of her mother Winifred, of her mother Joan.
Niece. Since you will run on, then I must needs tell you I am not satisfied in the point of my nativity. Many an infant has been placed in a cottage with obscure parents, till by chance some ancient servant of the family has known it by its marks.
Aunt. Ay, you had best be searched—That's like your calling the winds the fanning gales, before I don't know how much company; and the tree that was blown by it had, forsooth, a spirit imprisoned in the trunk of it.
Niece. Ignorance!
Aunt. Then a cloud this morning had a flying dragon in it.
Niece. What eyes had you, that you could see nothing? For my part I look upon it to be a prodigy, and expect something extraordinary will happen to me before night.... But you have a gross relish of things. What noble descriptions in romances had been lost, if the writers had been persons of your gout?
Aunt. I wish the authors had been hanged, and their books burnt, before you had seen 'em.
Niece. Simplicity!
Aunt. A parcel of improbable lies.
Niece. Indeed, madam, your raillery is coarse—
Aunt. Fit only to corrupt young girls, and fill their heads with a thousand foolish dreams of I don't know what.
Niece. Nay, now, madam, you grow extravagant.
Aunt. What I say is not to vex, but advise you for your good.
Niece. What, to burn Philocles, Artaxeres, Oroondates, and the rest of the heroic lovers, and take my country booby, cousin Humphry, for a husband!
Aunt. Oh dear, oh dear, Biddy! Pray, good dear, learn to act and speak like the rest of the world; come, come, you shall marry your cousin and live comfortably.
Niece. Live comfortably! What kind of life is that? A great heiress live comfortably! Pray, aunt, learn to raise your ideas—What is, I wonder, to live comfortably?
Aunt. To live comfortably is to live with prudence and frugality, as we do in Lombard Street.
By mere force of contrast the way is open for the smooth-tongued Mr. Cleremont. He meets the ladies in the park with such phrases as "the cool breath of the morning," "the season of pearly dews and gentle zephyrs," and Biddy is enraptured. After the adroit withdrawal of the aunt by Pounce, Cleremont well maintains with Biddy his reputation as a traveler in fairy-land, and assumes likewise the military prowess without which no romance hero was complete. He soon cleverly turns the conversation to a proposal of marriage, but Biddy understands the laws of romance too well to yield immediately. They part in the true spirit of Cassandre.
Cler. We enjoy here, madam, all the pretty landscapes of the country without the pains of going thither.
Niece. Art and nature are in a rivalry, or rather a confederacy, to adorn this beauteous park with all the agreeable variety of water, shade, walks, and air. What can be more charming than these flowery lawns?
Cler. Or these gloomy shades—
Niece. Or these embroidered valleys—
Cler. Or that transparent stream—
Niece. Or these bowing branches on the banks of it, that seem to admire their own beauty in the crystal mirror?
Cler. I am surprised, madam, at the delicacy of your phrase. Can such expressions come from Lombard Street?
Niece. Alas, sir! what can be expected from an innocent virgin that has been immured almost one-and-twenty years from the conversation of mankind, under the care of an Urganda[498] of an aunt?
Cler. Bless me, madam, how have you been abused! Many a lady before your age has had an hundred lances broken in her service, and as many dragons cut to pieces in honour of her.
Niece. Oh, the charming man! [Aside.]
Cler. Do you believe Pamela was one-and-twenty before she knew Musidorus?[499]
Niece. I could hear him ever. [Aside.]
Cler. A lady of your wit and beauty might have given occasion for a whole romance in folio before that age.
Niece. Oh, the powers! Who can he be?—Oh, youth unknown—But let me, in the first place, know whom I talk to, for, sir, I am wholly unacquainted both with your person and your history. You seem, indeed, by your deportment, and the distinguishing mark of your bravery which you bear, to have been in a conflict. May I not know what cruel beauty obliged you to such adventures till she pitied you?
Cler. Oh, the pretty coxcomb! [Aside.]—Oh, Blenheim, Blenheim! Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia!
Niece. You mention the place of battle. I would fain hear an exact description of it. Our public papers are so defective; they don't so much as tell us how the sun rose on that glorious day—Were there not a great many flights of vultures before the battle began?
Cler. Oh, madam, they have eaten up half my acquaintance.
Niece. Certainly never birds of prey were so feasted; by report, they might have lived half-a-year on the very legs and arms our troops left behind 'em.
Cler. Had we not fought near a wood we should never have got legs enough to have come home upon. The joiner of the Foot Guards has made his fortune by it.
Niece. I shall never forgive your General. He has put all my ancient heroes out of countenance; he has pulled down Cyrus and Alexander, as much as Louis-le-Grand—But your own part in that action?
Cler. Only that slight hurt, for the astrologer said at my nativity, nor fire, nor sword, nor pike, nor musket shall destroy this child, let him but avoid fair eyes—But, madam, mayn't I crave the name of her that has so captivated my heart?
Niece. I can't guess whom you mean by that description; but if you ask my name, I must confess you put me upon revealing what I always keep as the greatest secret I have—for would you believe it, they have called me—I don't know how to own it, but they have called me—Bridget.
Cler. Bridget?
Niece. Bridget.
Cler. Bridget?
Niece. Spare my confusion, I beseech you, sir; and if you have occasion to mention me, let it be by Parthenissa,[500] for that's the name I have assumed ever since I came to years of discretion.
Cler. The insupportable tyranny of parents, to fix names on helpless infants which they must blush at all their lives after! I don't think there's a surname in the world to match it.
Niece. No! What do you think of Tipkin?
Cler. Tipkin! Why, I think if I was a young lady that had it I'd part with it immediately.
Niece. Pray, how would you get rid of it?
Cler. I'd change it for another. I could recommend to you three very pretty syllables—What do you think of Cleremont?
Niece. Cleremont! Cleremont! Very well—but what right have I to it?
Cler. If you will give me leave, I'll put you in possession of it. By a very few words I can make it over to you, and your children after you.
Niece. O fie! Whither are you running? You know a lover should sigh in private, and languish whole years before he reveals his passion; he should retire into some solitary grove, and make the woods and wild beasts his confidants. You should have told it to the echo half-a-year before you had discovered it, even to my handmaid.
Cler. What can a lover do, madam, now the race of giants is extinct? Had I lived in those days there had not been a mortal six foot high, but should have owned Parthenissa for the paragon of beauty, or measured his length on the ground—Parthenissa should have been heard by the brooks and deserts at midnight, the echo's burden and the river's murmur.
Niece. That had been a golden age, indeed! But see, my aunt has left her grave companion and is coming toward us—I command you to leave me.
Cler. Thus Oroondates, when Statira[501] dismissed him her presence, threw himself at her feet, and implored permission but to live. [Offering to kneel.]
Niece. And thus Statira raised him from the earth, permitting him to live and love.
But Biddy has not the cold constitution of the romance heroines and she presently acknowledges that she finds in herself all the symptoms of a raging amour. "I love solitude," she soliloquizes, "I grow pale, I sigh frequently. I call upon the name of Cleremont when I don't think of it—His person is ever in my eyes, and his voice in my ears—Methinks I long to lose myself in some pensive grove, or to hang over the head of some warbling fountain, with a lute in my hand, softening the murmurs of the waters." And in spite of her reluctance to abridge courtship and so shut off "all further decoration of disguise, serenade and adventure," she finally consents to an immediate elopement, declaring that if Oroondates had been as pressing as Cleremont Cassandra would have been but a pocket-book.
Biddy, her aunt, and her two suitors, form the most delightful group of characters in the comedy of manners before Goldsmith and Sheridan. And Biddy can hold her own against any of the heroines except Congreve's Millamant. Nance Oldfield created the character in 1705 and it continued to be a favorite on the stage. The play was given several times nearly every year to 1736 and occasionally afterwards, so that the character of Biddy was one often before the public.
There are also other indications that the topic of romance-reading was one of continued interest. In 1748 there appeared the second edition of an anonymous work entitled The Lady's Drawing-Room. Being a Faithful Picture of the Great World. One chapter entitled "The Adventures of Marilla" presents a character following in the wake of "Biddy Tipkin" and antedating the Female Quixote by perhaps a decade:
Marilla was a young Lady, who, from her most early years, discover'd an uncommon Capacity, and, as she grew up, made a wonderful Progress, not only in those Accomplishments usually allowed to her own Sex, but also in some of those which more properly appertain to ours. While a Child herself, she despis'd all childish Diversions, and, as she was not a Companion for those of riper Years, instead of playing with those of her own, she amus'd herself with Reading, in which she took such an infinite Delight, that, for a Book she had never seen before, she would forego any other Satisfaction could be offer'd her; and, tho' any one who had been present when she was thus employ'd, and saw with what Swiftness her Eye pass'd from the Top of every Page to the Bottom, would have thought it impossible for her to receive much Advantage from the Contents, yet was her Apprehension so acute, and her Memory so retentive, that whatever she look'd over in this Manner was as much her own, as if she had been the author of it.—What could be more amazing than to hear a Girl, of ten or eleven Years of Age, quote Passages from Pliny, Livy, and Sallust, talk of the Policies of Princes, compare their several Interests, and the Motives on which War and Peace were made, and make such Observations on them as could rarely be contradicted! What might not have been expected from such a Genius when Time had ripen't it to Perfection?—She had also strong Notions of Philosophy, Morality, and Divinity, and had only such Books, as tended to the Improvement of her Mind, been thrown in her Way, she had doubtless made one of the most shining Characters that any Age or Nation has produced; but unhappily, she was likewise too well acquainted with Cassandra, Cleopatra, Grand Cyrus, Pharamond, and other fabulous Treatises, which poison'd her Way of Thinking, and gave her a certain Bent of Mind, to which she ow'd all the Misfortunes of her future Life. Indeed, I think, there cannot be any Thing more pernicious to Youth, than the suffering them to read those idle and voluminous Adventures, which have no Foundation either in Truth, or good Sense, and I heartily wish, for the Sake not only of the young Lady I am speaking of, but of many others whose Reason has been perverted by them, tho' perhaps not in an equal Degree, that the Government would forbid all such Books from being sold or printed.... Marilla was always obliging, and affable to every Body, but those who, as I said before, declared themselves her Lovers; now was this owing to either the Insensibility of her Heart, or to an Imagination, that all who address'd her were unworthy to do so, but to those romantick Notions she had imbib'd, by reading in what Manner the fictitious Ladies of Antiquity had behav'd. She has often, since Time and a melancholy Experience of the World, has mortify'd this Foible, confess'd, That at that Time, she thought it the most audacious and presuming Thing in the World for a Man, to make any publick Declaration of his Passion, 'till he had suffer'd the Pangs of it, in secret, for three or four Years.—That, even then, he ought not to do it, unless Fortune had presented him with the Opportunity of ushering it in by some extraordinary Service, and that, whenever he express'd himself on that Head, it should be in such ambiguous Terms, and with so much Timidity, that it should rather be from his alter'd Countenance, and despairing Air The Object of his Affections should perceive he lov'd her, than by any Words he could be able to speak.—Then, as to her own Part in this Farce, it seem'd to her the utmost Indecency in a Woman to listen to any amorous Proposals, 'till the Lover had griev'd himself to a Skeleton, and was on the Point of falling on his own Sword; nor, when he had arriv'd at that Pitch of Desperation, was she to vouchsafe him any greater Favour than a Command to live.—That, after seven Years, she might, tho' with an infinite Shew of Reluctance, allow him to kiss her Hand, confess she pity'd him, but no more;—And, if he persevered a second Apprenticeship in the same Manner, perhaps, that is, if she found none more worthy, reward his faithful Service, by giving herself to him.
These, she acknowledged, were the Ideas she had of Love and Courtship; but, none of her Admirers acting in any Degree answerable to them, she look'd on all the Professions of Love made to her, as so many Affronts, and return'd them only with picquant Repartees, or sullen Silence.
In 1752 Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, in The Female Quixote, gave an even more detailed picture of a girl obsessed by romances. Arabella was left motherless when very young, and her father lived in retirement with her on a vast estate in a remote province. She was very beautiful, and she was trained under the best masters in dancing, French, and Italian. But this excellent education had less influence on Arabella than the great store of French romances left by her mother who had bought them to relieve the tedium of life in the lonely castle. Supposing these romances to be pictures of real life, Arabella founded all her notions and expectations on them. She was on the alert for love adventures, and she misinterpreted the most ordinary actions or phrases into some romantic possibility. Arabella had a good mind, lively wit, a sweet temper, a thousand amiable qualities, but her romantic notions permeated her thoughts and feelings till she became involved in constant absurdities. Generosity, courage, virtue, love, were of value to her only as interpreted by the romances. Her lover, a courteous, frank, handsome man of the ordinary world, found all his attractions clouded over when he unfortunately fell asleep over some chapters in the romances especially selected for his admiration and imitation.
Mrs. Lennox's story satirizes nearly all the salient characteristics of the French romances. She burlesques their length and the ever-recurring histories, adventures, episodes. The romance conception of courtship and marriage, the lady's power of life and death over her lover, the exaggerated military prowess of the lover, the emphasis on unknown but illustrious birth, the bombastic language, the use of disguises, abductions, banishments, the long, argumentative conversations, the odd romance letters with high-flown superscriptions and signatures, and florid, stilted style, the romantic falsification of history, are some of the many elements clearly portrayed by Mrs. Lennox. But in spite of the minute accuracy of her work, Mrs. Lennox's Arabella yields in definiteness of impression as well as in veracity and charm to Biddy Tipkin.
Shortly after The Female Quixote came a little poem by Mrs. Monk entitled "On a Romantick Lady" in which a lover says to his mistress:
This poring over your Grand Cyrus
Must ruin you, and will quite tire us.
It makes you think, that an affront 't is,
Unless your lover 's an Orontes,
And courts you with a passion frantick,
In manner and in stile romantick.
Now tho' I count myself no Zero,
I don't pretend to be an hero.
Or a by-blow of him that thunders,
Nor are you one of the sev'n wonders.
But a young damser very pretty,
And your true name is Mistress Betty.
With Mrs. Lennox and Mrs. Monk we seem to come to the end of the satire on the romance-reading girls. But in 1756 we find in Murphy's Apprentice a young man, a Mr. Gargle, an apothecary's apprentice, whose wits have gone astray through reading romances. "An absurd, ridiculous, a silly empty-headed coxcomb," exclaims his exasperated father, "with his Cassanders and his Cloppatras, and his trumpery; with his Romances, and his damn'd plays and his Odyssey Popes, and a parcel of fellows not worth a groat!" Charlotte, Mr. Gargle's innamorata, was "as innocent as water-gruel" before he taught her to read play-books; but she was not permanently injured by them, for before she had read far her father locked her books away and confined her in her room. In the projected romantic escape Charlotte is all practicality and good sense, but Mr. Gargle demands rope-ladders, moonlight, emotions, attitudes, and poetical quotations, and so spoils all.
But Mr. Gargle lags behind his generation. Romances were being rapidly replaced by the novel. Between 1740 and 1753 Pamela, Joseph Andrews, Jonathan Wild, Clarissa Harlowe, Tom Jones, Amelia, and Sir Charles Grandison had established the new species. And the romance-reading girl speedily gives way to the novel-reading girl.
The first representative of this type comes in 1760 in George Colman's Polly Honeycomb, at the very end of the period we are considering. In the Prologue Colman shows a clear recognition of the change of type. He says:
Hither in days of yore, from Spain or France,
Came a dread sorceress, her name Romance.
O'er Britain's isle her wayward spell she cast,
And common sense in magick chain bound fast.
In mad sublime did each fond lover wooe,
And in heroicks ran each billet-doux:
High deeds of chivalry their sole delight,
Each fair a maid distress'd, each swain a knight.
Then might Statira Oroondates see,
At tilts and tournaments, arm'd cap-a-pie.
She too, on milk-white palfrey, lance in hand,
A dwarf to guard her, pranc'd about the land.
But now, the dear delight of later years,
The younger sister of Romance appears:
Less solemn in her air, her drift the same,
And Novel her enchanting, charming, name.
Romance might strike our grave forfathers' pomp,
But Novel for our buck and lively romp!
Cassandra's folios now no longer read,
See, two neat pocket-volumes in their stead!
And then so sentimental is the stile.
So chaste, yet so bewitching all the while!
Plot, and elopement, passion, rape, and rapture,
The total sum of ev'ry dear—dear—Chapter.
'T is not alone the small-talk and the smart,
'T is Novel most beguiles the female heart.
Miss reads—she melts—she sighs—Love steals upon her—
And then—Alas, poor girl!—goodnight, poor honour!
When Colman published the play he prefixed a list of one hundred and eighty-two novels which purports to be an "Extract from the catalogue of one of our most popular circulating libraries; from which extract the reader may, without any great degree of shrewdness, strain the moral of this performance."[502] Of these books over one hundred are in the form of "Lives," "Memoirs," or "Adventures." The list contains the principal novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, but the majority of the books have passed into the limbo of the forgotten, if, indeed, they ever existed. Polly gets her books from a circulating library in London, or purchases them from the bookseller, and she keeps up with the new books as they come out, but she does not mention any of the books in Colman's list. The History of Sir George Truman and Emilia, The British Amazon, The Adventures of Tom Ramble, The History of Dick Carless, History of Amelia, are the only novels she speaks of by the title. Her familiarity with novels in general is such that she merely refers to the characters in an offhand fashion. Nurse indicates the scope of Polly's reading in "Yes, yes, you are always reading your simple story-books. The Ventures of Jack this, the history of Betsey t'other, and Sir Humphreys, and women with hard Christian names."[503] But Polly merely refers to Clarinda and to Julia, to Betsey Thompson, to Sally Wilkins, as girls who eloped because they had obstinate, ill-natured parents; to Bob Lovelace as a writer of charming letters; to poor Clarissa and ugly Mr. Soames; to Nancy Howe and Mr. Hickman; to poor Sophy Western as one locked up by an irate father; to Tom Jones, a foundling and yet a gentleman's son. She means to marry Scribble, though they "go through as many distresses as Booth and Amelia." She belabors Mr. Ledger with "I hate you; you are as deceitful as Blifil, as rude as the Harlowes, and as ugly as Dr. Slop." After she has assailed this unwelcome suitor from Change-alley with "You are a vile book of Arithmetick, a table of pounds, shillings, and pence; you are uglier than a figure of eight, and more tiresome than the multiplication-table," she rejoices over her successful vituperation. "Ha, ha, ha! there he goes! ha, ha, ha! I have out-topped them all; Miss Howe, Narcissa, Clarinda, Polly Barnes, Sophy Willis, and all of them. None of them ever treated an odious fellow with so much spirit. This would make an excellent chapter in a new Novel. But here comes papa; in a violent passion, no doubt. No matter: It will only furnish materials for the next chapter."
Though it is apparent that Polly was reading Richardson and Fielding, yet the book that held temporary ascendancy over her imagination was Sir George Truman. By a clever device she is introduced reading the book and giving lively comments thereon:
Polly. Well said, Sir George! Oh, the dear man. But so—"With these words the enraptur'd baronet [reading] concluded his declaration of love."—So!—"But what heart can imagine, [reading] What tongue describe, or what pen delineate, the amiable confusion of Emilia?"—Well, now for it!—"Reader, if thou art a courtly reader, thou hast seen, at polite tables, iced cream crimsoned with raspberries; or, if thou art an uncourtly reader, thou hast seen the rosy-finger'd morning dawning in the golden East;" Dawning in the golden East! Very pretty.—"Thou hast seen, perhaps, [reading] the artificial vermilion on the cheeks of Cleora, or the vermilion of nature on those of Sylvia; thou hast seen—in a word, the lovely face of Emilia was overspread with blushes." This is a most beautiful passage, I protest! Well, a Novel for my money!—[reading] "Sir George touched at her confusion, gently seized her hand, and softly pressing it to his bosom [acting it as she reads] where the pulses of his heart beat quick, throbbing with tumultuous passion, in a plaintive tone of voice, breathed out, 'Will you not answer me, Emilia?'" Tender creature!—"She, half raising [reading and acting] her downcast eyes, and half inclining her averted head, said in faltering accents,—yes, Sir!" Well, now!—"Then, gradually recovering, with ineffable sweetness she prepared to address him: when Mrs. Jenkinson bounced into the room, threw down a set of china in her hurry, and strewed the floor with porcelain fragments: Then turning Emilia round and round, whirled her out of the apartment in an instant, and struck Sir George dumb with astonishment at her appearance. She raved; but the baronet resuming his accustomed effrontery...." Novels, Nursee, novels! [exclaims Polly.] A novel is the only thing to teach a girl life, and the way of the world, and elegant fancies, and love, to the end of the chapter!... Do you think, Nursee, I should have had such a good notion of love so early, if I had not read novels?... Oh, Nursee, a Novel is the only thing!... Lord, Nursee, if it was not for novels and love-letters a girl would have no use for her writing and reading.
It is from her precious novels that the energetic young Polly has a head so full of intrigues and contrivances. Rope-ladders or tied sheets and a feather-bed under the window, disguises, letters in lemon-juice, ink concealed in a pin-cushion, and paper and pens in a fan, all the devices of a thwarted amour, are as the alphabet of intrigue to Polly. No wonder the cautious Mr. Ledger finally withdraws his suit. "She'd make a terrible wife for a sober citizen. Who can answer for her behaviour? I would not underwrite her for ninety per cent." Mr. Honeycomb attributes all Polly's vagaries to "these damn'd story-books," and concludes, "A man might as well turn his daughter loose in Covent-Garden, as trust the cultivation of her mind to A Circulating Library."
Lydia Languish in Sheridan's Rivals (1775) carries us beyond the limits of this study, but Lydia must be mentioned here because she brings this topic to a natural chronological close and because of her relationship to the characters already noted. Judged from the point of view of the books selected, Biddy, Marilla, and Arabella belong to the romance-readers, as opposed to Polly Honeycomb and Lydia Languish, the novel-readers. But the lists of Polly and Lydia are far from identical. Lydia is, indeed, quite up to date in her novels. Nine of the fifteen she mentions were first published between 1768 and 1773.[504] And her reading is much less sensational and trashy than that of Polly. The bustling, executive Polly cannot for a moment be considered the real ancestor of Lydia. It is on Biddy Tipkin that Lydia is more nearly modeled. The points of similarity between The Tender Husband and The Rivals have often been noted, and it is in the Biddy and Lydia portion that this kinship is closest. Lydia with her two suitors and her aunt make up a group fundamentally like the one of which Biddy is the center, though, of course, Biddy's "Urganda of an aunt" is infinitely less amusing than "the old weather-beaten she-dragon," Mrs. Malaprop, and Numps and Captain Cleremont are but faint forerunners of Bob Acres and Captain Absolute. But the original conception, the general relationship of these characters, their function in the play, are much the same. Biddy and Lydia are alike in occasional details and almost identical as type characters. And Lydia as a heroine given over to mischievous reading is like the other heroines in arousing in the harassed guardian or parent numerous protests against romances and novels. Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony Absolute sum up all that has been said in the earlier plays. Mrs. Malaprop would not have young women become "progenies" of learning, and her ideal maid who goes to school at nine to learn a "little ingenuity and artifice," "a supercilious knowledge of accounts," with a little geography and reading, pretty well represents the amount of education the ordinary young girl was getting. And Sir Anthony protests against the inevitable evils consequent on teaching girls to read:
All this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read. Had I a thousand daughters, by Heavens! I'd as soon have them taught the black art as their alphabet!... Madam, a circulating library in a town is, as an evergreen tree, of diabolical knowledge ... it blossoms through the year!
[SUMMARY]
Material not easily accessible
In any attempt to trace a single line of thought or a social tendency through a long and remote period the difficult accessibility of the material must be premised. It is disheartening to note how many of the desired facts lurk in corners and byways, and are come upon almost by chance. A stray allusion followed up may lead to some rich little pocket of information, while laboriously conducted explorations prove futile. It is the discovery of these pockets of ore that constitute the rewards of the adventure. But such satisfaction is constantly clouded by a sense of the pockets that have been missed. Whatever discoveries reward the investigator, there is always a tantalizing sense of having hardly more than passed the outlying boundaries of what might be found.
Along with sins of omission it is regrettably certain that there must be sins of commission. In individual instances the discovery of further material might result in a somewhat different evaluation of the literary or historic significance of the person concerned. And certain it is that fuller records would reveal force and charm in many a woman presented now by but a meager array of unsuggestive biographical facts.
A final difficulty results from a carelessness as to dates in contemporary records of the period studied, especially with regard to minor people, so that chronology is sometimes led into a dim and confused region of conjecture and approximation.
Women in literary biography
Omission of important persons, mistakes in emphasis, an occasional dubious chronology, are due in part to the general condition of literary biography till long after the middle of the eighteenth century. The details regarding men were often meager and inexact, but much more so was this the case with regard to women. When Ballard began the preliminary studies for his memoirs of learned ladies he found the utmost difficulty in getting any reliable data. He refers to Leland, Bale, Pits, and Tanner as men whose works he had studied for general method. But from none of these could he get direct aid in his own field of research. Various records of Oxford and Cambridge could render but incidental service, Edward Philips's Threatrum Poetarum (1675); John Aubrey's Brief Lives (known as early as 1680); William Winstanley's Lives of the most famous English Poets (1687); Gildon's edition of Langbaine's Dramatic Poets, with a second volume on Poets in 1688, were somewhat more helpful. But in all these put together there were only a few pages devoted to women. John Shirley's Illustrious History of Women (1686) and Juncker's Catalogue of Learned Women (1692) have practically nothing to offer towards a history of learned English women. John Evelyn's Numismata (1697) gives a list of renowned persons "worthy the honour of Medal," in the course of which he mentions some instances of the "Learned, Virtuous and Fair Sex," beginning with Boadicea. Thirteen Englishwomen are in the list, but with only the briefest notice. Giles Jacob's Poetical Register (1724) goes more into detail, but in his two volumes there are only fifteen pages of female biography. Mrs. Cooper includes no woman in her Muse's Library (1737) and Hayward in his The British Muse (1738) makes but one quotation from a woman. John Wilford's Memorials and Characters (1741) was compiled with the idea of presenting examples of piety and virtue. Of the eighty-one women noted only a few come within the category of learned women. Thomas Birch in his Illustrious Persons of Great Britain (1752) includes no women but Queens.
The meager gleanings from the best biographical records before 1752 put stronger emphasis on the importance of George Ballard's Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain as a book of original research, and as the first source of detailed and ordered, and, in general, accurate information concerning the learned women of England.[505]
Of later sources the first is Theophilus Cibber's Lives of the Poets (1753). Rather full accounts of fourteen women are given by Cibber, eight of them being names not included in Ballard's book.[506] The Eminent Ladies (1755) was but a weak compilation of poems with brief and perfunctory comment. In the New and General Biographical Dictionary, published in 1761, the most imposing biographical work of the period, out of more than five thousand names less than twenty English women of letters are listed.
The first book after Ballard to take up female biography exclusively appeared in 1766 and is entitled: Biographium Femineum. The Female Worthies: or, Memoirs of the Most Illustrious Ladies of all Ages and Nations, who have been Eminently distinguished for their Magnanimity, Learning, Genius, Virtue, Piety, and other excellent Endowments, conspicuous in all the various Stations and Relations of Life, public and private. Containing (exclusive of Foreigners) The Lives of above Fourscore British Ladies, who have shone with a peculiar Lustre, and given the noblest proofs of the most exalted Genius, and Superior Worth. Collected from History, and the most approved Biographers, and brought down to the present Times (1766). This book is based on Ballard, Cibber, and Eminent Ladies, but also, unfortunately, accepts Amory as an authority.
In 1779 William Alexander published The History of Women, in two volumes. Mr. Alexander has comparatively little to say about learned women. He wrote, he said, to "amuse and instruct the Fair Sex," hoping thus to lure them from poring over novels and romances. He avoided technical and foreign terms and all citation of authorities as being "perplexing to the sex," and while his book professes to be a sort of propagandist tract for female education, he so abhors female pendantry and so laments fair eyes dimmed by severe and intense study that his book is a distinct reaction from the dignified earlier ideals. Dr. Johnson admits no women into the society of his fifty-two English Poets (1779-81). The Biographia Britannica (1778-93) includes Mary Beale and ten literary women. All of these except Mrs. Delany had appeared in Ballard or Cibber. Mary Hays's Female Biography, published in England in 1803 and in America in 1807, in three volumes, includes celebrated women in "all Ages and Countries." It is based on Ballard and the other authorities already indicated. The uncritical character of the book is indicated by the remark of Miss Hays, "My book is intended for women and not for scholars." Robert Southey, in 1809, in his Specimens of the Later English Poets, begins with the time of James II. Out of two hundred and twenty-three poets represented, seventeen are women. In the thirty-two volumes of Chalmers's General Biographical Dictionary (1812) about thirty English learned ladies are briefly noted. In Campbell's British Poets (1819) there is but one woman, Katherine Philips, among the one hundred and seventy names he gives. Alexander Dyce, in Specimens of British Poetesses, in 1827, gives brief extracts in chronological order from eighty-three authors, but with only the slightest possible apparatus of notes and dates. The purpose of Mr. Dyce was to exhibit the progress of English women in poetry, and his book was planned and partly executed before he happened upon the Eminent Ladies, a reprint of which appeared about 1780. On a perusal of that book he found it so unimportant a precursor as not to interfere with his plan. Over half of Mr. Dyce's work is given to women after 1750. Of the forty-nine before that period, beginning with Juliana Berners and ending with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, very few are represented by more than two or three pages of quotation. Lady Winchilsea, owing doubtless to Wordsworth's recent eulogy of her, is given eleven pages. Mr. Dyce did considerable independent research, for he quoted from a good many poems by women not mentioned by previous authors. Wordsworth had planned a similar work and had made extracts for it, "lucid crystals," he says, "culled from a Parnassian Cave seldom trod."
About the middle of the nineteenth century various books, such as Miss Costello's Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen (1844), Mrs. Hale's Woman's Record (1853), Jane Williams's Literary Women of England (1861), Julia Kavanagh's English Women of Letters (1863), with other compilations treating especially of late eighteenth-century fiction but recognizing also the works of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Haywood, seemed to indicate a recrudescence of interest in the work of women. But in most of these books the treatment is so vague and popular as to be of little use.
Of more value than formal condensed statements in biographical compilations are autobiographies, letters, contemporary allusions, works in prose and verse, prefaces, and early individual biographies. Thanks to a steadily growing interest in the period 1660 to 1800, there has been an accumulation during recent years of special critical editions of early works, of manuscripts published after long years of oblivion, and of reprints of valuable productions. It is in particular to this class of material that the student must go in an attempt to evolve personalities from scattered facts.
The term "learned"
The term "learned" as applied to women demands careful chronological definition. It would be used to-day, without any strong bias of approval or disapproval, to describe a woman who in some reputable realm of learning has a competent apparatus of the facts involved, and a mind trained to order and interpret these facts. Such intellectual activity would be differentiated from creative work in poetry, fiction, and drama. But the phrase "learned women" as used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had no such specialized application. The contemporary defenders of "The Excellency of the Female Sex" give the widest and loosest possible meaning to the term. It sometimes stood for the most solid attainments, but it was also made to cover very rudimentary intellectual strivings. An avowed taste for reading, the faintest interest in physical phenomena, the composition of slight little poems, the writing-out of prayers and meditations, even the copying of extracts into a common-place book, could, in applause or derision, be counted as learned occupations. This wide inclusiveness results inevitably in the practical breaking-down of any set of qualities as necessarily connoted by the term "learned."
Equally undiscriminating was the use of examples whereby to establish the possible mentality of women. History and tradition were of equal authority, the Muses and Sibyls counting as much as the great names of later days. The uncritical lists of learned ladies record as of apparently equal importance the "physical fancies" of the Duchess of Newcastle and the exact botanical knowledge of Elizabeth Blackwell; the playful coquetting with foreign tongues by some society ladies and the close linguistic attainments of Miss Elstob or Mrs. Collyer; the wide sweep of general information of Mrs. Delany and the minute investigation into the field of early English by Mrs. Cooper.
A similar ill-defined use of the term "learned" is inevitable in the present attempt to estimate the intellectual tendencies of the seventeenth and eighteenth century women. In the evaluation of the work of individual women as their names arise critical standards can be given due weight. But in general it is not the object of this study to test the scholastic, scientific, or literary work of the women of the period by modern academic ideas of excellence. The purpose here is rather to show the number of women whose interests were intellectual, whose chosen pursuits had to do with books and things of the mind, and who were demanding a new freedom of self-expression, new training, and new opportunities.
Still another preliminary statement seems necessary. The period from 1650 to 1760 is a rich and crowded one. Even when regarded from a single comparatively barren point of view such as an account of learned women, it offers too much material for a single volume. To keep at all within limits it is necessary to hold the presentation of each learned woman merely to those points in her life and work that have to do with her as an exponent of new ideals for women, or as marking by her own achievements new feminine possibilities in the arts, in learning, or in letters. Complete presentation would involve almost a separate volume for each important woman. Many of the women here studied offer interesting subjects for further investigation. A new insight into the religious, the social, and the domestic life of the period would be given by full biographies of such women as Anne Killigrew, Lady Winchilsea, Bathsua Makin, Mrs. Cooper, and indeed of many others. Such studies would be invaluable as a contribution to the history of the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century.
Periods in intellectual progress of women
A retrospect of the progress of the intellectual freedom and the systematic education of women in England does not reveal an orderly acceleration from period to period. There are, instead, periods of activity followed by periods of quiescence. Two such periods, one of activity, one of quiescence, may be noted before the Restoration.
The reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth have been called the golden age for learned women,[507] and even a cursory glance over these years serves to justify that reputation. Theoretical statements by distinguished foreigners such as that by Castiglione; the opinions of such men as Vives and Hyrde, of Mulcaster, Ascham, Udall, and Erasmus; the example of the royal family and many great nobles in securing the most learned instruction for their daughters; the influence of at least two learned queens, Catherine of Aragon and Elizabeth; the actual scholarship of many distinguished women; the warm praise of this scholarship by the most eminent men, made up a general atmosphere strongly stimulating to learned attainment by women. Individual opportunities of so high a character, and a reception so genial and even eager towards the intellectual activity of women did not again recur in England. But this golden age remains as hardly more than a brilliant picture; it has practically no important place in the progress of the education of women. The advantages given to women were nullified, so far as initiating more widespread activities is concerned, by two inherent defects. The learning of women had no legitimate purpose or outcome beyond the home. It was the object of adulation and flattery, but it seldom came into competition with the work of men where it could be judged on its merits. It had always a small audience favorably disposed in advance. Learning was a kind of high-class individual accomplishment purely for home consumption. A second defect was that learning belonged only to the daughters of the nobility or of the very rich. Even within these bounds it was sporadic, depending entirely on the opinion of the head of the family.
A gradual decline of interest in scholarship as an appropriate pursuit for damsels of high lineage was apparent even in Elizabethan days, and the change from Tudor ideals became marked in the period from the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration.[508] James looked upon women with contempt. Queen Anne's mother, Sophia of Mecklenburg, was a highly gifted woman who, after her retirement from public life, devoted her leisure to astronomy, chemistry, and other sciences. But Anne had none of her mother's intellectual interests. She cared only for fine dresses and jewels, progresses and masks, and gay frivolous entertainments.[509] So she brought no literary ideals or ambitions to counteract the king's cold indifference to education in general. Under Charles I and Henrietta Maria there might readily have arisen in a new and lighter form some educational ideals or schemes favorable to women, for the King loved music and painting and had well-developed literary tastes, and the Queen had great respect for the French salons of her day and was interested in the general ideas of the précieuses. But the troubled times of the Civil War turned the minds of both men and women to sterner tasks. And it is perhaps not strange that this period proves the most barren one in English history so far as the education of girls is concerned.
At the Restoration we enter upon a new era of feminine activity. The beginnings of this era do not, however, coincide sharply with 1660, but belong at least a decade earlier. The chief women writing and studying between 1650 and 1675,[510] the Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. Philips, Mary North, Dorothy Osborne, Margaret Blagge, Lady Pakington, the Countess of Warwick, Mrs. Hutchinson, and Lady Fanshawe, brilliantly ushered in this new period. With the coming of peace and national security women were apparently conscious not only of a new freedom, but of a new power and a new demand for some form of personal expression. After the unusual services rendered by them in war-times they could not settle down at once into the tame concerns of peace. This does not refer particularly to the women counted the heroines of the Civil War. It refers rather to the general emotional excitement and freeing of the spirit consequent on war activities. There was on the part of women a blind and unfocused but persistent and stimulating sense that larger and more varied opportunities were awaiting them. Latent powers had been stirred into self-consciousness and could not again be lulled into the old quiescence.
It was not only the inevitable burdens and responsibilities of war that had stirred women to new life. They could not fail to share in the new sense of personal importance and power that came to the people as a whole in their victorious struggle with autocracy. But it must be observed that along with this consciousness of national and political self-realization there was, under the Puritans, stern repression in matters of social and religious life. At the coming of Charles, however, all this was changed. With disastrous suddenness people found themselves free to follow with all gayety of spirit wherever their pleasure-loving instincts led. That such breaking of bonds resulted in an almost incredible outburst of immorality should not be allowed to obscure the fact that there was also a remarkable freeing of the mind from conventional standards. For good or for evil the individual found himself free to give energetic expression to his individual tendencies. By this freedom, by this license, women as well as men were profoundly moved.
The new impulses thus brought into being did not, however, give rise to anything like orderly and progressive activity on the part of women. The century following 1660 is seen to be an inchoate assemblage of beginnings. It is rich with a promise that comes to no decisive result. The path, instead of leading to some well-marked fortress or to some mount of vision, loses itself in unmeaning meanders.
There is, indeed, after the middle of the eighteenth century, even an appearance of retrogression in the attention devoted to learned pursuits for women. It is not till the end of that century that the movement acquires new momentum. Until we come to Catharine Macaulay, the novelists in the last quarter of the century, and Mary Wollstonecraft at its end, we have little that is new in theory or striking in achievement. From 1760 to 1775 no new woman writer of distinction appears. On ideals of education and conduct, Dr. James Fordyce, Mrs. Barbauld, and Mrs. Chapone, the recognized arbiters, are tame compilers of bromidic maxims with little of the dignity and spirit of the best writers on feminism six or seven decades earlier. The actual accomplishment of the period before 1760 was a destruction of old placidities, a restlessness of discussion, rather than a movement reaching definite achievement. But this discussion and the many individual examples of literary or learned accomplishment on the part of women were together slowly having their collective effect. Finally salons came and gave social prestige to the women who could think and talk brilliantly, and gave a tremendous impetus, if not to actual learning, yet to the idea that a woman should have sense, intelligence, a wide knowledge of books, and an understanding of history and current affairs.
From Catharine Macaulay to about the time of Tennyson's Princess is a period possessing considerable unity and one that would reward minute study. Such an investigation would bring us close to the establishment of great schools for the higher education of women and their consequent entrance upon a new era, an era that should look back with astonishment and respect to such ancestors as Anna van Schurman, Bathsua Makin, Dr. Hickes, and Mary Astell.
The learned woman and a public
One of the most promising characteristics of the work of women is the emergence of learning from the aristocratic seclusion of the "golden age." In Tudor times it was in courtly circles only that learning was counted appropriate for women. Elizabeth Lucar stands as a solitary record of a lady from the wealthy middle class whose accomplishments were similar to those in the palaces of the great. But a significant change is to be noted in the century initiated about 1660. Duchesses and countesses are listed with wives and daughters of the clergy, of rich merchants, of needy tradesmen. From the Duchess of Newcastle to Mary Leapor, the gardener's daughter, the roll shows that aristocratic restrictions are no longer in full force in the realm of letters. In intimate connection with this change is the fact that authorship is no longer a private, home affair. The days when Margaret Roper was praised because she found her father and husband a sufficient audience had passed forever. The work of women was no longer a carefully tended flower of the hot-house. It must grow in the open. To be sure, women hesitated to publish. The Orindas and Astræas and Philomelas and Ardelias, whom Richardson derides as "the lovely dastards" of the sex, show how women sought protecting pseudonyms. But publish they did. They craved readers. The applauding males of their households were no longer adequate. Under the spell of a thousand traditional timidities and reluctancies they yet desired to see their words on the printed page, and they secretly coveted a public.
Furthermore, women were thinking of authorship as a tool and as a weapon, not merely as a private resource. Mrs. Behn, the first English woman to write definitely for money, was but the precursor of various women in succeeding years who came to regard the products of their minds as of pecuniary significance. Especially is this true towards the end of the period. When we find Mrs. Haywood and Mrs. Manley writing fiction of a sort that will sell, Mrs. Blackwell doing superb botanical work in order to pay the fine imposed on her husband, or Mrs. Collyer writing that she may supplement a meager income and educate her children, we may not have come upon great art or literature, but we have come upon a new idea for women, the possible economic value of their work. It was not an idea that reached any but the most meager fruition, but at least the seed of a new thought was sown.
A third change was a respect for literature as a weapon, sometimes of offense, but mainly of defense and propaganda. The women who had ideals to promulgate, causes to urge upon the indifferent, or evils to be meliorated, found that talking at home was weak and futile. They must secure a public, and so the pamphlets poured forth. In fact, the fundamental difference between the golden age of the Tudors and the much less agreeable period for learned women after the Restoration was this matter of a public. Learning for home consumption only and as an elegant resource was sterile. However feeble intrinsically, learning and letters used for a purpose and submitted to a public had within it the seeds of vitality and the promise of a future.
Large number of intellectual women
Of greater significance still is the large number of women who gave themselves to intellectual pursuits. From Mrs. Philips to Mrs. Collyer the roll is impressively long. Macaulay's statement concerning the illiteracy of the women of the period may have some justification, but the exceptions are so numerous as almost to disprove the rule. And all the way down the line there is the suggestion that many other women of like tastes and attainments have been lost in obscurity. Many extant productions have been preserved only by chance. Dorothy Osborne's letters, the biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson and Lady Fanshawe, Celia Fiennes's travels, Lady Winchilsea's grand folio, to name but a few, escaped destruction mainly through the undisturbed continuity of the family life, and possibly the inertia, of their possessors. And where a few manuscripts have been saved, many more have doubtless been destroyed. The loss to learning and letters is probably slight. But in estimating the strength of a tendency the numbers who were affected by it count as important testimony. Every woman whose mind was alert, demanding intellectual sustenance, and struggling towards self-expression, adds a further fraction of proof as to the vitality of the new impulse. And, while not susceptible of absolute verification, the general tantalizing consciousness of many shadowy presences of women whose ideas and efforts never reached the printed page is a not unimportant factor in one's personal conviction as to the very large number of women who were affected by the new unrest and the new aspiration hidden away under the ordinary routine of thought and work. But even without any such shadowy presences the list is long enough to be convincing.
Types of work but scantily represented
In an attempt to tabulate the variety of ways in which women sought self-expression, we note first those fields of endeavor in which their work was but scantily represented. In some cases these areas of restricted productivity are characteristic of the age in general, in some cases, the outcome of limitations imposed on women in particular.
One type of the woman interested in letters becomes practically non-existent in the period under discussion, and that is the patroness whose rank and wealth and intellectual tastes summoned about her a brilliant coterie of poets and men of science to whom she extended substantial aid. The patroness plays no important part in English life after Elizabethan times. Lady Bedford is the last noted representative. Mary North's little circle of literary ladies, and the Matchless Orinda's "Circle of Friendship" are coteries, but without a Lady Bountiful as the center. Lady Pakington comes nearer the type in her assemblage of Church of England divines. But on the whole the patroness and salon are not revived till the time of the bas bleus in the mid-eighteenth century, and then only in a modified form.
In the fine arts the attainments of women were slight and amateurish. Mary Beale was the only portrait-painter of distinction, and in landscape-painting no woman is represented by valuable canvases. But the same state of affairs held true of English men. With the solitary exception of Mr. Riley all of the noted portrait-painters in England before 1760 were foreigners. The landscape artists, too, were foreigners, or were mere copiers of the Italian or Flemish masters. So the deficiency of women in the fine arts may justly be counted but a part of the general national deficiency. The immediate and permanent success of women on the stage has been sufficiently emphasized. But it should also be noted that acting was a career necessarily limited to a comparatively small number of women.
Many kinds of work more or less professional in character were but slightly represented. Except for governesses in great families and the mistresses of boarding-schools for girls there were no women teachers, hence teaching as an ultimate goal was eliminated as a determining factor in the kind of intellectual work pursued. Even the governesses were not chosen for scholarship, but for character and good-breeding. They had to do only with little children, and had no need for learning. And the school-mistresses secured outside masters for the various studies and accomplishments, confining their own work to morals and general management.
Women had so long had home medicaments to make and administer, the mistress of a great estate had so long been the sole resort in matters concerning the health of her dependents, that we might expect medicine to be one of the first important new fields conquered by women, but such was not the case. The Duchess of Newcastle, to be sure, gave her fancy free rein in the wide fields of anatomy and physiology. But besides such young women as Elizabeth Bury, renowned for her knowledge of simples and her skill in diagnosis, and Jane Barker who followed her brother's lead in reading medical works, there are no English women on record before 1760 as having given themselves with any serious interest to the study of medicine. The only possible exception would be in midwifery. In this department of medical or surgical practice women had the matter almost in their own hands. Mrs. Pilkington says that her father, Dr. Van Lewen, was the first man midwife in England. There must, then, have been developed among women considerable knowledge and practical skill. But their work was in no sense of professional rank. There was no definite training required, there was no way of applying standardized tests of excellence, and there was no organization among the women themselves. And almost no women attempted to put into book form the results of their experience. Mrs. Jane Sharp's The Midwives' Book (1671) is a solitary exception. Mrs. Cellier's book advocating the maintenance of a "Corporation of Skilful Midwives" is the only suggestion I have found looking towards professional training and recognition such as nurses now receive.
In housekeeping matters women were also in the main content to do the work without any formal statements of the mysteries of their art. There was much passing about of receipts for cookery, for toilet preparations, for curative drinks and salves, but when these were collected and published, it was usually the work of some enterprising book-seller. Mrs. Hannah Woolley, Mrs. "A. M.," and Mrs. Hannah Glasse, are the only women I have come upon who could even in the faintest way foreshadow the great mass of present-day writing on questions of domestic science.
Although the satire in some of the comedies would indicate that women were manifesting some interest in the new discoveries through the telescope and the microscope, and were sometimes giving themselves to laboratory experiments in dissection, there is no serious record of any real research in science by women. Even Mrs. Blackwell's exquisite and accurate botanical work is an artistic rather than a scientific achievement so far as she herself is concerned. Her botanical facts were not entirely the result of personal investigation.
To be "the breeders of children in their low age" had always been so unquestionably the province of women that they would supposedly be past-masters in that art, and it might be expected that they would use the first freedom of their pen to write such things as would suit the tastes and needs of children. Again, such is not the case. But it must be recognized that there was nowhere any catering to the literary needs of children. Bunyan's Book for Boys and Girls (1680), Mason's Little Catechism (1693), Watts's Divine and Moral Songs for Children (1720) represent a few attempts to render religious truth more palatable to the child's mind, but real literature for children did not begin till 1744. Mr. Newberry's Little Pretty Pocket Book of that year initiated a kind of literature the vast extent of which can now hardly be estimated. And in the earliest period of literature for children Mrs. Collyer's Christmas Box and Miss Fielding's Little Female Academy, both in 1749, must take an honorable place.
One more kind of work for which women have manifested exceptional ability in modern times is in the conduct of humanitarian enterprises. Traditionally they were the loaf-givers. The new thing was to organize generosity into permanent efficiency and to make it operative beyond the limits of the family estate. Mrs. Bovey and Lady Elizabeth Hastings are early instances of women devoting time, mentality, and money to the development of systematic benevolence. But there were few women whose economic independence and sense of civic responsibility were so happily united.
Still another realm in which women to-day are finding large opportunity was practically closed to the women of earlier times, and that is public speaking. Except among the Quakers no woman spoke, on any subject whatsoever, before an audience. She might sing or she might act with applause. But talking was outside her bounds. Acting was but repeating the words of others; singing was a gift of the gods; but talking to an audience, whether to delight or instruct, carried plain implications of self-conscious superiority in knowledge or power. It was incredibly unfeminine and not to be endured. On this topic the authority of St. Paul was still unquestioned.
If from the women who are to-day preparing for some sort of professional work, we should exclude all who expect to teach, all who are planning to enter upon some sort of scientific research, all who are training themselves for public speaking, all who are preparing for the effective management of large enterprises, all who are writing on domestic or medical matters, the scope of feminine activity would be almost unbelievably narrowed. These various kinds of work are now recognized channels through which whatever ability a woman may have may find expression. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries if a woman had a good mind and felt impelled to use it, none of these avenues were normally open to her. It is difficult to imagine what the withdrawal of all these opportunities would mean in the reduction of adequate stimuli to good work. Hence the few women who did pioneer work in these various departments must have been moved by some strong urgency of the spirit. They were adventurers lured by the fascination of the new and the untried, and their effort is significant even when the region they conquered proved to be but the barren edge of a great continent.
It was in writing that women were least hampered, and, as has been stated, it was in writing that we find their work most varied and abundant.
Women playwrights
As playwrights they were especially successful in comedy. Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Centlivre take a very creditable rank in the comedy of lively intrigue and social satire. Tragedy appealed to more women writers than did comedy, but they were less successful in that realm. Tragedy was considered so inherently virtuous that the most high-minded could find in it edification, and young girls who were forbidden attendance on comedies were freely allowed to witness tragedies. For this reason women writers with dramatic aspirations, but to whom the license of the comedy was distasteful, applied themselves to tragedy. That Catherine Cockburn's Fatal Friendship should be counted the best of these tragedies is perhaps a sufficient condemnation of the entire series. But it must be again remembered that it was not an age in which any writers excelled in tragedy. The heroic plays of Dryden, the domestic tragedy of Otway, and here and there a play of some contemporary vogue, such as Ambrose Philips's Distressed Mother and Addison's Cato, practically make up the list. Of the tragedies recorded by Genest between 1660 and 1760 very few of those having any but the most ephemeral success are by contemporary authors. Hence the failure of women in this realm is in accordance with the trend of the times.
Fiction
Novels did not come into existence till so late in the period under discussion that we have little chance to test women in this field which later proved to be peculiarly their own. Mrs. Behn's romances, with their realistic detail, their high-wrought emotions, scenic setting, and didactic intent, gave early examples of what might be done. But it is not till after Richardson that women had conspicuous success in works of fiction. After Mrs. Behn and before 1760 we have only the scandalous annals of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Haywood, Miss Barker's inchoate autobiographic tales, Mrs. Lennox's satiric novel, and the didactic stories of Mrs. Collyer and Miss Fielding.
Poetry
In an age when facile versifying was counted a gentleman's accomplishment, and when the heroic couplet offered a form in which mechanical precision could be tested by the rule of the thumb, it would be strange if women with some literary knack did not write poetry. And it is true that nearly every woman who wielded a pen trained it sometimes into the conventional pindarics or heroics. But on the whole, with most women writers poetry was but an occasional resource. It was not their chosen métier. There were, in fact, but two women, Mrs. Philips and Lady Winchilsea, who took their stand on poetry as their life's achievement. Orinda had grace, tenderness, and fine feeling. Ardelia had subtlety of intuition, a delicate independence of taste, and an occasional high excellence of form and phrase. By these qualities these two women are marked off from the poetasters of their day and have some permanent importance. But the mass of verse by women was undistinguished. It offers, however, some interesting general characteristics.
Compared to the total amount of verse by women, religious verse takes an unexpectedly small place. In no case that I can recall were a woman's religious poems her best work. The most popular as well as the most turgid and commonplace sort of religious writing was the Scripture paraphrase. Poems of pure devotion, of prayer and of praise, are less often found. In such as do occur we might expect the personal note, something winged and lyrical. But they are disappointingly timid and imitative. We have various proofs that there was no absolute lack of poignant spiritual conflict and endeavor during this period, but religious emotion was apparently so accustomed to decorous forms that it could not be driven into the nakedness of soul consequent upon religious abasement or ecstasy. The best religious verse of the period avoids strong emotions. It consists of gentle moralizing touched by personal feeling. There is a note of genuineness in the emphasis on fortitude, on self-control and self-abnegation, and on melancholy endurance. But the most that can be said for the religious poetry by women is that it was about on a par with contemporary religious poetry by men. It was an age of strong church affiliations and of theological discussion, but it was not an age that invited the expression of fervent religious emotion.
There is also little genuine love poetry. There is much that is friendly and affectionate, but almost nothing that is impassioned. This, however, is a negation applicable to all verse of the period. Few memorable love lyrics are to be found in English verse between Waller's Go, lovely rose, and the songs of Robert Burns. But women had been so long emancipated from reason and traditionally given over to the feelings that love poetry, at least of the sentimental variety, might have been thought their natural output. As a matter of fact, the case was quite otherwise. The poetry by women had not, in general, what would be termed a feminine tone. Women do not seem to have given their instincts free play when they took up the poetical quill. Poetry was either a trifling temporary resource or it was a serious, even solemn affair, and must concern itself with weighty matters of vice and virtue. The style in poetry is consequently much less effective than in prose. There is almost nowhere through all the mass of this verse any brightness of fancy, any playfulness of wit, any mollifying sense of humor. There is little lightness of touch, there are few felicities and unforgettable lines. And there is more of scorn, indignation, and didacticism than of sweetness and light.
Autobiography and letters
In various departments of prose women writers reached an excellence considerably above the general prose average of the time. This is especially true in certain rather new branches of writing. The fragments of autobiography that have come down to us are almost without exception fresh, unpretentious, and delightful pieces of work. The records given us by the Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. Hutchinson, Miss Barker, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth Elstob, and others, simply whet the appetite for more. If Anne Killigrew and Anne Kingsmill and Bathsua Pell and Lady Elizabeth Hastings, and very many other ladies, had left similar records we should have a legacy of simple, straightforward, and individual prose worth reams of pindarics or theological discussions. The intimate personal appeal of the subject-matter seemed to make for a picturesqueness and homely vigor of style. The only women who wrote biography—the Duchess of Newcastle, Lady Fanshawe, and Mrs. Hutchinson—wrote about their husbands, so they were, in reality, carrying on the autobiographical element. And their success is perhaps due to an intimate knowledge of the facts, and a strong personal interest such as had animated the sketches of their own childhood. At any rate, these three Lives rank in interest with Evelyn's Mrs. Godolphin and Roger North's Lives of the Norths. Letters belong in the same general realm, and offer some of the most entertaining writing of the period. There are many reasons for thinking that letter-writing was a more general feminine resource than existing records would indicate. Such letters as are now extant have been preserved almost by accident. They were not counted of contemporary importance and very few of them reached publication before the nineteenth century. Yet the list is fairly representative.
We have the letters of Margaret Blagge to Mr. Godolphin; those of the Osborne ladies, Dorothy, Martha, and Sarah; Orinda's epistles to Poliarchus; Mrs. Evelyn's letters to her son's tutor; Mrs. Rowe's to the Duchess of Somerset; Mrs. Delany's to numerous friends; Miss Talbot's to Miss Carter; Miss Carter's to a host of correspondents; Mrs. Cockburn's to her lovers and to her niece; and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's records from many lands as well as her early letters to Mr. Montagu. As a body of documentary material these letters are invaluable. And they are interesting reading. The keen eye for dress and customs would have qualified some of these ladies for the novel of manners. There are pungent character sketches and witty comment on social foibles. These letters show often a humor and gayety of spirit such as find entrance into no other forms of feminine writing. And the style is almost uniformly easy and natural. Dorothy Osborne's objection to stilted and pedantic letters could have been applicable to few women letter-writers. They had no thought of a public and so escaped the snare of professionalism in tone. The letters contain records of love and of grief, of moments of vivid emotion, of deep spiritual experience, of friendships and of hatreds, of hopes and despairs, and because all these came from the mind and the heart of the writer they are told in a convincing manner.
Travels
Another similar realm is that of travels. When women went on tours they saw everything that was to be seen. And they set down the details with infinite patience. Celia Fiennes has no literary style at all, but no other description of England between 1650 and 1760 contains so much detail worth remembering. She was the most spirited and indefatigable of travelers, and this intensity of interest found its way into her book and communicates itself to the reader. Had she kept her diary with any remotest thought of publication she might have been more lucid, but she might also have been less vigorous, individual, and picturesque. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Letters created a sensation, as well they might, for as a writer of travels she out-distanced all competitors.
The kinds of prose writing so far indicated were all animated by personal experience and interest. That is certainly one secret of their charm. And it is to be observed that they are marked by qualities of observation and analysis later proved natural to women by their success in fiction. But there is another department of writing less naturally associated with women in which they were nevertheless conspicuous for merit, and that is some form of controversial writing.
Propaganda
When women espoused and defended a cause, it was with a heat of personal conviction that robbed them of self-consciousness and contributed to vigor and animation of style. Even earlier women, such as Anna van Schurman and Mrs. Makin, who felt that to be convincing they must show their ability to argue with the most rigid scholastic apparatus, now and then had passages of high-wrought feeling or indignation that burst the trammels of their logical form, and carry even to modern readers a sense of the intensity of conviction that moved the writer. Bathsua Pell's Essay in 1673 is an admirable piece of propagandist writing. No defender of higher education in the early days of women's colleges was more pungent in attack, or tossed off the unmeaning arguments of opponents with more contemptuous ease. In writing on the higher education of women it is with the zeal of an enthusiast that Mary Astell marshals the details of her new scheme. She had thought her plan through to the end and she describes it with clearness and precision. Its noble possibilities give rise to seriousness and dignity of style. And when her mind is overborne by a recognition of the many foolish women and the scornful men who would render her ideals abortive, she is roused to passages of energetic satire. She is even acrimonious and vituperative. There is nothing soft or appealing or feminine about her work. If she convinces it will not be by the arts of her sex, but by argument and caustic attack. She does not entreat, she commands and instructs. The anonymous author of the Defence describes, with keen analysis, picturesque phrasing, and gay raillery, the beaux, the clodpate squires, the pedants, and the virtuosi of her day. Few contemporary satiric portraits are of more penetrating wit. "Sophia" of pamphlet fame carries on the successful propagandist writing. And Lady Winchilsea's one prose essay is indicative of her vigorous possibilities in speech when her ideas and feelings were involved. One point concerning the generally dignified tone of these essays in defense of women should be noted, and that is that they were not the outcome of personally bitter experiences or disappointments on the part of the authors. The writing was informed rather by a sense of high civic idealism and responsibility. Though the advancement of women is presented as a matter of justice, and of importance to women as individuals, the arguments always turn to a larger conception, and that is the service rendered to Society and the Church by educated women.
Religious experience and controversy
In religious controversy, also, women excelled. A practical or personal cause was not imperative. They wrote with equal vehemence, sincerity, and will to convince, when they were defending an abstract principle as when they were protesting against injustice, or trying to further some specific reform. Lady Masham, Susanna Hopton, Mary Astell, and Mrs. Cockburn sufficiently illustrate the success of women as disputants. The fact that nearly all the topics on which these religious controversialists wrote are now dead issues, and that the writing has inevitably passed into oblivion along with the ideas it championed, should not be allowed to obscure the very evident contemporary respect accorded women as redoubtable antagonists and able advocates. There were also women who wrote little, such as Lady Pakington and Lady Conway, to whom the best men of the day gave high esteem for the soundness of their patristic and philosophical learning, and for the acuteness of their thinking.
Writers on personal religious experience or on hortatory subjects do not reach so high a grade of work. The prodigious industry of various compilers, annotators, and note-takers—the true Church of England "sermon-tasters"—such as Lady Brooke and Lady Halkett, is less indicative of learning than of a pronounced religious bias. And in prose, as in verse, the free and natural expression of spiritual experience was not characteristic of the age.
That more of this controversial and religious writing was not published can hardly be counted a loss to literature. Religious meditations quicken the inner life, and the effort to put religious emotions and beliefs into some literary form must contribute to a more active mentality, but the resultant printed page is not necessarily of permanent interest. The ardors and acrimonies, the labyrinthine twisting of arguments, the niceties of interpretation, the array of authorities, are all a leaden weight to the modern reader. And most meditations on virtues and vices are hardly more stimulating. But we cannot pass the great mass of these religious writings without noting what a new impression they give us of social England, especially in the second half of the seventeenth century. A student of Restoration comedy sees the court of England in its most frivolous and morally repellent aspect. But these women whose minds were so set on religion were all members of the aristocracy. Margaret Blagge, Anne Killigrew, and Anne Kingsmill, women of the most sincere and ardent piety, were in intimate association with the courts of Charles II and James II. Lady Pakington, Lady Brooke, Lady Halkett, Lady Masham, Lady Russell, Mary Astell, Lady Elizabeth Hastings, and, later, Lady Huntington, were all by rank or especial opportunity in the highest and most exclusive social circles and so in contact with the profligacy of the court. Their extreme assiduity in all matters of religion, in church attendance, in private prayer, in meditation, in self-examination, in their austere moral standards, were a violent reaction from the evil life about them. In the homes and small social circles where their influence could be felt was being prepared a body of moral indignation, a desire for uprightness and purity of life, that gave to Jeremy Collier's attack on the stage in 1698 so overwhelming a response, and that was the sustaining force back of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
Work of women compared with contemporary work by men
The writing done by women between 1660 and 1760 is more impressive from its amount and variety than from any high excellence of its component parts. A mere calling of the great names of the period—Milton, Bunyan, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison, and Steele—is adequate to show that no woman of the time is comparable to these men in mental stamina and energy, or in deft literary manipulation. The dramatic work by women presents no such brilliant social satire as we find in Etherege and Wycherley, no wit so penetrating and sparkling as in Congreve's Way of the World, no humor so innocent and likable as in Steele's Tender Husband. In poetry Orinda and Ardelia make but a poor showing beside the giants of the day. There are no women writers on literary criticism even approaching the mastery of Dryden. There are no essayists with the light touch and social ease of Addison and Steele. There are no novelists to be ranked with Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding.
These rather damaging negations amount, however, in the final analysis, only to a statement that among the comparatively small number of women writers no one reached the pre-eminence of the eight or ten most distinguished literary men. But the same statement could be made concerning the crowd of men striving for success in authorship. Of most men it could be said that their best endeavors left wide unconquered fields between them and the elect. It is, indeed, much to say of women that, untrained, with no stimulus of money or fame, a considerable number of them yet attained to an honorable place in writers of a class below the best, and that in some realms such as autobiography, biography, travels, and letter-writing, and in writing inspired by some social reform, some propaganda of religion or ethics, they rank among the best of their time. The same may be said of their work in pure scholarship. Miss Elstob, Miss Carter, and Mrs. Collyer, in their respective fields of Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and German, were exact and thorough beyond the demands of contemporary standards.
But even if there were not many successes to record, the great amount of work done by women would still carry its own sort of proof. In establishing the existence of a tendency it is not the single brilliant example, the genius, the persons of extraordinary ability, that count. It is rather the aims, ambitions, attempts, of many persons variously striving in the same general direction.
Comedy an embodiment of current opinion
The general seventeenth and eighteenth century opinion concerning learned women finds fairly complete statement in contemporary comedy. The persistence of the learned lady as a comic type serves incidentally as corroborative proof of the increasing attention given by women to learned pursuits, for no stage type remains amusing from year to year unless personages at least moderately correspondent to the type exist in sufficient numbers to count as a factor in social life. A basis of reality is necessary to give the type currency. But the comedy is more important as voicing a general critical estimate of values. A character does not hold its own as a comic type unless to the mass of theater-goers it presents itself as out of focus with common sense. A moral or social judgment is implied. The laugh that followed Biddy Tipkin and Polly Honeycomb and Lydia Languish was a recognition of the absurdity involved in regulating real life by the rules of romance, and the underlying protest against too free access to fiction was quite in line with the diatribes of various grave moralists. So, too, with the learned lady. The comic character gained its point from the assumption on the part of the playwright and the audience that there was a fundamental incongruity between the lady and her learning. Learning did not belong to the lady, and when she assumed it she was thereby justly betrayed into all sorts of humiliations and absurdities. Back of every picture there was, consciously or unconsciously, the critical judgment. Learning and ladies do not coalesce. Either the lady abandons the learning or the learning spoils the lady.
There are two kinds of learned ladies represented in the comedy. In the case of young, lovely, and well-dowered girls, learning was but a foible. When convinced of its absurdity, these desirable maidens put aside their big folios and became the properly humble, adoring, and ignorant wives of the heroes whose sound good sense had shown them their folly. The unpleasanter elements of the comic portraits belong to dissatisfied wives whose souls were still bent on amorous adventure; to obsolescent ladies unwilling to confess the decay of their charms; to the old and the homely whom no bravery of attire and no battery of glances and graces could restore to the marriage market. To ladies of both classes Platonism is a name to conjure with. All physical manifestations of love are abhorrent to them. The mystic union of souls is as much as the truly refined can tolerate. To the young learned ladies this doctrine of austerity has at first a genuine appeal, but is quickly proved impracticable and fallacious. To the other ladies virtue is but a screen to mask their discredited charms.
The knowledge of the learned ladies is as spurious as their virtue. They profess an intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek, and French seems their native tongue. They are at ease in the jargon of philosophical systems. They follow the telescope with the ardor of the Royal Society itself. Their studies are full of mathematical books and instruments. The scalpel and microscope lead them along the path of anatomical research. But in all this parade of learning there is no real scholarship. The ladies are pretentious and conceited, flaunting their false Latin and Greek before all comers, claiming to have explored the depths of knowledge when their short swallow-flights have scarcely brushed the surface.
The comedy may be said to embody the ordinary view as to the unsuitableness of learning for women. This implied critical negation is given a positive analogue in the actual training given to girls. Their early education was not neglected as is shown by the numbers of masters and tutors provided for the young daughters of good families. And from six to fourteen many girls were sent to the numerous boarding schools for young misses. But whether at home or in school the teaching included little more than deportment, accomplishments, and housewifery. These were what, in the language of Mr. Verney, would render a girl "considerable in the eyes of God and man." Hannah Wood's school was the most advanced of these minor schools for girls, and Sarah Fielding's Little Female Academy depicts the best that was done for younger girls. In any case education apparently ceased at fifteen or sixteen.
The schools provided for girls represent what it was in general thought that they needed. The comedy represents the absurdity of trying to pass these limits. Confirmatory of these views would be many private expressions by both men and women. There were, of course, hundreds of intelligent men to whom any change in the status of women seemed hostile to the best interests of society. And there were hundreds of women who flouted all thoughts of learning as essentially, eternally unfeminine. The Spectator records that at a certain period in the court of France it was counted a mark of ill-breeding to pronounce hard words right and that ladies not infrequently took occasion to use such words "that they might show a Politeness in murdering them." And the diatribes in the English feminist pamphlets from Bathsua Makin to "Sophia" show how many women in high circles boasted of ignorance as one of their charms.
Advanced opinions of a minority
But we come to quite a different state of affairs when we consider the opinions of the progressive minority. The proposed schemes for higher education, although without immediate practical result, are notable indications of a new era of thought. Bathsua Makin's was the first formulated plan. But her effort to graft new fruit on the old stock resulted in a singular mixture. Her impassioned desire to induct girls into the excellencies of higher learning was hampered in various ways. She could not lessen the attention paid to the accomplishments; she could not venture to push the school age beyond sixteen; and she could not make her beloved linguistics compulsory. What she did accomplish was not in the establishment of an ordered system. It was rather the impress of her tastes and advanced ideas on the minds of individual pupils. The girls who went from the Tottenham High Cross School to various distinguished homes in England had no alarmingly fluent or exact knowledge of Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. But they had all at least been invited to look within the portals of the palace of learning and some had found it rich and alluring. To all had come a new conception of the learning possible to women. Mrs. Makin's court prestige, her reputation for prodigious scholastic attainments, her courage, originality, and independence, made her a dignified and an authoritative figure. It is a matter of regret that full annals of her school were not preserved.
The education proposed by Dr. Hickes in his remarkable sermon in 1683, ten years after Mrs. Makin established her school, was not analyzed into details. But when he suggested for women seminaries of learning similar to Oxford and Cambridge with only such changes in the instruction and the regimen as might be found advisable to fit them for their lives as women, and when he urged rich and childless women to make their wealth serve humanity by founding such colleges for girls, he was too far ahead of his time to meet any immediate practical response, or even any opposition.
The next plan came from Mary Astell. This was a matured scheme. Her college was to be a sort of conventual retreat without vows and with an emphasis on the intellectual as well as the religious life. Publicity, college honors, degrees, were not thought of. There were to be no required studies, nor does she suggest even an orderly progression of lectures. The heterogeneous character of her proposed clientèle forbade any rigidity of plan. Mary Astell seems to have looked about her and found many women to whom the customary régime offered no satisfactory place. There were widows who did not choose remarriage, spinsters unwelcome in the homes allotted them by kinship, girls with dowries too slender to make an advantageous marriage probable, young heiresses subject to the too adventurous pursuit of impecunious lovers and so in need of a haven pending marriage. All these uncoördinated needs were to be met by the new institution. The plan was to provide agreeable surroundings wherein women could tranquilly and without hostile criticism work out their own salvation. Practical beneficence, teaching, study in various realms, religious meditation, were the avenues open to individual choice. To the women who remained permanently in the college a life of dignified achievement was possible. Upon the young women who were destined to be wives and mothers in important homes would be exerted an influence tending to ennoble them in their domestic relations, and the learning they had gained would prove a resource amidst the distractions and trials of life. The plan included too much, and the adjustments rendered necessary by its captivating flexibility would have taxed any organizer to the utmost. Perhaps it is as well that the scheme was not put to the test of practice. Mary Astell's contribution was in the idea she set forth and in her eloquent defense of that idea.
It is surprising that Defoe's plan for a woman's college should have been coincident with Mary Astell's, yet independent of it. Defoe's fertile imagination creates curious buildings in which to house his Academy. He evidently considers Mary Astell's plan as too loose in general structure and too religious in tone to be practicable. He narrows his work down to such studies as are given in public schools.
After Defoe we hear of no further plans for higher education. But the idea lingered in the minds of many. Richardson in Clarissa Harlowe suggests such an institution, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says that it was her youthful ambition to be foundress of a college. In Mrs. Centlivre's Basset Table the learned young Valeria is advised to found a woman's college in which the pupils shall be called "Valerians." The most curious and interesting embodiment of the scheme was that by Thomas Amory. The fullness and realistic precision of detail in his account of the "Hertfordshire Religious Retirement" were such as to make his heroine, the foundress, accepted as an historical personage. The fictitious narrative is, however, of especial significance as showing the persistence of Mary Astell's abortive plan.
In complete harmony with these various schemes for giving women greater intellectual freedom was the attitude in many private homes. It is quite surprising to discover how many studious girls had a favorable home environment. Elizabeth Jocelyn's grandfather, a distinguished bishop, conducted her studies. Mary North's father "fostered her little assemblage of female literati." Lady Pakington was taught by the learned Sir Norton Knatchbull. Lucy Apsley's father spurred her on to outdo her brothers in Latin, and Mr. Hutchinson fell in love with her for her poetry and learning. Dudleya North had the same teachers and studies as her brothers until they went to the University. Damaris Cudworth's mind was her father's joy and pride and Locke was her tutor. Bishop Burnet provided for his daughter Mary all possible opportunities in books and art. John Evelyn cherished the intellectual tastes of his daughter and showed her writings and paintings with pride. Anne Baynard, Anna Hume, Elizabeth Singer, were girls whose early literary tendencies found paternal approval and aid. William Elstob gave fullest sympathy and guidance to his ambitious young sister, the indefessa comes of his studies. And Elizabeth Carter's intellectual needs ruled the household.
These protected home studies were not unlike the opportunities offered girls in Tudor times and had the same disadvantages. There were no ordered courses of study. The depths and shallows of a girl's learning were largely dependent on the tastes of her father or tutor. She entered upon such a line of work as offered itself, prepared herself for it as she went along, and achieved what she could. As compensations for a training so desultory were the concentration and zest of the work, the undisciplined ardor of the pioneer, contact with great books and men of well-seasoned learning.
It is important to note that these scattered homes where the daughter found herself free to develop learned tastes were doubtless more numerous than is at first apparent. We know of a few such homes because of chance published records. But there must have been many homes where the lettered leisure such as we find in the Evelyn family, in Lord Winchilsea's at Eastwell, and in Archbishop Secker's at Canterbury, was shared in to the fullest extent by the ladies of the household. No daughter of the family might attain to notice as a writer, but the result of such reading and thinking would be a high level of general intelligence which might, in the mass, be of more significance than authorship.
More important still as indicative of a new era is the favor accorded learned women by many men of high standing. The adulation given the Duchess of Newcastle may have been inspired by her rank and wealth, but Jeremy Taylor, Cowley, and the Earl of Roscommon had no such reason for their homage to Orinda. The clergymen who gathered at Lady Pakington's rejoiced in her great learning. Dryden gave to Anne Killigrew such praise as awaits few poets and artists. The Norths gave honorable public recognition of Dudleya North's remarkable linguistic attainments. The family circle at Eastwell applauded Lady Winchilsea's poems. Mrs. Blackwell's work received formal recognition from the most learned doctors of the day. Of the early novel-writers Richardson is so well recognized as the sex's champion, and as the champion of learned ladies in particular, that his services need no further emphasis. Fielding's satirical picture of Mrs. Western ends with the conclusion that "petticoats should not meddle," but he more than turns the scale by the opinions he expresses in the Prefaces to his sister's books. Most men of ability preferred as companions women of good minds and a fair stock of ideas. Even Bishop Burnet, while afraid of general education, praises the intellectual endowment and learned attainments of each of his three wives. And Swift, though contemptuous of the race of women, for close comradeship chose Stella, a woman of wit, sense, and learning, in preference to some one of the doll or clinging-vine type. And his amiability, though rather too condescending, towards various literary ladies, may in part offset his brutal general statements. The fact is, nearly every woman of learned or literary attainments was accorded praise—even an undue meed of praise—from her immediate circle and from at least a few of her distinguished contemporaries.
Furthermore, publication of worthy work was made a matter of urgency. Dr. Hickes did all in his power to bring Elizabeth Elstob's Anglo-Saxon work before the learned public of his day, and it was he who insisted on the publication of Susanna Hopton's letters. Lady Masham's Letters of the Love of God were brought out only on the insistence of John Norris. Mrs. Cockburn's early philosophical writings received immediate praise from Bishop Burnet, John Norris, and John Locke. But for Archbishop Secker Miss Carter's Epictetus would have remained in manuscript. It was through Bishop Burnet's insistence that his wife's Meditations were published.
And still one more debt must be recorded, for some of the most important books in behalf of women were written by men. From Gerbier to Ballard the list is an interesting one. No woman ventured on statements so astounding as those which Poulain de la Barre deduced from his fundamental assumption of the equality of the sexes. His arguments may have been but an academic pushing of a principle to its logical conclusion, or his book may even have been satirical in intent, but the English translation was evidently made in all seriousness and served as a basis for "Sophia's" most audacious claims. Specific attempts to bring female genius into knowledge and repute were by men. John Duncomb's Feminead in 1751 leads the list, and before 1760 we have the Poems by Eminent Ladies of Bonnell and Thornton, the Lives by Theophilus Cibber, the exaltation of learned women in John Buncle, and, chief of all, the monumental work by George Ballard.
In summary it seems fair to say that while there was a general opinion adverse to the learning of women and suspicious of it, there were yet many men who seriously held views that would not sound antiquated in any modern defense of the higher education of women.
Education in relation to the Church
In all the discussions of plans for the intellectual training of women two suggestive limitations are to be noted. One is that nearly all men and women who favored the higher education did so because of the advantage it would be to the Church. The Quakers recognized the right of women to speak in public because they believed such action authorized by the Scriptures, but the freedom so granted did not go beyond religious topics. Susanna Wesley's ministry to her husband's parishioners was excusable only because her teaching was in the service of the Church. And the clergymen of high rank who favored learned women did so because the piety of these women would probably prove more advantageous if it were trained. Even Ballard put extra emphasis on the ladies who read the Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek. And it was probably ethical rather than literary standards that precluded any mention in his record of women such as Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Haywood. In all Ballard's many pages I do not recall even a hint that his learned ladies could be accused of any irregularities of life or doctrine. And it is because women are naturally devout that Amory chooses learned young ladies to expound his new religion.
The basis of Bishop Burnet's objection to Mary Astell's college was that a body of women thus set apart for learning might conceivably prove inimical to the Church. The isolated learned lady under the charge of some wise husband or father could presumably be guided in right paths or suppressed. But who could give bonds for a college of learned women? It was the attitude towards the Church that turned the scale against or in favor of higher education. In point of fact, no woman—not even the most profligate—wrote against religion. On the contrary, all women of letters—even the most profligate—wrote in favor of religion. Genuinely, or as a matter of convention, they all upheld virtue and the authority of the Church.
Outcome of education not foreseen
A second limitation is that the ultimate outcome of any greatly increased intellectual freedom for women was but dimly descried. If women were permitted to pursue learning into remote fastnesses, if they were allowed to thread their difficult way through the entanglements of philosophical disputations, if they were encouraged to look out upon the follies of life with satiric or reformatory intent, further steps in independence would seem an inevitable sequence. But such steps were not only not taken, they were not even foreseen. Nor did the most advanced men and women make any claims extending beyond the freedom to read, write, and think according to their own desires. Home duties and relationships remained unchanged. Bathsua Makin said that higher education was not designed to make wives self-assertive, but more reasonably and intelligently submissive. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mary Astell, the two most advanced and independent women of their day, are at one with the theory of the divinely ordained headship of man. Their bitterness of tone contains no thought of change, no hint of rebellion. Women were still under the dominion of fathers and husbands. The difference was that these fathers and husbands were in numerous instances willing to accord a very much enlarged freedom. But the next step was not taken by virtue of which the final right of decision as to her own thought and action would have belonged to the woman herself.
There was, furthermore, no claim made by women for any part in public life. Mary Wollstonecraft's suffrage programme of 1791, mild as it was, would have seemed to Mary Astell an incredible overturning of feminine ideals. Mary Astell and her congeners could not see that the putting of educational weapons into the hands of women was a concession carrying with it all later demands of feminism. The advocates of higher education for women were blind to the potentialities of the situation. There was no immediate following-up of theory into action. The idea of woman as a self-sufficing, self-directing individuality, responsible for her own destiny, and capable of playing an important part in civic and national affairs, did not come into clear outline until two centuries after Mary Astell's pronunciamento. In the period before 1760 we become aware of a moving on the waters. We are conscious of a great stir of preparation as for a crisis. Many paths converge towards one goal, but no goal is reached. Plans and achievements and favorable utterances seem to halt in mid-air.
A detailed study of the various ways in which women sought for fuller and richer intellectual life shows in what isolation they worked, with what lack of leadership, with what a depressing sense of the futility of their uncoördinated efforts. The beginnings of the new ideals for women were so modest and unassuming, so casual, so without self-consciousness, that at the time they could hardly be recognized as beginnings. Evidences of a new vitality appear in the retrospect as numerous and promising, but in reality each thinker of new thoughts stood out alone, a solitary champion, scarcely realizing that in other parts of the field other champions were fighting under the same banners. We can now bring together many rather advanced statements in favor of educating girls. But these were often mere passing isolated utterances. There was nothing like an organized propaganda, no body of public opinion growing steadily in mass and power till it became dominant. There are hundreds of blades pushing up through the dark earth, but the field is never quite ripe for harvest. There is so much reasoning, so much able thought, so much sincerity of feeling and aspiration, and there are so many women reaching out into new mental realms, that a decisive revolution of opinion seems often imminent. But the world listens unconvinced, and in the actual affairs of life apparently applies the old standards.
What was actually accomplished in the century before 1760 was a lavish sowing of seed, a steady infiltration of new ideas, a breaking up of old certainties as to woman's place in domestic and civic life, and an accumulation of examples proving women capable of the most varied intellectual aptitudes and energies.
THE END