“Under the Commonwealth society assumed a new and stern aspect. Women were in disgrace; it was everywhere declared from the pulpit that woman caused man’s expulsion from Paradise, and ought to be shunned by Christians as one of the greatest temptations of Satan. ‘Man,’ said they, ‘is conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity; it was his complacency to women that caused his first debasement; let man not therefore glory in his shame; let him not worship the fountain of his corruption.’ Learning and accomplishments were alike discouraged, and women confined to a knowledge of cooking, family medicines, and the unintelligible theological discussions of the day.”
If Cromwell’s “Saints,” with their deadly hatred of Roman Catholicism, had been told that their views coincided with certain portions of the early teaching of the abhorred Church, they would have vehemently repelled the accusation. But the Puritans, in their revolt against beauty and pleasure, in their cramped conception and distorted views of the position of women, were only following the lead of the Fathers and the monks of the fourth century, who made of Christianity a revolting and immoral form of asceticism.
A kind of moral dislocation was going on, forming a canker in social life. With the excesses of the court on the one hand and the austerities of the Puritans on the other, there was a constant interaction going on, each party goading the other into greater extremes. The deterioration of moral tone on the one side, and the perversion of thought on the other, affected the national life injuriously, and retarded the intellectual progress of women.
There was, to begin with, an unstable throne. The Stuarts were weak rulers, and the people felt the relaxing of the strong hand of the Tudors. James I., untrained for his position, was a very undesirable sovereign, and earned for himself ridicule and dislike. One of his peculiarities was to affect a great contempt for women, and to scoff at men who treated them with respect. No wonder that he was held in abhorrence by the court ladies, and that there were loud complaints of his Majesty’s want of gallantry.
Then there was a tendency to listlessness, and especially to mental inertia, after the revival of learning in the sixteenth century. The tension could not be sustained. And there were special difficulties arising from the circumstances of the time. The destruction of so many seats of learning by the dissolution of the Religious Houses was a blow to education. Nothing had arisen to take the place of the monastic schools. How little provision there was may be judged by the following remarks, made on the establishment of a school for the sons of gentlemen in the second half of the seventeenth century:—
“It is sufficiently known that the subjects of his Majestie’s dominions have, naturally, as noble minds and as able bodies as any nation of the earth, and therefore deserve all accommodations for the advancing of them either in speculation or action. Neverthelesse such hath been the neglect or undervalueing of ourselves and our own abilities, and over-valueing of forreigne teachers, that hitherto no such places for the education and trayning up of our own young nobilitie and gentrie in the practise of arms and arts have been instituted here in England as are in Italy, France, and Germany, but that by a chargeable and sometimes an unfortunate experience we, to our own losse and disgrace, doe finde the noble and generous youth of this kingdome is sent beyond the seas, to learn such things at excessive rates, from strangers abroad, wherein they might be as well, and with lesse expense and danger, instructed here at home.”
If little attention were given to providing for the training of youths, still less was paid to that of girls, for whom there was not the compensation of being “sent beyond the seas.” Even for a gentleman’s daughters it was not thought necessary that they should learn anything thoroughly except housewifery.
“Let them learne plaine workes of all kind so they take heed of too open seeming. Instead of song and musick let them learn cookery and laundry, and instead of reading Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Arcadia,’ let them read the grounds of good huswifery. I like not a female poetesse at any hand: let greater personages glory their skill in musicke, the posture of their bodies, their knowledge in languages, the greatnesse and freedome of their spirits, and their arts in arraigning of men’s affections at their flattering faces: this is not the way to breede a private gentleman’s daughter.”[41]
The author of the above remarks suggests that where there were several daughters, one should be left with the mother, and the others drafted off into some other household, such as that of a merchant, or lawyer, or country gentleman, to gain experience and multiply their matrimonial chances.
It is obvious that the custom of sending children away to board in families was still common in the seventeenth century, and that the domestic ideal had not much enlarged. Women are still to study housewifery before all else, and to shun learning as an unprofitable thing. The profession of marriage is the only one proper to women. “Loke to thi doughten,” advises an early English poet—