As a rule, however, women in everyday life were secluded from the bustle of public affairs. According to Walpole, after the Restoration, the really respectable, well-conducted members of the female sex were neither seen nor heard outside their own home circle. That they led very dull lives seems pretty obvious, for they had neither the resources of learning and culture nor the distractions of society. But they enjoyed more personal freedom than women on the Continent. The Prince of Tuscany, who visited England, observes of the women—
“They live with all the liberty that the custom of the country authorizes. This custom dispenses with that rigorous constraint and reservedness which are practised by the women of other countries, and they go whithersoever they please, either alone or in company.”
Gentlewomen of good position were accustomed, in the seventeenth century, to live in a simple way, within the four walls of their home, occupied with domestic affairs. The wife of Sir John Coke, who was Secretary of State in the reign of Charles I., when she writes to her husband from the country, discourses to him of the children and of the needlework she is doing for the baby in homely fashion, and thanks him for sending her a new gown and hat, as if she were unused to fine clothes. Lady Anne Halkett, who played a notable part in the political troubles of her day, lived a quiet life enough when public affairs did not demand her attention, and spent her time like any good housewife. She was fond of gathering herbs and compounding powders and conserves for the sick poor.
“She was ever imployed either in doing or reaping good: in the summer season she vyed with the bee or ant, in gathering herbs, flowers, worms, snails, etc., for the still or limbeck, for the mortar or boyling pan, etc., and was ordinarily then in a dress fitted for her still-house; making preparations of extracted waters, spirits, ointments, conserves, salves, powders, etc., which she ministred every Wednesday to a multitude of poor infirm persons, besides what she dayly sent abroad to persons of all ranks who consulted her in their maladies.”
Mary Astell, however, who was so anxious about the intellectual advancement of her sex, blames Englishwomen for not excelling in the domestic talents, and upholds the example of the Dutch women, who, she says, not only manage all the household affairs, but—
“keep the books, balance the accounts, and do all the business with as much dexterity and exactness as their own or our men can do.”
Englishwomen could certainly not have coped with accounts if their arithmetic were on a par with their spelling. But they appear to have had complete control over domestic matters, or at least to have impressed foreigners with that belief.
“So great,” wrote one visitor, “is the respect which the English entertain for their women, that in their houses the latter govern everything despotically, making themselves feared by the men, courageous as they are on other occasions.”
In the opinion of a contemporary English writer,[46] husbands were by no means free agents—
“There is also the want of halfe a man’s liberty in marriage; for he is not absolutely himselfe, though many believe when they are going to Church upon their wedding day they are going into the land of liberty.... For my part I am not married; if I were I should finde my wings clipt and the collar too streight for my neck.”