But keep the question off, you keep the saint."
Everything should be done to render intriguing dangerous, if not impossible. The building should be of three plain fronts, "that the eye might at a glance see from one coin to the other, the gardens walled in the same triangular figure, with a large moat and but one entrance." But the restraint would be only relative, for only those were to be admitted into the seclusion of the college who were willing to live there, and even they were not to be confined a moment longer than the same voluntary choice inclined them.
Defoe realised that upon an absolute separation from the opposite sex depended the success of his undertaking. We seem to be listening to Lilia in Tennyson's Princess saying: "But I would make it death for any male thing but to peep at us", when Defoe pleads the advisability of an act of parliament making it "felony for any man to enter by force or fraud into the house, or to solicit any woman though it were to marry, while she was in the house." Any woman willing to receive the advances of a suitor, might leave the establishment, whilst those anxious to "discharge themselves of impertinent addresses" would be sure at any time to find a refuge in it.
The plan of instruction is made relative to the natural inclinations of the sex. An important place is to be given to music and dancing, "because they are their darlings", and to foreign languages, particularly French and Italian, "and I would venture the injury of giving a woman more tongues than one." Books are recommended, especially on historical subjects, to make them understand the world, nor are "the graces of speech", and "the necessary air of conversation" forgotten, in which the usual education was so defective.
In the solution he proposes to the problem of female erudition, Defoe was equally effective. He recognises that it will not do to fit all women into a universal harness. Allowance must be made for individuality. "To such whose genius would lead them to it" he would deny no sort of learning. He is even roused to an ecstatic pitch of enthusiasm by the contemplation of the ideal female which his imagination conjures up before his mind's eye. "Without partiality; a woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate part of God's creation, the glory of her Maker, and the great instance of his singular regard to man, his darling creature, to whom he gave the best gift either God could bestow or man receive", to which he adds that education may make of any woman "a creature without comparison, whose society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments." God has given to all mankind souls equally capable, and the entire difference between the sexes proceeds "either from accidental differences in the make of their bodies, or from the foolish difference of education." And Defoe winds up with the bold assertion that all the world are mistaken in their practice about women, "for I cannot think that God Almighty ever made them such delicate and glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind, with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men, and only to be stewards of our houses, cooks and slaves."
In direct opposition to the opinion of the Dean of St. Patrick's, holding women to be the main cause of their own depravity and endowing them with a very limited share of intelligence rendering them forever inferior to men, stand out the views of at least one individual member of the sex. While fully sharing Swift's disapproval of the actual condition of women, she felt more inclined to follow Defoe in blaming the other half of mankind for refusing them every opportunity to show their possibilities. The tyranny of the male sex aroused the burning indignation of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose feelings found vent both in her voluminous correspondence and in her, mostly occasional, poetry. She was most vehement in her denunciation of the treatment of married women by their husbands, which she made an argument against matrimony, and in favour of the virginal state, which at least ensured to women a certain amount of freedom and leisure. "Wife and servant are the same, but only differ in the name", and accordingly women are exhorted to "shun that wretched state, and all the fawning flatt'rers hate."[24] She did not, like Swift, believe in the moral superiority of man, and called marriage "a lottery, where there is (at the lowest computation) ten thousand blanks to a prize." Being all her life a furious reader, she had in her earliest years imbibed the romantic notions of d'Urfé's Astrée and of de Scudéry's long-winded romances of Cyrus and Clélie, causing her to deeply regret the utter loss of that platonic ideal of gallantry with its tendency to elevate the mind and to instil honourable sentiments which had so charmed her hours of meditation. In spite of the fact that her passion for literature met with little or no encouragement, and that her own education had been, according to her own statement[25] "one of the worst in the world"—being an exact parallel to that of which the unfortunate Clarissa Harlowe became the much-lamented victim—her erudition was such, that Pope—previous to their quarrel, when he said some very nasty things about her—playfully wondered what punishment might be in store for one who, not content, like Eve, with a single apple, "had robbed the whole tree".
Her own marriage to Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu was hardly a success. His diplomatic career, however, gave his wife the much wished-for opportunity to cultivate her understanding by means of foreign travel. As a result of her experiences at Constantinople she was enabled on the one hand to furnish the medical science with the means of successfully combating that most destructive disease: the smallpox, and on the other to enrich literature with a correspondence which bespeaks a profound knowledge of the world, combined with great sagacity and a wonderful discriminating power, and cannot fail to charm even the modern reader with the freshness and variety of its descriptions. Both style and descriptive manner show a pronounced resemblance to Mary Wollstonecraft's "Letters from Sweden", written nearly eighty years later. A preface to Lady Mary's Letters, which were not published until her death, was written in 1724 by Mrs. Astell, who certainly did not deserve the description given of her by the first editor of the Letters as "the fair and elegant prefacer", being "a pious, exemplary woman, and a profound scholar, but as far from fair and elegant as any old schoolmaster of her time."[26] Her friendship for Lady Mary found its origin in the circumstance that she saw in the latter's talents the conclusive evidence of that mental equality of the sexes which she made it her business to demonstrate. "I confess I am malicious enough to desire that the world should see to how much better purpose the Ladies travel than their Lords; and that, whilst it is surfeited with male travels all in the same tone, and stuffed with the same trifles, a lady has the skill to strike out a new path and to embellish a worn-out subject with variety of fresh and elegant entertainment." That this praise is—at least partly—due to considerations of feminism, appears from the following verses:
"Let the male authors with an envious eye
Praise coldly, that they may the more decry;
Women (at least I speak the sense of some)