In 1691 there appeared A Dialogue concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex. Written to Eugenia by W. Walsh. The Preface by John Dryden says of women: "For my own part, who have always been their Servant, and have never drawn my Pen against them, I had rather see some of them prais'd extraordinarily, than any of them suffer by detraction: And that in this Age, and at this time particularly, wherein I find more Heroines than Heroes."
The dialogue is between Misogynes and Philogynes: Misogynes brings up Solomon, Euripides, Simonides, Lucian, St. Chrysostom, and Juvenal, the Epigrammatists, Comick Poets, and Satyrists, as a dreadful array of the ancients against women, showing at least that these ancients "had a very commendable faculty of calling Names." Misogynes especially dislikes "the Learned Woman, who runs mad for the love of hard words, who talks a mixt Jargon, or Lingua Franca, and has spent a great deal of time to make her capable of talking Nonsense in four or five different languages."[422]
Do you not think Learning and Politics become a Woman as ill as riding astride? [he asks]. Do you not, in answer to these, fetch me a Sappho out of Greece; a Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi, out of Rome; an Anna Maria Schurman out of Holland; and think that in shewing me three Learned Women in three thousand years, you have gain'd your point?
Philogynes answers that he shall continue in his opinion that learning is suitable for women
'till you have answer'd Anna Maria Shurman's Arguments in their behalf, and 'till you have taken away her self, who is one of the best Arguments.[423] 'T is possible everybody does not know, that she was very well skill'd in the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabick, Turkish, Greek, Latin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Flemish Languages; that she had a very good faculty at Poetry and Painting, that she was a perfect Mistress of all the Philosophies, that the greatest Divines of her time were proud of her judgment in their own profession, and that when we had this character of her she was not above Thirty years of Age.[424]
Or shall I refer you to Mademoiselle Gournay among the French, or Lucretia Marinella among the Italians, who have both writ in defence of their Sex, and who are both Arguments themselves of the Excellency of it?[425]
Consider what Time and Charge is spent to make Men fit for somewhat; Eight or Nine Years at School; Six or Seven Years at the University; Four or Five Years in Travel; and after all this, are they not almost all Fops, Clowns, Dunces, or Pedants? I know not what you think of the Women; but if they are Fools they are Fools with less pains, and less expence than we are.[426]
Gildon's Letters (1694)
Charles L. Gildon published in 1694 a volume of miscellaneous letters and essays. Two of these letters were entitled "Chloe to Urania, against Womens being Learn'd," and "An Answer to the foregoing Letter in Defence of Womens being Learn'd." Chloe but transmits the arguments of her lover Lysander. "Learning will add fresh Pride to the Sex," he asserts, and will kindle in them an ambition of absolute Mastery. His second objection is the fundamental one. "Women were by their Creator design'd for Obedience not Rule; to be instructed by their Husbands, not to instruct them; and to Study nothing but their Household Affairs." If learning were added to the personal charms of women, not deity itself, Lysander thinks, could maintain the divinely ordained overlordship of man. A final argument is that learning will tend to make women unfaithful to their husbands, will give them "wandering desires." Lysander's antidote for the new ideas that seem to be perverting women's minds is Halifax's Advice to a Daughter, the authority of which was so well established that Chloe dares utter no protest against it. Urania, however, easily demolishes Lysander's objections, asserting that learning makes women humble, that no wise woman would ever think so wildly as to "attempt the inverting so prevalent, and inveterate a Custom of the Sovereignty of the Men." The Advice to a Daughter is a book Urania has little esteem for. Especially is she indignant at Halifax's advice to women to remain in the religious faith in which they have been brought up, since, even if such faith be error, says Halifax, women are not expected to do the voluminous reading necessary to find out the truth. Women, Urania maintains, should not govern their actions merely by what a corrupt age "expects." They have souls to save and must learn the truth and must have the learning that will guide them to the truth.