The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760

by Myra Reynolds

Dear Madam,

You do not approve of great learning in women. Learning in women may be rightly or wrongly placed, according to the uses made of them. And if the sex is to be brought up with a view to make the individuals of it inferior in knowledge to the husbands they may happen to have, not knowing who those husbands are, or what, or whether sensible or foolish, learned or illiterate, it would be best to keep them from writing or reading, and even from the knowledge of the common idioms of speech. Would it not be very pretty for the parents on both sides to make it the first subject of their inquiries, whether the girl as a recommendation, were a greater fool, or more ignorant, than the young fellow; and if not, that they should reject her, for the booby's sake?—and would not your objection stand as strongly against a preference in mother-wit in the girl, as against what is called learning; since linguists, (I will not call all linguists, learned men,) do very seldom make the figure in conversation that even girls, from sixteen to twenty, make.

If a woman have genius, let it take its course, as well as in men: provided she neglect not anything that is more peculiarly her province. If she has good sense, she will not make the man she chuses, who wants her knowledge, uneasy, nor despise him for that want. Her good sense will teach her what is her duty; nor will she want reminding of the tenor of her marriage vow to him. If she has not, she will find a thousand ways to plague him, though she knew not one word beyond her mother-tongue, nor how to write, read, or speak properly in that. The English, Madam, and particularly what we call the plain English, is a very copious and a very expressive language.

Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson.

I will not approve of learning in women. You, not even you, shall persuade me to it; that is no farther than I have already allowed which I think is pretty extensively; let them study that, domestic duties, and other necessary acquirements, and they will have employment enough to keep them out of mischief, if their inclinations are not strong that way: and if they were as learned as the most learned you can name, I have a notion these same whisperings must, in some degree, be attended to; and whilst they have ears they will be open to flattery and whilst men have tongues these ears will be filled with it. Learning cannot change nature, but it can make a woman ridiculous, a woman of sense I mean. Then, if it was once become customary, all parents would think their children qualified, and say, "If, please God, my girl shall be a scholar," as the men say of their boys, boobies or not: and what figures would most of us make!—Everything moves easiest in its own sphere. Indeed, Sir, great learning would make strange work of us. You know we are to submit and obey; and it is much as ever we can do, often more, in our inferior state of knowledge. I speak of acquired learning. What we have from good sense and natural genius, nobody can take from us. And the more a woman has of those, the better she must appear if along with those, she has good nature and humility.

Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh.

Your Ladyship will not "approve of learning in women." I cannot help it. But do you not think, Madam, that the woman, who, additionally to the advantages she has from nature, "has been taught to read and converse with ease and propriety"; who can read, spell, and speak English; may not be as justly feared by half the pretty fellows of this age, as if she could read and understand Latin?

I do not allow, that because a man is superficial, a woman must be so too, for fear she should meet with a husband to whom she may have a superior understanding. Do you not remember whose these words are? "What a pity it is that true genius and merit should be veiled under the cloud of inactivity and modesty."—"Strange! (adds this favourite of mine) that people will wrap up their talents and hide them."

In your Ladyship's, of January 6, you say, "I hate to hear Latin out of a woman's mouth: there is something in it to me masculine. I could fancy such a one weary of the petticoat, and talking over a bottle." But, in this case, will not vanity and conceit shew themselves, where they are predominant, in a man's as much as in a woman's mind? Are there not pedantic men? Miss C——[438] is an example that woman may be trusted with Latin and even Greek, and yet not think themselves above their domestic duties. But after all, I contend not that women should be taught either of these languages; nor do I hold languages to be great learning, as I hinted in my former. A linguist and a learned man may very well be two persons. Meantime, all that I contend for, is, that genius, whether in men or women, should take its course: that, as the ray of divinity, it should not be suppressed. But I acknowledge that the great and indispensable duties of women are of the domestic kind; and that, if a woman neglect these, or despise them, for the sake of science itself, which I call learning, she is good for nothing.

But would you not, Madam, have called me by some hard name, had I supposed the sex, in general, so conceited, so self-sufficient, so naturally weak in judgment, as you do? and had I asserted, that the more they knew, the worse they would be for it? I believe, I have observed in a former, that neither of us will let anyone but ourselves speak slightly of the sex.