Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
AND THE BEGINNINGS OF
FEMALE EMANCIPATION
IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
AND THE BEGINNINGS OF
FEMALE EMANCIPATION
IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND

ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT TER VER-
KRIJGING VAN DEN GRAAD VAN DOCTOR
IN DE LETTEREN EN WIJSBEGEERTE AAN
DE UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM OP
GEZAG VAN DEN RECTOR-MAGNIFICUS
Dr P. ZEEMAN, HOOGLEERAAR IN DE
FACULTEIT DER WIS- EN NATUURKUNDE,
IN HET OPENBAAR TE VERDEDIGEN IN
DE AULA DER UNIVERSITEIT OP VRIJDAG
17 NOV. 1922 DES NAMIDDAGS TE 4 UUR
DOOR

Jacob Bouten,
GEBOREN TE DORDRECHT

H. J. PARIS
V H FIRMA A. H. KRUYT
AMSTERDAM

TO
MY WIFE

PREFACE.

There is something particularly fascinating about the study of the literature and philosophy of the eighteenth century, with its gradual evolution of lofty social ideals which the Revolution failed to realise. When the altered circumstances brought promotion within my reach, it completely brought me under its sway, and ultimately came to determine my choice of a subject for an inaugural dissertation. It was while engaged upon tracing the influence of Rousseau's hopebringing theories on his English disciple William Godwin, that the less boldly assertive, but all the more humanly attractive personality of the latter's first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, attracted my attention. My admiration of her husband's intellect paled before my sympathy for her more modest, but at the same time more emotional character. Where the indebtedness of Godwin to Rousseau and the Encyclopedians has been manifested so clearly in different works, the absence of any direct attempt to prove and determine the extent of the relations between Mary Wollstonecraft and the early French philosophers struck me as an omission for which I found it difficult to account, and made me turn to a subject to which I am fully aware that a book of the size of the present little volume does but scant justice.

I wish to avail myself of this opportunity to thankfully acknowledge the valuable help and friendly encouragement received from Professor Dr. A. E. H. Swaen, of the University of Amsterdam, whose unceasing kindness and ever-ready interest in the preparation of this treatise I shall never forget.

Mr. K. R. Gallas, Lecturer on French Literature in the same University, has likewise a claim to my heartfelt gratitude for giving me the benefit of his extensive knowledge in making various suggestions with regard to the chapters dealing with the literature of France.

My best thanks are also due to Mr. M. G. van Neck and Dr. P. Fijn van Draat for guiding my reading for the B.-examination, and particularly to my first teacher of English, Mr. L. P. H. Eijkman, for giving me that interest in England and her language and literature which has determined my subsequent career.

Amsterdam, November 1922.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. The Main Theories regarding the Position of Women.

The history of the Emancipation of Women is the long and varied record of their slow and gradual liberation from that utter subjection to Man in which various circumstances beyond their control—among which the physical superiority of the latter, a form of male supremacy which has seldom been called into question, was probably the most prominent—had combined to place them. It relates how in the course of centuries—either with the support of a certain portion of the opposite sex or relying upon their own resources—they strove to cast off the shackles which bound and degraded them, and to acquire that degree of physical, intellectual and moral freedom to which they felt themselves entitled. That the movement towards complete enfranchisement met with a varied reception and was hampered and retarded by men and often by women themselves was due chiefly to the fact that in the question of female possibilities there was much diversity of opinions at different times and among different nations. The worst enemies to evolution of this kind were those women who, holding the Empire of Love and Gallantry to be their exclusive domain, in which their sway was not likely to be ever disputed, turned deliberately against those of their own sex who in trying to wrench from the hands of men the sceptre of social power, were willing to forego the privileges of sex. That women were thus divided among themselves from the first, was the natural outcome of those differences in personal attractions and in personal intelligence which have always constituted the great danger of too sweeping conclusions with regard to the inclinations and capabilities of the female sex. Individual members of the same sex may yet be radically different, and he who would prescribe for all will always find himself confronted by the bewildering problem of the disparity of individuals.

The champions of the Cause of Woman have had to overcome a great deal of stubborn opposition, nor can it be said that even at the present moment the emancipation of women is complete. Even now that the ideal of perfect equality in everything seems almost within reach, and the domestic woman has largely given way to the social worker and political agitator, it may be a matter of speculation whether the full realisation of the long wished-for end, throwing open to women all those occupations from which centuries of injustice rigorously excluded them, would mean a blessing to society and to women in particular, or a mixture of gain and loss. Those who regard women from the all-human standpoint, holding the functions of sex to be only a passing incident in the great scheme of life, will be inclined to take the former view; those, on the other hand, who believe that a woman's life derives its colour from considerations of sex which refuse to be ignored, may well wonder where a rigorous application of perfect equality will land us in the end. In one respect however, there has been great and undeniable progress. The modern tendency to overlook sexual differences ensures to individual women the necessary freedom to judge for themselves whether a life of domestic or one of social duties will be more compatible with their personal inclinations; and no woman whose hopes of domestic bliss are rudely blunted, need—as was the case in former times—despair of succeeding in life; any talents she may happen to possess, will find full scope. If we contrast with this the truly pitiable condition of unmarried women in earlier ages, who were too often treated contemptuously for failing to perform what was considered the only duty of womanhood—the propagation of the species—we cannot but feel grateful to the champions of emancipation, whose restless ardour and unceasing devotion has entailed such glorious results.

The feminist programme includes a number of points, on some of which something will have to be said. There is, in the first place, that physical enfranchisement which makes the woman cease to be the willess, and therefore irresponsible and soulless, slave to the caprices of a brutal master. There is, in the second place, the intellectual emancipation of women, admitting the female sex to the participation of Reason and granting them that education of the mind which is to place them on a par with the other half of humanity; and there is that moral emancipation which recognises woman as a being endowed with a soul, equal to that of man, with consequent moral duties and responsibilities, partly dictated by considerations of sex. As a direct consequence of these, there is finally, social emancipation, constituting principles of perfect equality between the sexes, also in matters of social and political interest. They are all of them largely dependent on the growth of civilisation. It has even been said that the degree of civilisation in a nation is determined by the position of its women in the life of the community.

In the early stages of history—in that savage state which some authors persist in preferring to the social state of an imperfect civilisation—only the physical condition of women was considered, and, where even some of the most fervent advocates of the female excellence are forced to acknowledge the physical inferiority of the sex, it is but natural that the women of prehistoric times were kept in utter subjection, being regarded exclusively as a means of gratifying the animal instincts. But with the growth of civilisation came the development of the mind, and it has always been one of the bitterest grievances of feminists against man, that he, taking advantage of his usurped authority, deliberately withheld from woman the means of proving that the supposed inferiority only concerned her physical capacities, and not those of the mind. Even as late as the 18th century the complaint is repeatedly uttered (and this is one of the points where two women of such widely different views as Mary Wollstonecraft and Hannah More fully agree) that men keep from women all opportunities of that cultivation of the understanding which infallibly leads to virtue, and by a singular want of logic hold them responsible for the moral deficiency which is the inevitable consequence. In the introduction to her "Strictures on the modern system of female education" Hannah More calls it "a singular injustice which is often exercised towards women, first to give them a very defective education and then to expect from them the most undeviating purity of conduct; to train them in such a manner as shall lay them open to the most dangerous faults and then to censure them for not proving faultless"[1], and the argument seems indeed unanswerable. Hence the cry for female education which Plato was among the first to raise. The physical inequality between the sexes was apparent and therefore remained, upon the whole, uncontested, but the problem of the possibilities of the female understanding was less easy to solve and admitted of different opinions; hence it was in the first stage of the growth of the human mind that the great question was first broached the solution of which was to occupy so many minds in so many successive centuries.

While making every possible allowance for deviations due to individual opinion, which mostly had its roots either in a particular form of creed or in some special system of philosophy, it may be stated that there were throughout the centuries two directly opposing lines of thought, each leading to certain clearly marked conclusions.

Of these, the first and oldest is based upon considerations of practice rather than theory, which makes it less rigid and more adaptable to the exigencies of practical life. It was adopted on the whole by churchmen and religious moralists rather than by abstract philosophers, and had the full support of the unquestioned doctrines of Christianity, of which support its adherents never failed to make the best use. It determined the attitude of the early Christian Church towards women in taking for granted the existence of a sexual character, from which it draws inferences. The difference between the sexes is essential and not restricted to physical differentiations. They were intended for different functions and have widely different duties to fulfil. Man's chief duty is the support of the family he has reared—for which obviously his strength of muscle was intended,—his is the struggle for life against a hostile society in which egoism reigns supreme and the interests of individuals constantly clash. Woman's special province is the home; hers is the difficult and important task of regulating the domestic life and bringing up the children she has borne. So far this theory receives support from observations of the animal world. But that faculty which marks the essential difference between the human and the animal kingdom became the apple of discord among many later generations. For Reason was held to be the prerogative of Man only, in which Woman had no share. His world is the world of the Intellect, the world of Action, in which sex is only an episode; hers is the world of Sentiment and of Contemplation, in which sex is the dominant factor. To think is the prerogative of Man, to feel that of Woman. That there is also an intellectual side to the quiet undisturbed contemplation of confinement at home was demonstrated by Shakespeare when creating the character of Lady Macbeth, nor was the monopoly of Thought greatly abused by the mediaeval Lords of creation, the only scholars of that period being those who had resigned their sex. But apart from those who lived in convents and whose reading was exclusively religious, women were self-taught or rather taught by experience, and the use of books was confined to some monasteries.

Starting from the above principle, any claim to intellectual equality would have seemed an encroachment upon the male kingdom. Love and maternity, and the daily routine of the household ought to be the only considerations in a woman's existence and whatever is outside these is the domain of Man. To Woman was allotted the task of managing the home, to Man the more comprehensive one of managing society. That in reality the former is quite as important as the latter, which must always largely depend on it, since Woman is the mother of Man, and the guide of his first steps, did not find full recognition until the 17th century, when Fénelon and some of his contemporaries made this consideration a basis on which to build their demands for a female education.

Early Christianity, drawing the necessary conclusions from certain Biblical allusions to the position of Woman and guided by St. Paul's teachings, adopted the Hebraic notions of female inferiority and dependence, which long met with no resistance whatever. The early churchmen, in strict obedience to the teaching of their faith, tacitly accepted the inferiority of women and their subjection to men. About these little need be said here. They were partly responsible for the misery of women in the early Middle Ages, the time of their greatest debasement and degradation, and will be remembered only among the adversaries of feminism. However, the fact must here be emphasized, that even the full acceptance of a sexual character does not necessitate, and in practice did not always lead to, insistence upon the female inferiority.

There are those who, while assigning to woman a place in society differing essentially from that held by man, do not infer that woman is necessarily inferior to man. They purposely refrain from comparing that which by its very nature defies comparison: "for Woman is not undeveloped Man, but diverse." They insist instead on the division of functions which makes the sexes supplement each other. The majority are moralists, churchmen of a later age, and to them the problem is that of sexual duties, with the promise of eternity in the background, which is intended for both sexes, female as well as male. The pursuit of Christian virtue, which to them is the essential thing, is regardless of sex and leads to self-abnegation which renders the sexual problem of secondary importance. The very orthodoxy of her faith prevented Hannah More from becoming a feminist in the full sense of the word, and as Mary Wollstonecraft's feminism came to absorb her mind more fully, her religious convictions retired into the background. To the Christian moralist the place of woman in the social structure must of necessity be an important one; but it is made so only by the domestic duties which devolve upon her. She is expected to bring up her children to be good Christians, good citizens, and good fathers and mothers, in the moral interest of society, and this duty obviously involves the necessity for women to receive the benefit of a moral education. In this lies the gist of the moralist's arguments in favour of a partial female emancipation. To be a good educator of the young it is indispensable that the mother herself should be liberally instructed, for what is to become of her influence, should her male offspring come to regard her as intellectually inferior? In this argument the feminist and the moralist join hands. Fénelon and his contemporaries were philosophers and for the rigid, inflexible interpretation of Scripture by the early churchmen they substituted the structure of moral philosophy, which thus indirectly promoted the growth of feminist ideas. In their eyes an education is the very first requisite to enable a woman to discharge the duties imposed by motherhood.

The second line of thought, in direct opposition to the assumption of a sexual character, takes for its starting-point the theory of equality in everything except what is physical, arriving at the conclusion that there is nothing which woman—if given the benefit of the same education—is not capable of performing equally well as man. In view of the impossibility of furnishing conclusive rational evidence—women are not educated and therefore no opportunity is given them to vindicate their powers—the adherents of this theory, who mostly belong to the rational school of philosophy, point to the example of some individual women, who in spite of a defective education obtained great results, thereby laying themselves open to the criticism that what may apply to certain individuals, need not hold good for the entire sex, which argument they try to refute by insisting on the experiment being made. This ultra-feminist way of thinking equally originated in France, where Mlle de Gournay and François Poullain de la Barre built up their theories more than a century before Mary Wollstonecraft voiced their claims in the English language.

Apart from certain physical differences which even she could not deny, although she held with truth that they were often exaggerated, nay, purposely augmented, woman possesses the same capabilities as man and the existing difference in intellectual development may be entirely removed by means of an education which does not regard sex. This process of reasoning naturally leads to a denial of sexual character. The mental inferiority of women is merely the consequence of ages of neglect which urgently demands reparation. The soul, they agreed with the moralists, has no sex—an assertion which some of the early Christian leaders might have felt inclined to call into question—and since the development of the moral sense depends largely upon the condition of the mind, it is the right of women to be educated. The claim for education as a natural right was first made in its full purport by Mary Wollstonecraft, to whom belongs the undivided honour of having been the first woman in Europe to apply Rousseau's famous theory of the Rights of Man to her own sex by taking her stand upon the principle of equality of the sexes.

The extreme adherents of equality among the philosophers of the French Revolution founded their claims upon an absolute denial of all innate character, holding the character of every individual to be the resultant of different influences to which it has been exposed. Among French philosophers Helvétius had been the first to profess this theory in his "Traité de l'Homme." Diderot had written an energetic reply, vindicating the theory of innateness and heredity, and the topic had remained a theme of frequent dispute. The partisans of Helvétius, among whom were both Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, continuing his line of argument, were naturally led to the most optimistic forecasts for a happy future. It only remained to find a way to perfect education and to extend it from a few privileged ones to the multitude, and all evil would of necessity disappear, and society would be rebuilt upon a more solid foundation. The consequence was an overwhelming number of educational treatises, mainly in the French language, most of which, however, sadly overlooked the pressing needs of woman.

It was again Mary Wollstonecraft who extended this implicit faith in the perfectibility of humanity to the case of woman. All that women needed was to be given a good education, and the rest would follow. So convinced were these idealists of the incontestability of their arguments that they refused to make any concessions, however slight, to those who held different views. This very inflexibility became the means of ruining their best intentions. They did not stop at intellectual and moral enfranchisement, their daring schemes comprised complete social and political emancipation. In the period with which we shall be chiefly concerned, their efforts were doomed to failure by the circumstance that their aims were physically incapable of realisation while society remained in the state in which it found itself at the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution. Those more or less unconscious feminists, the Bluestockings, were responsible for far more direct improvement through the very moderation of their suggestions than Mary Wollstonecraft, whose lonely voice in the wilderness of British conventionality heralded the great and successful movement of a later century. When the inevitable reaction set in, the entire feminist movement, which Mary had identified with the cause of liberty, as advocated by the French, was regarded as anti-national and seditious, and first ridiculed and reviled, to be soon after consigned to a temporary oblivion.

When called upon to decide which of the two lines of argument referred to above deserves most sympathy, the unbiased onlooker may find himself sadly perplexed. In choosing between the advocates of dignified domesticity and those of perfect equality, one might be inclined to decide in favour of the former; yet the fact remains that, if especially the last decades have brought considerable progress, it is chiefly the latter we have to thank for it. For the pathway of the pioneer is rough and beset with difficulties, and she may seem "no painful inch to gain", and yet the amount of progress, when measured after the lapse of ages may be found to be considerable. But the fatal tendencies to generalise and to exaggerate are everywhere, and invariably spoil the best arguments. To the advocates of equality à outrance might be held up the warning example of the "masculine woman", who has succeeded in getting herself abominated both by man and by the wise members of her own sex; who has voluntarily, for the prospect of mostly imaginary gains, unsexed herself, forgetful alike of her task of propagation and education and of the fact that even outside the home-circle there are the sick to be ministered to, and the suffering to be comforted, occupations that demand the loving gentleness and unselfish devotion of which the womanly woman is made more capable by Nature than her brother Man. She scornfully resigns the chivalrous worship of the opposite sex, mixing in political and other debates with a want of moderation and often with a narrowness of views which prove all too clearly that the average woman's qualities fit her for the domestic rather than the social task.

On the other hand, those moralists who exhort women to be content to take their place in society as "wives and mothers", not inferior to man, but different, forget to provide for those women, whom circumstances beyond their control have destined for celibacy, debarring them from the privileges of their own sex, while not allowing them to share those of the male. For such women it was indeed a blessed day when the word that was to deliver them from bondage and to open to them paths of public usefulness was first spoken by the pioneers of feminism, throwing open to the female sex the many professions for which they are as fit, or even fitter—in spite of the equality theory—than men!

Whatever may be the absolute truth,—which probably no moralist or feminist has ever held, although some may have held a considerable portion of it,—both may be credited with a firm and unshakable belief in the creative force of a good education for women, of whatever description their chief duties in life may be. And, after all, the question of perfect equality and of rivalry between the sexes leading to a struggle for pre-eminence will chiefly attract women who, being more gifted than their sisters, and filled with a laudable desire to devote their talents to their cause, make the error of identifying their own individual plight with that of their sex, imagining women in general to be thwarted in their aims and ambitions, and ascribing to them aspirations which the majority of women never cherished and probably never will cherish. They turn their weapons against "man, the usurper", goading him to opposition and forgetting Hannah More's wise remark that "cooperation, and not competition is indeed the clear principle we wish to see reciprocally adopted by those higher minds in each sex which really approximate the nearest to each other"[2]. This remark, however much it may hold good for the times in which we live, would have elicited from Mary Wollstonecraft the reply that between master and slave there can be no cooperation until the latter's individuality has been fully recognised by emancipation. If, moreover, we consider how she was always thinking of duties before considering the question of female rights, claiming the latter only that with their help women might be better enabled to perform the former, it is difficult to withhold from either woman that sympathy to which the purity of her motives and the extreme earnestness of her endeavour justly entitles her.

The history of female emancipation, therefore, is so closely bound up with that of female education that it often becomes impossible to separate them. Education, to follow the feminist line of rational thought, forms the mind; and a well-formed mind shows a natural inclination towards that perfect virtue which ought to be the ruling power in the universe and the attainment of which is the sole aim of humanity. The feminist problem will not be fully settled until all men and women are equal partakers of the best education which it is in our power to bestow.

It is impossible to record the earliest beginnings of feminism in England without first glancing at that country whence came the powerful wave of philosophical thought which, stimulated by the fathers of British philosophy, in its turn stung the latent feminist energy of a Mary Wollstonecraft to life and was also—although in a less degree—indirectly responsible for the more qualified feminism in the tendencies of the Bluestocking circles and their literature, which it will be our business to describe. After one or two abortive attempts of a directly feminist nature a movement of indirect feminism, which was fostered and nursed by the French salons of the 17th century began at a time when in England the condition of women was rapidly sinking to the lowest ebb since the dark ages of mediaevalism. All through the 17th and the greater portion of the 18th century female influence and importance grew and intensified without calling forth anything like a parallel movement in the great rival nation beyond the Channel. Those who, like Mary Astell and Daniel Defoe, caught the spirit of emancipation were indeed pioneers, and to them all English women owe a never-to-be-forgotten debt.

From the beginning of the religious revival in England in the early part of the 18th century to the outbreak of the French Revolution a strong and determined reaction against French manners was noticeable in England. This reaction found its root in national prejudices, which held whatever came from France to be tainted with the utter corruption and depravity of French society and as a natural consequence disqualified public opinion from appreciating the glorious edifice of philosophical thought which was being erected at the same time. It derived greater emphasis from the vicious excesses of the French aristocracy and afterwards from the unparalleled horrors of the Revolution. The English nation has never been remarkable for any special love of imitation, and the menace of French revolutionism turned Great Britain into the very bulwark of the most rigid conservatism. So general did the feeling of hatred of the French revolutionary spirit become, that even Mary Wollstonecraft's determined attempt remained unsupported and was predoomed to failure merely because it was identified with the hated principles of the French Revolution.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Edition T. Cadell, Strand, 1830; p. IX.

[2] Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, p. 226.

CHAPTER II. The Beginnings of a Feminist Movement in France.

The two main feminist tendencies of the preceding chapter may be found illustrated among the Ancients by the respective theories of Plato and Plutarch regarding women.

The history of ancient Greece records the earliest traces of what might be termed a feminist movement. There was a period when the position of the women of Greece, who had long been kept in submission, excluded from political influence and treated contemptuously in literature, began to awaken some interest. The views of Plato were of an advancedly feminist tendency. His Republic, of which the fifth Book deals with the position of women in the ideal state, ascribed their inferior power of reasoning to an education which was based upon the assumption of a sexual character. Plato was the first to assert the moral and intellectual equality of women and to claim for them an equal share in the public duties. His writings foreshadow the constant alternative of later centuries. The woman who is regarded as essentially a citizen will find the consequent responsibilities crowding upon her, which she will be expected to share with her male partners, a bar to the exclusively feminine duties of motherhood and the education of her own progeny. No theories and social movements of the past or of any future time have altered or will alter the axiom that every individual woman will sooner or later find herself at a parting of roads, one of which will lead her to devote her energies to the progress of human society at large, the other to the more exclusive happiness and welfare of the domestic circle. So completely does Plato disregard the feminine instinct, that the children in his commonwealth were to be entrusted to professional nurses, and that the mothers were to be allowed only to suckle the infants promiscuously and without even recognising them, out of bare necessity. The maternal instinct in Plato's state was ignored, and the existence of a sexual character emphatically denied.

Another feminist among the Ancients, although his views differed widely from Plato's, was Plutarch, whose ideas represent the opposite extreme of the ideal set up for women. Woman's chief duty he held to be, not to the state, but to her own family. She should try to be her husband's associate not merely in material things, but also in the fulfilment of more delicate tasks, prominent among which is that of educating the young, for which purpose she herself requires to be instructed. In direct opposition to Plato, Plutarch insists on the essentially feminine qualities of tenderness, gentleness, grace and sensibility. In preference to a national education, he wishes for a home-education, based upon the natural affections between parent and child.

The theories of Plato and Plutarch contain the germ of one of the main points of dispute among later feminists and anti-feminists: that of a sexual character. On the attitude taken by later writers on the Woman Question towards this all-important problem depends the course into which they are directed. Those who, like Plato, either deny or ignore the existence of a specially feminine character and specially feminine proclivities, are naturally driven to assert the equality of the sexes, and to claim for the female sex an equal share in both the rights and the responsibilities of social life. On the other hand, those who, like Plutarch, lay stress on the domestic and educational duties of womanhood, counterbalancing the public duties of man, duties which take their origin in the innate propensities of the female character, may yet become defenders of the cause of woman, but their demands will be more qualified, and while including in their programme a liberal female education to make women fitting companions to their husbands and wise mothers to their children, will regard the political emancipation of the sex as a hindrance to the discharge of more important duties, and therefore as undesirable.

Although the problem regarding the social status of women was a matter of some speculation and discussion in the early days of antiquity, no female writers arose to take part in them, and the position of the female sex was exclusively determined by male opinion. This circumstance in itself proves conclusively that the prevailing opinion was that woman in her then state was an inferior creature. Women were not even appealed to to make known their own wishes on a subject so vitally concerning them. Their participation in the movement belongs to later times. Upon the whole, the educationalists of Rome took little notice of the problem of female education and instruction. Quintilian, the chief among them, completely ignores the point, and Roman literature affords no contribution of any real importance.

The first statements of the cause thus remained without any direct results. Such traces as had been left were completely swept up in the years of turmoil that followed, causing early civilisation to fall back into barbarism. The centuries that elapsed between the fall of the Latin Empire and the Renaissance may be called the Dark Age of feminism. Mr. Mc. Cabe in his "Woman in Political Evolution" states that the decline of the comparative esteem in which women were held among the Romans set in even before the great Empire began to totter on its foundations, and was largely due to the Judaic spirit which prevailed in the early days of Christianity, demanding the implicit obedience of women to the stronger sex, a point of view which was found endorsed in many places in both the old and the New Testament. The earliest Christian leaders had been taught to regard woman as the agent of man's downfall, and readily observed the law that rendered her dependent. They were for the most part zealots, who did not believe in any literature that was not devotional. Even the most enlightened among them, St. Jerome, who had to answer the charge of occupying himself preferably with the instruction of women—which accusation he met with the complaint that the men were displaying an absolute indifference to instruction of any kind—wanted to make narrow religious asceticism the basis of his education of women. Being exempt from social and political duties, they seemed naturally fitted for a life of devotion and contempt of the world, directing their energies and hopes towards a life to come. In the strict retirement of the cloisters they filled their time with prayer and sacred literature. Thus, in the dark age, the ideal of womanhood became the Virgin, who lived her life of devotion far from the temptations of a wicked world with which she had nothing in common. Those women—and they were the majority—who did not pursue so lofty an ideal, sank lower and lower, and came to be regarded as mere sexual instruments, without any claim to consideration, by men whose only interest was war, and among whom learning was regarded with contempt.

Before the great Renaissance came with its revival of learning in which some women had a share, bringing improvement to some privileged ones, but leaving the bulk of them in the pool of ignorance and slavery into which they had sunk, two minor renaissances call for mention. The first, of the late eighth and early ninth century, centres round the names of Charlemagne, Emperor of the Franks, and Alcuin. They saw, indeed, the necessity for better instruction and founded a great many schools, but in their scheme women as a class were unfortunately overlooked. The second revival, that of Abélard, which took place in the twelfth century, marks the beginning of a more rational education, subjecting various theological problems to the test of reason and logic. Unfortunately, this second revival soon degenerated, and gave rise to a class of pedants who neither understood the aims, nor even the principles of education and against whose severity and arrogance the great reformers of the Renaissance as Rabelais, Montaigne and Roger Ascham directed their shafts. Neither of these revivals, therefore, exercised any considerable influence on the position of women.

It was also in the twelfth century that the influence of the conquest of England by the Normans began to make itself felt in Latin Europe. The early traditions of England regarding women offer a striking contrast to those which lived on the continent. When in the days of Julius Caesar the Romans first set foot on British soil, they found a well-balanced society, in which prevailed a state of comparative equality between the sexes, and a correspondingly high code of morality. The British women were consulted whenever an important resolution had to be taken, and Tacitus, and in later days Selden, were lavish in their praise of the dignity and bravery of Boadicea, whose history has furnished even modern authors with a fitting subject.

About the middle of the fifth century there began those invasions of Anglo-Saxons which led to a partial blending of the two races. The newcomers also reverenced their women; history even records the names of some "Queens regnant" among them, and ladies of birth and quality sat in their Witenagemot. The church boasted among its abbesses some fine specimens of intellectual womanhood (St. Hilda, St. Modivenna), and in general the position of women among the Anglo-Saxons points to a spirit of generous chivalry.

William the Conqueror and his men, who overran and subjected the country in the eleventh century, came from a land where the principles of the Salic law were recognised. Seen from a feminist point of view, this invasion was a most fatal occurrence. Under Norman influence a rapid decline set in.

But if the Normans Latinised the manners and customs of the nations subjected to their rule, the latter influenced their conquerors in a more subtle way through their literature. It was especially the literature of Celtic England that hit the taste of mediaeval France. The Arthurian Cycle found its way to the Continent. It breathes a spirit of chivalry, and depicts a blending of the sexes on terms of homage to the fair and weaker which came like a revelation. And although the chivalrous element soon degenerated—Mr. Mc. Cabe deliberately leaves early romanticism out of account, calling it "a cult of pretty faces and rounded limbs, leading to a general laxity in morals"—yet it opened the eyes of the stronger sex to the possibility of women playing some slight part in society. In this connection it is rather amusing—and also enlightening as illustrating the general estimate of women—to read about a proposal made by one Pierre du Bois to king Edward the First to make Christian women marry Saracen husbands, that they might have a chance of converting them. The first social mission of women, if du Bois had been given his way, would thus have been that of utilising their charms to make religious converts. At the same time, he deemed it advisable to fit them for this task by giving them a rather liberal education and instruction.

There was, however, one important result of the new tendencies. The education of girls in the early Middle Ages,—such as it was—was a monastic one, practised within the walls of a convent. But in feudal society it became more and more customary to have the daughters of aristocratic families brought up at home, either by a tutor, or by some member of the family whose parts fitted him for the task. This first secularisation of female education among the higher classes was mainly responsible for the awakening interest of some women in literature of a secular kind. The traditions of the Church had demanded the teaching of Latin long after it had fallen into disuse in the outside world. The secular education, which comprised little actual instruction, next to music and dancing, came to include a good deal of physical exercise. Religion was not neglected, but relegated to a less commanding position, and secular literature in the vernacular became a favourite pastime, so much so, that (about 1400) Gerson thought it necessary to protest against the reading of the Roman de la Rose by young ladies, from motives of delicacy.

In spite of many backslidings, the position of women was now very slowly beginning to improve, and in the argument between the partisans and the opponents of female instruction the latter were beginning to have the worst of it. In the fifteenth century one or two forerunners of the renaissance-women swelled the ranks of the advocates of the cause.

There was in France Christine de Pisan, who in her "Cité des Dames" protested against the conventional statement, that the spreading of learning among women had had a disastrous influence upon their morals. In illustration of her plea she quoted the example of Jehan Andry, "solennel canoniste à Boulogne", who, when prevented by circumstances from giving his lessons of divine wisdom, sent his daughter Novelle in his place. In order that the beauty of her appearance might not awaken illicit thoughts among her male scholars "elle avait une petite courtine devant son visage." Christine de Pisan was one of the first women who made a living by their pen, and is said to have lived a life of irreproachable virtue, besides being possessed of great erudition.

The country where the most considerable gain was recorded was Italy. Not only did many Italian women share in the enthusiasm aroused by the Renaissance, but their doings were no longer regarded as unworthy of interest. In Boccaccio's writings, for instance, women occupy a very prominent place, and Chaucer was among those who followed his example. Although a great many writers of the period make the failings of women the object of their satirical remarks, yet there is in their very criticism the wish for something better and nobler, and better still, the conviction that women are capable of improvement.

The Renaissance, with its revival of ancient culture, contained a strong educational element, which, although like the earlier revivals it busied itself only very indirectly with the female half of society, was not without importance to the movement of female emancipation. For in the first place man was the usurper of all authority, and it was only by educating him and widening his horizon that he could be made to recognise the absurdity of the relations between the sexes; and in the second place it was the philosophical spirit of the Renaissance that built its educational speculations upon a solid foundation of thought and method. The educationalists of the Renaissance were not churchmen, but philosophers. The tendency among them—when at all interested in women—is to condemn both the monastic education, which forms devotees instead of mothers, and that secular education which creates literary ladies instead of housewives, and to return to the ancient ideal of womanhood in making them essentially wives and mothers, assuming without discussion the female inferiority.

The most striking exception to this rule was the German Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, who was the first to state the cause and pronounce upon it in a sense so favourable to female instruction that it entitles him to the name of "father of feminism". His treatise "De nobilitate et praecellentia feminini sexus" (first published in 1505), though naturally crude and immature, and hesitatingly put forward, has that enthusiasm of firm convictions which touches the reader's heart. The rudiments of later contentions are to be found in his plea. The tyranny of men, he says, has deprived woman of her birthright of liberty. Iniquitous laws have prevented her from enjoying it, usage and custom have neglected it, and finally an exclusively sexual education has quite extinguished it. In her youth she is kept a close prisoner at home, as though she were utterly incapable of any more dignified occupation than the performance of domestic duties like a kind of superior servant, and using the needle. Thus she is prepared for the matrimonial yoke which is laid upon her the moment she has attained maturity, that she may quickly serve her chief purpose of propagating the species. She is then delivered up to the oppression of a husband whose inordinate jealousy and fits of temper reduce her to a deplorable condition. Or she is kept all her life in the even more rigorous confinement of a convent, a retreat of so-called virgins and vestals, where she is left to a thousand agonies, the worst among which is a gnawing regret for lost happiness which finishes her.

In a supplementary treatise Agrippa exhorts the husband to regard and to treat his wife as a companion, and not as a servant. He seems almost afraid of the consequences of his audacity when he tries to weaken its effects by acknowledging the natural dominion of the male sex. "However", he adds, "let their rule be all grace and reverence. Although woman be inferior, let her be given a place by the husband's side, that she may be his faithful helpmate and counsellor. Not a slave, but the mistress of the house; not the first among the servants, but the mother of the fine children who are to inherit her husband's property, succeed to his business, and transmit his name to posterity."

Erasmus in his Dialogues depicts women as eager to rise out of their conditions of servitude. However much he tempers the force of his argument by continual jokes and pleasantries, yet he seems to sympathise with the female complaint that woman herself has abandoned her cause, leaving the husband to decide all matters of importance and voluntarily resigning all liberty, consigning herself to a life of religious devotion and household duties. The consequence is that men regard them as mere playthings and even deny them the name of human beings. The woman who voices this complaint enumerates the various occupations for which her sex would be fit, and winds up by saying that "there is nothing in what she has said which does not deserve serious and mature consideration."

In "Abbates et Eruditiae" Erasmus anticipates the problem of female education as it would present itself in later ages. He foresees that there will come a time when women, dissatisfied with the state of bondage, will seek improvement by demanding an education. The innate masculine egoism, however, will realise that learning will make women less submissive to male authority, and they will resist any innovations by which their supremacy may be endangered. The coming struggle is thus foreshadowed by one of the most prominent among the philosophers of the Renaissance, and his sympathies are, upon the whole, with the female sex. He is the first to see the close connexion between the moral worthlessness of females and their need of an education. To remedy the frivolity of women he demanded that girls should be taught some useful occupation, so as to keep them from idleness and its concomitant vices. He also wished for a more liberal intellectual education to be supplied in the family, and, should that be impossible, by the husband.

In full accordance with the above is the main drift of the third of the great humanist's works which show a tendency favourable to women: his "Christian Marriage", which made its appearance in 1526. It resolutely prefers the state of matrimony to that of religious celibacy and makes the possibilities of conjugal happiness dependent on the cultivation of the female soul.

Works like the above could not fail to draw to the problem the attention of the reading public, and to make it a favourite topic of controversy. France especially proved an extremely fruitful soil, and the French nation became interested in a regular "querelle des femmes" which inspired a great many pens, and culminated in the third Book of Rabelais' Pantagruel. The habit of reviling the female character and satirising the female weaknesses was of mediaeval growth, and may be found illustrated among many other examples in that portion of the "Roman de la Rose" which is the work of Jean de Meung, in the "Lamentations de Matheolus", of which the late professor van Hamel issued a new edition in 1892, and in a great many "fabliaux". It also prevailed in England with great persistence for several centuries.[3] But the somewhat puerile invective became a controversy in France when about the middle of the 15th century the female sex found some staunch defenders among the male French authors. Martin le Franc's "Champion des Dames", composed between 1440 and 1442, aroused a great deal of hostile criticism, mostly in the prevailing satirical form and culminating in the "Grand Blason des Faulces Amours" by Guillaume-Alexis, and some sympathy, as in the "Chevalier aux Dames", an allegorical poem; while some authors, like Robert de Herlin in his "Acort des mesdisans et biendisans" tried to reconcile the two parties.

After 1500 the growth of the Renaissance spirit soon caused the controversy to enter into a new phase. The interest it commanded remained undiminished and towards the middle of the century it even increased to immense proportions, without, however, leading to any pronounced tangible results. The progress of learning caused the argument to become intensified into a more serious, philosophical cast. One of the champions of the female sex, at the time when the "quarrel" had reached its acute stage, François du Billon, who also made use of the allegorical device to level his threats at the heads of the revilers of women in his "Fort inexpugnable de l'honneur fëminin", narrates how three of the worst sinners are taken prisoner by the gallant defenders of the fortress. They are Boccaccio, Gratien Dupont, seigneur de Drusac, whose "Controverses", written in 1534, are full of the fiercest invective against women, and Jean Nevizan, author of a Latin treatise, published in 1521, of which the very lengthy title may be advantageously condensed into "Sylva nuptialis". Nevizan's work shows the Renaissance spirit of enquiry into the stores of antiquity in its mention of a great many sources from Christ to Plato and itself became a source of inspiration to Rabelais.

In the years that followed the champions of feminism became identified with the Platonic idealists who were bent upon spiritualising love[4], whilst its adversaries tried to uphold the ancient "gaulois" traditions with their lower estimate of womanhood. The publication (in 1542) of Antoine Héroët's "Parfaicte Amye", with its Platonic notions, heralded a new phase in the history of the "Querelle des Femmes". In its metaphysical tendencies this brief treatise contains a delicate analysis of the emotions attendant upon the pure passion, the chief inspirer of virtue which brings us nearer to God. It ushered in the acute stage, during which not one of the great authors remained silent on a question which occupied so many minds. The different contributions to the problem under discussion were soon combined in one volume under the name of "Opuscules d'Amour". The poets and poetesses of the "école lyonnaise", Maurice Scève, Pernette du Guillet, Louise Labé, and others, ranged themselves among those who tried to introduce a purified love-ideal and also Marguerite, Queen of Navarre[5] joined the controversialists in her poetry. So general did the interest taken in the issue become, that Rabelais interrupted the narrative of his Pantagruel to contribute his reflections on the subject in the Third Book (about 1546). He took his cue from Nevizan's "Sylva nuptialis" in introducing the problem as a consequence of speculations regarding the marriage of Panurge. Rabelais proved himself on the whole an anti-feminist, and we have du Billon's authority for the fact that the name "Pantagruéliste" was considered equivalent to that of enemy to the cause of woman.[6]

If we except Christine de Pisan, Marie de Jars de Gournay, and "la Belle Cordière," the Lyons poetess Louise Labé, the number of French female authors was not greatly increased by the Renaissance movement. But the number of women of the higher classes who took part in the great intellectual movement grew all over Europe, particularly in France, England and Spain. One of the most erudite Frenchwomen of the time was Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, (1492-1549), sister to Francis the First, who welcomed to her court the greatest scholars of the day, and who was herself no mean poetess. It would not be difficult to extend this list with more names of high-placed women who owed their intellectual development to the instruction of special preceptors. Education of this kind became the privilege of the female aristocracy. The schools for the most part refused to admit women; in the convent learning was discouraged because a spirit of free inquiry mostly led to heresy, and for the women of the lower classes nothing at all was done. Their more fortunate sisters learned to speak and write Latin, Greek and Italian, and after 1600 also Spanish, and the abuse by women of Italian words while pretending to speak their own language called forth a strong reaction in 1579, the year which saw Euphues, and the beginning of its influence at the Elizabethan court.

The tendencies of the Reformation pointed in the same direction; they encouraged a spirit of free inquiry and were directly opposed to those of the monastic education. Under Luther's influence a number of lay-schools for girls arose in Germany and the early Reformation thus tried to fill up the gap in female education which the Renaissance had left. Unfortunately the political condition of France in the late 16th century was most unfavourable to educational reform owing to the violence of the religious wars, and it was not until after the Edict of Nantes that a number of Huguenot schools arose. The outlook in the opening years of the 17th century was far from bright; great misery prevailed everywhere, in addition to which the internal wars had brought about a general decay of morals which threatened to become the country's ruin. It was at this critical stage in the history of France that woman had become sufficiently confident of her powers to claim a beneficial share in all matters of social importance.[7] For the first time in history the Woman Question reached an acute stage. The seventeenth century, which witnessed the deepest abasement of English women, will always be remembered in the history of France as the time of the first self-conscious vindication of female rights. This vindication—except in one or two isolated instances—did not take the form of a direct appeal; it adopted the persuasive method of furnishing convincing evidence of woman's capacity to hold her own both intellectually and morally and even to supply certain elements which were lacking among the opposite sex, for the benefit of French society.

We have seen that in the late sixteenth century the problem came to be a much-discussed one in French literature, which it remained all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. M. Ascoli, in the "Revue de synthèse historique" (Tome XIII) has published an extensive bibliography of no fewer than ninety-seven works of a feminist or anti-feminist tendency written between 1564 and 1773, which proves conclusively that the intellectual condition of women remained a subject of contemplation. The thirst for knowledge, as we have seen, had imparted itself to a small category of women whose circumstances enabled them to share the literary pursuits of their menfolks. But even the boldest of these earliest champions in their wildest dreams did not go beyond that enfranchisement of the mind which—however important in itself—is only the indispensable first step in female emancipation. Until quite late in the 16th century no women had entered the field as the avowed champions of their sex against the arrogant assertions of male supremacy. The alleged inferiority of women was a theme of frequent discussion only in the works of male authors, who further degraded the sex by the bantering, often insolently satirical tone of their contentions. But no woman had come forward to test the evidence on both sides, far less to enter into competition with men on behalf of her sex. The growing taste for literature had done little or nothing to improve the social position of women; it unfortunately limited itself to a few privileged women, leaving the rest of womanhood in the obscurity of hopeless ignorance. Thus matters stood when in the first quarter of the seventeenth century two events of great importance in the history of feminism took place, of which the first, abortive though it was, and therefore predoomed to barrenness, represents a deliberate attempt by a woman to constitute herself the champion of her sex; the second being something in the nature of a social experiment, which, without aiming definitely at the attainment of an exclusively feminist ideal, did more to improve the condition of women than any more direct endeavour. I refer to the work of Marie de Jars de Gournay, and to the establishment of the first salon by Catherine de Rambouillet.

The former struck a bold and defiant note, resolutely claiming for her sex equality with men. This audacious assertion stamps her as the pioneer of modern feminism. The remarkable thing about her theories is that without the help of anything like a clearly defined philosophy she strikes the keynote of whatever claim was put forward on behalf of women in later times as a consequence of more than a century of philosophical speculation, the practice of which entailed the all-absorbing consequences of the great Revolution of 1789. When the cause of woman was taken up in England by Mary Wollstonecraft, and grafted upon the larger cause of humanity as its logical consequence, the arguments of her plea were directly derived from that philosophy of liberty, equality and fraternity which may be traced to its origin in Locke, Descartes and Bacon. Yet here was a lady, at a time when Descartes was a mere boy, boldly asserting that nature is opposed to all inequality. "La pluspart de ceux qui prennent la cause des femmes contre cette orgueilleuse preferance que les hommes s'attribuent, leur rendent le change entier: r'envoyans la preferance vers elles. Moy qui fuys toutes extremitez, je me contente de les esgaler aux hommes: la nature s'opposant pour ce regard autant à la supériorité qu'à l'infériorité." She thus sets about vindicating the equality of her sex in everything except physical strength, going beyond the most daring speculation of any previous author, with the exception of those who, blinded by hate, had put forth theories of female pre-eminence in which in sober moments they themselves hardly believed.

Marie de Gournay ascribed the state of inequality to the circumstance that woman is purposely denied an education by man, who owes his usurped authority to abuse of physical force, which she holds in utter contempt. "Les forces corporelles sont vertus si basses, que la beste en tient plus pardessus l'homme, que l'homme pardessus la femme." Woman is man's inferior in bodily strength only "par la nécessité de port et la nourriture des enfants", compensating her lack of brute force by her delicate mission of propagation. But Mlle de Gournay emphatically asserts the perfectibility of the female mind.

To understand and partly justify the extreme vehemence of the lady's attack upon the opposite sex, whose unmerited contempt of the feminine intellect had deeply injured her feelings, it is necessary to take into account the circumstances of her life, which explain her acerbity. She was a studious woman,—a forerunner of the Hannah Mores and Elizabeth Carters as well as of the Mary Astells and Mary Wollstonecrafts of a later period—whom her exceptional intellectual gifts betrayed into that error so common among the extreme female champions—that of substituting herself for her sex and claiming for all what no one with any discernment would think of refusing her personally. Her mother's attempts to turn her away from literature only irritated her. She had no personal beauty and her entire life was a protracted struggle against indifference, opposition and ridicule, which embittered her beyond measure against that sex which valued the gift of a pleasing appearance above that of a comprehensive mind. Born in or about 1565, she must have been a mere girl when first brought into contact with Montaigne's Essays. She expressed her admiration of them in a letter to the author, couched in terms so enthusiastic that the philosopher came to see her, thus laying the foundation of a friendship which was only disturbed by his death in 1592. She became his spiritual daughter,—his "fille d'alliance"—and took an active part in the publication of the later editions of the Essays. She rather conceitedly accounted for the close affection which bound them together as "the sympathy from genius to genius". When Montaigne died, his "fille d'alliance" was in a fair way to become a prominent figure in the literary world, having under his influence written some pedagogical essays, which were favourably received. With the philosopher her chief guide passed away, and subsequent experience seems to have soured her and made her spiteful and old-maidish before her time. Those whose object was to ridicule her represent her with three cats, following her about wherever she went. She met with little sympathy beyond that expressed from chiefly intellectual motives in the correspondence of the learned Dutchwoman Anna Maria Schuurman, and of the renowned Louvain professor Juste Lipse—whose praise of Montaigne's Essays had won her instant recognition. But she deserves respect for the courage of her opinions, regardless of the prejudices of her contemporaries, and for standing her ground firmly, often turning ridicule into esteem.

Such was the pioneer whose ideas regarding the position of women are embodied chiefly in a treatise entitled: "De L'Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes" and in the "Grief des Dames", and further alluded to in her preface to the 1595 edition of Montaigne's Essays and in a prose "Apology", intended to disarm her ridiculers, in which she protests against being disregarded merely on account of her womanhood. Here, indeed, we are confronted by a sense of personal injury. Concerning "De L'Egalité" she says in one of her later writings: "Il faut le soubmettre à la touche par ce que peuvent valoir ses raisons et ses pensées, fortes ou feibles qu'elles soient, et puis apres, par la consideration de son dessein. Sçavoir si ce nouveau biais qu'elle prend, et qui la rend originale, est bon pour relever le lustre et pour verifier les privileges des Dames, opprimez par la tyrannie des hommes."

The treatise "De L'Egalité" consists of two parts. In the first, the right of women to equal consideration with men is vindicated by means of evidence derived from the writings of men; in the second the authority of God himself as contained in the Bible is referred to and expounded in a manner wholly favourable to the doctrine of equality.

Regarding the first point, the author derives comfort from the reflexion that the chief revilers of women are to be found among the worst specimens of the male sex, who merely repeat the opinions of others, "n'ayans pas appris que la première qualité d'un mal habill' homme, c'est de cautionner les choses soubs la foy populaire et par ouyr dire," in doing which, "d'une seule parolle ils desfont la moitié du Monde." Their sole aim is to rise at the expense of the female sex. But fortunately there is the testimony of truly great men to prove the mental and moral capacity of women. Here follows a list of the male partisans of some degree of feminism among the philosophers of antiquity and of the renaissance: Plato, Socrates, Plutarch, Seneca, Aristotle, Erasmus, Politian, Agrippa. Montaigne is introduced as "le tiers chef du triumvirat de la sagesse humaine et morale" (with Plutarch and Seneca), for having written that "il se trouve rarement des femmes dignes de commander aux hommes," which she twists into an implication that he holds woman to be the equal of man.

To counterbalance the principles of the Salic law, constructed entirely upon considerations of war, Tacitus' account of the position of women among the Germanic tribes is quoted, together with the example of the Spartans, who in the discussion of their public affairs consulted female opinion.

Marie de Gournay held that the two sexes have equal souls given them; the institution of a sexual difference having been made exclusively with regard to the propagation of the species. To illustrate which, the author, whom nobody would dream of accusing of levity, bashfully craves permission to quote a popular saying. "Et s'il est permis de rire en passant, le quolibet ne sera pas hors de saison, nous apprenant: qu'il n'est rien plus semblable au chat sur une fenestre, que la chatte."

After passing in review the principal secular authorities with feminist tendencies, Mlle de Gournay tries the more difficult task of reconciling her feminist views to those of the early Christians, taking what she calls "la route des tesmoignages saincts", quoting St. Basil and St. Jerome, and finding herself for the first time somewhat perplexed at the teachings of St. Paul, who forbids preaching by women and enjoins silence, "not because he despises the female sex, but merely lest their beauty and grace, displayed to advantage in a public office, should become a source of temptation to men."

That women have always excelled in religious devotion is demonstrated by means of a reference to the championship of Judith and the martyrdom of Joan of Arc. The mention of the former brings us to direct Scriptural evidence, which the author finds an even harder subject to tackle. Here, indeed she is sometimes led by her zeal into the most palpable absurdities: "Et si les hommes se vantent, que Jesus-Christ soit nay de leur sexe, on respond qu'il le falloit par nécessaire biensceance, ne se pouvant pas sans scandale, mesler jeune et à toutes les heures du jour et de la nuict parmy les presses, aux fins de convertir, secourir et sauver le genre humain, s'il eust esté du sexe des femmes: notamment en face de la malignité des Juifs."

The entire treatise is mere theorising, and being produced at a time when the public mind on the subject was one mass of inveterate prejudice, brushing aside any speculations of the kind it contained as ridiculous and "paradoxical", it is not astonishing that Marie de Gournay spoke to the winds, and that the practical results of her labour were nihil.

One gets the impression that the author herself was fully convinced of the hopelessness of even obtaining a hearing, and wrote chiefly to relieve herself of the burden of her glowing indignation. To this circumstance it may be attributed that she refrains from formulating any practical claims, or drawing up a scheme of an ideal society in which women were given their due. But her zeal and devotion to the cause she believed to be just were above suspicion, and she has a claim to the gratitude of her sex for having asserted the female equivalence.

If Mlle de Gournay combined in her person some of the elements of the social reformer, there certainly is nothing sensational about her personality and way of expressing her views, and she must be described as revolutionary in a limited sense. Apart from her extreme feminism, her social and political views were quite conventional, and in her preface to "De l'Egalité" she even seeks the patronage of Queen Anne, as the most prominent and influential member of her sex. François Poullain de la Barre, however, who half a century later became heir to her spiritual legacy, was an out-and-out revolutionist, whose theories of female equality proceeded from generally revolutionary tendencies. Like Mlle de Gournay, he was a theorist, but he differed from her in being above all a philosopher of the school of Descartes, and the first to apply the doctrine of Cartesianism to social problems. This consideration renders him important not merely as the direct advocate of the cause of woman, in which capacity his efforts met with no success whatever, but as the forerunner of J. J. Rousseau in his theory of human rights, which in its turn became the basis of the feminist movement in England in the last years of the next century, inaugurated by Mary Wollstonecraft. As M. Piéron puts it, "le chemin réel ira de Descartes au féminisme par la Révolution, et non de Descartes à la révolution par le féminisme."

M. Rousselot, in drawing attention to Poullain de la Barre, refers to his works as "now almost forgotten."[8] The utter obscurity in which this author remained buried for two centuries is probably due to his life of retirement,—as M. Henri Grappin has pointed out in opposition to M. Piéron's opinion, who, basing himself upon evidence of style and language, adjudged him to be a frequent visitor to salons—to his complete indifference to worldly fame, and to this freedom from worldly ambitions. His work, like that of Mlle de Gournay, was received with a mixture of scorn and ridicule, and soon forgotten. A century later, some of the works of the Encyclopedians, which developed the same social ideas—with a striking difference in the matter of female education,—were burnt by the common hangman by order of the authorities, who could not, however, prevent the new ideas from taking root and bearing fruit. In striking contrast, Poullain, whose revolutionism found few sympathisers and was consequently adjudged harmless, was left at peace, and brought out his revolutionary treatises "avec privilege du Roy", and "avec permission signée de la Reynie", for which he paid with disregard and oblivion. Both Mary Wollstonecraft and Poullain should have been born in the nineteenth century, but whereas the former was the embodiment of that indomitable spirit of rebellion which had taken almost a century to mature, Poullain stands revealed to the modern reader, a living anachronism. There is something in his "fanaticism of ideas" which anticipates the intellectual "tours de force" of William Godwin, whose eccentric genius, however, was made subservient to the larger cause of mankind.

Born at Paris in 1647, it seems that Poullain chiefly studied theology at the University of his native city, until the discontent which was roused in him by the system of education followed there, made him yield to the intellectual allurements of Cartesianism. Descartes had been dead some dozen years when the great vogue of his philosophy began. Poullain became a fervent Cartesian and after some years turned Protestant, which religion he felt to be better suited to his philosophical ideas. He lived mostly at Paris and at Geneva, and died at the latter place in 1723.

Although Poullain seems to shrink from openly confessing himself influenced by Descartes, his works show the rationalist tendencies of pronounced Cartesianism, to which we shall often have occasion to refer in coming chapters. He may be called one of the forerunners of the Encyclopedians, anticipating their imperturbable rationalism, their contempt of tradition and custom,—which, by a somewhat sophistic turn of reasoning, they call superstition and prejudice,—their habit of referring to original principles, and above all their absolute faith in the perfectibility of mankind through the education of the mind and in the certainty of unlimited human progress. No theory had ever been put forward which contained brighter promises for the future of the human race, and the enthusiasm which it awakened was not damped by the fatal experience of the failure of former experiments. To this circumstance must be ascribed the boundless optimism of the partisans of the new philosophy and their radicalism.

The three feminist treatises, in the order of their publication, were:

1. "De L'Egalité des deux sexes, discours physique et moral ou l'on voit l'importance de se défaire des préjugés." (1673);

2. "De L'Education des Dames, pour la conduite de l'esprit dans les sciences et dans les moeurs." (1674);

3. "De l'Excellence des Hommes, contre l'Egalité des sexes, avec une dissertation qui sert de réponse aux objections tirées de l'Ecriture Sainte contre le sentiment de l'Egalité." (1675).

Of these, the second may be dismissed in a few words, as containing nothing very striking beyond the author's dissatisfaction with the spirit prevailing at the Universities.

The first, on the other hand, contains the gist of Poullain's contentions. We are exhorted to judge only from evidence, without regarding the opinions of others, and are brought face to face with what the author holds to be the unvarnished truth, unaffected by that spirit of misplaced gallantry which he feels to be particularly offensive. If, therefore, anybody is shocked at the crudeness of some statements, he expects him to blame Truth, and not Poullain de la Barre.

Conventionalism is what the author holds to be the chief source of the prevailing inequality. In conformity with the tenets of the Christian faith, people are taught to regard the submission of women as the will of God, whereas Reason shows it to be merely the consequence of inferior strength. To maintain this usurped supremacy men have purposely kept women from being instructed. In many respects the capabilities of women are superior to those of men: it is their special province to study medecine and by its aid to restore health to the sick and ailing. There is, in fact, nothing for which he pronounces women to be unfit: "il faut reconnaître que les femmes sont propres à tout." He would make them judges, preachers and even generals.

The faults of women, which even this fanaticist of Reason cannot overlook in the face of the distressing state of female manners and morals, are due to the defective education which is given them. They are taught to feel an interest only in balls, theatres and the fashions, with the result that vanity is their predominant characteristic. So far we might be listening to some English moralist of the eighteenth century. Their only literature is of a devotional kind, "avec ce qui est dans la cassette," Poullain meaningly adds. For a girl to display any knowledge she may have acquired is thought a shame, and makes her a "précieuse" in the eyes of everybody.

The only state of dependence which finds favour in Poullain's eyes is that of children on their parents. Here again, we have the purely rational view which was also Mary Wollstonecraft's. The reason of a child is undeveloped, and therefore requires the support of full-grown reason. But this dependence naturally comes to an end as soon as that age is reached when the faculty is sufficiently developed to enable the child to judge for himself, when advice may take the place of command.

Pierre Bayle informs us that Poullain fully expected to be taken to task for this daring vindication of the right of woman to be educated. However, as two years passed without bringing the looked-for refutation of his arguments, he himself anticipated his opponents by writing the third treatise. Its title is rather misleading. As a matter of fact, the pamphlet itself presents the usual arguments in favour of the theory of male excellence with which the arsenal of anti-feminists was stocked, whilst the "remarques nécessaires" by which it is followed, demonstrating the author's opinions, contain the entire feminist theory. The spirit that was to conduct straight to the Revolution breaks out when the author confidently states that as yet feminism is only a matter of theoretical speculation, and not ripe for social or political action. He next enters upon a diatribe against civilisation, which has failed to bring humanity any nearer to absolute truth, and extols the never-failing power of Reason.

However interesting treatises like the above may be in the evidence they contain of what was secretly going on, of the mental processes which occupied individuals when conventionalism was at its height, processes which contained in them the germs of the great upheaval of a later century, yet it cannot be sufficiently insisted on that they were only abortive eruptions, showing that the social volcano was very far from being extinct; mere puffs of smoke which the slightest breath of wind dispersed. Of far greater direct importance to the growth of opinions was that social movement which began in the early seventeenth century, of which woman was herself the originator, and by means of which she almost leapt into the seat of social influence: the movement of the salons. We have seen that it was in the sixteenth century that woman made her triumphal entry into society and began to dominate the world of conversation and of literature. The chivalrous worship of earlier centuries had degenerated without doing anything permanent to increase the esteem in which women stood. But in the sixteenth century a new form of courtship was introduced from Italy and Spain, which was utilised by clever women as a means of gaining the ascendancy over men.

The love theory evolved by Plato, with its metaphysical conception of the passion, which in the Greek philosopher's days had fallen on deaf ears, was carried into practice two thousand years later under the auspices of the great Renaissance. In accordance with the views of Plato's circle, love came to be recognised as the chief inspirer of virtue and of noble deeds. The platonic ideal thus was from the beginning a refining influence, a corrective to coarseness and materialism, and an incentive to the purest idealism. The theory of spiritualised love recognised the love of physical beauty only as the first step on the ladder of Beauty connecting Earth with Heaven; at each new step, however, the ideal becomes transfigured and purified, until everything earthly sinks into nothingness, the Soul becomes paramount and everything else falls away. This view was adopted by the intellectual leaders of the Italian Renaissance, Dante and Petrarch, and also by the leading churchmen, in whose speculations the highest and purest form of passion became the love of God. The spirit of Platonism thus became mingled with that of religious mysticism, which even surpassed Plato in its condemnation of that earthly love which the latter had recognised. The Florentine Academy, however, adopted the Platonic view, making human love one of the steps leading to the ideal of eternal beauty; and refining upon it until it became the chaste passion of the sacrifice of self to the loved object, of which the passion of Michel Angelo and Vittoria Colonna furnishes an example.

The Italian wars of the late fifteenth century had brought Lewis the Twelfth and his retinue to Genoa. One of the highly-cultured ladies of that city, Tommassina Spinola, made a deep impression upon the king. She was married and virtuous, and so the royal lover had to control his passion and to be content with that platonic friendship which made of the lady "la dame de ses pensées", and entitled him to nothing beyond the purest and most disinterested friendship. A great many parallel cases occurred among the king's followers, and the women found their influence upon their platonic lovers far greater and more lasting than that exercised over the husband in matrimony. There was in this new form of courtship,—which in literature often took a pastoral form,—an element of idealism which placed the weaker sex on a pedestal in putting the adored one far beyond the reach of the lover, who only aspired the more faithfully for not having his passion gratified. In this lay the dormant power of womanhood, which might be successfully turned into a means of improving their position in society; and as soon as women came to realise this they made the most of their opportunity. The "Platonic friendship craze" spread to France, where the sentimental passion of these "Jansenists of love" found a fruitful soil. Before this new form of worship all class-distinctions fell away; not unfrequently the lady was so high above the lover's reach as to exclude all possibility of gratification, which only added an additional zest to the adventure.

Unfortunately the morals of the French court were not such as to encourage the hope of a permanent improvement in the relations between the sexes. The antithesis between the platonic ideals and the brutal coarseness of sexual desire, ill-concealed under a varnish of hypocritical gallantry, was indeed very marked. At the court of Francis physical beauty was considered far above virtue. The years following the introduction of the female element and the rise of female influence at court witnessed a long and bitter struggle between the coarse manners which the long years of warfare had engendered, regarding women as the playthings of men, to be trifled with and to be lightly thrown away when used, and the newly-introduced "galanterie" which implied patient and disinterested worship of an object, superior in the possession of that beauty of feature which was regarded as the reflection of a beautiful soul. Women had become conscious of their growing influence, and of the means of increasing it. This struggle for recognition found expression in literature in the "Contes de la reine de Navarre", written by Marguerite after her marriage, and modelled upon Boccacio's Decamerone, the evident purpose of which was to correct French manners and morals, and to glorify that form of love which is a mixture of the worship of chivalry and the platonic passion. The Contes themselves show a certain looseness of morals which is rather a concession to the general taste of the times, but the prologues and epilogues are of a far more refined character, and breathe a spirit of platonic idealism. In their celebration of virtue and the pure, idealistic passion it inspires, the Contes are a precursor of Mlle de Scudéry's later romances. Instead of the deceitful, hypocritical homage of feudal times, the demand was for women to be respected and to be recognised as the social equals of men.

The first serious attempt made by the ladies of the French court to better their position ended disastrously. Their influence was more than discounted by the demoralising effects of the wars and by the gross libertinism of the male leaders of society. The more determined among the women, finding the task of reforming the morals of a dissolute court beyond their strength, resolved to cultivate in their own private circles that refinement of manners and higher civilisation which the court refused to adopt. Thus arose the famous salons of the seventeenth century, in which the struggle for the emancipation of the female mind was combined with that for the improvement of contemporary morals, the refinement of contemporary taste, and the purification of the French language and literature.

"Depuis le salon de Madame de Rambouillet jusqu'au salon de Madame Récamier", says M. Ferdinand Brunetière, "l'histoire de la littérature française pourrait se faire par l'histoire des salons." This statement by an eminent critic implies a magnificent eulogy of women and testifies to the magnitude of their literary influence during the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for the history of the salons is the history of indirect feminism. Nor was their influence restricted to literature; in nearly every department of social life French women rose to ascendancy; and this, too, at a time when the subjugation of their sex in the other countries of Europe, and notably in England, was most complete. After the great triumphs of the first half-century of their existence, the salons shared in the general decline, to be revived with a fair amount of success,—although of a somewhat different kind—in the eighteenth century.

Woman thus became a social influence to be reckoned with. The question may be put whether upon the whole this remarkable event was favourable to the cause of feminism? For, however much the movement of "preciosity" did to make women realise their independence, and assert their individuality, its original tendencies were not towards any appreciable increase of female instruction. The leaders of the movement: Mme de Rambouillet and her daughters, and afterwards Mme de Sévigné and Mme de la Fayette, detested the "femme savante" quite as much as they hated ignorance. The only aim of the education they recommended was to make women fit for the society in which they were expected to move; manners, taste and wit were cultivated at the expense of those qualities which are indispensable to rouse a spirit of pure feminism. The "précieuses" were bent upon cultivating sentiment rather than intellect, and—apart from the fact that sentiment is rather apt to run riot and that many women have a natural surplus which does not require cultivation—it is by a well-regulated intellect that the cause of feminism will be best served. As it was, the essentially feminine qualities were cultivated by the salons, and the sexual difference emphasized. It must therefore be admitted that the salons only very indirectly furthered the feminist movement and that the interest evinced by the "précieuses" in the equality problem and its levelling tendencies was naturally slight. But it stands to their credit that they compelled men to recognise the importance of sex in other matters than those which are purely sexual. If the cause of feminism in the days of the salons had been in a more advanced state, the ladies who frequented them might have turned anti-feminist in their horror of social changes which threatened to rob them of the empire which their essentially feminine qualities had so easily secured over men.

The better "précieuse" was not an intellectual; she was expected to conceal such knowledge as she might possess and to cherish that "pudeur sur la science" which makes Mme de Lambert refer to her secret "débauches d'esprit", and which became the prevailing sentiment also among her Bluestocking sisters of the eighteenth century.

The history of the French salons and of the "précieuses" who peopled them begins in the year 1613, when Catherine, marquise de Rambouillet invited to her town residence all those who, like herself, felt disgusted at the camp-manners prevailing at the court and at the licentiousness of the language and literature practised there. The Rambouillet-assemblies, in their original intention a reaction against the "esprit gaulois", accomplished far more than they aimed at in securing for women a prominent place in French society. They became a powerful factor in that thorough reform of manners and of language which became the glory of the century and which, whatever excesses may have followed in its train, did away for good and all with coarseness and brutality. Of the very questionable society at court it might be said that "force prevailed, while grace was wanting"; the latter essentially feminine quality was abundantly supplied at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where the feminine element found its way into literature; and conversation, which hitherto had been masculine, became the means of introducing a new language for new manners.

In opposition to the scant respect with which women were treated in court-circles, an ideal of love was set up which was more in accordance with the platonic sentiment. Once again the virginal state became an object of glorification. The state of matrimony, on account of its coarser foundation, was relegated to an inferior position. To the crude, almost offensive lovemaking of the courtier was opposed the modest, unselfish worship of platonic love of a pastoral kind; and the representative poetry of the period, some of which was the work of women, exalted the platonic passion which was to revolutionize the relations of the sexes. The warrior-lover of the feudal past, who was only a tyrant under the mask of chivalrous adulation, gave way to the "honnête homme", or knight without an armour, of whom it could be said that he possessed "la justesse de l'esprit et l'équité du coeur", safe-guarding him against error of judgment and excess of passion, and making him the devoted and constant lover of his mistress. The following enumeration is given of his duties: "aimer le monde, aimer les lettres sans affectations; mais surtout être amoureux et rechercher la conversation des femmes". Anybody wishing to be admitted to polite society had to conform to these rules. The tone of conversation was characterised by a spirit of "galanterie", a kind of chivalry of words and actions, which was to inspire men to noble feelings and to corresponding deeds.

Mme de Rambouillet attracted to her salon not only men and women of the aristocracy, but also a great many men-of-letters, who were valued according to their literary merit, regardless of fortune and importance. This close alliance between the female sex and the men of culture was in some respects the best education the former could have chosen. They were bent on proving once for all, as Fléchier puts it, that "l'esprit est de tout sexe" and that nothing was wanting to make women the intellectual equals of men, but the habit of being instructed and the liberty of acquiring useful knowledge. Women became the unchallenged arbitresses of morals, taste, language, literature and wit, in all of which they themselves set the example. In a contemporary work we find the earliest salon described as "l'école de Madame de Rambouillet, qui a renouvelé en partie les moeurs, où l'on mettait sa gloire dans une conduite irréprochable." Not only was the language purified by removing its overgrowth of obscenity and indelicacy, but it was divested of a number of superfluous and affected foreign words. The female influence upon the literary taste was equally all-embracing. A number of new words owed their existence to feminine initiative, and although the writers of the very first class were on the whole unfavourably disposed towards what came to be called "préciosité", and were consequently inclined to satirise its excesses, a great deal of respectable second class talent was lavished upon the frequenters of the salons.

The literature produced by the "habitués" of Mme de Rambouillet's salon was mostly of an occasional nature, and composed in homage to the female sex, comprising sonnets, madrigals, epistolary prose, and plays. The literature of the Scudéry circle, besides the products of a growing pedantry, also included many occasional pieces of a lighter kind, among which were so-called sonnets-énigmes, vers-échos and the like, which, if contributing to the enjoyment of an idle moment, had no permanence whatever as literature. To this kind of poetry the ladies themselves were important contributors. In M. Victor du Bled's "La société française" we read about a "Journée des Madrigaux" at Mlle de Scudéry's, occasioned by a present of a "cachet de cristal" made to the hostess on one of her famous Saturdays, calling forth poetical ebullitions from the most widely different authors. There were the famous "Portrait" series, composed by the ladies of the Duchess of Montpensier's circle; the written "Conversations",—those by Mlle de Scudéry herself were judged by Mme de Maintenon to contain "useful hints to young females" and therefore introduced at St. Cyr—and a very extensive literature in the epistolary style, which was to become the current form of the Richardsonian novel.

The topics of the day also formed a subject of animated discussion at the assemblies. Among them the social position of women and their treatment by the male sex occasionally found a place. Dissertations on literary subjects alternated with discussions of intellectual problems, one of the themes at Mlle de Scudéry's being: "De quelle liberté les femmes doivent-elles jouir dans la société?" Although the salons of the seventeenth century were not so revolutionary in their tendencies as some of the next, inasmuch as they were strictly private and did not either directly or indirectly aim at subverting the existing government or promoting seditious theories, yet political subjects were not shunned, and even philosophy and science—the craze of the salons of the early eighteenth century—found a number of devotees and sympathisers. About the middle of the seventeenth century, Cartesianism became the fashionable philosophy in spite of the opposition of the universities. Mme de Sévigné's letters prove that many women were interested in its propagation. The "précieuses" felt attracted by the speculations of Descartes, to follow which the cultivation of a sound sense of logic is more indispensable than any great erudition. The consequence of the philosophical movement was a widening interest in knowledge, an awakening curiosity about science, and a corresponding contempt of tradition, resulting from that self-reliance which is the natural outcome of the theory of human perfectibility.

The two principal salons, those of the marquise de Rambouillet and of Mlle de Scudéry, although of the same general tendencies, differed somewhat in their particulars. The glory of the former and earlier was never equalled by any subsequent one. The marquise herself was in every respect an ornament of her sex. Born and bred in Italy, she married the marquis de Rambouillet before she had reached the age of thirteen. After some turbulent years at court she retired to the privacy of her residence in the Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre and became the centre of a brilliant circle of aristocratic people and celebrated men-of-letters. Although some of the greatest wits of the age frequented her salon—Malherbe, and afterwards Corneille and Balzac were among her occasional visitors—there never was question of a domination of literary men: the hostess remained enthroned in full and undisputed authority, receiving the verbal and written homage which they paid to her virtues.

The entire house was reconstructed after her own ideas, so as to afford more room for the reception of guests. In one of the apartments which opened into each other, the marquise was in the habit of keeping her state, receiving her visitors while reclining upon a luxurious couch. The Blue Room, which, by the way, changed its aspect with each succeeding fashion, was a marvel of refined taste. Nor did the marquise confine her receptions to her town-residence; assemblies were held at Rambouillet in summer and garden-parties introduced plenty of variety. Great praise has been lavished on her kindness of character, and rising authors in particular found in her a warm-hearted patroness, always ready to applaud and encourage. One of her daughters, Julie d'Angennes, equalled her in popularity and had her beauty and virtue celebrated in a collection of laudatory verse entitled "La Guirlande de Julie", to which different poets made contributions, the principal being the young marquis de Montausier, who afterwards became her husband. Among her closest intimates were two men of a very much inferior social station: Voiture, the chief poet and chronicler, and Chapelain, the chief oracle and critic of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. She had made these two her own; they basked in the serenity of her smile, shared in her joys as in her troubles, and were the most perfect male satellites to female beauty and brilliance.

The years between 1630 and 1645 were the crowning years of glory in the history of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. After Julie's marriage, however, there came a decline. There were some sudden deaths, including that of the marquise's only son, and the Fronde began, in which some of the marquise's intimates followed the fortunes of the rebels, entailing fresh partings. In 1652 she sustained a further loss through the death of her husband. Bowed down with sorrow, she retired to Rambouillet to seek comfort in the intimacy of Julie's family.

The influence of the Hôtel de Rambouillet passed on to the circle presided over by Madeleine de Scudéry, whose "Saturdays" were much sought after. Her visitors were rather more given to affectations of manners and speech than those of her aristocratic predecessor and the transfer therefore marks the first step in the decadence which set in. In her "ruelle" the Third Estate was largely represented; in fact, as the "bourgeois" element gained in strength, the decadence became more marked, for its representatives were more easily led into excesses than the female members of the aristocracy. This explains how the name of Mlle de Scudéry—rather unjustly—came to be identified with that false preciosity which did the female cause such harm. And yet she was herself an ardent feminist, not only in the qualified sense of her predecessor, but in the full sense of the word. Her two principal romances: "Artamène, ou le grand Cyrus" and "Clélie", derive an interest—which their longwindedness greatly endangers—from their marked feminist tendencies. In the former, Mlle de Scudéry, whose views are expressed by Sapho, pleads for mental occupation as the only means of promoting female virtue. She rebukes the vanity of ignorance so common among those of her sex who imagine that "elles ne doivent jamais rien savoir, si ce n'est qu'elles sont belles, et ne doivent jamais rien apprendre qu'à se bien coiffer". She is also one of the first to accuse the male sex of inconsistency, refusing their womenfolk an education, yet finding fault with them for lacking those qualities which are the fruit of education only. "Sérieusement, y a-t-il rien de plus bizarre que de voir comment on agit pour l'ordinaire en l'éducation des femmes? On ne veut pas qu'elles soient coquettes ni galantes, et on leur permet pourtant d'apprendre soigneusement tout ce qui est propre à la galanterie, sans leur permettre de savoir rien qui puisse fortifier leur vertu, ni occuper leur esprit". But the "femme savante" equally inspires her with profound disgust, and this some of her critics have failed to recognize. The Damophile of the Grand Cyrus is an exact reproduction of the Philaminte of Molière's "Femmes Savantes", pretending to an erudition which is only imaginary and prevents her from attending to her household duties. There is nothing more objectionable in Mlle de Scudéry's opinion than for a woman to make parade of her knowledge, which may be useful chiefly in enabling her to listen with appreciation when men were talking. The theory of perfect equality, proposed about the same time by Poullain de la Barre, did not find an adherent in Mlle de Scudéry. The "honnête homme" of her dreams has more power of diverting and amusing than the most erudite of her own sex. Of all the leading ladies of seventeenth century French society there were none whose qualifications would have fitted them so perfectly to be the rivals of Mrs. Montagu in presiding over Bluestocking assemblies as Mlle de Scudéry!

Her second great romance, "Clélie", marks the culminating point of the usual seventeenth century feminism in expressing the rather one-sided ideal to which the ladies of the salons aspired, that of commanding the love of gallantry and of ruling the world through it. The entire romance is nothing but an elaborate code of gallantry by which all love is to be regulated. In some passages, however, the social position of women becomes the theme, regardless of the rather too obtrusive love-theories. After protesting indignantly against female bondage, Mlle de Scudéry proves that the doctrine of gallantry has not impaired her judgment. She demands that man shall be "neither the tyrant nor the slave of woman", and that the rights and duties of matrimony shall be equally shared between the two partners. Nor has the glitter of the platonic love-arsenal blinded her to the blessings of the virginal state. Far superior to matrimony she holds the condition of the wise and (of course!) beautiful woman who, although much courted, remains indifferent; who has many friends, but no lovers; who lives and moves in a world which to her is without peril, unswayed by the passions which rule others, always free and always virtuous—and, we may add, always sublimely conscious of her own superiority—an ideal embodied in the person of Plotine.

The attempt at "regulating the passions", i. e. keeping the affections under perfect control, no doubt led to a great deal of absurdity which supplied the many antagonists with weapons against "la préciosité." Some of the worst sinners in this respect were ladies of the Scudéry circle. There was a certain Mlle Dupré, given to philosophy, and surnamed "la Cartésienne" whose glory was to consider herself incapable of tenderness; and, worse still, there was the example of her friend Mlle de la Vigne, whose infatuation went so far as to make her reject even the comforts of platonic worship.

Mlle de Scudéry herself was more moderate in her ideas, and proved capable of cherishing some "tendresse" for the poet Pellisson whom she rescued from the Bastille. Her verdict that "la vraie mesure du mérite doit se prendre sur la capacité qu'on a d'aimer" even suggests that she was capable of undergoing the real passion. Gradually, however, the excesses in false "préciosité" began to multiply. The original signification of the term had been a taste for whatever is refined and delicate; noble, grand and sublime. The affectation and pedantry which came to be substituted for this, gave rise to the worst excesses of language. In their admiration of the fine phrasing of the literary masterpieces the "précieuses" took to substituting their periphrases and metaphors for the simple mode of expression which daily conversation requires[9], making themselves ridiculous and objectionable in the eyes of soberminded people and calling forth some malignant attacks even by people who could not be accused of misogynist leanings. To make matters worse, some very inferior imitations of the aristocratic salons had sprung up among the "bourgeoisie" both at Paris and in the provinces, where prudery was substituted for purity, affectation for elegance and pedantry for charm and taste. The moral tone prevailing at these meetings also compared very unfavourably with the atmosphere of culture and good breeding which had reigned at the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Scandal became a favourite topic of conversation, and literary men of a usurped reputation, to whom the better circles remained closed, laid down the law and constituted themselves the arbiters of literary taste. The decline, which had been slow and partial in the salons of Mlle de Scudéry and afterwards of Mme Deshoulières, became rapid and complete in those of the so-called "bourgeoisie de qualité".

M. Brunetière has pointed out that the "esprit précieux" of the salons, aiming at polish and refinement—for which in later years it came to substitute narrowness and affectation—was directly opposed to the "esprit gaulois" which had the upper hand in court circles and whose satire of the salons often degenerated into cynicism and coarseness. The great authors found themselves occupying an intermediate position, trying to reconcile what was recommendable in either and ridiculing what was objectionable. The fact that they drew their inspiration from Nature and from the lessons taught by antiquity brought them into conflict with the précieuses who lived in an artificial present, and eagerly welcomed whatever was new. In the Ancient and Modern Controversy, which was started in the seventeenth century and revived in the early eighteenth, the female element, with a very few exceptions, unhesitatingly took the side of the Moderns. How powerful a factor they had become in determining what was to be the public opinion appears from the share they had in the ultimate victory of the Moderns, and more still from the utter futility of the repeated efforts made by men of the first genius to crush their power by means of ridicule. Molière opened the campaign in his "Précieuses Ridicules" (1659). Although very successful as a play, and warmly applauded by the Rambouillet-circle, it missed its aim in utterly failing to crush false "préciosité". When after Molière's death Boileau continued the campaign, he met with no better success. No sooner had he retired from the field than the monster he had set out to kill reared its head again, enjoying undisputed possession until Mme de Lambert and her friends made an endeavour to return to the old ideals; in doing which, however, they did not forget to march with the times and to observe the signs of impending change which were beginning to manifest themselves.

While the "précieuse" society of the salons in its anxiety to strengthen the female element was occupying itself with the cultivation of polished manners, taste and wit in the members of the sex, and came to neglect female morals and instruction, the problem of a moral education was introduced and discussed by a philosopher among churchmen, the great Fénelon. The civil wars in France were followed by a religious renaissance, representing a supreme effort made by catholicism to recover the ground which had been lost to the combined classical renaissance and reformation. The religious order of the Jesuits, founded in the middle of the sixteenth century, saw in a strictly religious education the means of strengthening the position of the Roman Catholic church. Before the end of the century they had their colleges in different parts of France and became the educators of the Roman Catholic youth of that country. From the first their aim was the attainment of political influence for the church by means of religious propaganda. To this end they tried to suppress all spontaneity and individuality in their pupils, a system which in that age of awakening individualism and philosophical enquiry could not long remain without protest. A reaction set in which aimed at combining a certain amount of personal freedom and patriotic sense with religious sentiment, and at reconciling the tenets of Catholicism with the theories of the new philosophy. Such was the general character of the first great rival of Jesuitism, the "Oratoire".

Neither society, however, took any notice of female education. The omission was repaired by the Jansenists, the implacable enemies of the Jesuits, be it in a manner in which some sound common sense was mingled with a good deal of narrow dogmatism. For a number of years they maintained a somewhat precarious footing in France, during which time they proved themselves zealous educators, to whom the moral interests of their pupils, and not the worldly ones of their society, were paramount. Their chief educational establishment at Port Royal, founded in 1643, was in many ways superior to contemporary institutions, and some of their methods have found imitation in France to this very day.

It is true that the Jansenist system of education was, upon the whole, a monastic one, and as such could not be a very great improvement. But its practice was distinguished by a few characteristics which made it superior to all parallel schemes of education. Nowhere do we find that perfect purity of motives, that eagerness on the part of the educator to keep his charges from temptation and evil. This circumstance found its origin in the tenets of Jansenism, asserting that a tendency to sin and evil is inherent in the infant soul. To the Jansenists, education meant the unrelaxing struggle of the educator, aided by divine grace, against this natural bias, for the purpose of saving the soul. That this constant watchfulness on the teacher's part involved the total disappearance of the last frail spark of liberty left to the child, is only natural. On the other hand, it strengthened the affections. The Jansenist "religieuses" were filled with a most laudable sense of responsibility and loved their charges with the most unselfish tenderness and devotion. Their individual kindness tempered the severity of the rules laid down in Jacqueline Pascal's "Règlement pour les enfants". (1657).

The discipline was of the strictest, and the entire system directed towards forming pious Christian women and docile wives, rich in virtue rather than in knowledge. The final decision was left to the girls themselves; they either became nuns or re-entered the world after some years of close sequestration, "selon qu'il plaisait à Dieu d'en disposer", but it is to be feared that some moral pressure was often brought to bear upon them. The rules for daily observance implied early rising, strict silence, very limited ablutions and the greatest simplicity in dress; the hours of daylight being divided among prayers, devotional literature, manual labour and the elements of practical knowledge.

The above will be sufficient to show that Port Royal was a convent rather than a school and that its spirit was directly opposed to both the Renaissance spirit and the philosophical spirit of the later generations. In the annals of female education the "Petites Ecoles" of Port Royal will therefore not be remembered as a milestone in the march of Woman towards the ideal of perfect enfranchisement. They derive their importance from the fact that they were among the very first institutions in which great stress was laid on a moral education and in which some attention was paid to psychology.

The convents of other religious orders also participated in the educational movement and tried to recover lost influence. The seclusion of convent-life in those days was not nearly so strict as it had been in the days of early christianity, and this concession gained for them many pupils who had no intention of taking the veil, but were merely obeying the increasing call for female instruction. Some of these religious orders, as for instance the Ursulines, did good service, although they aimed at the pursuit of the moral virtues rather than intellectual accomplishments. What constitutes their chief merit, however, is the fact that by the side of the existing boarding-schools for paying resident pupils they established dayschools for the benefit of the poorer classes, in which all instruction was gratuitous. The number of secular schools for girls was so small, that we may safely regard the above as a first attempt to bring education within the reach of the untaught female multitude. Unfortunately, the convent-schools became involved in the general decline which marks the latter half of the century. All sorts of abuses found their way into them. A great deal too much regard was paid to the social standing of pupils, the nuns were often unfit for their educational task, for which they lacked preparation, and many convents became havens of refuge to worldly ladies with a damaged reputation, who paid well, but in return introduced lazy morals and a loose conversational tone. Add to this the intense and general misery which both the Fronde and the later foreign wars had engendered, and it need not astonish anybody that the efforts of the religious orders were of too partial and desultory a nature to bring about a lasting improvement in female education. Although the actual progress recorded was slight, yet something had been gained. The necessity for some degree of female instruction—thanks largely to the indirect influence of the salons—was now universally granted, although opinions varied regarding the extent and the means to be employed. It had to a certain extent become a topic in France, and as such began to attract a good deal of notice among moral philosophers. There arose the philosophy of education, making the subject a basis for philosophical speculation and applying to the systems then in vogue the severe test of Reason. In this way some glaring abuses were revealed which urgently demanded correction. The entire monastic system, based upon conventional grounds, was full of faults and the reverse of practical, showing an utter disregard of the demands of life. Thus began the gradual emancipation of education from the shackles of monasticism, the urgent necessity of which was recognised even by some of the leading churchmen, whose works breathe the more liberal spirit of the new philosophy. The theorisings of Fénelon mark a new departure in moral education, and his ideas became the prevailing ones of the eighteenth century which he heralded. He did not fall into the error made by his predecessors of overlooking the female half of society, but placed himself on the standpoint that the education of women is as important a social problem as that of men. At the time of the composition of his treatise "De l'Education des Filles" (published in 1683) he was director of the "Nouvelles Catholiques", a Parisian institution in which female converts from Protestantism were educated. Its direct claims on behalf of woman—apart from absolute insistence on the right of a moral education—are rather modest, but its originality consists in the introduction of the problems of feminine psychology, lifting the subject into the sphere of moral philosophy. Unmoved by the passion which swayed some of the later feminists—there is a wide gulf between his ideal of morality and theirs of equality—the moderation of his views and the soundness of his logic gained him a hearing and procured him some staunch supporters among the better Précieuses, who justly admired his insight into the female character. Madame de Maintenon was very much taken with his ideas and even procured him an appointment to the archbishopric of Cambrai. While insisting on the fundamental difference between the male and the female character, Fénelon never hesitates to put woman on the same level as man, without troubling to decide the theoretical question of superiority. The all-important promise of eternity he believed to apply with perfect equality to both sexes, and as regards earthly life he held that man and woman are too fundamentally different to allow of comparison in the sense of competition. However, he recognised that while the chief duties of man were concerned with social life, those of woman lay within a smaller circle: that of the home, upon the management of which depend both the happiness of every individual and the prosperity of the state; thus granting to woman a sphere of interest and activity in no wise inferior to, though different from, that of man, and exhorting her to fulfil those sacred duties to the very best of her ability. The domestic duties of womanhood are first regarded by Fénelon as an important social function, for which the monastic education was the worst preparation that could be imagined. There are not only children to be educated, but servants to be managed. The more deeply we enter into the spirit and full purport of Fénelon's contentions, the more it strikes us how he anticipates all the points of discussion which were to keep the philosophical moralists of the next century busy. A woman may excel in the art of being served; she may show in her treatment of her inferiors that she realises the great truth that all human beings in their widely different social stations are equal before God, and that any amount of authority involves an equal amount of responsibility. Ideas like the above seem to belong to the eighteenth century rather than to the seventeenth. Fénelon was in the full sense of the word: a pioneer.

We have said that the Jansenist educators held that "la composition du coeur de l'homme est mauvaise dès son enfance", directing their efforts towards reclamation from innate evil. Fénelon's views are more optimistic.

To him, there is no original tendency towards either good or evil. Everything depends upon guidance; give a child a good education and all its possibilities for good will be developed and bear fruit. The sole aim of education is not social influence or intellectual culture, but merely what he calls "l'amour de la vertu". And who can be fitter for such a task than the girl's own mother? "A good mother", says Fénelon, "is infinitely preferable to the best convent". Only she can prepare her daughter for the domestic circle over which it will one day be her task to preside, and only she has enough natural affection for her to impress upon her receptive mind lessons of moral wisdom. Boys, who are brought up to be citizens, require a public education, but for girls there is no place of education like the home, watched over by a loving mother.

A few of the points introduced may here be passed in rapid review. Great stress is laid on tenderness in education. Unless the pupil feels real affection for the teacher, unless the task of learning lessons is made a pleasant, and not a wearisome one, the results will be disappointing. Gentle reasoning and persuasion ought therefore as a rule to take the place of severity. Also in matters of religion an appeal should be made to the child's budding reason. The religious principles should be instilled in a subtle, slightly philosophical manner, and cleverly arranged questions—often in the form of metaphors or similes—should suggest to the pupil the expected replies. Here we have an anticipation of that "mise en scène" which becomes a striking feature in Rousseau.

A close study of the characters of women implies an insight into the essentially feminine failings, which may render them unfit for their task, and therefore ought to be first exposed and then carefully eradicated. Fénelon's list of female shortcomings and their remedies proves that there was no great difference in the matter of inclinations between the female youth of France and that of England.

Their worst vices are said to proceed from the misdirection of two characteristically feminine qualities: imagination and sensibility. Want of purpose renders the former over-active and turns it towards dangerous objects. A careful watch should be kept over the literature put into the hands of young females, for of the amorous romances then in vogue which were so eagerly devoured by the sex, the majority were far too stimulating to an imagination which in the close seclusion of home- or convent-life was but too apt to run riot. By living in an imaginary society of "précieux et précieuses" the girls became dissatisfied with everyday life and were made unfit for it.

Another dangerous consequence of inoccupation is that thirst for amusement which is the leading motive in female society. It creates egoists, bent upon indulging every wanton caprice. This, coupled with physical weakness, makes women resort to cunning and dissimulation as a means of attaining their end, to the detriment of their moral characters.

Vanity, which is another inherent portion of the female character, is responsible for that inordinate desire to please which in leading to an all-absorbing passion for clothes and fashion threatens to ruin domestic life and to deprave the female morals.

Fénelon had no patience with the "précieuses" of the decline, who tried to appear "savantes" without being even "instruites". To him, the value of knowledge depends entirely on its practical use as a means of edifying the mind and soul. Woman was not meant for science, and what Fénelon has seen of the "femme savante" is not calculated to make him enthusiastic. Girls should feel "une pudeur sur la science presque aussi délicate que celle qu'inspire l'horreur du vice." His programme of subjects of female study is correspondingly small. Reading and writing, spelling, arithmetic and grammar are the principal. In addition, music, painting, history, Latin and literature are conditionally recommended, for the individual talents have to be taken into consideration.

Fénelon's picture of contemporary womanhood is far from alluring. Its chief interest lies in the circumstance that it is the first instance in French literature of a systematic estimate of female manners based upon the feminine psychology, anticipating the current opinion among the writers of the next century regarding the foibles of the sex. Fénelon was among the first to realise—what Mary Wollstonecraft a century later stated with that characteristic frankness which almost entirely robbed her of female sympathy—that the worst enemy of female emancipation is, and always has been, woman herself. As long as the majority of women make considerations of sex the foundation of all their actions, it will prove impossible for the champions of equality to accomplish their full aims. Although a churchman and a moralist, Fénelon was in open revolt against the spirit of monasticism which regarded only eternity and failed to see its relation to everyday life, with its many exigencies. The best preparation for eternity, according to him, is a daily attention to the nearest duties of life. Not science, but the domestic circle was the proper domain of woman. More necessary than theoretical knowledge was that practical instruction in the little household ways which turn a young woman into a good housekeeper. What Fénelon did not sufficiently realise, was the indispensable connection between a moral and an intellectual education. The theory that perfect virtue arises out of the intellect and derives its chief value from a rational source, was a further step in the same direction which it was left to his successors to take. But he was instrumental in preparing the enfranchisement of the female education from the narrow principles of that church to which he belonged heart and soul.

His precepts were almost immediately put in practice. Making some allowance for personal inclinations and circumstances which forbade their full application, we may call Madame de Maintenon the foremost pupil of Fénelon's school. This remarkable woman's educational views present two entirely different aspects. She was a pietist of the Roman Catholic faith, but with certain leanings towards liberalism which smacked of heresy, the origin of which may be found in the influence of the philosophical creeds with which her early career as a précieuse had brought her into contact. On the other hand, her experience of society—after her marriage to the poet Scarron she had for some years kept a salon in Paris—had given her a taste for literature and made her a believer in "l'art de dire et d'écrire" as one of the necessary elements of female education. She thus combined in her person two of the principal tendencies of the century: a strong religious spirit and an intense interest in literature, and both became important factors in her educational system, in which she aimed at reconciling the exigencies of the world with the demands of piety in forming society women who were devout Christians. She was a woman of practical common sense, actuated by the most unselfish motives, and devoted to the exercise of that Reason which she held ought to be the constant regulator of Piety and the governing motive of all human actions. Nothing could be more directly opposed to the monastic spirit. Her principles therefore stamped her as a reactionary of Fénelon's school, save for the fact that "the world was too much with her", which made her always keep in view that polite society whose morals she had set out to improve, and the allurements of which constantly clashed with the rigidity of her religious devotion. At the same time the charms of domesticity appealed to her as strongly as to Fénelon. Reason, she argued, forbids the education of women to any station except that for which Providence originally intended them, and Providence never meant them to pass their lives in a convent, but rather in the domestic circle as devoted wives and loving mothers. She felt the monastic education to be a violation of the destination of womanhood, and her educational writings were a plea for emancipation from the compulsion of conventional religiosity with its disregard of practical life.

The equality-claim has no place in her programme. The very spirit of Christianity condemns it. "Dieu a soumis notre sexe au moment qu'il l'a créé, la faiblesse de notre esprit et de notre corps a besoin d'être conduite, soutenue et protégée; notre ignorance nous rend incapable de décision, et nous ne pouvons dans l'ordre de Dieu, gouverner que dépendamment des hommes." No further steps towards intellectual, social or political enfranchisement are to be expected from Madame de Maintenon.

Although woman can only "govern dependently", yet her rule of the home—and here again she fully agrees with Fénelon—is of the utmost importance, not only to her own small circle, but to society, or rather to that portion of it which alone had her full regard and affection: the kingdom of France. Woman was meant for marriage and her education should be relative to her position in society. Plutarch's line of thought, which we had almost lost sight of, re-enters the stage with the appearance of Fénelon and Madame de Maintenon. No motives of false delicacy should withhold from young women such information as may be useful to them in their struggle against the temptations of the outside world. The right place to prepare them for their natural place in society is not the convent, but the college, where the educational taste is entrusted to capable teachers, of whom it may be said that "le monde n'est étranger qu'à leur coeur". The optimistic faith in the capability of her sex of being perfected, which links her to Helvétius and the other Encyclopedians gave her the necessary courage to attempt an experiment which she confidently trusted might lead to a general reform in female morals. The words of Racine's Esther:

Ici, loin du tumulte, aux devoirs les plus saints

Tout un peuple naissant est formé par mes mains,

are a faithful reflection of her hope for the future. And so Madame de Maintenon declared war against convention and tradition and went the way she had marked out for herself. Her influence with the king enabled her to carry out her scheme to the minutest details and became the means of placing the vast establishment of St. Cyr at her disposal. The time had come to realise her dream of education. Two hundred and fifty girls of aristocratic families whom the endless wars had ruined, were entrusted to the care of a headmistress, Mme de Brinon, and her staff, under Madame de Maintenon's personal superintendance. It was her wish that they should constitute a large family and that the relation between teacher and pupil should be as nearly as possible that of mother to child, so as to make the reality differ as little as possible from what Fénelon's theory had considered the ideal form. The secular character of the establishment—on which the king had also insisted, holding that there were already more nuns than was strictly compatible with the interests of his kingdom—appeared from the fact that the teachers—"les dames de Saint Louis"—were called "madame" instead of "soeur" and wore dresses which, although simple, were different from those worn in the convent. They were not at first expected to take the vow for life, but their patroness expressed a distinct wish that they should always regard their pupils' interests before their own and show the greatest possible devotion to this task. In respect of this insistence upon the most absolute self-abnegation—involving a most unyielding sternness in taking what seemed the right moral course and a most complete subjection on the part of the pupil—Mme de Maintenon's ideas came dangerously near those of the Jansenists against whose severe methods she professed to be in revolt. The rules of discipline at St. Cyr were in some respects as strict as those practised at Port Royal and in both the motive was to shield the pupil against contamination. Realising the danger of influence from abroad at an age when the character was not sufficiently formed, and apt to take impressions too easily, Mme de Maintenon determined that all parental authority should cease. The girls were kept in the establishment until they were well out of their teens, and supposed to be morally strong enough to resist temptation and to exercise influence on their surroundings instead of undergoing it. There were no holidays and the "demoiselles" were allowed to see their parents only four times a year for half an hour or so under the watchful eye of one of the mistresses. Even their correspondence with them was limited, and the tone of the letters had to be strictly formal, in fact they were mere exercises of style. Apart from these restrictions, the girls were treated with great kindness, if with little outward show of affection. Mme de Maintenon was too much devoted to Reason to approve of such demonstrations, and wished the emotions to be kept under strict control. On the other hand, punishments were few, the teacher took a liberal share in all recreations and amusements, and the necessary instruction was made as attractive and imparted in as unobtrusive a manner as possible, in accordance with Fénelon's precepts.

The sudden change in Mme de Maintenon's system of discipline which took place in the third year of St. Cyr and which narrowed down the comparative liberty which had been a fundamental principle to the absolute subjection described above, was a frank avowal of the failure of her original methods and at the same time a proof of the sincerity of her endeavour. It was due to a most unexpected development.

In the first years of St. Cyr—the establishment was opened in 1686—the study of literature had occupied an important place among the subjects of the curriculum. The girls were made to act little domestic scenes written by the headmistress. At the patroness's instigation an experiment was made with Racine's "Andromaque", which, in her opinion, "succeeded too well", for the girls so entered into the spirit of the play, and developed such histrionic talents, that their monitress, realising the danger, asked Racine to write another play specially for them. In accordance with this request the great dramatist wrote "Esther", which was performed several times before the king and a select audience with signal success, and results disastrous to the spirit prevailing among the girls of St. Cyr. Never before had the discipline of the institution been in greater jeopardy. The girls' heads were turned, and their vanity and conceit knew no bounds.

Mme de Maintenon saw that energetic measures were urgently called for, and did not hesitate to adopt them. With an earnestness and resolution greatly to her credit she undertook the necessary reform with the effect of radically removing whatever was liberal and reactionary in her system, and reducing St. Cyr to a slightly modified form of a convent, thus granting to her opponents the satisfaction of a great moral victory, which the latter deserved no more than Mme de Maintenon deserved her defeat.

One of the unfortunate consequences was that the instruction which the girls received, and which had never been abundant, was reduced to almost a minimum. "Il n'est point question de leur orner l'esprit", said Mme de Maintenon. The horrors of exaggerated preciosity were ever since before her eyes. Too much learning, she feared, might turn the girls into précieuses, and manual labour was introduced as an effective antidote. Fortunately the years tended to soften the severity which had prevailed immediately after the catastrophe, and upon the whole the institution, which enjoyed special protection and undiminished popularity until its suppression by the Convention in 1793, could boast excellent results, and turned out some real "ornaments of their sex".

It seems a pity that in Mme de Maintenon's schemes so secondary a place should have been given to that education of the mind which is so essential to lasting improvement. She inevitably suffers by comparison with her contemporary Mme de Sévigné, whose correspondence with her daughter Mme de Grignan contains a most enlightened scheme for the education of her granddaughter Pauline de Simiane. She recognises that it is by literature that the mind is fed, and since to the pure everything is pure, there is little to be feared even of the otherwise pernicious reading of novels, for a sound mind will not easily go astray. An optimistic view of education, taking its root in considerations of philosophy, for Mme de Sévigné, like her daughter, was a Cartesian. In comparing her contribution to the educational problem with that of Mme de Maintenon, it should be remembered, however, that an individual education within the family circle offers better opportunities for freedom and less danger of contamination than the collective system of St. Cyr. Mme de Sévigné's ideas, contained in private correspondence, intended only for her daughter's use and entirely without the militant spirit, exercised little influence and were of little direct value to the cause of feminism.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Cf. the two articles in "A Cambridge History of English Literature", by Prof. F. M. Padelford (Vol. 2 p. 384) and by Prof. H. V. Routh (vol. 3 p. 88).

[4] Cf. p. 30.

[5] See also page 32.

[6] A very interesting article on "Le tiers Livre du Pantagruel et la Querelle des Femmes" by M. Abel Lefranc, containing an extensive list of contributions to the feminist and the anti-feminist literature of the time, may be found in the "Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes", (Tome II, 1904).

[7] Heinrich Morf, in his "Geschichte der französischen Literatur im Zeitalter der Renaissance" relates that a number of ladies took to frequenting the Académie de poésie et de musique founded by Baïf under the auspices of Charles IX; especially after his successor Henry III had transferred its seat to an apartment in the Louvre, whence it came to be called "Académie du Palais".

[8] P. Rousselot. Histoire de l'Education des Femmes en France.

Poullain de la Barre owes his revival to an article by M. Henri Piéron in the "Revue de Synthèse historique" of 1902. The latter's judgment is based upon two works: "De l'Egalité des Sexes" and "De l'Education des Dames", which he found in the Bibliothèque Nationale. In 1913 the "Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France" contained an article by M. Henri Grappin, pointing out that some of Poullain's works had been overlooked, supplying a full list of his literary productions and fully discussing one, entitled: "De l'Excellence des Hommes, contre l'Egalité des Sexes." The above-named three are the only treatises by Poullain which bear upon the position of women.

[9] Cf. Livet, Précieux et Précieuses, p. XXV.

CHAPTER III. The Position of French Women in Eighteenth Century Society.

In the earlier half of the eighteenth century, at a time when the inferiority of English women was so generally recognised as to leave no room at all for controversy, the Woman Question was attracting a good deal of notice in France, and scarcely a year passed without some kind of contribution to its literature.[10] It was by this time an acknowledged problem, and theoretically speaking it may be said that by the middle of the century feminism in France had carried the day, thanks mainly to the influence of modern philosophy, which the salons helped in propagating. The instruction-problem was also settled in theory in a manner satisfactory to feminists, and only that of female occupations remained as yet unbroached. The position of women in society not only became a favourite topic of conversation and controversy, but came to command a number of able pens in periodical literature and in the drama. In the latter branch of literature a number of pieces were written on the subject, some of which were hostile and sought the aid of ridicule, but of which the majority were of a more sympathetic tendency, showing that Molière's attack had failed. All the important theatres paid their tribute of attention to the cause of feminism. One of the earliest was Montchenay's "Cause des Femmes", a comedy performed at the Théâtre italien as early as 1687, while a more elaborate dramatic statement of the cause, entitled "l'Ile des Amazones" was composed in 1718 by Lesage and d'Orneval, and suggested the machinery of the "Amazones Modernes" of Legrand (1727), performed at the Théâtre français. This brings us to the field of Utopian literature à la Mrs. Manley, whose "New Atlantis" had appeared a few years previously. The Amazons, who had founded their own community in a remote island, having forsworn the society of men, made their return conditional on the acceptance of the following terms:

1stly, there was to be no subordination of the wife to the husband;

2ndly, the women were to be allowed to study, and to have their own universities;

3rdly, they were to be eligible to the highest positions in the army as in jurisdiction and finance; and finally it was to be considered as shameful an act on the part of a man to break the conjugal faith as on that of a woman, so that men might no longer boast of that which in a woman was deemed criminal. That the last was among the most rankling sores will be seen later on, when the "dual standard of morality" aroused the indignation of true "Blues" like Mrs. Chapone, and equally of radical feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft.

But the piece in which the question was best and most conclusively treated was a comedy, entitled "La Colonie", which Marivaux wrote about the middle of the century, and which, possibly owing to lack of success, was not included in the different editions of his works, so that it is at present accessible only in the Mercure de France of 1750[11]. It was on the whole sympathetic to women, in spite of the failure of their effort—described in the play—to establish a feminine republic, and the pleasantries of which men and women alike are the object. Both the weak points of the female character, as vanity, coquetry, garrulity and frivolity, and those of the men, as envy and vainglory, are made the object of ridicule. But the feminist tendency of the whole appears from the fact that the speeches of the female leaders are more reasonable than those of the males who are worsted by them. The women of the island-state, bent upon vindicating their rights, and inflamed by the speeches of Arthenice and Madame Sorbin,—whose respective lover and husband occupy responsible positions on the male side—contemplate a final breach between the sexes. They experience their first disappointment when the young and pretty women refuse to give up their empire of coquetry, especially when told to make themselves ugly! An ultimatum is duly sent to the male leaders, demanding the admission of women to different occupations and equality between the sexes in matrimonial affairs, a refusal of which will mean instant dissolution of the social state. When the men, driven to despair, are on the point of surrendering, a philosopher's stratagem brings relief. Rumours are spread of a hostile attack upon the island, and the women, by virtue of the proposed compact, are called upon to swell the ranks of the defending army. This proves too much for the majority, who find that they prefer the worries of the daily household routine to the hardships of war, causing peace to be restored.

The periodical essay was also made subservient to the propagation of feminist ideas when in 1750, while in London, Mme Leprince de Beaumont started the "Nouveau Magasin français", in which the rights of women were vindicated with great fervour. Nine years later, a second, even more pronounced attempt to adapt the periodical to the female interests was made in the "Bibliothèque des Femmes", which after a short run, was continued in the "Journal des Dames". This paper, which enjoyed great success, was continued for twenty years, during which it served the female interests and contained a number of articles written by women. The original intention of having only female contributors proved incapable of realisation. The paper sang the praises of women in different keys, as an antidote to the daily revilings in other periodicals, and the original idea of promoting the female interests by stimulating the female intellect was gradually lost sight of.

But the greatest friends of woman and her cause, who fought and won her battles for her, and were willing to recognise her empire, were the philosophers of the Encyclopedia, with the emphatic exception of that most inconsistent of all geniuses: J. J. Rousseau. The Encyclopedian spirit is best reflected by d'Alembert's "Lettre à J. J. Rousseau", written in reply to the "Lettre sur les Spectacles" in the famous controversy on the drama. He protests against the latter's cynical views of womanhood. The human race would be indeed in a pitiable condition, he says, if the worthiest object of the male homage were indeed so rare an occurrence as Rousseau chooses to intimate. But supposing he should be right, to what cause would such a deplorable state of things be attributable? "L'esclavage et l'espèce d'avilissement où nous avons mis les femmes; les entraves que nous donnons à leur esprit et à leur âme, le jargon futile et humiliant pour elles et nous; auquel nous avons réduit notre commerce avec elles, comme si elles n'avaient pas une raison à cultiver, ou n'en étaient pas dignes; enfin, l'éducation funeste, je dirai presque meurtrière, que nous leur prescrivons, sans leur permettre d'en avoir d'autre; éducation ou elles apprennent presque uniquement à se contrefaire sans cesse, à n'avoir pas un sentiment qu'elles n'étouffent, une opinion qu'elles ne cachent, une pensée qu'elles ne déguisent. Nous traitons la nature en elles comme dans nos jardins, nous cherchons à l'orner en l'étouffant." And d'Alembert makes an appeal to the philosophers of the age to destroy so pernicious a prejudice, to shake off the barbarous yoke of custom and to set the example by giving their daughters the same education as their sons, that they may be saved from idleness and the evils that follow inevitably in its train. And the cause of woman thus became incorporated in the great scheme of Liberty and Equality which was slowly maturing in the master minds of the nation.

The gulf that yawned between the two opposing parties was widening every instant. On one side were those in possession of power and authority, leaning upon Custom and Tradition, drawing what inspiration animated them from the source of the Ancients and stubbornly opposing any change which might tend to undermine their position. Ranged on the other was the intellect of the nation, the devotees of a philosophy which held the promise of the millennium to be almost within immediate reach, firing the mind with their daring schemes for improvement and asserting the coming triumph of Modernism. Nothing could be more natural than that woman should throw in her lot with the latter and that her cause should become a subdivision of the great problem of humanity. The great sphere of activity, next to the wide field of literature, was the more modest compass of the eighteenth century salon.

Madame de Lambert herself draws a parallel somewhere between the salons of the seventeenth and those of the eighteenth century, more especially with regard to the prevailing codes of morality. Her conclusions, like those of M. Brunetière nearly two centuries later, are overwhelmingly in favour of Mme de Rambouillet and her contemporaries. She complains that the delicate intellectual amusements of the seventeenth century assemblies have been largely superseded by the grosser delights of the card-table and of a declining stage. The merest semblance of knowledge is regarded with disapproval,—this in consequence of Molière's furious onslaught in his Femmes Savantes—and as a natural consequence of ignorance, the female morals have sadly decayed. Being thus deprived of the means of improving the mind, women are naturally driven to a life of pleasure-seeking. And she doubts whether society has derived any benefit from the change. "Les femmes ont mis la débauche à la place du savoir, le précieux qu'on leur a tant reproché, elles l'ont changé en indécence." In other words, Mme de Lambert wanted to return to the earlier preciosity, granting women the right to be instructed, and trying to steer clear of those excesses which had called forth the attacks of Molière and Boileau. She emphatically protests against the pernicious habit of making a pleasing appearance the sole aim of female education, and claims for her sex the blessings of an education which in cultivating the mind will improve the female morals.

It would be impossible to deny that the moral standard was considerably lower than it had been half a century earlier. The consequences entailed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and by the suppression of Port Royal had been equally disastrous. The chief bulwarks of Protestant and Catholic orthodox faith had been removed, leaving a free field to both libertinage and disbelief. The coarseness of manners which it had been the aim of the Rambouillet societies to suppress reasserted itself on the one hand, while on the other the rising spirit of philosophical inquiry and scientific research had degenerated into a scepticism which was no longer counteracted by that spirit of religious mysticism which had been a weapon of orthodoxy against unbelief. The Encyclopedian spirit often spelt deism and atheism, both of which flourished in the salons. The very fact that their society was no longer exclusive, but freely admitted people of all class and opinions, and from different parts of the world, accounts for the enormous influence exercised by these "bureaux d'esprit" upon public opinion in the eighteenth century. Moreover, the monarchical power was declining, and the king, in establishing a barrier between himself and the society of the salons, was himself instrumental in raising opinions which more and more became the prevailing ones, and upon which he had no influence whatever. Rationalism began to gain ground rapidly and became a basis for speculations which soon came to include politics and economics.

M. Brunetière, whose judgment on the salons of the eighteenth century is very severe, complains that the lofty artistic and moral ideals of the preceding generation had given way to scepticism and to cynicism of a kind which made Madame de Tencin refer to her guests as "ses bêtes". This statement, which no doubt is mainly correct, seems strange in consideration of the fact that it was by the new philosophy which the same salons helped in spreading, that the great problems of the future of the human race were put forward, which in broader minds gave rise to much idealism in what M. du Bled so finely calls: "le souci de la modernité." But eighteenth century society regarded philosophy as an intellectual pastime rather than as bringing the hope of relief to the oppressed millions, and if it occasionally dabbled in social problems, the misery of the multitude did not touch the majority of those who lived lives of comfort and luxury, and were utterly unacquainted with suffering, very deeply. No direct attempt at improvement, therefore, was to be expected from them, they were talking in theory about things of the practice of which they knew nothing. Brunetière calls the eighteenth century salon "le triomphe de l'universelle incompétence", with which its seventeenth century predecessor, with its more limited programme, compares favourably. It became habitual "to talk wittily of serious problems, while seriously discussing trifling subjects". It needed, indeed, the fiery imagination and fervent enthusiasm of a Rousseau to inspire the philosophical theories with the life of his genius. And yet, if the social problems of the time were not directly solved by eighteenth century society, they were at least formulated by it in such a manner as to make them the catchword of the period and to draw to them the attention of those who were better able to do them justice. The very fact that the salons were ruled over by women and independent of court-influence made them the place where opinions were most freely uttered and most readily listened to.

Literature, which had been the chief occupation of the early salons, now found a powerful rival in science. The poetry of the eighteenth century "ruelles" became of an even lighter and more insipid kind. On the other hand, the latter half of the previous century had witnessed a growing interest in anatomy and surgery, and after the introduction (by Fontenelle) of astronomy as a fashionable science, Newton became the rage, and ladies of quality like the marquise du Châtelet were among his worshippers. The domination of the salons thus became extended to philosophy, science, economics and politics. When the Ancient and Modern controversy was re-introduced in the opening years of the century, nearly all the female philosophers were fervent partisans of the Moderns, believing in a future in which all human beings would be guided by the light of Reason.

Of this eighteenth century modernism, feminism is, in fact, only a subdivision. This appears from the work of Poullain de la Barre, and still more from the great defence of the Cause of Woman (when threatened by Boileau in Satire X "Sur les Femmes") by the great champion of modernism Perrault in his "Apologie des Femmes." The Moderns, indeed, saw in the prejudice against women a remnant of the servility of antiquity which was in flagrant contradiction with the dictates of Reason. Hence the close connection between feminist literature in the eighteenth century and life in the salons, of which the authors were mostly among the regular frequenters. The marquise de Lambert laid down her ideas of feminism in her "Réflexions sur les Femmes", and we have seen that both D'Alembert and Marivaux were among the staunch defenders of the right of the sex to equal consideration.

Boileau's death had left the "précieuses" in the undisputed possession of the field of light literature, to which now became added that of science. This new form of preciosity, "la préciosité scientifique", which made its appearance in the salon of Mme de Lambert, where it found an ardent worshipper in Fontenelle, grew so powerful that even Voltaire's efforts to crush it with ridicule were unavailing. So strong had the female dictatorship become, that three of the most influential men-of-letters in the kingdom had vainly tried to get the better of it. But unfortunately the platonic ideal to which the women of the preceding century had owed their ascendancy had degenerated, and in consequence of the altered circumstances women often had to buy with physical submission and degradation that worship of their beauty and deference to their opinion which made them at the same time the rulers and the slaves of men, and against which the moralists of the century, with the glaring exception of Rousseau, made it their business to protest loudly, but in vain.

Mme de Lambert merely wanted to restore the right sort of preciosity to its throne as an antidote to the evils of ignorance, in which she set herself the ideals of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and advocated moderation in everything. Her salon thus became as much a protest against exaggeration and affectation as against the prevailing opinion that the education of women should only aim at teaching them how to please the opposite sex. An occasional frequenter calls it "l'hôtel de Rambouillet présidé par Fontenelle, et où les précieuses corrigées se souvenaient de Molière."

Being left a widow at a comparatively early age, Mme de Lambert opened her salon in the Palais Mazarin in the rue Colbert about 1700. She was at that time rather more than fifty, and reigned supreme over her circle of visitors for more than thirty years. She set herself to prove that it was possible to have a lively entertainment without the help of the card-table, relying chiefly on conversation and literature. Her Tuesdays and Wednesdays soon became famous, and attracted both the aristocracy and the literati. Among her regular visitors were Fontenelle, Marivaux, Mlle de Launay (Mme de Staal) and de la Motte, champion of the moderns, whilst Mme Dacier undertook the defence of the opposite cause. Mme de Lambert herself was the ruling spirit of the Académie, of which the way towards membership lay through her favour, and the chief literary productions previous to being published—if published they were—were read and criticised in her circle.

If Mme de Lambert deserves mention for having kept a salon which formed a link between the seventeenth and the eighteenth century, and exercised a beneficial influence on the tone of conversation, she is even more entitled to attention on account of the part played by her in the development of feminism. She was a moralist rather than educator, and followed in the steps of Fénelon. She had the Cartesian belief in the infallibility of Reason, with two exceptions, which do honour to the qualities of her heart, and saved her from the inevitable conclusions of logic à outrance: religion and honour. "Il y a deux préjugés auxquels il faut obéir: la religion et l'honneur", and a little further: "En fait de religion, il faut céder aux autorités. Sur tout autre sujet, il ne faut recevoir que celle de la raison et de l'évidence", excluding even honour. But her actions show that she realised the danger which lies in obeying the duties of reason while totally excluding the admonitions of the heart. Stronger than her love of logic was that exquisite form of sensibility which made her at least a real champion of the less fortunately situated. There is real concern for the welfare of her inferiors in the precept that "servants should be treated as unhappy friends", and a true love of humanity in the statement that "humanity suffers in consequence of the inequality which Fortune has introduced among men". Words which come from the heart and entitle her to sympathy and admiration.

Her ideas concerning female education are contained in the "Avis d'une mère à sa fille". She insists on the importance of cultivating the female mind to render woman an agreeable companion to her husband, who will then honour her and give her her due. And she places herself on the standpoint which Mary Wollstonecraft took after her, in basing upon this foundation her vindication of women's right to be instructed. She complains of the tyranny of men, who condemn to ignorance the partners of their wedded lives, disregarding the pernicious consequences entailed thereby. For ignorance leads to vice, and the mind should be kept employed, were it only as a means of avoiding mischief. To Mme de Lambert the Muses were "l'asyle des moeurs". Her educational scheme contains more instruction than Fénelon's, as it includes philosophy, which is to reclaim women to virtue through the medium of Reason.

Of all the French female authors on the Woman Question it is Mme de Lambert whose ideas show the nearest approach to Mary Wollstonecraft. The essential difference between the two—the former's indifference to political emancipation—was due to a difference in social circumstances, which made her a ruler whose influence over men no political enfranchisement could have increased, and also to the condition of things in France, where the first steps towards the political equality of the stronger sex were yet to be taken. She believed the domestic circle to be the proper sphere of women, and her "metaphysics" of love—if less fantastic than the ideals of her 17th century predecessors, which, however, found some adherents among the regulars of her own circle in de la Motte and the Duchesse du Maine—were certainly more conducive to real happiness in the high moral principles out of which they arose. It was the marquis d'Argenson who said of her writings that they were "un résumé complet de la morale du monde et du temps présent la plus parfaite", and there seems no reason to doubt the truth of his judgment.

Unfortunately the good example set by the marquise de Lambert was not followed in other circles, where the increasing influence of the feminine element, instead of purifying the morals of the male sex, depraved them yet further. The great catastrophe of the end of the century was hastened by the vicious excesses of many females.

Goncourt says that the eighteenth century lady of quality represented the principle that governed society, the reason which directed it and the voice which commanded it; she was, in fact, "la cause universelle et fatale, l'origine des événements, la source des choses," and nothing could be achieved without her concurrence. Rousseau, when first arriving in Paris, was advised by a Jesuit to cultivate the acquaintance of women, "for nothing ever happened in Paris except through them".

The bulk of female influence upon the morals of the century was disastrous. The gross materialism amongst society-women found expression in a well-known utterance of the marquise du Châtelet: "We are here merely to procure ourselves the greatest possible variety of agreeable sensations." The most perverse code of morality came to reign in some of the most-frequented salons. One of the leading hostesses of Paris boasted that one of her reception-days was reserved for "gentlemen of a damaged reputation", the so-called "jour des coquins". Of the Englishmen who frequented these circles of appalling vice, Horace Walpole—who in a space of forty years paid six successive visits to Paris, and who was very far indeed from being a sentimentalist,—refers to the utter absence of any sense of decency among people whose chief occupation was the demolition of all authority, whether temporal or spiritual, including the Divine Authority itself.

One of the worst examples of the epicurian spirit was furnished by the salon of the notorious Mme de Tencin. She disdained even to keep up the appearance of quasi-platonic courtship and lived in open and shameless debauch. Her entire life was made up of political intrigues and adventures of gallantry, in which she turned the latter to account to promote the former. She possessed plenty of literary talent, and her two novels "Le Comte de Comminges" and "Le siège de Calais" rank among the best female productions of the century—but even Fontenelle thought her heartless. After a childhood spent in the very imperfect seclusion of a convent which was notorious for its nocturnal orgies, "la religieuse Tencin" came to Paris in 1712 to begin her siege of male hearts, directing her first attack against no less a person than the Regent himself, and ultimately contenting herself with one of his ministers, which gallant adventure was followed by many more. She gave birth to a child, whom she deposited on the steps of a church, to be found and brought up by strangers. This child afterwards became the famous d'Alembert.

In order to be able to pursue her political schemes she filled her salon on different days of the week with people of various occupations and interests; keeping philosophers and académiciens, politicians and ecclesiastics carefully separated, making herself their confidante, and possessing herself of their secrets, managing them all so cleverly that they became her tools without being aware of it, secretly despising her "bêtes" while openly flattering them. The visitors to her two weekly dinners were nearly all men, Bolingbroke and Matthew Prior being among her "habitués". Apart from Mme Geoffrin, who became her successor, and of whom she said that "she only came to see if there was anything among her inventory that she might have a use for", there were hardly any women, for Mme de Tencin would brook no possible rivals. Such was her degradation that she wrote a most indecent "Chronique scandaleuse" for the special delectation of the Regent. As Mme de Lambert's salon represents eighteenth century society at its best, so Mme de Tencin's foreshadowed some of the worst instances of female intriguing that were to follow.

A totally different salon was that kept by Mme Geoffrin. Mme de Tencin—whose own birth was not above suspicion—had all the pride of class, and looked down upon the Third Estate; Mme Geoffrin on the contrary was the daughter of a court-valet and consequently remained all her life a "bourgeoise", without any pretence to "préciosité" or anything but a kind and warm heart, a most remarkable wit, sound common sense and a natural delicacy which made her an ideal hostess. For Mme de Tencin's lofty disdain she substituted an almost maternal solicitude for the welfare of her "children", who, with the exception of Mlle de Lespinasse, were of the male sex. Besides d'Alembert, Diderot, Morellet and Grimm there were the ubiquitous Horace Walpole, David Hume the philosopher and Wraxall; the first-named of whom in his correspondence declared her to be "a most extraordinary woman with more common sense than he had ever encountered in one of her sex."

The principles of the salon in the Rue St. Honoré were much the same as at Mme de Tencin's, but a milder spirit prevailed, and the demon of intrigue was absent. Mme Geoffrin kept fixed reception-days, her Mondays being devoted to artists, and her Wednesdays to men-of-letters and philosophers, while her intimates were made welcome on both days. The hostess presided over the assemblies without in any way obtruding her personal opinions or bringing her private interests into play, exercising an absolute authority which never became tyranny, and keeping peace among the more excitable of her guests[12]. She was much appreciated by them all, not least by the future king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus, her devoted "son", causing Walpole to refer to her as "the queen-mother of Poland". Her apotheosis came when in her sixty-eighth year she visited Warsaw, where she met with a royal reception. After her return her mental powers declined rapidly, and her daughter—fearing the influence of scepticism upon her mother—kept her favourite philosophers at a distance, eliciting from her the remark that she was, like Godfrey of Bouillon, "protecting her tomb against the infidels."

The third of the "Muses of the philosophical Decameron", whose salon was much in vogue, was Julie de Lespinasse, whose attractive personality and brilliant conversational and epistolary powers account for her success. She combined the warmth of heart of Mme Geoffrin with the ardent temperament of Mme de Tencin, but without the latter's brazen-facedness. She possessed a degree of sensibility which made her succumb to different lovers "for each of whom she cherished a passion which it was beyond her power to resist." Her youth had been fed with Richardson, "Clarissa Harlowe" being her favourite. She had entered the employ of the famous marquise du Deffand, herself a prominent hostess, in the capacity of reader. Her wit and the natural buoyancy of her character soon made her more popular than her mistress, whose guests took to visiting her in her room, while her mistress was still asleep. Mme du Deffand in her jealousy accused her of "skimming off the cream of her visitors' conversation"; a breach followed, and Julie was enabled by some supporters to set up a small salon in the rue St. Dominique, which flourished from 1764 till the year of her death in 1776. She could not afford sumptuous dinners, but her guests were sure of a warm welcome and of some interesting conversation, which she conducted so tactfully, effacing herself completely and making her guests feel at home by always appearing interested, that her lack of personal beauty was quite forgotten in the charm of her manner. Politics were a frequent topic, and Mlle de Lespinasse was among the professed admirers of the British Constitution. D'Alembert, Condorcet, Turgot and also Mme Geoffrin belonged to her circle, and that Walpole knew her also, appears from the correspondence between him and Mme du Deffand, who at Julie's death complained that the rupture with her had robbed her of the friendship of d'Alembert.

While the women of society were celebrating their triumphs in the salons, philosophy was trying to do something for the female multitude. We have seen that it was Fénelon who caused education to be included among the subjects of moral philosophy, but it was the diffusive power of Rousseau's writings that made it one of the most frequently discussed themes of the century. His "Emile, ou de l'Education", which appeared in 1762—curiously enough, the year of the suppression of Jesuitism in France—marked a new era in the history of education, if not in that of feminism. Of Rousseau it might have been reasonably expected as the champion of liberty and equality to carry to their full extent the philosophical venturings of Fénelon and thus to usher in a new era of female emancipation. However, with an inconsistency which is one of his chief characteristics, Rousseau not only deliberately left the female half of mankind out of his scheme for political enfranchisement, but ranged himself among the anti-feminists by the great emphasis he laid on the consideration of a sexual character, which he construed into evidence of female inferiority, by arguing that it makes the subjection of woman a natural law, which is to be respected according to the theory that "whatever is in Nature, must be right." Owing to the contradictory nature of his views, however, while directly opposing the movement, he indirectly furthered it in two ways. In the first place, his social theories were adopted without reserve and without restrictions by some of his followers, who thus repaired the omission which had left Woman out of the scheme; and secondly it was Rousseau who once for all broke the back of the monastic system of education by continuing the campaign which Fénelon in theory, and Mme de Maintenon in practice, had entered upon before him, and bringing it to a happy conclusion. The reduction and ultimate abolition of the education of religion, which was one of the great victories of the philosophical school, became manifest in the latter half of the century. It was a signal success, achieved over an unwilling government and crowned by the expulsion of the Jesuits, who had formed one of the chief bulwarks against the growing revolutionary spirit.

The Cartesian principles, which had been a beacon-light to seventeenth century philosophy, were supplemented in the next by a new element: that of utility. In John Locke's "Treatises of Government" and also in "Some Thoughts concerning Education", he let himself be guided chiefly by considerations of usefulness, thus becoming the founder of that doctrine of Utilitarianism which, after influencing the French Encyclopedians, was to return to England a century later and to find a fervent champion in William Godwin. In deciding upon a course of action, the inevitable question was: "What is the use?" and this guiding principle became paramount also in matters of education. To Locke, who was a man of practical sense and not a mere theorist, the problem was how to make people understand their real interests, and to make them act in accordance with them, which must necessarily lead to happiness. His educational system, therefore, is based upon the communication of such useful knowledge as will most contribute to the total amount of happiness to be found on this globe[13]. Locke insisted on the necessity for a physical education which increases the mental and moral capacity by rendering the body less subject to fatigue. Simplicity and effectiveness in dress and food, and plenty of outdoor exercise are recommended, and in this important matter, as indeed in a great many others, Locke may be said to have struck the keynote of the philosophical tendencies of the eighteenth century, anticipating the famous Nature-theory of Rousseau. Many important questions were mooted by him. He introduced the ethical problem of reward and punishment, and discussed the advisability of reasoning with a child and of making him learn a trade, which became a part of the educational programme of the next generations.

The French philosophers became Locke's immediate heirs, and afterwards repaid their debt to England with interest. Where Locke gave his "young gentleman" a tutor, his views were adopted by the opponents of the monastic education. It could hardly be expected of Locke, who lived in a time when the female fortunes in his own country were at a very low ebb, to have paid much attention to the possibility of making women share in the obvious advantages of the new system. However, if he did little or nothing for British women, his theories were turned to account for the benefit of their French sisters, whose position in the lower walks of life was not very much better than theirs. His French disciples, carrying the theory of utility to its fullest extent, included the female sex in their reflections. The first in point of time was the Abbé de St. Pierre, of whom Rousseau contemptuously said that he was "a man of great schemes and narrow views". Seen from a feminist standpoint this judgment is cruelly unjust. For, even granting that the Abbé's schemes were too Utopian to be capable of full realisation—a circumstance he himself sadly recognised—the fact remains that he was responsible for the first project of female education on a national basis, making wholesale education a state-concern and thus wanting to extend the benefit of instruction to many who would otherwise be deprived of it. He stands at the beginning of the lane that leads via Bernardin de St. Pierre and Talleyrand to the great Condorcet.

The Abbé de St. Pierre was willing to grant women as a class that equality which the better-class women had actually attained, and he believed in their instruction, holding that on the instruction given to the young, whether male or female, depended the happiness of the coming race. But he believed still more in the necessity for a moral education, for his utilitarianism is not of this earth, but of eternity. With him the ever recurring question is: "What will it profit the soul?", and the fear of punishment in Hell is rather stronger with him than the sense of moral duty. He thus laid himself open to attack from the notorious Mme de Puysieux, who believed in reputation and the preservation of appearances, informing him that it was silly to let the fear of Hell withhold people from seeking happiness by cultivating the good opinion of others, whether deserved or not! The final clause sums up what moralists found most objectionable in the inclinations of a depraved age.

The real aim of women, according to the Abbé, should be to please God, and not men, so as to gain eternal life. He has no ambition for women beyond that of making them devout Christians and good housekeepers, and his educational efforts are accordingly directed towards these two accomplishments. Girls are to dress simply, to eschew cards—that curse of the age—and to learn useful needlework, the keeping of accounts and in general such things as will be of the greatest use to them in the performance of their domestic duties. But he very unaccountably refuses their youth the advantages and innocent enjoyments of home-life, wishing them to be brought up in colleges, in which they are to be kept immured until such time as their education will be completed, when they will be ready for matrimony! At college girls may learn to be good citizenesses, but they will scarcely gain the necessary experience for managing a home of their own. The comprehensiveness of his scheme, however, and his recognition of the female equality entitles him to a place in the history of feminism above Rousseau.

The latter's attitude towards the feminist movement is so complicated as to demand careful analysis. Where women were concerned the strong individuality of the female genius would not allow him to side fully either with "those who wished to condemn them to a life of household-drudgery, making of them a sort of superior slaves, or those who, not satisfied to vindicate woman's rights, made her usurp those of the stronger sex", for the former have too low a notion of the duties of womanhood, whilst the latter overlook the considerations of a sexual character by which, according to Rousseau, the relations between the sexes are exclusively determined. Rousseau's opinion of the depth to which women had sunk appears from his "Lettre à d'Alembert sur les Spectacles," which contains a fierce onslaught upon their moral perversity, which has caused the drama, too feeble to rise to worthier themes, to fall back upon erotics of a most despicable kind. Rousseau judged women capable of becoming something better than what eighteenth century society had made of them, but in his demands for them and in his schemes for perfecting their moral education he was extremely modest. Next to the salons he held the education of the convents, "ces véritables écoles de coquetterie", to be chiefly responsible for the degradation of the female character. The young women who, on leaving them, enter society, carry into instant practice the lessons of vanity and coquetry which the convents have supplied. For convent and salon Rousseau wanted to substitute the blessings of true domesticity—painted in glowing colours in the pages of the "Nouvelle Héloise." His sympathies went out, not to that college-life of which the Abbé de St. Pierre had such sanguine expectations, but to the intimacies of the family-circle, presided over by loving parents, an ideal which he reintroduced in the fifth book of his treatise on education, where, circumstances rendering it advisable to provide the finished male product with a suitable partner for life, the principles of Sophie's education are elaborately described[14].

Where he recommends making the duties of life as pleasant as possible to the young pupil, protesting against that austere conception which allowed her no other diversion than studies and prayers, Rousseau sides with Fénelon. In his opinion girls enjoy too little freedom, whilst grown-up women are left too much liberty. Let the young girls have an opportunity to enjoy life, he says, or they will take it when they are older. Nor does the notion of making them at an early age acquainted with the world inspire him with terror, for he trusts with Mme de Sévigné that the sight of noisy gatherings will only fill them with disgust instead of tempting them to imitation.

So far there is nothing anti-feminist in Rousseau's ideas. But unfortunately we have come to the end of what is positive and his further utterances rather advocate woman's subjection than her enfranchisement. The habit of reverting to first principles which is so dominant a characteristic of his Nature-theory makes him draw a parallel between the sexes upon the foundation of those innate qualities which constitute the sexual character. Men and women are the same in whatever is independent of sex, and radically different, almost diametrically opposed, in all that pertains to it. Thus all disputes regarding equality are vain, for "in what the sexes have in common they are naturally equal, and in that in which they differ no comparison is possible". And woman is to be congratulated upon this diversity, for in it lies the great secret of her subtle power. Where woman asserts the natural rights which arise from this difference she is superior to man; where she tries to usurp the natural rights of the opposite sex she remains hopelessly below their level. The two sexes have different spheres of activity, and each sex can do well only in its own sharply-defined sphere.

Reason itself demands this stress laid on the contrast between the sexes. For, says Rousseau, once women are brought up to be as like men as possible, their authority and influence, which are rooted in their being essentially different, will be lost without a substitute. This remark is one of great wisdom and psychological insight. Rousseau saw what many extreme feminists are so apt to forget, that those who wish to develop in women those qualities which naturally belong to man, and to suppress in them what is proper to their own sex, are in reality doing them irreparable harm.

There are, according to Rousseau, a male empire and a female one. The former rests upon a foundation of superior physical strength and mental superiority; but although the stronger sex are masters in appearance, they in reality depend on the weaker. For the female empire, established by Nature herself, derives its strength from those delicate feminine charms which command the worship of that gallantry which Nature again has instilled into the hearts of men.

In giving this interpretation of female power and influence Rousseau exposed himself to attack. The platonic worship, we have seen, had sadly degenerated, and what remained was a worthless, hypocritical imitation which was felt by well-meaning women as an insult rather than a compliment. But what called down a storm of feminist indignation upon his head was the sweeping conclusion he drew from the natural law that man, having physical strength on his side, must always play the active part in the intercourse between people of different sexes, while woman has to be always content with the passive rôle. "The sole object of women," says Rousseau, "ought consequently to be to please men, on whom their relative weakness has made them dependent", and goes on to assert that all female education should as a natural consequence be "relative to men".

There is in the above passage, which shows that on the subject of feminism Rousseau, instead of a revolutionary, was rather a conservative, nothing to suggest the bold and daring vindication of female rights that was so soon to resound in the philosophical world like a mighty trumpet-blast. His ideas about the position of Woman are characteristic of his want of equilibrium in presenting a bewildering chaos of judicious observations and unaccountable oversights. It is not so much that some of his statements are untrue, as that they are incomplete. In drawing sweeping conclusions from the physical inferiority of the sex he deliberately closes his eyes to their moral and mental possibilities. It is true that he insists upon a moral education for women, but whatever of merit may be contained in this claim is instantly neutralised by its only object: making women more acceptable companions to their husbands, contributing to the happiness of the latter by unwearying devotion and unalterable constancy. There are undoubtedly many women to whom the above would seem the most acceptable task, as there are others whose consciousness of their talents would make them indignantly reject so subordinate a part. As long as women are not cut after the same pattern, allowance will have to be made for individual propensities and any theory, however cleverly put together, will succeed with some types of womanhood and hopelessly fail with others.

St. Marc Girardin indignantly remarks that the condition of the women in Rousseau's Nature-scheme suggests the oriental seraglio. This is an exaggeration, for the "relative education" is qualified by Rousseau to such an extent that the harem-picture which it may at first conjure up is considerably modified. He wished the term "made to please men" to be understood in a far wider meaning than the merely sensual, for no one realised better than he that in the absence of a spiritual element no love based upon the grosser passions can possibly endure.

Where the female weaknesses and vanities are concerned Rousseau's discernment even surpasses that of Fénelon. The task of woman being to please, Nature has made her regard above all things the opinion of the opposite sex. And the moralist who teaches men to ignore the opinion of others as destructive of individuality, goes so far as to prescribe for women an unlimited deference to opinion and reputation. "Opinion, which is the grave of virtue among men, ought to be among women its high throne". The utilitarian question: "A quoi cela est-il bon?", which is to be the guiding principle in Emile's case, changes its character where Sophie is concerned, and becomes: "Quel effet cela fera-t-il?" The question what impression a thing will produce naturally leads to putting the shadow before the substance, and appearance before reality, and as such may have a most disastrous effect.

Sophie's love of needlework is accounted for not so much by considerations of usefulness as by the reflection that this delicate occupation will make her appear to advantage to her admirer. The same train of thoughts makes her abominate the useful occupation of cooking, by which her hands might become soiled. Did Rousseau actually imagine that his much-recommended simplicity in dress would hold out against the innate love of finery which was to help in the accomplishment of what he considered the chief aim of womanhood?

Rousseau certainly did not mean to imply that woman must of necessity be morally inferior to man, but simply that Nature had ordained that she shall be subjected to his superior strength, to his cooler judgment and to his superior common sense. He was certainly capable of imagining an ideal female, and of worshipping in her the essentially sexual qualities which make her differ from man. That portion of the fifth book of Emile which deals with the first meeting between the lovers leaves little doubt as to how he pictured to himself his ideal of womanhood. The philosophical treatise is more than once in danger of becoming a romance, embodying the slightly sobered ideals of courtship of the author of "Julie". It cannot be denied that Sophie has charm and that her subjection to Emile is not oppressive. But to form a correct notion of Rousseau's ideas regarding the social position of women we must strip the story of its lyrical element and glance at the purely philosophical portion of the treatise. It is there that we must look for an answer to the question: "Did Rousseau look upon women as partakers of the faculty of Reason?" And he gives his reply in the following words: "L'art de penser n'est pas étranger aux femmes, mais elles ne doivent faire qu'effleurer les sciences de raisonnement." He would not even object to a system by which the functions of women were strictly limited to the performance of sexual duties, if it were not that utter ignorance would make them fall a too easy prey to rascally adventurers! The subsequent statement that, after all, it being the task of woman to get herself esteemed, so as to justify her husband's choice, a little knowledge would not come amiss, does not mend matters in its re-introduction of the relativity-principle. Here indeed, Rousseau "pitches the pipe too low".

Woman's special domain is that of sentiment. But the very "sensibility" which renders her more alluring by contrast, prevents her from forming a sound judgment. This appreciation of women appears clearly in the passages of Emile in which the choice of a religion is discussed. Emile is not allowed to decide until he has completed his eighteenth year, when he is made to judge for himself, uninfluenced by his tutor. Sophie's religious notions, on the contrary, are carefully instilled by her parents at an early age, it being silently taken for granted that she will never arrive at a degree of understanding which will enable her to form her own convictions. "The female reason is of a practical nature, which renders them very quick to find the means of arriving at a fixed conclusion, but does not enable them to form that conclusion independently of others". Again that utter dependence, that total lack of individuality which characterises Rousseau's female ideal. "My daughter", says Sophie's father, "knowledge does not belong to your age; when the time has come, your husband will instruct you."

The amount of actual instruction in Rousseau's scheme is reduced to a minimum. There is no knowing what damage may be done to the unstable female imagination by the dangerous literature of the time. Here we recognise the author of the Dijon prize-essay with its crushing conclusion. Rousseau frankly hated the "femme bel esprit". Sophie's mind is to be formed by observation and reflection, and not by books. But how can Sophie be supposed to reflect, one might ask, unless she had certain fundamental truths pointed out to her, the instilment of which is not the work of every parent, however well-intentioned? It is Rousseau's fatal mistake that he cannot bring himself to realise that moral culture simply cannot exist without a certain amount of intellectual culture. He wanted to have both granted to men, and his conclusions tended to withhold both from women. The march of humanity finds him in the first rank of those who were pioneers; the feminist movement, while recognising his cleverness, looks upon him as a dangerous, and sometimes does him the injustice of calling him an hypocritical enemy.

The charge of insincerity has, indeed, been often brought against him, although he has found some defenders also. However, he is condemned by most women. Mrs. Fawcett, in her introduction to Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication, opines that a man who made so light of his duties towards his own children, and whose married life was so full of blame has no right to pronounce on problems which require the disinterestedness and self-abnegation of the pure idealist. Where Rousseau points out the shortcomings of the women, of his time and regrets them, he is with Mary Wollstonecraft; where he fails to show the way by which improvement may be attained, he remains hopelessly behind one who, with considerably less genius, had a great deal more moral courage and a far wider conception of the ideals of woman.

Of the disciples and opponents of Rousseau, some of whom, like Mme de Staël, Mme de Genlis, and Mme de Necker de Saussure were of the female sex, little need be said here, as their writings either did not throw any new light on the problem under consideration, or belong to a period following that of Mary Wollstonecraft. When the Revolution came, bringing with it an increased demand for a public education, some of its theorists, who like Condorcet, showed an interest in the female part of the problem, will call for mention.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The "Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France" (Tome XXIII, XXIV and XXV) contains a contribution by M. Raymond Toinet entitled: "Les Ecrivains moralistes au 17ième siècle"; being an alphabetical nomenclature of moral writings published during the age of Louis the Fourteenth (1638-1715). In this list works of a feminist or an anti-feminist nature figure so largely that little doubt can be entertained as to the interest taken in the topic under discussion. They may be conveniently classified as follows:

1. Assertions of female superiority, including a. o. two French translations of Agrippa, three pieces entitled: "Le Triomphe des Dames", and one by Mlle. Jacquette Guillaume, entitled: "Les Dames Illustres". They were frequently combined with attacks on the male half of humanity, as in the case of Regnard's "Satire contre les Maris".

2. Apologies for the female sex, including Perrault's "Apologie des Femmes", Poullain de la Barre's "Egalité des deux Sexes", and a Latin translation of Anna Maria Schuurman. Some were meant as a refutation of some male attack. To this class belong Ninon de l'Enclos' "Coquette Vengee" and a number of replies to Boileau's satire.

3. Attacks on the female sex, which are gradually diminishing in number, or rather changing from the direct invective to the moral essay with a didactic purpose, busying itself with the female morals and the female character. A collection of pieces dealing with the problem of sexual preference was published in 1698 by de Vertron under the name of "La nouvelle Pandore, ou les femmes illustres du siècle de Louis le Grand".

4. Rules of female conduct, for the use of young ladies "about to enter the world", insisting chiefly on the feminine duty of preserving the reputation. A translation of Lord Halifax's "Advice" (see page 83), "Etrennes ou conseils d'un homme de qualité à sa fille" seems to have attracted some notice.

5. Pieces dealing with the relations between the sexes in daily intercourse, including the subjects of love and gallantry, and of marriage. Some are directly favourable to the state of matrimony, pointing to the reciprocal duties of the partners in the contract, and instructing them in the readiest way to happiness; others, frequently deriving their inspiration from Boileau, arguing about marriage as a social institution and enumerating its advantages and its drawbacks. To the period under discussion belongs a translation of Erasmus' "Christian Marriage".

6. Treatises of female education, containing a plea for the development of the female intellect. They are, as yet, remarkably few. Beyond the contributions by Poullain de la Barre and Fénelon there are some half-dozen pieces dealing with the education of girls on a religious basis, and a few in which the question of the pursuit of science and philosophy by women is stated and answered favourably. There was an "Apologie de la science des Dames, par Cléante", (1662); a treatise entitled: "Avantages que les femmes peuvent recevoir de la philosophie et principalement de la morale", (1667); another by René Bary bearing the somewhat questionable title of "La fine philosophie accommodée à l'intelligence des dames", and, in conclusion, one by Guillaume Colletet, headed: "Question célèbre, s'il est nécessaire ou non que les filles soient savantes, agitée de part et d'autre par Mlle Anne Marie de Schurmann, hollandoise, et André Rivet, poictevin, le tout mis en françois par le sieur Colletet" (1646).

[11] "La Nouvelle Colonie, ou la Ligue des Femmes", first presented in the Théâtre italien on the 18th of April 1729, a three-act comedy, afterwards reduced to one single act to be performed in the "théâtres de société", and published in this form in the Mercure. (Cf. Larroumet; Marivaux, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres, Paris 1882).

[12] Such, at least, is the description of Mme Geoffrin's character in M. E. Pilon's "Portraits français". M. G. Lanson, in his "Lettres du dix-huitième siècle", accuses her of vanity and consequent despotic leanings. "Elle aimait à conseiller ses amis, et les régentait en mère un peu despotique; elle n'aimait pas les indépendants, les âmes indociles et fières qui ne se laissent pas protéger, et veulent être consultés dans le bien qu'on leur fait".

[13] That a great many of the Utilitarian ideas of John Locke may be traced to their origin in the works of Montaigne has been demonstrated by M. Pierre Villey in his "L'influence de Montaigne sur les Idées pédagogiques de Locke et de Rousseau", who thus claims for the literature of his own country an honour which was commonly granted to that of England.

[14] The education recommended for Emile is not domestic. He was to be kept carefully isolated from the world, so as to escape its taint, until such time as his character would be fully matured, placing him above the reach of disastrous influences. A similar principle had prevailed at Mme de Maintenon's establishment of St. Cyr.

CHAPTER IV. Feminist and Anti-Feminist Tendencies among the English Augustans.

In studying the march of feminism among the two rival nations on either side the Channel, one cannot help being struck by the remarkable lateness of anything resembling a feminist movement in England. That the women of mediaeval England were looked down upon, not only on account of their inferior muscular strength, but also on the score of their supposed want of mental and moral stability, appears but too plainly from the numerous scornful references to the weaker sex in the literature of those days. The Song-collections of the Transition Period clearly betray the "esprit gaulois" in their brutal estimate of woman and in the tone of undisguised contempt and ridicule which prevails whenever women are the theme. The often-repeated story of the henpecked husband and the shrewish wife contains a warning against marriage which, although couched in the form of banter, evidently has its foundation in the general conviction of female depravity. The early plays with their brawling scenes and stock female characters were also most unfavourable to women. Nor did the early Renaissance bring any marked improvement either in the female morals or in the male appreciation of them, for the satires against women continued with hardly a refutation. The improvement which resulted in Ascham's days from the awakening female interest in learning and in the Caroline period from the introduction into poetry of the Platonic love ideal, was too partial and too qualified to be permanent, and in later years the Puritanic ideal of womanhood was an abomination to feminists of the Wollstonecraft type. But the general estimate of women in England had never been lower than in the notorious days that followed the Restoration. In the Middle Ages all influence had been denied them on the score of their supposed inferiority of understanding and inequality of temper; the men of the reign of Charles II regarded them merely as fair dissemblers and utter strangers to the nobler motives, in which opinion the ladies of the age did all they could to confirm them. The higher the society in which they moved, the less likely they were to escape the many vices which prevailed in that age of depravity and libertinism. There were, of course, the Puritans, who were forced by circumstances to lead lives of retirement, regarding the vicious excesses of Whitehall with disgust and jealously guarding their women against degrading influences. The puritan ideal of womanhood was thus preserved; but there was no promise for the future in the state of close confinement and complete submission which the Judaic notions of Puritanism demanded.

In those days, when night was darkest, a faint glimmer of a coming dawn was seen. It consisted in some women beginning to take a modest share in literary pursuits. When late in the seventeenth and early in the 18th century the modern novel was passing through its preparatory stage, Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Haywood and some other women realised that here was a new domain of literature in which woman was qualified by her fertile imagination and quick power of observation to excel. Even before the Restoration, the birth of a new social problem dealing with the relative positions of the sexes was heralded in the works of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle[15]. However, public opinion stamped any such efforts—whether conscious or no—as immature, and therefore doomed to failure.

All through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century women were regarded from a purely sexual point of view; they were, as Mr. Lyon Blease calls it "enveloped in an atmosphere of sex". Their being judged exclusively by a sexual standard entailed as a necessary consequence the scornful neglect of those among them who were disqualified by age or lack of physical attractions. If the lot of the married women was often a sad one, considering the habitual inconstancy of husbands, the condition of those who had drawn a blank in the matrimonial lottery was even more pitiable. Hence that desperate hunting for husbands which it is among the most creditable performances of modern feminism to have lessened. It is easy to understand that it is among forsaken married women and especially among the more pronounced spinsters that we must look for such elements of female wisdom and virtue as the barren age affords. The middle-aged mother of a family was sometimes possessed of a certain hard-acquired dignity; and to the often bitter experiences of spinsterhood we owe women of the type of Mary Astell. But contemporary literature, while on the whole inclined to be lenient towards married women who became "stricken in years" was almost uniformly severe in dealing with the "old maid of fiction", and the unmarried female had to await the broader days of humanitarianism to have her troubles understood and her wrongs righted.

But even the more privileged among the female sex, those who in their personal attractions possessed some kind of coin, the value of which masculine opinion was not slow to recognise, were not much better off than their plain sisters. The prevailing views regarding the place of women in social life were the direct outcome of the general tendencies of egoism and materialism by which the age was characterised. Woman was regarded only in her relations to the male sex, and, what was worse, woman herself had not yet learned to rebel against the shackles of a convention of centuries, unquestioningly adopted the male verdict and tried her hardest to become what the opposite sex wanted her to be. They found it easy to relinquish all individuality, and live up to the ideal set up by a degenerated manhood, and readily assumed the vices which their lack of any sense of moral responsibility prevented them from recognising as such. This total absence of moral purpose is a characteristic of the age which was not restricted to women only. The moral standard had sunk very low indeed, existence among the better situated seemed exclusively devoted to the pursuit of pleasure with all its attendant vices. From the male standpoint this view of life determined the esteem in which the female sex was held. The eighteenth century "beau" regarded woman only as an instrument of animal passion, which hypocrisy tried very successfully to gild over with a varnish of mock gallantry that was a remnant of better times of Platonic chivalry, and aroused the indignation of moralists. This gallantry tried to make up in extravagance for what it lacked in sincerity. The pursuit of the object of his passion led the libertine to the most absurd excesses which were very far removed from a devout worship[16]. Love had become a grossly sensual passion, and women were treated with exaggerated ceremony, but with little respect. Men held with Pope that "every woman is at heart a rake", and treated them accordingly. They laid a mock siege to what was conventionally called "the female heart" and when that fortress in an unguarded moment surrendered or was taken by storm, the conqueror, after enjoying the spoils of his victory, left the poor victim to pay the penalty of social excommunication and flaunted his conquest in the face of a society which maintained a double standard of morality, and in which seduction and adultery on the part of the male were held to be titles of honour.

To fully understand the eighteenth century interpretation of the passion of love we have only to scan the pages of that new form of fiction, the novel, which has supplied us with a truthful and lifelike picture of the morals and manners of the time. In many of them the heroine is made the object of libertine attempts which to the twentieth century reader are absolutely revolting. It is true that she does not submit to the outrage, but defends her honour as well as she is able—strange to say, the eighteenth century heroine, apart from a few females of the picaresque kind, is generally represented as virtuous and chaste, rather a picture of womanhood as the author liked to imagine than a faithful one, a circumstance for which the presence of a moral purpose may account—but the secondary female characters are often of a frailty which contrasts strongly with it. The "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality" in Peregrine Pickle, for instance, are a frank confession of the most shameless female profligacy, and the outrages upon decorum and good taste described in them are corroborated by numerous descriptions of female indecency and wantonness displayed either in the baths of the fashionable watering-places or at the masquerades which were in great vogue, giving the female sex ample opportunity for displaying their charms with an utter want of delicacy. Nor were the "bucks", "beaux" or "maccaronies" at all inclined to be particular with regard to the language they used in the presence of ladies. The obscenity of their conversation aroused the indignation of Swift's Stella, but upon the whole women were too much accustomed to the coarseness of male conversation to think of protesting, nor did their parents or husbands think it necessary to interfere. Besides which, the dialogue of those novels which constituted their daily amusement was of much the same kind, and even the works of an Aphra Behn or a Mrs. Manley were read freely in the presence of young girls without being considered in the least offensive to feminine delicacy.

The improvement which the latter half of the century witnessed in this respect was, as we shall see, in no small measure due to female influence. The Bluestocking circles were largely instrumental in bringing about this purifying of conversational and literary taste. The female novelists of the next generation, while following in the steps of Richardson and Fielding, and imitating their choice of incidents, do not imitate their revolting coarseness. The stories of libertinage and violence occur in a much modified form, and the treatment is less offensive and not unfrequently humorous, taking the edge off the indelicacy of many a doubtful situation.

The chief literary exponents of female depravity, satirising women for what they were and hardly allowing an exception to the general rule, forgetting the part of men in their degraded state, and regarding the prospect of improvement with a degree of scepticism which has made them the abomination of feminists, were Alexander Pope and Lord Chesterfield. Pope's estimate of the sex, contained in the second of the "Moral Essays", and confirmed by numerous allusions in his other works, ranks him among those who jeer at women in general. Their two prevailing passions according to him, are "love of pleasure", and "love of sway":

"Men, some to bus'ness, some to pleasure take,

But every woman is at heart a rake:

Men, some to quiet, some to public strife,

But every lady would be queen for life."

The former he is rather inclined to excuse, for "where the lesson taught is but to please, can Pleasure be a fault?" But the latter contains in it the germs of unavoidable wretchedness to the woman who outlives the power and influence which beauty grants her and whose punishment consists in finding herself in later years friendless and neglected, and without the redeeming blessing of a cultivated intellect and a sensitive heart, which

"... shall grow, while what fatigues the ring

Flaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing."

The many inconsistencies in the female character are passed in review and scourged with the whip of a satirist who does not care to rack his brains for means of improvement, but whose egoism revels in the intellectual delight of scathing ridicule. Women make their very changeability a means of attracting suitors, they are "like variegated tulips," showing many colours and attracting chiefly by variety:

"Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create

As when she touched the brink of all we hate."

It was no doubt Pope's intention to run down the entire female sex, but while uttering the above insinuation, he seems fatally blind to the very questionable light the successful application of certain female devices reflected on the contemporary male character!

From a purely feminist point of view, the name of "cold-hearted rascal", by which Mary Wollstonecraft distinguished the Earl of Chesterfield, although not altogether deserved—for where his son was concerned he was anything but "cold-hearted"—may be easily accounted for. Whenever woman is the subject, his contentions as well as his tone of uttering them betray a callous, contemptuous cynicism which marks the man of fashion who "knows the season, when to take occasion by the hand", and has been taught by the intricacies of diplomacy to regard women from a purely egoistical standpoint as political weathercocks, whose undeniable influence may be turned to account, but upon whom otherwise no judgment can be too severe. There is in his writings no trace of interest whatever in women for their own sake; despising them for their weaknesses, he regards them merely as possible instruments by which his personal ends may be furthered. The morality preached in the famous "Letters to his Son" (written between the years 1739 and 1768, representing the dawn of the Bluestocking movement) has been severely and deservedly criticised. Their worst defect as well as their greatest danger is that while containing a number of maxims which are absolutely repugnant in their cynicism, they were written for an educational purpose and pretended to instil the ways of conscious virtue "which is the only solid foundation of all happiness."[17] Another objection is that he insisted far too much on "the graces" (i. e. deportment), while almost forgetting to recommend the more solid acquirements of the character. Mrs. Chapone complained that he substituted appearances for the real excellences which she considered more important, and Mrs. Delany wrote that his letters were generally considered ingenious and useful as to polish of manners, but very hurtful in a moral sense. "Les grâces", she added, "are the sum total of his religion." This, and the fact that he made a point of discussing moral questions of the greatest importance with a child not yet ten years old and incapable of grasping their full purport, afterwards made Mary Wollstonecraft turn upon him with her accustomed vehemence. No doubt she found this education of deliberate cynicism more difficult to forgive than even his cold contempt of the female sex.

Chesterfield wanted to perfect his son in what he considered the most important of arts, to be recommended to both sexes with equal emphasis: that of pleasing. No man held more by opinion as a means of reaching aims than he. To read his correspondence one might think the chief aim of life to be a perfect mastery of the art of "wriggling oneself into favour", with all its attendant insincerity and duplicity. Such was the man whose advice the bishop of Waterford asked in respect to the kind of reading to be permitted to his daughters[18].

When women are the topic, Lord Chesterfield invariably appears at his worst. Nowhere in literature do we find a lower estimate of the sex and a more sneeringly insolent ridicule of their foibles. Little is known about the marriage of young Philip Stanhope, who even forgot to inform his father of the circumstance, and who died too soon after to test the truth of his father's teaching that "husband and wife are commonly clogs upon each other." However, with such a mentor his chances of happiness in the matrimonial state would have been slight in any case.

In the first place Lord Chesterfield regards women as intellectually inferior and beneath notice. They are to him only "children of a larger growth"[19] who seldom reason or act consistently; their best resolutions being swayed by their inordinate passions, which their reason is to weak to keep under constant control. Even the so-called "femme forte",—of which type Catherine the Second was a prominent representative—was in his eyes only another proof of this statement; for at bottom all women are Machiavelians and they cannot do anything with moderation, sentiment always getting the better of reason[20]. They do not appreciate or even understand the language of common sense, and the proper tone to be adopted in their presence is "the polite jargon of good company"[21].

His opinion of female morals is not more flattering. Women are capable of, and ruled by two passions: vanity and love, of which the latter is made dependent upon the former. "He who flatters them most pleases them best; and they are most in love with him who they think is the most in love with them"[22]. They value their beauty—real or imaginary—above everything, and in this respect "scarce any flattery is too gross for them to follow".

The above, if true, might be a reason for a man to rather avoid female company than court it. However, says Chesterfield, low as they are, we cannot afford to ignore them, for it is not to be denied that they are a social power. "As women are a considerable, or at least a pretty numerous part of company; and as their suffrages go a long way towards establishing a man's character in the fashionable part of the world (which is of great importance to the fortune and figure he proposes to make in it), it is necessary to please them". The sole use of women in Chesterfield's eyes is that they may be turned into a ladder for social advancement: "here women may be put to some use"; and he who has discovered the right way of humouring them may serve his own interest by cultivating their acquaintance and fooling them to the top of their bent with judicious and cleverly administered flattery. Of all Chesterfield's insinuations this is certainly the worst.

But how is woman to be pleased? The scheme for social promotion involves an effort to please on an even more general scale. Women feel a contempt for men who pass their time in "ruelles", making themselves their voluntary slaves; they value those most who are held in the highest esteem among their fellowmen; for this will render their conquest by a woman worth her while. However, to please men, and gain influence among them, the concurrence of women is indispensable, and so forth, ad nauseam.

Practical hints are not wanting either. The best stepping-stones to fortune are "a sort of veteran women of condition" who, besides having great experience, feel flattered by the least attention from a young fellow and in return render him excellent services by pointing out to him those manners and attentions which pleased and engaged them when they were in the pride of their first youth and beauty, and are therefore the most likely to prove effective.

In conclusion, two instances may here be quoted of the excellent father's recommendable advice to his son in regard to the exploitation of female sympathies. The first regards that Mme du Bocage whose name will be mentioned again in connection with her relations to the Bluestocking circles in England. When young Stanhope was residing in Paris and frequenting some salons, Lord Chesterfield advised his son to make the French lady his confidante and confess to her his eagerness "to please", asking her in true hypocritical fashion to teach him her secret of pleasing everybody. Offered under different circumstances this might have been a pretty compliment, coming as it did from the pen of such a cynic and confirmed womanhater it was about the worst insult that could be offered to a lady of "esprit" and dignity.

But the second passage is even worse. The exemplary father here suggests a full scheme for political advancement through the intermediacy of a lady of unsullied reputation, who was to be courted and inveigled into granting her concurrence in a manner so beyond words that we must let the letter speak for itself. "A propos, on m'assure que Mme de Blot, sans avoir des traits, est joli comme un coeur, et que nonobstant cela, elle s'en est tenu jusqu'ici scrupuleusement à son mari, quoiqu'il ait déja plus qu'un an qu'elle est mariée. Elle n'y pense pas; il faut décrotter cette femme-là. Décrottez vous done tous les deux réciproquement. Force, assiduités, attentions, regards tendres, et déclarations passionnées de votre côté produiront au moins quelque velléité du sien. Et quand une fois la velléité y est, les oeuvres ne sont pas loin."

Social life in the eighteenth century had indeed sunk to the appalling depth which such letters as Chesterfield's reveal, through an utter lack of purpose. The time was entirely void of social interest. At a time when the French philosophy which had been so largely stimulated by British example found its way into the assemblies of Paris, awakening a vivid intellectual interest in thousands of minds and giving birth to a national thought-life which laid the theoretical foundations not only of the coming changes in the social order, but also of that glorious edifice of science of which the nineteenth century was to witness the rapid growth—English society was content to let things remain as they were and did not at once respond to the call that came from beyond the Channel. If England, too, contained a number of social abuses that were rank and appealed to the justice of Heaven, they did not heed them. The self-sufficiency thus revealed remained characteristic of the better classes in England, and was in the majority of cases increased rather than lessened by the outbreak of the Revolution, when most Englishmen felt secure in the conviction that in England there were no great wrongs to be righted. It had its origin in gross selfishness and coarse materialism, which did not leave the bulk of the nation an opportunity to realise the miserable condition of the poorer classes in Ireland,—in England itself there was comparatively little pauperism in the beginning—or the gross injustice of the prevailing system of Parliamentary representation, or the cruelty of punishments, or the abominable condition of the jails in which thousands of small offenders were abandoned to the horrors of slow and gradual extinction, or the shame of the execrable system of slavery prevailing in the colonies. It was not until the second half of the century that the great humanitarian movement began to make rapid progress; before that great dawn British society remained undisturbed while pursuing their round of pleasure which was interrupted only by death. Of the heralds of a better time, who acted according to their lights, and of whom some were doomed to failure, while others were to see their efforts crowned with ultimate success, it is gratifying to think that a fair percentage were women. If the education of men was sadly inadequate, that of women was so hopelessly neglected that ladies of quality could hardly sign their own name. They were, upon the whole, quite content to remain in ignorance. Their horror of the "femme savante" was such, that all appearance of even the slightest degree of learning was carefully avoided. The result was disastrous. Dean Swift can hardly be said to rank among the defenders of the sex, and yet even he recognised the absurdity of this utter ignorance. In a letter, dated October 7th 1734, occurring in Mrs. Delany's correspondence, and addressed to her, he says: "I speak for the public good of this country; because a pernicious heresy prevails here among the men, that it is the duty of your sex to be fools in every article except what is merely domestic; and to do the ladies justice, there are very few of them without a good share of that heresy, except upon one article, that they have as little regard for family business as for the improvement of their minds." He proposes to "carry Mrs. Delany about among his adversaries", and (I will) "dare them to produce one instance where your want of ignorance makes you affected, pretending, conceited, disdainful, endeavouring to speak like a scholar, with twenty more faults objected by themselves, their lovers or their husbands. But I fear your case is desperate, for I know you never laugh at a jest before you understand it, and I must question whether you understand a fan, or have so good a fancy at silks as others; and your way of spelling would not be intelligible."

Only those qualities were considered worth developing which were calculated to excite desire in the opposite sex. Women were skilled in the commonplace conversation of the gaming-table, and were taught to dance and to play the spinet, or the harpsichord, and to say ballads, regardless of talent. Household duties and needlework were held in less repute, and the qualities of the mind were utterly disregarded. All feminine education was deliberately discouraged.[23]

In marriage the wife was completely subjected to the husband's authority. If he proved inconstant—which was the rule—and transferred his attentions to other women, it was considered most unwise in the wife to object, the approved course being to pretend ignorance of the fact, lest the husband should be displeased at being taken to task by his inferior. About 1700 Lord Halifax's "Advice to a Daughter" was published; and being the reflections of a man of recognised social abilities, became a standard-work not only in England, but also on the other side the Channel, where it was translated into French and repeatedly quoted with great deference. Viewed in the light of the conditions then prevailing it must be unreservedly admitted that the advice is absolutely the best that could be given under the circumstances. Mr. Lyon Blease's indignation in quoting it, seems due rather to very natural disgust at the social conditions that necessitated it, than to the nature of the advice in itself. Lord Halifax exhorts his daughter to consider that she "lives in a time which hath rendered some kind of frailties so habitual that they lay claim to large grains of allowance." This reasoning would seem faulty to a moralist, but there is more. "This being so, remember that next to the danger of committing the fault yourself, the greatest is that of seeing it in your husband. Do not seem to look or hear that way, if he is a man of sense he will reclaim himself; the folly of it is of itself sufficient to cure him; if he is not so, he will be provoked, but not reformed." In other words he advises her to "eat her half loaf and be happy", rather than disturb her share of happiness by aiming higher than is compatible with the character and morality of the average male. Halifax further observes that a benign indulgence on the wife's part for the husband's wanderings will "make him more yielding in other things", i. e. he admonishes his daughter to make a compromise, enabling her to acquire certain advantages by conniving at her husband's faithlessness! This is certainly pretty bad; but there seems no room for any doubt that Halifax indeed struck the key-note of eighteenth century opinion.

So far we have looked at the purely negative side of the picture, which presents no features that can be called redeeming. Before passing to the brighter side to examine the utterances of those who aimed at the moral improvement of the female sex, or at an amelioration of their social position, or both, we shall have to make some mention of the views expressed by Swift in his "Letter to a Young Lady on her Marriage". The general tone is certainly not encouraging. It holds the male sex to be absolutely superior in matters physical, intellectual and moral. While criticising with his habitual sarcasm the errors, fopperies and vices of the female sex, Swift does not even trouble to consider what has made them so depraved. The nearest suggestion of possible blame to the male sex in regard to their treatment of women is to be found in a passage in the "Hints towards an Essay on Conversation". There are certain signs of a coming dawn in this passage. After complaining of the degeneracy of conversation, "with the pernicious consequences thereof upon our humours and dispositions," Swift suggests that it may be partly owing to "the custom arisen for some time past of excluding women from any share in our society, farther than in parties at play, or dancing, or in the pursuit of an amour." In this respect he readily admits the superiority of the more peaceable part of Charles the First's reign, "the highest period of politeness in England," when the example set by France, and the love-ideals prevailing among French society found English followers, "and although we are apt to ridicule the sublime Platonic notions they had, or personated, in love and friendship; I conceive their refinements were grounded upon reason, and that a little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low." This astonishing avowal on the part of one so inclined to cynicism throws a most unfavourable light upon the relations between the sexes in the early years of the eighteenth century.

However, if it could not be denied that manners and morals had decayed, Swift never doubted that the female sex were chiefly responsible. In his advice to the young bride their depravity is contrasted with the sound wisdom and the more dignified conduct(!) of their lords and masters. Swift satirises the worthlessness of the females who spend their afternoon visiting their neighbours to indulge in talking scandal, and whose evenings are devoted to the gambling-table. His opinion of the sex in general is such as to make him emphatically warn his young protégée against the dangers of female conversation. "Your only safe way of conversing with them is, by a firm resolution to proceed in your practice and behaviour directly contrary to whatever they say or do." The fondness of the sex for finery disgusts him to such an extent, that he "cannot conceive them to be human creatures, but a certain sort of species hardly a degree above a monkey."

Such was the verdict Swift passed upon the women of his time, whose moral ideals, he was willing to grant, might be and ought to be the same as those of men, always excepting "a certain reservedness, which however, as they manage it, is nothing but affection and hypocrisy."

Man being superior to woman in every respect, also morally, it follows that her chief aim should be to render herself more worthy of him. Swift here introduces that pernicious theory of "relativity" which in Rousseau's "Emile" was to arouse the indignation of Mary Wollstonecraft. An effort is to be made to raise women out of that pool of iniquity into which they have sunk, not so much for the sake of their precious souls, as to render them more acceptable companions to men. Whatever in Swift seems to favour a certain degree of emancipation owes its origin to this consideration. He does not believe in what he calls "the exalted passion of a French romance". By the time his first passion is spent, the husband will want a companion to amuse and cheer his leisure hours. Some provision should be made for the years to come when, beauty having disappeared forever, it will be necessary to fall back upon the accomplishments of the mind as a substitute, by means of which the husband's esteem may be gained. Thus, by a process differing materially from that of the feminists, Swift arrives at the same conclusion; viz. that the first step towards improvement is the institution of some kind of mental education for women. At the same time he has little confidence in the mental capacities of the female sex, so that his claims are in truth modest enough. Books of history and travel represent the limit of what he deems them capable of grasping; and he even recommends the making extracts from them, should the fair reader's memory happen to be a little weak! For the rest the task of instructing woman will necessarily devolve upon man; i. e. upon the husband and upon those of his friends whom he judges best calculated to enrich her mind by their advice and conversation, and to set her right should her imagination tend to lead her judgment astray! "Learned women," in the full sense of the term, were an abomination to Swift, who believed the average female intellect to be so deficient that "they could never arrive in point of learning to the perfection of a schoolboy."

There can be no doubt that Swift's estimate of female capabilities was the general one, which makes it all the more astonishing to find that as early as 1673 a deliberate attempt was made to "raise women to the dignity and usefulness which distinguished their ancestresses", by giving them an education which included a rather considerable amount of knowledge. A school for girls was founded in that year by a certain Mrs. Makin, who explained her purpose in "An Essay to revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen in Religion, Manners, Arts, and Tongues; with an Answer to the Objection against this Way of Education", dedicated to Mary, daughter of James, Duke of York. The author protests against "the barbarous custom to breed women low", which arises from the general belief that women are not endowed with the same reason as man. Learning, and even virtue, in a woman are "scorned and neglected as pedantic things, fit only for the vulgar", and the creation of schools seems the only way to restore women to the place they once held. Mrs. Makin wisely refrains from asking too much, and therefore will not "as some have wittily done, plead for female pre-eminence. To ask too much, is the way to be denied all". A plea, therefore, for female education as a means of improving female morals. Curiously enough, one of her pupils, Elizabeth Drake, was destined to become Mrs. Robinson, and the mother of that Elizabeth Robinson who as Mrs. Montagu became the recognised queen of the Bluestockings.

To strengthen her argument Mrs. Makin points to a number of women who were proficient in knowledge among the Ancients, after which she refers to some Englishwomen of great erudition, as: Lady Jane Grey, Queen Elizabeth, the Duchess of Newcastle, "who overtops many grave gownsmen", and the princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles the First, whose tutoress Mrs. Makin had been.

Her school for gentlewomen was situated at Tottenham High Cross, then within four miles of London, on the road to Ware, "where by the blessing of God, gentlewomen may be instructed in the principles of religion and in all manner of sober and virtuous education: more particularly in alle things ordinarily taught in other schools." Half the time available for study, according to the sort of prospectus with which the essay closes, was to be devoted to foreign languages, particularly Latin and French, and those who wanted further instruction could be served with "Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish, in all which this gentlewoman hath a competent knowledge." As a linguist, therefore, Mrs. Makin here constitutes herself the rival of the famous translator of Epictetus, Mrs. Carter. But she realised that the gift of languages is not granted everybody. "Those who think one language enough for a woman may forbear the languages and learn only (!) experimental philosophy."

That the lady herself regarded the undertaking more or less as an experiment appears from the fact that the terms were made dependent on the success achieved. The minimum was twenty pounds per annum, but in case of very marked improvement "something more would be expected", it being left to the happy parents to judge how much more was due to the preceptress.

A discourse on the "practicability of the scheme" was to be delivered by a proxy "every Tuesday at Mrs. Mason's Coffee House in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange; and Thursdays at the 'Bolt and Tun' in Fleet Street, between the hours of three and six in the afternoon."

That in Mrs. Robinson's case, at least, Mrs. Makin's efforts had not been wholly in vain, is demonstrated by the fact that her children called their mother "Mrs. Speaker", probably in connection with her easy flow of language in the miniature contests of wit that used to be held among them, which were no doubt an excellent preparation for the later Mrs. Montagu's social task.

If we consider that both Port Royal and St. Cyr aimed far more at instilling moral principles than imparting useful knowledge and that neither in France nor in England had so sweeping an assertion ever been put forward, it seems only giving Mrs. Makin her due to allow her a prominent place among the pioneers of female education in Europe.

The history of feminism is as much that of the indirect influences fostering the movement while slowly and almost imperceptibly leavening the whole of society, as that of the direct and embittered struggle for enfranchisement. The earlier half of the eighteenth century cannot boast any direct champions of the cause beyond that Mary Astell of whom it will be our business to speak presently, no martyrs out of whose sacrifice arose the hopes of better things to come, but there are some instances of men—and even of women—of letters who, while aiming at a less ambitious or even a different object, indirectly contributed to the growth of new opinions regarding the social status of women. Among them must be reckoned the essayists, whose aim was (as the General Advertisement of the Tatler has it) "to teach the minuter decencies and inferior duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation." Life is chiefly made up of such seeming trifles, and the men who by pointing out the shortcomings of humanity bring about an improvement in the general morals may claim to be mentioned among the benefactors of mankind. Where the correction of the slighter errors was avowedly the object in view, the essayists were naturally drawn to consider the relations between the sexes, to criticise women freely, and to point out the ready way towards improvement. That the success they undeniably achieved was not—at least in its direct consequences—in proportion to the talent lavished on the essays, nor to the eagerness with which these literary efforts were devoured by the reading public, was due mainly to two causes. In the first place, considering probably that the times were not ripe for that more direct form of attack upon the stronghold of conventional manners and customs which in arousing opposition and resistance results in war to the knife and ends in the complete overthrow of one of the combatants, they chose to inculcate their moral lessons almost imperceptibly, assuming a light and bantering tone of ridicule which was not likely to give serious offence and might cause the reader to laugh at her own expense and perhaps make her consider how much of truth there lay in a criticism so jovially offered. No doubt this plan was the wisest course under the circumstances then prevailing, but it is not the way in which thorough reforms arise. Moreover, the moral lessons were introduced so much at random, and with such utter lack of system; and the improvements suggested were so vague, that in stating that the periodical essay of the days of Addison and Steele helped in some measure to prepare the way for the more emphatic assertions of the later feminists, we have done the essayists full justice. Their feminism is indeed extremely qualified, and stamps them as the forerunners of the moralists among the Bluestockings, while leaving a very wide gulf between them and Mary Wollstonecraft.

The thought of making anything like a definite claim never entered their minds; the time for suggesting extensive social and political improvements was yet far off, and Addison and Steele were content to recommend in a general way the cultivation of the female mind as the readiest way to overcome the prevailing worthlessness and irresponsibility, thus continuing a line of thought which others had held before them, and bringing it under the public notice. This involves the supposition that the female mind is improveable to an eminent degree, and here Addison and Steele fully agree. In N^o. 172 of the Guardian the latter, in giving an extract from a poem "in praise of the invention of writing, written by a lady", delivers himself of the sentiment that "the fair sex are as capable as men of the liberal sciences; and indeed there is no very good argument against the frequent instruction of females of condition this way, but that they are too powerful without that advantage."

Addison in another number (155) of the same periodical says that "he has often wondered that learning is not thought a proper ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since they have the same improveable minds as the male part of the species, why should they not be cultivated by the same method? Why should reason be left to itself in one of the sexes, and be disciplined with so much care in the other?" An assertion, therefore, of the faculty of Reason in woman, and a denial of that much-professed sexual character upon which eighteenth century society was almost exclusively founded, and which Steele held to be the main cause of contemporary female inferiority. He complained (Tatler N^o. 61) that the fact that the eighteenth century woman valued herself only on her beauty, caused her to be regarded by men on no other consideration as "a mere woman" from a purely sexual point of view; it being his opinion that the rule for pleasing long (which, with a want of logic in matters of sex characteristic of his time, he held to be woman's chief consideration) was "to obtain such qualifications as would make them so, were they not women," and therefore without any reference to sex.

The superiority of the accomplishments of the mind over mere physical beauty is a favourite theme with Steele, and may be found illustrated in the usual way in N^o. 33 of the Spectator in the character of the two sisters Laetitia and Daphne. The suitor whom the former's charms have captivated is not long in discovering that her pleasing appearance but ill conceals the insipidity of her character, and promptly transfers his affections to the less handsome but more cultured and therefore far more agreeable Daphne. And so Steele wants it to be realised that we commit a gross blunder when "in our daughters we take care of their persons and neglect their minds", whereas "in our sons we are so intent upon adorning their minds that we wholly neglect their bodies" (Spectator N^o. 66). Strangely enough in a moralist, the ethical side of the question is here left out of discussion.

The conclusions drawn by both Steele and Addison from this neglect of the education of the mind are characteristic of the difference between the two. Steele observes that the unavoidable loss of her beauty through the ravages of time causes a woman in the prime of her years to be out of fashion and neglected, and he pleads earnestly for an education to be given to women, that they may have better chances of happiness in the later years of matrimony; whilst Addison with his habitual irony weakens the impression produced by his assertion of the perfectibility of the female mind, by ridiculing the much-discussed "femmes savantes" in his picture of Lady Lizard and her daughters reading Fontenelle's "Pluralité des mondes" while "busy preserving several fruits of the season, dividing their speculation between jellies and stars, and making a sudden transition from the sun to an apricot, or from the Copernican system to the figure of a cheese-cake." His treatment of the question is throughout tinged with sarcasm. "If the female tongue will be in motion", he says, after complaining of their copia verborum, "why should it not be set to go right?" Thus science might be made into an antidote to scandal and intrigue.

The most directly feminist among the authors of the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century was Mary Astell, the author of "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies", written in 1696. Her personality and ideas remind us strongly of Mlle de Gournay, who lived nearly a century earlier. The conviction that all contact with the world and its wickedness would infallibly end in moral ruin had made Mary Astell the warm advocate of education in a nunnery, far from the madding crowd, where women might be brought up to lives of Christian virtue. The very fact, however, that she was not a worldly woman, made her overlook the circumstance that her scheme, however promising in theory, could never hope to stand the test of practice. It was to be expected that the first practical hint for an educational establishment for women—a hint which, however, was not more regarded than Mary Astell's had been—would come from one whose close contact with the outside world enabled him to do something more than brood over schemes that were incapable of realisation. Mary Astell in her religious zeal had entirely forgotten to take into account the innate proclivities of the female character. Daniel Defoe knew how to reconcile the demands of life and of womanhood with those of a moral educational establishment, and he suggested a scheme which was certainly more capable of being put into practice than Mary Astell's. But even he was firmly convinced that his proposal would meet with almost universal disapprobation and therefore recommended it to the consideration of a later generation. Defoe was a man of great inventiveness and sound common sense, and many undeniable improvements were suggested in his "Essay upon Projects" (1702). He had certainly heard of, and very probably read (although he misquotes the title) Mrs. Astell's "Serious Proposal", and it redounds to his credit that he is one of the very few contemporaries of that eccentric lady to do justice to her motives in seriously considering her ideal of a nunnery, instead of making it the object of obscene insinuations like those of which Dr. Swift was guilty in the pages of the Tatler. His estimate of the possibilities of women was very considerably in advance of his time, and places him among the most advanced of woman's male advocates. Unlike the essayists, his tone is serious throughout, and the proposal well worth considering, although even Defoe has so far become tainted with the prevailing opinion regarding women as to assume certain sexual propensities which he fears will be in the way of their moral improvement. "I doubt a method proposed by an ingenious lady in a little book called "Advice to the Ladies" would be found practicable," he says. "For, saving my respect for the sex, the levity which is perhaps a little peculiar to them, at least in their youth, will not bear the restraint, and I am satisfied nothing but the height of bigotry can keep a nunnery." Here we have the voice of worldly experience and psychological insight protesting against Utopianism. For in women who for ages have lacked the moulding influence of education Nature cannot fail to assert herself, and will ruin the scheme.

On the other hand, his confidence in the improvability of the sex is such as to make him claim for them the right to an education which will bring out their dormant qualities. "I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilised and a Christian country, that we deny the advantage of learning to our women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, which I am confident, had they the advantage of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves." That the pioneer should occasionally somewhat overstep the bounds of moderation is surely pardonable. Defoe in his zeal holds the capacities of women to be greater and their senses quicker than those of men.

Nor does he fail to recognise the advantage that will accrue to the female soul from an education which will "polish the rough diamond", and without which its lustre might never appear. The Academy for Women which he proposes, therefore, shall be "different from all sort of religious confinements," and above all, there shall be no vows of celibacy. The ascetic view of finding fault with every innocent enjoyment seems to him as objectionable as the perpetual pursuit of pleasure upon which it was a reaction.

The Academy was to be a sort of public school, supplying women with the advantages of learning "suitable to their genius", without requiring any monastic vows which were sure to be broken. Defoe is inclined to try his women "by the principles of honour and strict virtue", being convinced that the measure of keeping the men effectually away from the college will put an end to all intriguing. According to him, temptation comes with the suggestion of opportunity and all modesty takes its root in custom, "for this alone, when inclinations reign, tho' virtue's fled, will act of vice restrain".

"If their desires are strong, and nature free,

Keep from her man and opportunity,

Else 'twill be vain to curb her by restraint;

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)

This little spirit of rivalship o'ercome.

I read with transport, and with joy I greet

A genius so sublime, and so complete,

And gladly lay my laurels at her feet."

Lady Mary on her part wrote an "Ode to Friendship", addressed to Mrs. Mary Astell. She also sympathised with the latter's scheme for the establishment of a convent. She thought that a safe retreat might be preferable to a show of public life. Her friend Lady Stafford once said of her that her true vocation was a monastery, and we have Lady Mary's own evidence where, approving of a project of an English monastery in "Sir Charles Grandison", she confesses that it was one of the favourite schemes of her early youth to get herself elected lady-abbess. This intellectual propensity—for what appealed to her most in the scheme was the indefinite leisure to be devoted to studies—pervades all her writings, and throws further light upon her disinclination to the matrimonial state and her recluse habits.

Lady Mary's social career came to a sudden close when in 1739 her declining health made it advisable for her to leave England for the sunny skies of northern Italy, where she remained till the year before her death. To this period belong her chief contributions to the Woman Question, contained in her correspondence with her daughter the Countess of Bute, and giving her views of the position of women, elicited by certain remarks on the education of her little granddaughter. The circumstances under which this correspondence was carried on bear a close resemblance to Mme de Sévigné's when writing to her daughter Mme de Grignan her excellent advice regarding the education of little Pauline de Simiane. From what has already been said it may be readily concluded that the principal of Lady Mary's grievances against the existing system was not that women were not allowed their share of political and social power,—for she felt no difficulty in entrusting the male sex with those duties which would have kept her from her favourite pursuit—but rather that they should be purposely and systematically debarred from studies and kept in ignorance. But she was wise in avoiding all generalisation and recommending the consideration of each individual case by itself and for its own sake, since what might suit one woman might prove a source of misery to another.

When her own daughter had been young, the fact that she was likely to attract the highest offers had made it necessary that she should learn to live in the world, for which very few intellectual qualifications were then needed. But her granddaughter's chances of a brilliant match were considerably less, and so she ought to be taught how to be perfectly easy out of the world, in that retirement which Lady Mary herself preferred to the social state. Thus, a new element is added to the arguments in favour of liberal instruction, which is to be a pleasure rather than a task, with no more important background than the providing of a substitute for social intercourse to those whose circumstances prevent them from occupying a place in social circles. And it is clearly the mother's task to talk over with her daughter what the latter may have read, that she may not "mistake pert folly for wit and humour, or rhyme for poetry, which are the common errors of young people, and have a train of ill consequences."

The moral education which she recommends for her granddaughter is rather slight, and based chiefly on the negative principle—which we have also found in Fénelon and other French moralists—of keeping the mind occupied as a means of preventing idleness, which is the mother of mischief. Learning,—which modesty would have them carefully conceal, for ignorance is bold, and true knowledge reserved—will tend to make women less deceitful instead of more so, and as the same lessons will form the same characters, there is no reason to "place women in an inferior rank to men."

Lady Mary thus declared her belief in the equality of the sexes, but she has not enough of the social leaven in her to make any definite claim for her sex. She is rather an isolated specimen of womanhood, serving as a proof of the capacities of some exceptional women, than a fighter for female rights. Her intellectual and literary powers were of a critical and satirical rather than a creative nature. That she was among the very first women to possess the critical faculty in an eminent degree, appears from the clever criticism of contemporary fiction with which her correspondence abounds, and which makes her the forerunner of her husband's relative of Bluestocking fame. She was sufficiently independent in her judgment to disagree with the general opinion of Richardson's novels, without being able to remain uninfluenced by his pathos. "I heartily despise him, and eagerly read him, nay, sob over his works in a most scandalous manner." This merely because of the parallel some of the heroine's circumstances afforded to those of her own youth, for neither Miss Howe nor even Clarissa herself found favour in her eyes. She was one of the very few readers of Richardson who saw the faultiness of the moral of both Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe, considering them "to be two books that will do more general mischief than the works of Lord Rochester." Her sound common sense made her heartily despise any excess of that sensibility which Richardson's works fostered. Her verdict of Sir Charles Grandison was even more crushing. "His conduct (towards Clementina) puts me in mind of some ladies I have known who could never find out a man to be in love with them, let him do or say what he would, till he made a direct attempt, and then they were so surprised, I warrant you! nor do I approve Sir Charles's offered compromise (as he calls it). There must be a great indifference to religion on both sides, to make so strict a union as marriage tolerable between people of such distinct persuasions. He seems to think women have no souls, by agreeing so easily that his daughters should be educated in bigotry and idolatry."

In her love of learning, and more still in her keen literary judgment Lady Mary foreshadowed the coming of the Bluestockings, whom her total lack of sociability would have forever prevented her from joining.