Women in the Eighteenth Century

Constructions of Femininity

Vivien Jones, Vivien Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134966318
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This anthology gathers together various texts by and about women, ranging from `conduct' manuals to pamphlets on prostitution, from medical texts to critical definitions of women's writing, from anti-female satires to appeals for female equality. By making this material more widely available, Women in the Eighteenth Century complements the current upsurge in feminist writing on eighteenth-century literary history and offers students the opportunity to make their own rereadings of literary texts and their ideological contexts.

1
CONDUCT

The concern of all eighteenth-century ‘conduct’ manuals for women is how women might create themselves as objects of male desire, but in terms which will contain that desire within the publicly sanctioned form of marriage. They form a significant sub-genre among the hundreds of books and periodicals (the most famous of which is Addison and Steele’s Spectator) which offered instruction in all areas of social, domestic, and professional behaviour to a rapidly growing readership. Highly popular, they were powerfully instrumental in defining an ideological identity for the emergent middle class. Fictionalized forms of advice literature were also popular, and in this section three examples of these moral narratives (1.2, 1.4, 1.5) are juxtaposed with extracts from more straightforwardly instructional conduct manuals (1.1, 1.2, 1.6). The final extract (1.7) is from a conduct book by Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (see also 3.4) is an early work, published in 1788, and its inclusion here demonstrates the common ground that frequently exists between moral instruction, educational literature and ‘feminist’ texts (cf. Sections 3 and 5).

The extracts from conduct manuals span the whole period and are taken from three of the best-known examples of the genre. The first passage (1.1) is from George Savile, Marquis of Halifax’s Advice to a Daughter, first published in 1688 and reprinted at least fourteen times throughout the eighteenth century. It was eventually superseded, in 1774, by John Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters (1.6) which Mary Wollstonecraft attacks in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Halifax, Gregory, and Wilkes’s Letter of Genteel and Moral Advice (1.3) have in common the standard eighteenth-century image of the socially desirable woman. In these texts, young women are taught ‘natural’ femininity in terms of negation and repression – silence, submission, ‘abstinence or continence’ (Wilkes) – and are offered an illusion of power based on sublimation and passive virtue. The emphases within the three texts vary, however, as their particular ideological context modifies the basic paradigm.

For Halifax, an aristocrat, a Whig, and one of the architects of the Protestant Settlement of 1688, marriage is ‘an Establishment, upon which the Order of Humane Society doth so much depend’. The ‘rational subjection’ demanded of members of the state by a just ruler is extended, by a familiar patriarchal analogy, to women within marriage. (For a feminist appropriation of this political position, see passage 5.2.) Public interest is privileged over individual desire and women are regrettably but inevitably denied any choice of marriage partner. Wilkes and Gregory are later texts, recognizable as part of an emerging middleclass morality which identifies the aristocracy with indulgence and excess. Their ultimate object is still social stability based on the subjection of women within marriage, but the language of affective individualism masks actual power relations by offering women the promise of romantic attachment and personal choice. In Wilkes, the main threat to social stability comes from ‘the passions’: implicitly sexuality itself, both male and female; explicitly male sexuality in the figure of the (aristocratic) ‘licentious rake’ who must be subjected to a feminized, virtuous, ‘heroic passion’ by female chastity. (For two rather different contemporary accounts of sexuality which indicate its importance as a subtext in conduct literature, see 2.6 and 2.7; and for other texts stressing a heroic romantic ideal, see 2.5, 4.13.) In Gregory, we can see a later stage of this process of ‘feminization’, though the effect is still to deny women any choice of partner. Here, sexuality is figured almost entirely through the language of sensibility: men and women are differentiated by their capacities for feeling, but it is now men rather than women who are capable of forming powerful emotional attachments. Women’s unequal role in the marriage market can thus be depicted as the natural consequence of female sensibility, conceived in terms of a capacity for passive rather than active affection. (For comparable accounts of female mental qualities, see 3.7, 3.9.)

The vocabularies and views of female sensibility in Gregory and Wollstonecraft have a lot in common, but Wollstonecraft reads like a pragmatic lament for the standard conduct-book idealization of marriage. In her account, sensibility is a vital source of strength for women suffering the inequalities of the ‘married state’.

The fictional texts explore some of the consequences of transgressing the rules of conduct literature. They have obvious points in common with the other texts: the sublimation of sexual desire into spiritual reward in Rowe, Wilkes, and Wollstonecraft; the problem of choice of marriage partner in Richardson, Halifax, and Gregory; the fascination with the rake figure in Rowe, Wilkes, and Haywood. But in the fictionalized accounts moral judgement becomes more overtly problematic. Even Rowe’s static letters offer possibilities for fantasy and their unfinished narrative structure invites speculation about the permanence of the writers’ moral resolve. In Richardson, the multiple voices which were to develop into Pamela and, supremely, Clarissa undermine the possibility of a fixed moral message. And in Haywood, the classic narrative of sexual vulnerability (cf. 2.3, 2.9, 4.7) overtly questions the heroine’s assumption of guilt and, at a more troubling level, disrupts the asexual ideology of the family through the rake/ brother identification.

The generic and ideological boundaries between narrative fiction and various forms of conduct literature were very fluid, particularly at the beginning of the period. There is a clear continuity between the literature of moral instruction written in letter form included here, the more explicitly fictional letters of Rowe and Richardson, and eighteenth century novels. In spite of the mistrust of novels which abounds in conduct manuals (see Wilkes, Gregory and Wollstonecraft, and cf. 3.1, 4.13), to suggest a rigid distinction between their moral clarity and the ambiguities of fiction is too simple. The warnings against romantic fiction in Wilkes and Gregory are oddly redundant given their own implicit narratives of triumphant female virtue; and their fears that novels over-excite women’s imaginations sit strangely beside their own depictions of courtship as a state of high sexual tension. Such depictions stimulate and empower the desire they seek to deny. A product of the same ideological moment, conduct literature enacts the same potentially liberating contradictions as the novels against which it is so often seen as static ‘background’.

1.1 George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, from The Lady’s New Year’s Gift: or, Advice to a Daughter, 1688

‘Introduction’

Dear Daughter,

I Find, that even our most pleasing Thoughts will be unquiet; they will be in motion; and the Mind can have no rest whilst it is possess’d by a darling Passion. You are at present the chief Object of my Care, as well as of my Kindness, which sometimes throweth me into Visions of your being happy in the World, that are better suited to my partial Wishes, than to my reasonable Hopes for you. At other times, when my Fears prevail, I shrink as if I was struck, at the Prospect of Danger, to which a young Woman must be expos’d. But how much the more Lively, so much the more Liable you are to be hurt; as the finest Plants are the soonest nipped by the Frost. Whilst you are playing full of Innocence, the spitefull World will bite, except you are guarded by your Caution. Want of Care therefore, my dear Child, is never to be excus’d; since, as to this World, it hath the same effect as want of Vertue. Such an early sprouting Wit requireth so much the more to be sheltred by some Rules, like something strew’d on tender Flowers to preserve them from being blasted. You must take it well to be prun’d by so kind a Hand as that of a Father. There may be some bitterness in meer Obedience: The natural Love of Liberty may help to make the Commands of a Parent harder to go down: Some inward resistance there will be, where Power and not Choice maketh us move. But when a Father layeth aside his Authority, and persuadeth only by his Kindness, you will never answer it to Good Nature, if it hath not weight with you.

‘Husband’

It is one of the Disadvantages belonging to your Sex, that young Women are seldom permitted to make their own Choice; their Friends Care and Experience are thought safer Guides to them, than their own Fancies; and their Modesty often forbiddeth them to refuse when their Parents recommend, though their inward Consent may not entirely go along with it. In this case there remaineth nothing for them to do, but to endeavour to make that easie which falleth to their Lot, and by a wise use of every thing they may dislike in a Husband, turn that by degrees to be very supportable, which, if neglected, might in time beget an Aversion.

You must lay it down for a Foundation in general, That there is Inequality in the Sexes, and that for the better Oeconomy of the World, the Men, who were to be the Lawgivers, had the larger share of Reason bestow’d upon them; by which means your Sex is the better prepar’d for the Compliance that is necessary for the better performance of those Duties which seem to be most properly assigned to it. This looks a little uncourtly at the first appearance; but upon Examination it will be found, that Nature is so far from being unjust to you, that she is partial on your side. She hath made you such large Amends by other Advantages, for the seeming Injustice of the first Distribution, that the Right of Complaining is come over to our Sex. You have it in your power not only to free your selves, but to subdue your Masters, and without violence throw both their Natural and Legal Authority at your Feet. We are made of differing Tempers, that our Defects may the better be mutually supplied: Your Sex wanteth our Reason for your Conduct, and our Strength for your Protection: Ours wanteth your Gentleness to soften, and to entertain us. The first part of our Life is a good deal subjected to you in the Nursery, where you Reign without Competition, and by that means have the advantage of giving the first Impressions. Afterwards you have stronger Influences, which, well manag’d, have more force in your behalf, than all our Privileges and Jurisdictions can pretend to have against you. You have more strength in your Looks, than we have in our Laws, and more power by your Tears, than we have by our Arguments.

It is true, that the Laws of Marriage, run in harsher stile towards your Sex. Obey is an ungenteel word, and less easie to be digested, by making such an unkind distinction in the Words of the Contract, and so very unsuitable to the excess of Good Manners, which generally goes before it. Besides, the universality of the Rule seemeth to be a Grievance, and it appeareth reasonable, that there might be an Exemption for extraordinary Women, from ordinary Rules, to take away the just Exception that lieth against the false measure of general Equality.

It may be alledged by the Counsel retained by your Sex, that as there is in all other Laws, an Appeal from the Letter to the Equity, in Cases that require it, it is as reasonable, that some Court of a larger Jurisdiction might be erected, where some Wives might resort and plead specially. And in such instances where Nature is so kind, as to raise them above the level of their own Sex, they might have Relief, and obtain a Mitigation in their own particular, of a Sentence which was given generally against Woman kind. The causes of Separation are now so very coarse, that few are confident enough to buy their Liberty at the price of having their Modesty so exposed. And for disparity of Minds, which above all other things requireth a Remedy, the Laws have made no provision; so little refin’d are numbers of Men, by whom they are compil’d. This and a great deal more might be said to give a colour to the Complaint.

But the Answer to it, in short is, That the Institution of Marriage is too sacred to admit a Liberty of objecting to it; That the supposition of yours being the weaker Sex, having without all doubt a good Foundation, maketh it reasonable to subject it to the Masculine Dominion; That no Rule can be so perfect, as not to admit some Exceptions; But the Law presumeth there would be so few found in this Case, who would have a sufficient Right to such a Privilege, that it is safer some Injustice should be conniv’d at in a very few Instances, than to break into an Establishment, upon which the Order of Humane Society doth so much depend.

You are therefore to make the best of what is settled by Law and Custom, and not vainly imagine, that it will be changed for your sake. But that you may not be discouraged, as if you lay under the weight of an incurable Grievance, you are to know, that by a wise and dexterous Conduct, it will be in your power to relieve your self from any thing that looketh like a disadvantage in it. For your better direction, I will give a hint of the most ordinary Causes of Dissatisfaction between Man and Wife, that you may be able by such a Warning to live so upon your Guard, that when you shall be married, you may know how to cure your Husband’s Mistakes, and to prevent your own.

First then, you are to consider, you live in a time which hath rendred some kind of Frailties so habitual, that they lay claim to large Grains of Allowance. The World in this is somewhat unequal, and our Sex seemeth to play the Tyrant in distinguishing partially for our selves, by making that in the utmost degree Criminal in the Woman, which in a Man passeth under a much gentler Censure. The Root and the Excuse of this Injustice is the Preservation of Families from any Mixture which may bring a Blemish to them: And whilst the Point of Honour continues to be so plac’d, it seems unavoidable to give your Sex, the greater share of the Penalty. But if in this it lieth under any Disadvantage, you are more than recompens’d, by having the Honour of Families in your keeping. The Consideration so great a Trust must give you, maketh full amends; and this Power the World hath lodged in you, can hardly fail to restrain the Severity of an ill Husband, and to improve the Kindness and Esteem of a good one. This being so, remember, That next to the danger of committing the Fault your self, 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 it self sufficient to cure him: if he is not so, he will be provok’d, but not reform’d. To expostulate in these Cases, looketh like declaring War, and preparing Reprisals; which to a thinking Husband would be a dangerous Reflexion. Besides, it is so coarse a Reason which will be assign’d for a Lady’s too great Warmth upon such an occasion, that Modesty no less than Prudence ought to restrain her; since such an undecent Complaint makes a Wife much more ridiculous, than the Injury that provoketh her to it. But it is yet worse, and more unskilful, to blaze it in the World, expecting it should rise up in Arms to take her part: Whereas she will find, it can have no other Effect, than that she will be served up in all to be the common Entertainment, till she is rescu’d by some newer Folly that cometh upon the Stage, and driveth her away from it. The Impertinence of such Methods is so plain, that it doth not deserve the pains of being laid open. Be assur’d, that in these Cases your Discretion and Silence will be the most prevailing Reproof. An affected Ignorance, which is seldom a Vertue, is a great one here: And when your Husband seeth how unwilling you are to be uneasie, there is no stronger Argument to perswade him not to be unjust to you. Besides, it will naturally make him more yielding in other things: And whether it be to cover or redeem his Office, you may have the most reasonable Ground that can be, of presuming, such a Behaviour will at last entirely convert him. There is nothing so glorious to a Wife, as a Victory so gain’d: A Man so reclaim’d is for ever after subjected to her Vertue; and her bearing for a time, is more than rewarded by a Triumph that will continue as long as her Life. . . .

With all this, that which you are to pray for, is a Wise Husband, one that by knowing how to be a Master, for that very reason will not let you feel the weight of it; one whose Authority is so soften’d by his Kindness, that it giveth you ease without abridging your Liberty; one that will return so much tenderness for your Just Esteem of him, that you will never want power, though you will seldom care to use it. Such a Husband is as much above all the other Kinds of them, as a rational subjection to a Prince, great in himself, is to be preferr’d before the disquiet and uneasiness of Unlimited Liberty.

‘House, Family, and Children’

You must lay before you, My Dear, there are degrees of Care to recommend your self to the World in the several parts of your Life. In many things, though the doing them well may raise your Credit and Esteem, yet the ommission of them would draw no immediate reproach upon you: In others, where your duty is more particularly applyed, the neglect of them is amongst those Faults which are not forgiven, and will bring you under a Censure, which will be a much heavier thing than the trouble you would avoid. Of this kind is the Government of your House, Fa...