Types of work but scantily represented
In an attempt to tabulate the variety of ways in which women sought self-expression, we note first those fields of endeavor in which their work was but scantily represented. In some cases these areas of restricted productivity are characteristic of the age in general, in some cases, the outcome of limitations imposed on women in particular.
One type of the woman interested in letters becomes practically non-existent in the period under discussion, and that is the patroness whose rank and wealth and intellectual tastes summoned about her a brilliant coterie of poets and men of scienceto whom she extended substantial aid. The patroness plays no important part in English life after Elizabethan times. Lady Bedford is the last noted representative. Mary North's little circle of literary ladies, and the Matchless Orinda's "Circle of Friendship" are coteries, but without a Lady Bountiful as the center. Lady Pakington comes nearer the type in her assemblage of Church of England divines. But on the whole the patroness and salon are not revived till the time of thebas bleusin the mid-eighteenth century, and then only in a modified form.
In the fine arts the attainments of women were slight and amateurish. Mary Beale was the only portrait-painter of distinction, and in landscape-painting no woman is represented by valuable canvases. But the same state of affairs held true of English men. With the solitary exception of Mr. Riley all of the noted portrait-painters in England before 1760 were foreigners. The landscape artists, too, were foreigners, or were mere copiers of the Italian or Flemish masters. So the deficiency of women in the fine arts may justly be counted but a part of the general national deficiency. The immediate and permanent success of women on the stage has been sufficiently emphasized. But it should also be noted that acting was a career necessarily limited to a comparatively small number of women.
Many kinds of work more or less professional in character were but slightly represented. Except for governesses in great families and the mistresses of boarding-schools for girls there were no women teachers, hence teaching as an ultimate goal was eliminated as a determining factor in the kind of intellectual work pursued. Even the governesses were not chosen for scholarship, but for character and good-breeding. They had to do only with little children, and had no need for learning. And the school-mistresses secured outside masters for the various studies and accomplishments, confining their own work to morals and general management.
Women had so long had home medicaments to make and administer, the mistress of a great estate had so long been the sole resort in matters concerning the health of her dependents, thatwe might expect medicine to be one of the first important new fields conquered by women, but such was not the case. The Duchess of Newcastle, to be sure, gave her fancy free rein in the wide fields of anatomy and physiology. But besides such young women as Elizabeth Bury, renowned for her knowledge of simples and her skill in diagnosis, and Jane Barker who followed her brother's lead in reading medical works, there are no English women on record before 1760 as having given themselves with any serious interest to the study of medicine. The only possible exception would be in midwifery. In this department of medical or surgical practice women had the matter almost in their own hands. Mrs. Pilkington says that her father, Dr. Van Lewen, was the first man midwife in England. There must, then, have been developed among women considerable knowledge and practical skill. But their work was in no sense of professional rank. There was no definite training required, there was no way of applying standardized tests of excellence, and there was no organization among the women themselves. And almost no women attempted to put into book form the results of their experience. Mrs. Jane Sharp'sThe Midwives' Book(1671) is a solitary exception. Mrs. Cellier's book advocating the maintenance of a "Corporation of Skilful Midwives" is the only suggestion I have found looking towards professional training and recognition such as nurses now receive.
In housekeeping matters women were also in the main content to do the work without any formal statements of the mysteries of their art. There was much passing about of receipts for cookery, for toilet preparations, for curative drinks and salves, but when these were collected and published, it was usually the work of some enterprising book-seller. Mrs. Hannah Woolley, Mrs. "A. M.," and Mrs. Hannah Glasse, are the only women I have come upon who could even in the faintest way foreshadow the great mass of present-day writing on questions of domestic science.
Although the satire in some of the comedies would indicate that women were manifesting some interest in the new discoveriesthrough the telescope and the microscope, and were sometimes giving themselves to laboratory experiments in dissection, there is no serious record of any real research in science by women. Even Mrs. Blackwell's exquisite and accurate botanical work is an artistic rather than a scientific achievement so far as she herself is concerned. Her botanical facts were not entirely the result of personal investigation.
To be "the breeders of children in their low age" had always been so unquestionably the province of women that they would supposedly be past-masters in that art, and it might be expected that they would use the first freedom of their pen to write such things as would suit the tastes and needs of children. Again, such is not the case. But it must be recognized that there was nowhere any catering to the literary needs of children. Bunyan'sBook for Boys and Girls(1680), Mason'sLittle Catechism(1693), Watts'sDivine and Moral Songs for Children(1720) represent a few attempts to render religious truth more palatable to the child's mind, but real literature for children did not begin till 1744. Mr. Newberry'sLittle Pretty Pocket Bookof that year initiated a kind of literature the vast extent of which can now hardly be estimated. And in the earliest period of literature for children Mrs. Collyer'sChristmas Boxand Miss Fielding'sLittle Female Academy, both in 1749, must take an honorable place.
One more kind of work for which women have manifested exceptional ability in modern times is in the conduct of humanitarian enterprises. Traditionally they were the loaf-givers. The new thing was to organize generosity into permanent efficiency and to make it operative beyond the limits of the family estate. Mrs. Bovey and Lady Elizabeth Hastings are early instances of women devoting time, mentality, and money to the development of systematic benevolence. But there were few women whose economic independence and sense of civic responsibility were so happily united.
Still another realm in which women to-day are finding large opportunity was practically closed to the women of earliertimes, and that is public speaking. Except among the Quakers no woman spoke, on any subject whatsoever, before an audience. She might sing or she might act with applause. But talking was outside her bounds. Acting was but repeating the words of others; singing was a gift of the gods; but talking to an audience, whether to delight or instruct, carried plain implications of self-conscious superiority in knowledge or power. It was incredibly unfeminine and not to be endured. On this topic the authority of St. Paul was still unquestioned.
If from the women who are to-day preparing for some sort of professional work, we should exclude all who expect to teach, all who are planning to enter upon some sort of scientific research, all who are training themselves for public speaking, all who are preparing for the effective management of large enterprises, all who are writing on domestic or medical matters, the scope of feminine activity would be almost unbelievably narrowed. These various kinds of work are now recognized channels through which whatever ability a woman may have may find expression. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries if a woman had a good mind and felt impelled to use it, none of these avenues were normally open to her. It is difficult to imagine what the withdrawal of all these opportunities would mean in the reduction of adequate stimuli to good work. Hence the few women who did pioneer work in these various departments must have been moved by some strong urgency of the spirit. They were adventurers lured by the fascination of the new and the untried, and their effort is significant even when the region they conquered proved to be but the barren edge of a great continent.
It was in writing that women were least hampered, and, as has been stated, it was in writing that we find their work most varied and abundant.
Women playwrights
As playwrights they were especially successful in comedy. Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Centlivre take a very creditable rank in the comedy of lively intrigue and social satire. Tragedy appealed to more women writers than didcomedy, but they were less successful in that realm. Tragedy was considered so inherently virtuous that the most high-minded could find in it edification, and young girls who were forbidden attendance on comedies were freely allowed to witness tragedies. For this reason women writers with dramatic aspirations, but to whom the license of the comedy was distasteful, applied themselves to tragedy. That Catherine Cockburn'sFatal Friendshipshould be counted the best of these tragedies is perhaps a sufficient condemnation of the entire series. But it must be again remembered that it was not an age in which any writers excelled in tragedy. The heroic plays of Dryden, the domestic tragedy of Otway, and here and there a play of some contemporary vogue, such as Ambrose Philips'sDistressed Motherand Addison'sCato, practically make up the list. Of the tragedies recorded by Genest between 1660 and 1760 very few of those having any but the most ephemeral success are by contemporary authors. Hence the failure of women in this realm is in accordance with the trend of the times.
Fiction
Novels did not come into existence till so late in the period under discussion that we have little chance to test women in this field which later proved to be peculiarly their own. Mrs. Behn's romances, with their realistic detail, their high-wrought emotions, scenic setting, and didactic intent, gave early examples of what might be done. But it is not till after Richardson that women had conspicuous success in works of fiction. After Mrs. Behn and before 1760 we have only the scandalous annals of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Haywood, Miss Barker's inchoate autobiographic tales, Mrs. Lennox's satiric novel, and the didactic stories of Mrs. Collyer and Miss Fielding.
Poetry
In an age when facile versifying was counted a gentleman's accomplishment, and when the heroic couplet offered a form in which mechanical precision could be tested by the rule of the thumb, it would be strange if women with some literary knack did not write poetry. And it is true that nearly every woman who wielded a pen trained itsometimes into the conventional pindarics or heroics. But on the whole, with most women writers poetry was but an occasional resource. It was not their chosenmétier. There were, in fact, but two women, Mrs. Philips and Lady Winchilsea, who took their stand on poetry as their life's achievement. Orinda had grace, tenderness, and fine feeling. Ardelia had subtlety of intuition, a delicate independence of taste, and an occasional high excellence of form and phrase. By these qualities these two women are marked off from the poetasters of their day and have some permanent importance. But the mass of verse by women was undistinguished. It offers, however, some interesting general characteristics.
Compared to the total amount of verse by women, religious verse takes an unexpectedly small place. In no case that I can recall were a woman's religious poems her best work. The most popular as well as the most turgid and commonplace sort of religious writing was the Scripture paraphrase. Poems of pure devotion, of prayer and of praise, are less often found. In such as do occur we might expect the personal note, something winged and lyrical. But they are disappointingly timid and imitative. We have various proofs that there was no absolute lack of poignant spiritual conflict and endeavor during this period, but religious emotion was apparently so accustomed to decorous forms that it could not be driven into the nakedness of soul consequent upon religious abasement or ecstasy. The best religious verse of the period avoids strong emotions. It consists of gentle moralizing touched by personal feeling. There is a note of genuineness in the emphasis on fortitude, on self-control and self-abnegation, and on melancholy endurance. But the most that can be said for the religious poetry by women is that it was about on a par with contemporary religious poetry by men. It was an age of strong church affiliations and of theological discussion, but it was not an age that invited the expression of fervent religious emotion.
There is also little genuine love poetry. There is much that is friendly and affectionate, but almost nothing that is impassioned.This, however, is a negation applicable to all verse of the period. Few memorable love lyrics are to be found in English verse between Waller'sGo, lovely rose, and the songs of Robert Burns. But women had been so long emancipated from reason and traditionally given over to the feelings that love poetry, at least of the sentimental variety, might have been thought their natural output. As a matter of fact, the case was quite otherwise. The poetry by women had not, in general, what would be termed a feminine tone. Women do not seem to have given their instincts free play when they took up the poetical quill. Poetry was either a trifling temporary resource or it was a serious, even solemn affair, and must concern itself with weighty matters of vice and virtue. The style in poetry is consequently much less effective than in prose. There is almost nowhere through all the mass of this verse any brightness of fancy, any playfulness of wit, any mollifying sense of humor. There is little lightness of touch, there are few felicities and unforgettable lines. And there is more of scorn, indignation, and didacticism than of sweetness and light.
Autobiography and letters
In various departments of prose women writers reached an excellence considerably above the general prose average of the time. This is especially true in certain rather new branches of writing. The fragments of autobiography that have come down to us are almost without exception fresh, unpretentious, and delightful pieces of work. The records given us by the Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. Hutchinson, Miss Barker, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth Elstob, and others, simply whet the appetite for more. If Anne Killigrew and Anne Kingsmill and Bathsua Pell and Lady Elizabeth Hastings, and very many other ladies, had left similar records we should have a legacy of simple, straightforward, and individual prose worth reams of pindarics or theological discussions. The intimate personal appeal of the subject-matter seemed to make for a picturesqueness and homely vigor of style. The only women who wrote biography—the Duchess of Newcastle, Lady Fanshawe, and Mrs. Hutchinson—wrote abouttheir husbands, so they were, in reality, carrying on the autobiographical element. And their success is perhaps due to an intimate knowledge of the facts, and a strong personal interest such as had animated the sketches of their own childhood. At any rate, these threeLivesrank in interest with Evelyn'sMrs. Godolphinand Roger North'sLives of the Norths. Letters belong in the same general realm, and offer some of the most entertaining writing of the period. There are many reasons for thinking that letter-writing was a more general feminine resource than existing records would indicate. Such letters as are now extant have been preserved almost by accident. They were not counted of contemporary importance and very few of them reached publication before the nineteenth century. Yet the list is fairly representative.
We have the letters of Margaret Blagge to Mr. Godolphin; those of the Osborne ladies, Dorothy, Martha, and Sarah; Orinda's epistles to Poliarchus; Mrs. Evelyn's letters to her son's tutor; Mrs. Rowe's to the Duchess of Somerset; Mrs. Delany's to numerous friends; Miss Talbot's to Miss Carter; Miss Carter's to a host of correspondents; Mrs. Cockburn's to her lovers and to her niece; and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's records from many lands as well as her early letters to Mr. Montagu. As a body of documentary material these letters are invaluable. And they are interesting reading. The keen eye for dress and customs would have qualified some of these ladies for the novel of manners. There are pungent character sketches and witty comment on social foibles. These letters show often a humor and gayety of spirit such as find entrance into no other forms of feminine writing. And the style is almost uniformly easy and natural. Dorothy Osborne's objection to stilted and pedantic letters could have been applicable to few women letter-writers. They had no thought of a public and so escaped the snare of professionalism in tone. The letters contain records of love and of grief, of moments of vivid emotion, of deep spiritual experience, of friendships and of hatreds, of hopes and despairs, and becauseall these came from the mind and the heart of the writer they are told in a convincing manner.
Travels
Another similar realm is that of travels. When women went on tours they saw everything that was to be seen. And they set down the details with infinite patience. Celia Fiennes has no literary style at all, but no other description of England between 1650 and 1760 contains so much detail worth remembering. She was the most spirited and indefatigable of travelers, and this intensity of interest found its way into her book and communicates itself to the reader. Had she kept her diary with any remotest thought of publication she might have been more lucid, but she might also have been less vigorous, individual, and picturesque. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu'sTurkish Letterscreated a sensation, as well they might, for as a writer of travels she out-distanced all competitors.
The kinds of prose writing so far indicated were all animated by personal experience and interest. That is certainly one secret of their charm. And it is to be observed that they are marked by qualities of observation and analysis later proved natural to women by their success in fiction. But there is another department of writing less naturally associated with women in which they were nevertheless conspicuous for merit, and that is some form of controversial writing.
Propaganda
When women espoused and defended a cause, it was with a heat of personal conviction that robbed them of self-consciousness and contributed to vigor and animation of style. Even earlier women, such as Anna van Schurman and Mrs. Makin, who felt that to be convincing they must show their ability to argue with the most rigid scholastic apparatus, now and then had passages of high-wrought feeling or indignation that burst the trammels of their logical form, and carry even to modern readers a sense of the intensity of conviction that moved the writer. Bathsua Pell'sEssayin 1673 is an admirable piece of propagandist writing. No defender of higher education in the early days of women's collegeswas more pungent in attack, or tossed off the unmeaning arguments of opponents with more contemptuous ease. In writing on the higher education of women it is with the zeal of an enthusiast that Mary Astell marshals the details of her new scheme. She had thought her plan through to the end and she describes it with clearness and precision. Its noble possibilities give rise to seriousness and dignity of style. And when her mind is overborne by a recognition of the many foolish women and the scornful men who would render her ideals abortive, she is roused to passages of energetic satire. She is even acrimonious and vituperative. There is nothing soft or appealing or feminine about her work. If she convinces it will not be by the arts of her sex, but by argument and caustic attack. She does not entreat, she commands and instructs. The anonymous author of theDefencedescribes, with keen analysis, picturesque phrasing, and gay raillery, the beaux, the clodpate squires, the pedants, and the virtuosi of her day. Few contemporary satiric portraits are of more penetrating wit. "Sophia" of pamphlet fame carries on the successful propagandist writing. And Lady Winchilsea's one prose essay is indicative of her vigorous possibilities in speech when her ideas and feelings were involved. One point concerning the generally dignified tone of these essays in defense of women should be noted, and that is that they were not the outcome of personally bitter experiences or disappointments on the part of the authors. The writing was informed rather by a sense of high civic idealism and responsibility. Though the advancement of women is presented as a matter of justice, and of importance to women as individuals, the arguments always turn to a larger conception, and that is the service rendered to Society and the Church by educated women.
Religious experience and controversy
In religious controversy, also, women excelled. A practical or personal cause was not imperative. They wrote with equal vehemence, sincerity, and will to convince, when they were defending an abstract principle as when they were protesting against injustice,or trying to further some specific reform. Lady Masham, Susanna Hopton, Mary Astell, and Mrs. Cockburn sufficiently illustrate the success of women as disputants. The fact that nearly all the topics on which these religious controversialists wrote are now dead issues, and that the writing has inevitably passed into oblivion along with the ideas it championed, should not be allowed to obscure the very evident contemporary respect accorded women as redoubtable antagonists and able advocates. There were also women who wrote little, such as Lady Pakington and Lady Conway, to whom the best men of the day gave high esteem for the soundness of their patristic and philosophical learning, and for the acuteness of their thinking.
Writers on personal religious experience or on hortatory subjects do not reach so high a grade of work. The prodigious industry of various compilers, annotators, and note-takers—the true Church of England "sermon-tasters"—such as Lady Brooke and Lady Halkett, is less indicative of learning than of a pronounced religious bias. And in prose, as in verse, the free and natural expression of spiritual experience was not characteristic of the age.
That more of this controversial and religious writing was not published can hardly be counted a loss to literature. Religious meditations quicken the inner life, and the effort to put religious emotions and beliefs into some literary form must contribute to a more active mentality, but the resultant printed page is not necessarily of permanent interest. The ardors and acrimonies, the labyrinthine twisting of arguments, the niceties of interpretation, the array of authorities, are all a leaden weight to the modern reader. And most meditations on virtues and vices are hardly more stimulating. But we cannot pass the great mass of these religious writings without noting what a new impression they give us of social England, especially in the second half of the seventeenth century. A student of Restoration comedy sees the court of England in its most frivolous and morally repellent aspect. But these women whose minds were so set onreligion were all members of the aristocracy. Margaret Blagge, Anne Killigrew, and Anne Kingsmill, women of the most sincere and ardent piety, were in intimate association with the courts of Charles II and James II. Lady Pakington, Lady Brooke, Lady Halkett, Lady Masham, Lady Russell, Mary Astell, Lady Elizabeth Hastings, and, later, Lady Huntington, were all by rank or especial opportunity in the highest and most exclusive social circles and so in contact with the profligacy of the court. Their extreme assiduity in all matters of religion, in church attendance, in private prayer, in meditation, in self-examination, in their austere moral standards, were a violent reaction from the evil life about them. In the homes and small social circles where their influence could be felt was being prepared a body of moral indignation, a desire for uprightness and purity of life, that gave to Jeremy Collier's attack on the stage in 1698 so overwhelming a response, and that was the sustaining force back of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
Work of women compared with contemporary work by men
The writing done by women between 1660 and 1760 is more impressive from its amount and variety than from any high excellence of its component parts. A mere calling of the great names of the period—Milton, Bunyan, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison, and Steele—is adequate to show that no woman of the time is comparable to these men in mental stamina and energy, or in deft literary manipulation. The dramatic work by women presents no such brilliant social satire as we find in Etherege and Wycherley, no wit so penetrating and sparkling as in Congreve'sWay of the World, no humor so innocent and likable as in Steele'sTender Husband. In poetry Orinda and Ardelia make but a poor showing beside the giants of the day. There are no women writers on literary criticism even approaching the mastery of Dryden. There are no essayists with the light touch and social ease of Addison and Steele. There are no novelists to be ranked with Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding.
These rather damaging negations amount, however, in thefinal analysis, only to a statement that among the comparatively small number of women writers no one reached the pre-eminence of the eight or ten most distinguished literary men. But the same statement could be made concerning the crowd of men striving for success in authorship. Of most men it could be said that their best endeavors left wide unconquered fields between them and the elect. It is, indeed, much to say of women that, untrained, with no stimulus of money or fame, a considerable number of them yet attained to an honorable place in writers of a class below the best, and that in some realms such as autobiography, biography, travels, and letter-writing, and in writing inspired by some social reform, some propaganda of religion or ethics, they rank among the best of their time. The same may be said of their work in pure scholarship. Miss Elstob, Miss Carter, and Mrs. Collyer, in their respective fields of Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and German, were exact and thorough beyond the demands of contemporary standards.
But even if there were not many successes to record, the great amount of work done by women would still carry its own sort of proof. In establishing the existence of a tendency it is not the single brilliant example, the genius, the persons of extraordinary ability, that count. It is rather the aims, ambitions, attempts, of many persons variously striving in the same general direction.
Comedy an embodiment of current opinion
The general seventeenth and eighteenth century opinion concerning learned women finds fairly complete statement in contemporary comedy. The persistence of the learned lady as a comic type serves incidentally as corroborative proof of the increasing attention given by women to learned pursuits, for no stage type remains amusing from year to year unless personages at least moderately correspondent to the type exist in sufficient numbers to count as a factor in social life. A basis of reality is necessary to give the type currency. But the comedy is more important as voicing a general critical estimate of values. A character does not hold its own as a comic type unless to the mass oftheater-goers it presents itself as out of focus with common sense. A moral or social judgment is implied. The laugh that followed Biddy Tipkin and Polly Honeycomb and Lydia Languish was a recognition of the absurdity involved in regulating real life by the rules of romance, and the underlying protest against too free access to fiction was quite in line with the diatribes of various grave moralists. So, too, with the learned lady. The comic character gained its point from the assumption on the part of the playwright and the audience that there was a fundamental incongruity between the lady and her learning. Learning did not belong to the lady, and when she assumed it she was thereby justly betrayed into all sorts of humiliations and absurdities. Back of every picture there was, consciously or unconsciously, the critical judgment. Learning and ladies do not coalesce. Either the lady abandons the learning or the learning spoils the lady.
There are two kinds of learned ladies represented in the comedy. In the case of young, lovely, and well-dowered girls, learning was but a foible. When convinced of its absurdity, these desirable maidens put aside their big folios and became the properly humble, adoring, and ignorant wives of the heroes whose sound good sense had shown them their folly. The unpleasanter elements of the comic portraits belong to dissatisfied wives whose souls were still bent on amorous adventure; to obsolescent ladies unwilling to confess the decay of their charms; to the old and the homely whom no bravery of attire and no battery of glances and graces could restore to the marriage market. To ladies of both classes Platonism is a name to conjure with. All physical manifestations of love are abhorrent to them. The mystic union of souls is as much as the truly refined can tolerate. To the young learned ladies this doctrine of austerity has at first a genuine appeal, but is quickly proved impracticable and fallacious. To the other ladies virtue is but a screen to mask their discredited charms.
The knowledge of the learned ladies is as spurious as their virtue. They profess an intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek,and French seems their native tongue. They are at ease in the jargon of philosophical systems. They follow the telescope with the ardor of the Royal Society itself. Their studies are full of mathematical books and instruments. The scalpel and microscope lead them along the path of anatomical research. But in all this parade of learning there is no real scholarship. The ladies are pretentious and conceited, flaunting their false Latin and Greek before all comers, claiming to have explored the depths of knowledge when their short swallow-flights have scarcely brushed the surface.
The comedy may be said to embody the ordinary view as to the unsuitableness of learning for women. This implied critical negation is given a positive analogue in the actual training given to girls. Their early education was not neglected as is shown by the numbers of masters and tutors provided for the young daughters of good families. And from six to fourteen many girls were sent to the numerous boarding schools for young misses. But whether at home or in school the teaching included little more than deportment, accomplishments, and housewifery. These were what, in the language of Mr. Verney, would render a girl "considerable in the eyes of God and man." Hannah Wood's school was the most advanced of these minor schools for girls, and Sarah Fielding'sLittle Female Academydepicts the best that was done for younger girls. In any case education apparently ceased at fifteen or sixteen.
The schools provided for girls represent what it was in general thought that they needed. The comedy represents the absurdity of trying to pass these limits. Confirmatory of these views would be many private expressions by both men and women. There were, of course, hundreds of intelligent men to whom any change in the status of women seemed hostile to the best interests of society. And there were hundreds of women who flouted all thoughts of learning as essentially, eternally unfeminine.The Spectatorrecords that at a certain period in the court of France it was counted a mark of ill-breeding to pronounce hard words right and that ladies not infrequently took occasionto use such words "that they might show a Politeness in murdering them." And the diatribes in the English feminist pamphlets from Bathsua Makin to "Sophia" show how many women in high circles boasted of ignorance as one of their charms.
Advanced opinions of a minority
But we come to quite a different state of affairs when we consider the opinions of the progressive minority. The proposed schemes for higher education, although without immediate practical result, are notable indications of a new era of thought. Bathsua Makin's was the first formulated plan. But her effort to graft new fruit on the old stock resulted in a singular mixture. Her impassioned desire to induct girls into the excellencies of higher learning was hampered in various ways. She could not lessen the attention paid to the accomplishments; she could not venture to push the school age beyond sixteen; and she could not make her beloved linguistics compulsory. What she did accomplish was not in the establishment of an ordered system. It was rather the impress of her tastes and advanced ideas on the minds of individual pupils. The girls who went from the Tottenham High Cross School to various distinguished homes in England had no alarmingly fluent or exact knowledge of Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. But they had all at least been invited to look within the portals of the palace of learning and some had found it rich and alluring. To all had come a new conception of the learning possible to women. Mrs. Makin's court prestige, her reputation for prodigious scholastic attainments, her courage, originality, and independence, made her a dignified and an authoritative figure. It is a matter of regret that full annals of her school were not preserved.
The education proposed by Dr. Hickes in his remarkable sermon in 1683, ten years after Mrs. Makin established her school, was not analyzed into details. But when he suggested for women seminaries of learning similar to Oxford and Cambridge with only such changes in the instruction and the regimen as might be found advisable to fit them for their lives aswomen, and when he urged rich and childless women to make their wealth serve humanity by founding such colleges for girls, he was too far ahead of his time to meet any immediate practical response, or even any opposition.
The next plan came from Mary Astell. This was a matured scheme. Her college was to be a sort of conventual retreat without vows and with an emphasis on the intellectual as well as the religious life. Publicity, college honors, degrees, were not thought of. There were to be no required studies, nor does she suggest even an orderly progression of lectures. The heterogeneous character of her proposed clientèle forbade any rigidity of plan. Mary Astell seems to have looked about her and found many women to whom the customary régime offered no satisfactory place. There were widows who did not choose remarriage, spinsters unwelcome in the homes allotted them by kinship, girls with dowries too slender to make an advantageous marriage probable, young heiresses subject to the too adventurous pursuit of impecunious lovers and so in need of a haven pending marriage. All these uncoördinated needs were to be met by the new institution. The plan was to provide agreeable surroundings wherein women could tranquilly and without hostile criticism work out their own salvation. Practical beneficence, teaching, study in various realms, religious meditation, were the avenues open to individual choice. To the women who remained permanently in the college a life of dignified achievement was possible. Upon the young women who were destined to be wives and mothers in important homes would be exerted an influence tending to ennoble them in their domestic relations, and the learning they had gained would prove a resource amidst the distractions and trials of life. The plan included too much, and the adjustments rendered necessary by its captivating flexibility would have taxed any organizer to the utmost. Perhaps it is as well that the scheme was not put to the test of practice. Mary Astell's contribution was in the idea she set forth and in her eloquent defense of that idea.
It is surprising that Defoe's plan for a woman's collegeshould have been coincident with Mary Astell's, yet independent of it. Defoe's fertile imagination creates curious buildings in which to house his Academy. He evidently considers Mary Astell's plan as too loose in general structure and too religious in tone to be practicable. He narrows his work down to such studies as are given in public schools.
After Defoe we hear of no further plans for higher education. But the idea lingered in the minds of many. Richardson inClarissa Harlowesuggests such an institution, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says that it was her youthful ambition to be foundress of a college. In Mrs. Centlivre'sBasset Tablethe learned young Valeria is advised to found a woman's college in which the pupils shall be called "Valerians." The most curious and interesting embodiment of the scheme was that by Thomas Amory. The fullness and realistic precision of detail in his account of the "Hertfordshire Religious Retirement" were such as to make his heroine, the foundress, accepted as an historical personage. The fictitious narrative is, however, of especial significance as showing the persistence of Mary Astell's abortive plan.
In complete harmony with these various schemes for giving women greater intellectual freedom was the attitude in many private homes. It is quite surprising to discover how many studious girls had a favorable home environment. Elizabeth Jocelyn's grandfather, a distinguished bishop, conducted her studies. Mary North's father "fostered her little assemblage of femaleliterati." Lady Pakington was taught by the learned Sir Norton Knatchbull. Lucy Apsley's father spurred her on to outdo her brothers in Latin, and Mr. Hutchinson fell in love with her for her poetry and learning. Dudleya North had the same teachers and studies as her brothers until they went to the University. Damaris Cudworth's mind was her father's joy and pride and Locke was her tutor. Bishop Burnet provided for his daughter Mary all possible opportunities in books and art. John Evelyn cherished the intellectual tastes of his daughter and showed her writings and paintings with pride. AnneBaynard, Anna Hume, Elizabeth Singer, were girls whose early literary tendencies found paternal approval and aid. William Elstob gave fullest sympathy and guidance to his ambitious young sister, theindefessa comesof his studies. And Elizabeth Carter's intellectual needs ruled the household.
These protected home studies were not unlike the opportunities offered girls in Tudor times and had the same disadvantages. There were no ordered courses of study. The depths and shallows of a girl's learning were largely dependent on the tastes of her father or tutor. She entered upon such a line of work as offered itself, prepared herself for it as she went along, and achieved what she could. As compensations for a training so desultory were the concentration and zest of the work, the undisciplined ardor of the pioneer, contact with great books and men of well-seasoned learning.
It is important to note that these scattered homes where the daughter found herself free to develop learned tastes were doubtless more numerous than is at first apparent. We know of a few such homes because of chance published records. But there must have been many homes where the lettered leisure such as we find in the Evelyn family, in Lord Winchilsea's at Eastwell, and in Archbishop Secker's at Canterbury, was shared in to the fullest extent by the ladies of the household. No daughter of the family might attain to notice as a writer, but the result of such reading and thinking would be a high level of general intelligence which might, in the mass, be of more significance than authorship.
More important still as indicative of a new era is the favor accorded learned women by many men of high standing. The adulation given the Duchess of Newcastle may have been inspired by her rank and wealth, but Jeremy Taylor, Cowley, and the Earl of Roscommon had no such reason for their homage to Orinda. The clergymen who gathered at Lady Pakington's rejoiced in her great learning. Dryden gave to Anne Killigrew such praise as awaits few poets and artists. The Norths gave honorable public recognition of Dudleya North's remarkablelinguistic attainments. The family circle at Eastwell applauded Lady Winchilsea's poems. Mrs. Blackwell's work received formal recognition from the most learned doctors of the day. Of the early novel-writers Richardson is so well recognized as the sex's champion, and as the champion of learned ladies in particular, that his services need no further emphasis. Fielding's satirical picture of Mrs. Western ends with the conclusion that "petticoats should not meddle," but he more than turns the scale by the opinions he expresses in the Prefaces to his sister's books. Most men of ability preferred as companions women of good minds and a fair stock of ideas. Even Bishop Burnet, while afraid of general education, praises the intellectual endowment and learned attainments of each of his three wives. And Swift, though contemptuous of the race of women, for close comradeship chose Stella, a woman of wit, sense, and learning, in preference to some one of the doll or clinging-vine type. And his amiability, though rather too condescending, towards various literary ladies, may in part offset his brutal general statements. The fact is, nearly every woman of learned or literary attainments was accorded praise—even an undue meed of praise—from her immediate circle and from at least a few of her distinguished contemporaries.
Furthermore, publication of worthy work was made a matter of urgency. Dr. Hickes did all in his power to bring Elizabeth Elstob's Anglo-Saxon work before the learned public of his day, and it was he who insisted on the publication of Susanna Hopton's letters. Lady Masham'sLetters of the Love of Godwere brought out only on the insistence of John Norris. Mrs. Cockburn's early philosophical writings received immediate praise from Bishop Burnet, John Norris, and John Locke. But for Archbishop Secker Miss Carter'sEpictetuswould have remained in manuscript. It was through Bishop Burnet's insistence that his wife'sMeditationswere published.
And still one more debt must be recorded, for some of the most important books in behalf of women were written by men. From Gerbier to Ballard the list is an interesting one. Nowoman ventured on statements so astounding as those which Poulain de la Barre deduced from his fundamental assumption of the equality of the sexes. His arguments may have been but an academic pushing of a principle to its logical conclusion, or his book may even have been satirical in intent, but the English translation was evidently made in all seriousness and served as a basis for "Sophia's" most audacious claims. Specific attempts to bring female genius into knowledge and repute were by men. John Duncomb'sFemineadin 1751 leads the list, and before 1760 we have thePoems by Eminent Ladiesof Bonnell and Thornton, theLivesby Theophilus Cibber, the exaltation of learned women inJohn Buncle, and, chief of all, the monumental work by George Ballard.
In summary it seems fair to say that while there was a general opinion adverse to the learning of women and suspicious of it, there were yet many men who seriously held views that would not sound antiquated in any modern defense of the higher education of women.
Education in relation to the Church
In all the discussions of plans for the intellectual training of women two suggestive limitations are to be noted. One is that nearly all men and women who favored the higher education did so because of the advantage it would be to the Church. The Quakers recognized the right of women to speak in public because they believed such action authorized by the Scriptures, but the freedom so granted did not go beyond religious topics. Susanna Wesley's ministry to her husband's parishioners was excusable only because her teaching was in the service of the Church. And the clergymen of high rank who favored learned women did so because the piety of these women would probably prove more advantageous if it were trained. Even Ballard put extra emphasis on the ladies who read the Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek. And it was probably ethical rather than literary standards that precluded any mention in his record of women such as Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Haywood. In all Ballard's many pages I do not recall even a hint that his learnedladies could be accused of any irregularities of life or doctrine. And it is because women are naturally devout that Amory chooses learned young ladies to expound his new religion.
The basis of Bishop Burnet's objection to Mary Astell's college was that a body of women thus set apart for learning might conceivably prove inimical to the Church. The isolated learned lady under the charge of some wise husband or father could presumably be guided in right paths or suppressed. But who could give bonds for a college of learned women? It was the attitude towards the Church that turned the scale against or in favor of higher education. In point of fact, no woman—not even the most profligate—wrote against religion. On the contrary, all women of letters—even the most profligate—wrote in favor of religion. Genuinely, or as a matter of convention, they all upheld virtue and the authority of the Church.