THE WOMAN QUESTION

Danika Rockett

English 371

Summer 2010

June 2

18TH CENTURY WOMEN

Worked a variety of professions:

Spinning thread

Goldsmithing

Running shops

Brewing beer

Women’s lives went from this …

… to this. But why?

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION1780 - 1830

Work conditions changed drastically

Cottage industries turned into large-scale factories

Men went out to work

Women stayed home

RELIGION

Women were “morally weak”

The public sphere was morally dangerous

The Angel in the House

RESTRICTIONSBy law, husband and wife are one person, and that person is the husband.

EducationLimited to “genteel”

skills Work opportunities

Seamstress, governess, ladies’ companion

Marriage Custody of children Property inheritance Social perception Bodily freedom

THE VICTORIAN PERIOD1832 - 1901

Named for Queen Victoria (ruled 1837-1901)

Women were expected to stay in the private sphere (the home)

Novels became extremely popular and influential

Western feminism began mid-century

This period saw a huge amount of reform

SEPARATE SPHERESMan for the field and woman for the

hearth,Man for the sword and for the needle she,Man with the head and woman with the

heart,Man to command and woman to obey.

~from Tennyson’s The Princess (1847)

SOCIAL BATTLES1837

Charlotte Brontë a.k.a. Currer Bell Robert Southey, Poet Laureate

VS.

"Literature cannot be the business of a

woman's life..."

I would like your advice about my poetry …

SOCIAL BATTLES1862

Frances Power Cobbe

“What Shall We Do With Our Old Maids?”

W. R. Greg

“Why Are Women Redundant?”

VS.

30% of women do not marry …

let’s educate them!

Unmarried women are

unnatural. Send them to the

colonies to find husbands

READINGS FOR TODAY Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of

the Rights of Woman pp. 373 – 376 Anna Latitia Barbauld – “The Rights of

Woman” Frances Power Cobbe – “Wife-Torture in

England” pp. 111 – 144 Florence Nightingale – “Woman’s Time”

from Cassandra pp. 1017 – 1021 Sojourner Truth – “Ain’t I a Woman?” Frances E. W. Harper – “Learning to

Read”

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT1759 – 1797

Worked as a ladies’ companion and governess

Had a daughter out of wedlock

Considered a founding feminist philosopher

Died giving birth to daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, a.k.a. Mary Shelley

A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN (1792)

Women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education.

Both men and women should be treated as rational beings

Rights cannot be based on tradition

What does she claim to be “the only way women can rise in the world”? (p. 375)

FROM A VINDICATION:Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert

the order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex; but I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that there is a God …

ON WOMEN AND “SENSIBILITY”One of Wollstonecraft's most scathing

critiques in the Rights of Woman is of false and excessive sensibility, particularly in women. She argues that women who succumb to sensibility are "blown about by every momentary gust of feeling," and because they are "the prey of their senses" they cannot think rationally.

What does the word “sensibility” mean in this context?

ON WOMEN’S EDUCATIONIn addition to her larger philosophical

arguments, Wollstonecraft also lays out a specific educational plan. In the 12th chapter of the Vindication, "On National Education", she argues that all children should be sent to a "country day school" as well as given some education at home "to inspire a love of home and domestic pleasures." She also maintains that schooling should be co-educational arguing that men and women, whose marriages are "the cement of society", should be "educated after the same model"

ANNA LATITIA BARBAULD1743 – 1825

Popular professional writer and poet

Taught with her husband at Palgrave Academy (for boys), but refused to open a girls’ school

1792: “We are called upon to repent of national sins, because we can help them, and because we ought to help them …”

1812 poem “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven” ruined her career

THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN Response to

Wollstonecraft Is Barabauld a feminist? Look at these lines:

469 – 1225 – 2829

FRANCES POWER COBBE1822 - 1904

Born in Dublin, Ireland British Union for the

Abolition of Vivisection Spoke out passionately

about the treatment of women and other disenfranchised groups

CRIMINALS, IDIOTS, WOMEN AND MINORS: WIFE-TORTURE IN ENGLAND (1869) Collection of essays

What does the title mean? She focuses on lower classes—

why? What might be the purpose of her

opening anecdote? (also p. 140) “Where is the hidden fun in this

and scores of similar allusions, which sound like the cracking of whips over the cowering dogs in a kennel?” (p. 112)

“The whole relation between the sexes … is very little better than one of master and slave” (p. 115)

WIFE-TORTURE IN ENGLAND, CONT.

p. 116, para. 1: Whom does Cobbe blame for this problem?

“The notion that a man’s wife is his PROPERTY, in the sense in which a horse is his property … is a fatal root of incalculable evil and misery” (p. 117)

What are the “incentives” of wife-beating, according to Cobbe? (pp. 119 – 120)

Why does she choose the title “Wife-torture”? (p. 125)

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE1820 - 1910

Upper-class, well educated

Never desired marriage Nurse, writer,

statistician Crimean War (1853 -56) Sanitation pioneer

She is a ‘ministering angel’ in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds . . .

CASSANDRA(1851)

What is Nightingale’s main complaint? “Better to have pain than paralysis” (p. 1017) What does she refer to as “those wise

institutions”? (p. 1018) “Now, why is it more ridiculous for a man than

for a woman to do worsted work and drive out every day in the carriage? Why should we laugh if we were to see a parcel of men sitting round a drawing-room table in the morning, and think it all right if they were women?” (p. 1019)

“But it is laid down, that our time is of no value….” (p. 1020) How does she illustrate this point?

ISABELLA BAUMFREE, A.K.A. SOJOURNER TRUTH1797 - 1883

Born in New York Spoke only Dutch

until age 9 Escaped slavery at

age 26 with infant First African-

American woman to win court case against a White man

AIN’T I A WOMAN?(1851)

Delivered at Women’s Rights Convention, Ohio

Why does she think White men will “be in a fix pretty soon”?

What is the meaning of her “cup” metaphor?

How does she use religion to make her points?

FRANCES E.W. HARPER1825 - 1911

Most successful African-American woman writer in abolition movement

Born in Baltimore to free parents

Went to school, supported herself as a nursemaid, seamstress, and teacher

With Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, she organized the American Equal Rights Association She questioned activists

whose beliefs excluded certain groups

LEARNING TO READ1872

She recited this, and other poems, in a dramatic fashion What kind of dialect does she use? “learning by hook or crook” (line 12) How does “Mr. Turner’s Ben” learn to read? What does she gain from learning how to read?

A hundred thousand newborn babes are annually added to the victims of slavery; twenty thousand lives are annually sacrificed on the plantations of the South. Such a sight should send a thrill of horror through the nerves of civilization and impel the heart of humanity to lofty deeds. So it might, if men had not found out a fearful alchemy by which this blood can be transformed into gold. Instead of listening to the cry of agony, they listen to the ring of dollars and stoop down to pick up the coin …

~from 1857 address to New York Antislavery Society

FOR NEXT WEEK No class Monday—start reading Tenant

a.s.a.p. We will discuss Victorian laws regarding

women Take notes in your book as you read! Make note of character names, their

relationships to one another, where they meet and interact, etc.

Note any questions that arise as you read

½ - 1-PAGE IN-CLASS ESSAY QUESTION: CHOOSE ONE What kind of changes or progression can you see from the

Medieval and Early Modern women’s writing to the 18th and 19th Century women’s writing?

What were some of the advantages to women from the set of assumptions about gender known as "separate spheres"?

Cobbe seems to almost excuse upper- and middle-class men who abuse their wives. Note the following quote: “Wife-beating exists in the upper and middle classes rather more, I fear, than is generally recognized; but it rarely extends to anything beyond an occasional blow or two of a not dangerous kind” (p. 113). Do you think she is being serious, or is she attempting to make a rhetorical point when she makes statements like this?

→Use specific examples from the readings to support your answer