THE WOMEN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The artificiality of eighteenth-century society was a precursor of the
practicality of that of the nineteenth. The influences which had given
shape to the society of the time of the Stuarts had passed away, and
the new influences and forces were in operation. The result of the
contest between the Puritan and the sensualist had been a broadened
social apprehension; and into this new concept entered harmoniously
the catholicity of the worldly spirit and the conservatism of the
religious spirit. This was the society which was productive of
women of eminence in the arts and literature, as well as of women
untalented, but blessed with a broader scope of life, more varied
experience and controlled natures, than those who had gone before
them.
Society as a whole indirectly profited by the English dalliance
with French manners. Corruption was but a circumstance of the closer
relationship, in social ways, of England with the continent. Political
animosities and ambitions had more largely than anything else brought
England and the rest of Europe into contact, nor was the contact by
clashing at an end. A nation generally is not greatly concerned in
the projects of princes, so that, while territorial aggrandizement or
curtailment or similar benefits or injuries resulted from the wars
of England, the salient fact as a social consideration is that the
English people were still further broadened from the provincialism
which the insularity of their country induced. At the beginning of
the eighteenth century, the women of England had escaped the local and
narrow spirit and separateness of customs which threatened them from
England's beginning, and from which they were saved by recurrent and
ever more frequent contact with continental nations.
English society, however, had not become so imbued with the
cosmopolitan spirit as to feel at ease in it as in a loose garment;
the people were straitened and formal. They were lacking the
versatility and adaptability which developed in the nineteenth
century, when, amongst women, convention became settled custom, and
custom the careful promulgator of social laws. There were present all
the evidences of the finer sensibilities which give clear notions in
matters intellectual, and society in the last half of the eighteenth
century became thoroughly aroused to a social consciousness with
regard to the middle and lower classes. The industrial revolution and
the rise of the school of classic economists brought forward great
discussions which had for their purpose the determination of the
fundamental basis of a nation's prosperity. Into this discussion women
entered as participants, but very much more largely as interested
subjects of the matters involved.
The growth of England's industries, more than any other single thing,
contributed to the well-being of the masses of English society, while
at the same time it tended to make sharper distinctions among them.
The increase of ease and comfort in living affected largely the
character of domestic life; and the wider scope of industry and
sterner demands for labor, which were the outcome of a desire to
participate largely in the benefits of the new industries, gave
opportunity to individual talent and application; while the unfrugal
and shiftless, or the unfortunate, experienced in proportionately
greater degree the severity of living. To mining, fishing, farming,
sheep rearing, fruit cultivation, weaving, seafaring,--the industries
of England other than manufactures,--were added during the seventeenth
century glass manufacture, cotton manufacture, and other industries
which were the foundation of England's material greatness. This
list was greatly augmented during the eighteenth century, and the
development of manufactures of all sorts created the factory towns,
which drew to them, as into a vortex, the populations of the rural
districts, and created many problems of modern society in which female
and child labor are involved.
Among the women in everyday life, social habits were easy and
existence had many elements of contentment. Gossip--which had become
differentiated from scandal, because of a wider variety of subjects to
chatter about than flagitious conduct, occupied a large proportion of
the time of the women. The public gardens and the promenades of the
cities, notably the capital, were as much resorted to as during the
reign of Charles, and there was as keen an interest in the display
of styles and the parade of wealth by the women who rode in their
carriages or were carried in their sedan chairs as formerly there had
been in the conduct of the gilded set of the Restoration.
Society as such had not as yet reached the coherence which it knows
to-day. It was much a matter of classes or sections. The "democracy of
aristocracy," which makes a cross-section of all the social grades and
includes the wealthy, the noble born, the intellectual and the gifted
of all ranks of society, was a later development. It is true that
women of gifts did not have to rely upon patrons for their reputation,
but had direct access to the public and were sustained by their own
worth; nevertheless, the pride of birth was still strong enough to
make those who possessed it hold themselves far above even the most
gifted and talented of the sex who were not born within the narrow
circle of noble society. Yet it was no longer simply the person
garnished with titles of nobility who attracted the popular eye and
was singled out in the crowd; for when women whose only claim to
notice was their saintliness of character and Christian service, or
their philanthropy, or their literary gifts, or their art attainments,
were seen in the places of general resort, they attracted as much
attention as did women of rank.
The prosperous and well-domiciled woman of the middle classes could
rest in the comfortable feeling that the demarcations of society no
longer absolutely precluded the possibility of her daughters' entering
the ranks of those famous for their signal worth of one sort or
another; but as yet the great movements of modern society had not come
into close touch with the lives of ordinary women. Newspapers were
published, but women seldom read them. Philanthropy was making
headway, but women had little part in its movement, nor had they fully
entered as yet into their birthright in the realm of literature.
In the rural districts, their life was so contracted that a weekly
newsletter, passed from hand to hand, was the chief medium of
information as to the outside world; but even this was not usually
read by the womenfolk, who were content to receive their news by
hearsay. Unlike the women of the aristocracy, the women of the middle
classes did not become beneficiaries to any large degree in the wider
connections of their husbands, because such connections were for the
most part of a business nature and not social. They were women
of mediocrity, and their role was domestic. It was still thought
unimportant to widen woman's horizon beyond the elements of an
education. To these, in the case of the more prosperous, were added
those accomplishments which are still looked upon by ignorant persons
with disdain, but which serve to bridge the chasms of society by
establishing tests of good breeding irrespective of social birth;
so that to reading, writing, geography, and history there were added
music, French, and Italian. Such a curriculum, faithfully followed,
prepared young women to move in polite circles.
The old cry of women's incapacity for intellectual attainments of
the same order as those of men is audible throughout the eighteenth
century. One writer, after speaking of the regard in which the sex
were held in England, discusses the matter of their education and
concludes that it is not easy to comprehend the possibility of raising
them to a higher plane than that to which they had been lifted,
because of their natural incapacity for other than the domestic and
social functions which they so gracefully fulfilled. To English people
generally, it was a matter of pride that their women received greater
respect and were held in greater affection than those of continental
countries. This was often remarked upon by foreign visitors, one of
whom observes that "among the common people the husbands seldom make
their wives work. As to the women of quality, they don't trouble
themselves about it." The position of the wife in middle-class society
has been set before us by Fielding in a satire that has in it much
of truth: "The Squire, to whom that poor woman had been a faithful
upper-servant all the time of their marriage, had returned that
behavior by making what the world calls a good husband. He very seldom
swore at her, perhaps not above once a week, and never beat her. She
had not the least occasion for jealousy, and was perfect mistress
of her time, for she was never interrupted by her husband, who was
engaged all the morning in his field exercises, and all the evening
with his bottle companions." Certainly home had come to have attached
to it a notion of greater sanctity than ever before, and women were
accorded their natural rights and position, with the respect and
deference in the tenderer relations of life, which signified much more
than the profuse chivalry of the Middle Ages or the mock courtesy of
the time of Charles II.
The English people were above all domestic; and the period, in its
emphasis upon this phase of social life,--the English home,--marks in
a way the beginning of that conception which is now regarded as being
at the very foundation of a secure society. While France was going on
in its iconoclastic way, destroying all things sacred in a mad desire
to seize for the Third Estate the rights which they realized belonged
to them, and the grasping of which was to cause French history to be
written in the blood and fire of the great Revolution, the English,
having passed out of the social depravity of the reign of Charles II.,
became eminently steady and conservative of those elements of social
progress which, in their case, unlike that of their French neighbors,
had already been secured for them by progressive and largely peaceful
measures.
It is interesting to note that the term "old maid" had now entered
into the popular vernacular, although "spinster," with its transferred
meaning, was the more respectful way of speaking of unmarried women.
"An old maid is now thought such a curse," says the author of the
_Ladies' Calling_, "as no Poetick Fury can exceed; looked on as the
most calamitous creature in nature. And I so far yield to the opinion
as to confess it to those who are kept in that state against their
wills; but sure the original of that misery is from the desire, not
the restraint, of marriage; let them but suppress that once, and the
other will never be their infelicity. But I must not be so unkind
to the sex as to think 'tis always such desire that gives them an
aversion to celibacy; I doubt not many are frightened only with the
vulgar contempt under which that state lyes: for which if there be no
cure, yet there is the same armous against this which is against all
other causeless reproaches, viz., to contemn it."
The esteem in which matrimony was held as the manifest destiny of the
fair sex is illustrated by all the social manners of the day. Women
had, however, the good taste to conduct themselves without reproach,
and not to invite attention even while they most appreciated it. In
a word, the young women of the eighteenth century were not coquettes,
and with them modesty was not a lost art. They were not masculine,
and indeed might have been regarded from the standards of to-day as
prudes. But the prudery of the British women excited the admiration of
foreigners, thoroughly satiated with the arts, the flaunting manners,
and the gilded charms of the young women of the European capitals.
One foreigner is found recording his astonishment at the diversity in
the manner of walking of the ladies, and sees in it an index of their
characters; for, says he, when they are desirous only of being seen,
they walk together, for the most part without speaking. He suggests
that the stiffness and formality of their demeanor when not thus on
dress parade are laid aside for greater naturalness. But he says that,
with all their care to be seen, they have no ridiculous affectations.
In former times, it was not customary for young women to go about
without the attendance of some older person, and a girl so doing was
brought under suspicion as to her character; but in the eighteenth
century, young girls went about freely with their fellows and without
any other company, and a writer of the period assures us that if a
young girl went out with a parent, unless such parent were as wild as
herself, she felt as though she was going abroad with a jailer. It was
not usual, however, for girls to go about unchaperoned.
It would be an unwarranted assumption to suppose that demureness was
any deeper than demeanor in the maidens of the eighteenth century,
for the feminine character--and not times and customs--determines
the effectiveness of the sex. Matters of custom and of dress signify
little, and yet the Solons who passed the act of 1770 to lessen the
potency of woman's charms appear to have been utterly oblivious of
the important consideration that these do not rest in outward
circumstance, but in inward grace. This curious act prescribed: "That
all women, of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree, whether
virgins, maids, or widows, that shall, from and after such Act, impose
upon, seduce, or betray into matrimony, any of his Majesty's male
subjects by the scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth,
false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, etc.,
shall incur the penalty of the law now enforced against witchcraft and
like misdemeanours, and that the marriage upon conviction shall stand
null and void." And this, too, just six years before the American
Declaration of Independence!
Allusion to this act proscribing aids to beauty leads to the
consideration of the matter of costume and adornment. This can be
summarized in the censure which was called forth from an Italian
visitor: "The ladies of England do not understand the art of
decorating their persons so well as those of Italy; they generally
increase the volume of the head by a cap that makes it much bigger
than nature, a fault which should be always avoided in adorning that
part." After this observation, the writer passes on to criticise
the length of the ladies' skirts, affirming that they wore their
petticoats too short behind, unlike the ladies of Italy and France,
for--and we are indebted to him for his explication of trains--these
ladies "pattern after the most graceful birds." By their failure to
emulate the peacock or the bird-of-paradise in the matter of their
splendid appendages, the English women are said to lose "the greatest
grace which dress can impart to a female." He continues, saying: "In
truth, not beauty, but novelty governs in London, not taste, but copy.
A celebrated woman of five foot six inches gives law to the dress of
those who are but four feet two.... This is not the case in Italy
and France; the ladies know that the grace which attends plumpness is
unbecoming the slender; and the tall lady never affects to look like a
fairy; nor the dwarf like the giantess, but each, studying the air and
mien which become her figure, appears in the most engaging dress that
can be made, to set off her person to the greatest advantage."
Passing from the generalities of female dress and coming to particular
descriptions thereof, here is an account of the costuming of the
ladies who assembled at court to congratulate his majesty George II.
and his queen, Caroline, on their nuptials: "The ladies were variously
dressed, though with all the richness and grandeur imaginable; many
of them had their heads dressed English, of fine Brussels lace of
exceeding rich patterns, made up on narrow wire and small round rolls,
and the hair pinned to large puff-caps, and but a few without powder;
some few had their hair curled down on the sides; pink and silver,
white and gold, were the general knots worn. There was a vast number
of Dutch heads, their hair curled down in short curls on the sides and
behind, all very much powdered, with ribbands frilled on their heads,
variously disposed; and some had diamonds set on ribbands on their
heads; laced tippets were pretty general, and some had ribbands
between the frills; treble-lace ruffles were universally worn, though
abundance had them not tacked up. Their gowns were either gold stuffs
or rich silks, with either gold or silver flowers, or pink or white
silks, with either gold or silver nets or trimmings; the sleeves to
the gowns were middling (not so short as formerly), and wide, and
their facings and robings broad; several had flounced sleeves and
petticoats and gold or silver fringe set on the flounces; some had
stomachers of the same sort as the gown, others had large bunches of
made flowers at their breasts; the gowns were variously pinned, but
in general flat, the hoops French, and the petticoats of a moderate
length, and a little slope behind. The ladies were exceedingly
brilliant likewise in jewels; some had them in their necklaces and
ear-rings, others with diamond solitaires to pearl necklaces of three
or four rows; some had necklaces of diamonds and pearls intermixed,
but made up very broad; several had their gown-sleeves buttoned with
diamonds, others had diamond sprigs in their hair, etc. The ladies'
shoes were exceeding rich, being either pink, white, or green silk,
with gold or silver lace braid all over, with low heels and low
hind-quarters and low flaps, and abundance had large diamond
shoe-buckles."
The preposterous hooped petticoats which ladies wore out of doors
subjected them to the good-natured banter of the wits of the time. One
of these sallies, which appeared about 1720, runs as follows:
"An elderly lady, whose bulky squat figure
By hoop and white damask was rendered much bigger,
Without hood and bare-neck'd to the Park did repair
To show her new clothes and to take the fresh air;
Her shape, her attire, raised a shout in loud laughter:
Away waddles Madam, the mob hurries after.
Quoth a wag, then observing the noisy crowd follow,
'As she came with a hoop, she is gone with a hollow.'"
The hoopskirt was the characteristic feature of eighteenth-century
styles, and it grew to such enormous proportions as seriously to
inconvenience the wearer and to interfere with the cubic feet of space
which a pedestrian might reasonably claim as his right on a crowded
thoroughfare. But there were eighteenth-century styles which were more
reprehensible than the oft-caricatured hoop.
There was a class of votaries of fashion, in contrast to the mass of
society, whose only notion of dress was display, and toward the middle
of the eighteenth century these imported the most extravagant and
immodest of French styles. As they paraded the public gardens, to
which all classes resorted, the staid people were scandalized by their
appearance. T. Wright, in his _Caricature History of the Georges_,
says that "what was looked upon as the _beau-monde_ then lived much
more in public than now, and men and women of fashion displayed their
weaknesses to the world in public places of amusement and resort,
with little shame or delicacy. The women often rivalled the men
in libertinism, and even emulated them sometimes in their riotous
manners." Women of the town were greatly in evidence, and a
trustworthy traveller of the times affirms that they were bolder and
more numerous in London than in either Paris or Rome. Not only at
night, but in broad daylight, they traversed the footpaths,
selecting out of the passers-by the susceptible for their enticement,
particularly directing themselves to foreigners. Archenholz says: _On
compte cinquante mille prostituees a Londres, dans les maitresses
en titre. Leurs usages et leur conduite determinent les differentes
classes ou il faut les ranger. La plus vile de toutes habite dans
les lieux publics sous la direction d'une matrone qui les loge et
les habille. Ces habits mee pour les filles communes, sont de soie,
suivant l'usage que le luxe a generalement introduit en Angleterre....
Dans_ _la seule paroisse de Marybonne, qui est la plus grande et la
plus peuplee de l'Angleterre, on en comptoit, il y a quelques annees,
treize mille, dont dix-sept cents occupoient des maisons entieres a
elles seules_.
Such a picture of social vice in the metropolis is a sad commentary
upon the tendency of the young women of the country districts to drift
to the city. The "lights o' London" had already begun to possess that
fascination for the weak in morals, the light-headed and frivolous,
which has made them a wrecker's beacon on a rockbound shore, luring to
destruction untold hosts of inexperienced country youth. Nor was the
drift Londonward due altogether to the fascination which the gay and
pleasure-pandering city possessed, for there were not wanting methods
of enticement such as are still employed, in spite of legal penalties.
The example of city dwellers of outward respectability did not tend to
elevate the moral tone of those who came fresh from the country,
with its purer home life; for while the sanctity of the home was an
appreciable fact of the seventeenth century, it was much less so in
the metropolis and in the cities generally than it was in the country.
A notorious fact that attracted the notice of continental visitors
to England was that lax morality prevailed in many English families.
Muralt, a Frenchman, even asserts that he found it customary for
husbands generally to maintain mistresses and also to bring them to
their homes and place them on a footing with their wives. This is
doubtless an exaggerated statement of the case; but when the king was
not faultless, the people were apt to pursue folly. Although no king
after Charles II., except George II., disgraced the nation by the
profligacy which he exhibited, yet Charles's successor, James II.,
kept a mistress, as did most of the kings following him.
Referring again to Fielding, we get what is probably a truer picture
of the times in this respect than could be penned from the hasty
observations of a traveller. A young fellow who has led astray his
landlady's daughter is addressed by his uncle in the following manner:
"Honour is a creature of the world's making, and the world has the
power of a creator over it, and may govern and direct it as they
please. Now, you well know how trivial these breaches of contract are
thought; even the grossest make but the wonder and conversation of the
day. Is there a man who afterwards will be more backward in giving you
his sister or daughter, or is there any sister or daughter who would
be more backward to receive you? Honour is not concerned in these
engagements." It need not be supposed that such sentiments were
general; but that they were all too prevalent is manifested by the
literature that mirrors the times.
Drinking and swearing, the coarse associations of the alehouse, the
obscene jokes and sallies which were indulged in freely in such places
and made up a great part of the conversation, were conducive to a very
low moral standard for men, and there was nothing in the times to lead
women to uphold higher ideals of conduct than those which were imposed
upon them by the male sex. Consequently, they were accustomed to a
lower standard than would be tolerated to-day; but as libertinism was
largely concerned with the outcast element of society, the women of
the homes were not called upon to sacrifice integrity of character for
its satisfaction. So that the lower moral standard was set up for men,
and a woman who would attempt at once to maintain her respectability
and follow such courses would very soon have found that difference in
standards for the sexes visited a stricter condemnation upon her than
upon the male delinquent.
The testimony of foreigners to the chastity of the English matron
quite coincides with that which comes from English sources. Le Blanc
remarks: "Most of those who among us pass for men of good fortune in
amours would with difficulty succeed in addressing an English fair.
She would not sooner be subdued by the insinuating softness of their
jargon than by the amber with which they are perfumed." Another
observer, of the same nationality, speaking of the unassailability of
the English woman, attributes it to the insurmountable rampart which
she had in the love for her family, the care of her household, and her
natural gravity, and says that he does not know any city in the world
where the honor of husbands is in less danger of deflection than in
London.
The social hypocrisy of the eighteenth century, as it relates to
woman, was due to the failure as yet to place the sex in correct
adjustment with the times. Instead of considering her as having
serious qualities and value other than the realization of matrimony,
everything that entered into woman's life pointed in that one
direction. The art of pleasing was not cultivated as an opportunity
of the sex due to their special graces of spirit and of person, which
might legitimately be employed for their own sake to make the world
happier and brighter. There was not afforded to men the restfulness
and pleasure in the company of women which would serve as a delightful
foil to the practical and anxious cares of their daily lives; nor
were women taught to believe in themselves as capable persons in the
spheres of life in which feminine personality, taste, and touch
best affect and mould civilization. Except in a few notable cases,
literature and art, to say nothing of science, were outside of woman's
sphere, because she neither believed in herself nor was seriously
regarded by men as a factor in any of the wide relations of life other
than those which were involved in her sex. The arts of the toilette,
conversation, and deportment were all in which she was considered to
need to be adept. Where naturalness was suppressed, it is not strange
that the young women should have been influenced by false standards;
false modesty, false sensitiveness, false ignorance, were depended
upon to give them the artlessness and innocence of deportment which
should recommend them to the blase men of the times.
The estimate in which the sex was held was not quietly accepted by all
women; although the new woman had not appeared upon the horizon,
there were not wanting women who realized that their position was
a humiliating one, and who sought to create a sentiment for its
betterment. Mary Astell was one such, and the case as presented by
her shows the superficiality of the conventional routine of a woman's
life. She says: "When a young lady is taught to value herself on
nothing but her cloaths, and to think she's very fine when well
accoutred; when she hears say, that 'tis wisdom enough for her to know
how to dress herself, that she may become amiable in his eyes to whom
it appertains to be knowing and learned; who can blame her if she lays
out her industry and money for such accomplishments, and sometimes
extends it farther than her misinformer desires she should?... If from
our infancy we are nurs'd upon ignorance and vanity; are taught to be
proud and petulant, delicate and fantastick, humourous and inconstant,
'tis not strange that the ill effects of this conduct appear in
all the future actions of our lives.... That, therefore, women are
unprofitable to most, and a plague and dishonor to some men, is not
much to be regretted on account of the men, because 'tis the product
of their folly in denying them the benefits of an ingenuous and
liberal education, the most effectual means to direct them into, and
secure their progress in, the ways of virtue."
A French writer criticised the Englishmen of the day for their failure
to avail themselves of the refining influence of women, in whose
graces, he affirmed, there could be found constant charm and a certain
sweetness peculiar to the sex. He said that the conversation of the
women would polish and soften the manners of the men and enable them
to contract a manner and tone which would be agreeable to both sexes;
and he ascribed the bluntness of the English character to this lack of
the refining influence of female society.
As women were left so largely to their own devices, falling the
comradeship of men, they gave themselves over to the needle as the
chief resource for idle hours. The _Female Spectator_ protested
against this excessive needlework on the part of women: "Nor can I by
any means approve of your compelling young ladies of fortune to make
so much use of the needle, as they did in former days, and some few
continue to do.... It always makes me smile when I hear the mother
of fine daughters say: 'I always keep my girls at their needle;' one,
perhaps, is working her a gown, another a quilt for a bed, and a third
engaged to make a whole dozen shirts for her father. And then, when
she had carried you into the nursery and shown you them all, add: 'It
is good to keep them out of idleness; when young people have nothing
to do, they naturally wish to do something they ought not,'" With such
a narrow circle of interest, it was not strange that women who had
leisure should have wasted it in frivolity.
Gambling among women of fashion was more a result of too much leisure
and too little intellectual stimulus than an indication of vicious
propensities. _The Female Spectator_, from which we have quoted, in an
article in 1745, relating an account of the visit of a country lady to
a London friend, furnishes an illustration of the extent and effects
of the vice. The article recites that after knocking a considerable
time at the door of her friend's house,--the hour was between eleven
and twelve o'clock in the day,--a footman, with his nightcap on and
a general appearance of having risen from the dead, responded to her
inquiry for her friend, in the interim of his yawns: "We had a racquet
here last night, and my lady cannot possibly be stirring these three
hours." The surprised visitor refrained from asking any questions
concerning this unintelligible answer, and, after leaving her name,
returned again at three o'clock. She had the good fortune to be
admitted, and found her friend at her chocolate. She had a dish of
this in one hand, and with the other she seemed to have been busy in
sorting a large pile of guineas, which she had divided in two heaps
on the table before her. Rising, she greeted her visitor with great
civility, and expressed regret at the latter's disappointment on first
calling, saying, with a smile, that when her friend had been a little
longer in town, she would lie longer in bed in the morning. She then
enlightened her as to the term "racquet," telling her that when the
number assembled for cards exceeded ten tables the game was so styled;
if fewer, it was called a "rout"; and if there were but two tables, it
was a "drum."
It must always appear a curious and an unfortunate circumstance that
at the time of the great industrial awakening in England in the last
half of the eighteenth century, when men, women, and children were
losing their individuality and becoming mere industrial units,
representing so many pounds of human energy to be added to a machine,
the women and children of the factories and of the hovels of the
factory towns cried piteously to the Church for bread and received but
a stone. And this was at a time when the social needs were so great
and the sympathies of all other classes seemed to be alienated by
diversity of interest from those who were called upon to toil for the
making of England's wealth. Professor Thorold Rogers, the painstaking
and acute investigator of England's industry, says with regard to
the lethargy which constituted a veritable Dark Age for the English
Church: "It is hard indeed to see what there is to relieve the
darkness of the picture which the Anglican Church presents from the
death of Queen Anne to the time of the Evangelical Revival. Over
against the Anglican Church, formal, jealous of laymen, fearful of
schism or irregularity, should be set the nonconformist churches."
Although there was a great deal of religious enthusiasm in the
religious communities of the Commonwealth, the principal branches of
the Protestant nonconformists soon became wedded to their own systems,
and, in a way, as narrow in their application of the principles of the
New Testament as the church from which they had separated. It was
not until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that a movement
began which opened the way to lines of development which have
been going on ever since. The vast number of present-day religious
societies, whether in direct connection with the Church or outside
of its pale, may be traced in some ways to the period just before and
during the reign of William III.
Then arose societies for the reformation of manners in all parts of
the kingdom. These societies represented the early stirring of the
spirit of reform which found its expression in so many forms of
activity in later times. They resembled somewhat the modern societies
for the correction of social evils, such as societies for the
prevention of vice, or societies for preventing the corrupting of
the youth. It was all done under the impulse of religion, but was
not initiated by the Church; it was a lay movement. The first
distinctively women's movements in religious matters were outside of
the Church. The great preacher Whitfield attracted the attention of
the Countess of Huntingdon, whose drawing rooms were thrown open for
his preaching and were filled by fashionable auditors. Other titled
women joined the countess, and among them was the famous Duchess of
Marlborough. The interest of noblewomen in a movement essentially
plebeian has its parallel in the nineteenth century, when the
Salvation Army enlisted the interest and support of women of rank and
title.
The attitude of the countess in her loyal support of the new
evangelical movement brought her under the criticism that is always
encountered by a zeal which is not understood by people generally.
The Duchess of Buckingham wrote to her: "I thank your Ladyship for the
information concerning the Methodist preachers; their doctrines
are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence and
disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to
level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to
be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that
crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I
cannot but wonder that your Ladyship should relish any sentiments so
at variance with high rank and good breeding." The Countess of Suffolk
on one occasion was so incensed at a sermon of Whitfield in the
Countess of Huntingdon's drawing room, that she rushed out of the
house in a passion, under the impression that the discourse was a
personal attack. The attitude of the clergy generally to the Methodist
movement within the Church was one of indifference.
The suffering among the wives of the inferior clergy, who were
impoverished and suffered under the defeat of the endeavor to make
their scanty resources meet the demands of household expenses, the
lack of opportunity for educating their children, and their own loss
of self-respect, must have made their lives more miserable in some
ways than those of the wives of the potters, whose sphere of existence
and needs were much more limited. One of the clergymen of this order
plaintively sets forth his pecuniary distress as follows: "Oh,
my Lord, how prettily and temperately may a wife and half a dozen
children be maintained with almost L30 per annum! What an handsome
shift will an ingenious and frugal divine make, to take by turns and
wear a cassock and a pair of breeches another! What a primitive sight
it will be to see a man of God with his shoes out at the toes, and
his stockings out at heels, wandering about in an old russet coat and
tatter'd gown for apprentices to point at and wags to break jest on!
And what a notable figure will he make in the pulpit on Sundays
who has sent his _Hooker_ and _Stillingfleet_, his _Pearson_ and
_Saunderson_, his _Barrow_ and _Tillotson_, with many more fathers of
the English Church, into limbo long since to keep his wife's pensive
petticoat company, and her much lamented wedding ring!" Such a picture
belongs rather to the latter part of the eighteenth century than to
its beginning, for in its earlier days the Church was prolific of
quiet scholars and antiquaries, in both parsonage and manse, living
peaceful, comfortable, and cultured existences.
The attitude of the Church of the eighteenth century toward women is
hardly one of record, as there was not enough animation or interest
displayed in social conditions--or, indeed, during a part of the
century, enough of intellectual comprehension--to serve the Church for
any discrimination as to women's status. When the change of attitude
of the Church in respect to its indifference toward that element of
its body which before the Reformation, and continuously since then,
has been so serviceably employed by the Roman Catholic Church did
occur, it was the High Church party which brought it about, and so
preserved for English Protestantism the work of women.
Although the Church was indifferent to the great mission that lay
before it in the eighteenth century,--a mission that had to be met by
the raising up from the laity of men and women who should stand for
the spiritual rights of the lower orders of society especially,--there
was a notable band of Christian philanthropic women who brightened the
close of the century.
By harnessing human compassion to social needs, the distressed classes
of society came to be lifted to that position of betterment which is
theirs to-day, largely through agencies that owe their beginnings to
the More sisters, Elizabeth Fry, and Harriet Martineau. It is always a
pleasing task to turn to such women as these, exemplifying as they do
the attainments of the sex in those peculiar and special ways which so
well represent the adaptations of women. The greatest woman who graced
the annals of helpfulness of the last half of the eighteenth century
in England was Hannah More. The beautiful devotion of her long and
honorable life to the cause of teaching, and the widespread interest
which, by her writings, she attracted to the subject both in Europe
and America, place her at the source of one of the mighty streams of
pervasive influence that have ever permeated human society. So great
was her appreciation of the character and the position of woman, that
she was able to forecast well-nigh everything that has been enunciated
in modern times with regard to the place of the sex in education and
in society.
Hannah More was born in 1745, in a little village near Bristol. Her
father, who was the village schoolmaster, gave his five daughters
educations adapted as near as might be to the peculiar talents of
each. Three of the girls opened a boarding school in Bristol, when
the oldest was only twenty years of age. This school soon became
fashionable and ultimately famous. It was to this institution that
the early labors of Hannah More were given, and it was here that she
attracted the attention of such men as Ferguson the astronomer, the
elder Sheridan, Garrick the tragedian, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Burke, and
indeed nearly all men of eminence in intellectual and state life. But
her associations were not solely with the fashionable world, by which
she was petted and flattered, for she turned her attention to labors
for the poor and the ignorant. She sought to do for the children who
lived amid the savage profligacy of the peasant class what Madame
de Maintenon sought to do for girls of the aristocratic class in her
country. Both alike aimed to offset the perversion of character which
threatened the girls of their respective schools, from different
sources, but to the same end,--their destruction. Madame de Maintenon
worked to counteract the insidious infidelity that permeated the upper
walks of life--Hannah More, to counteract the practical atheism of
the lowest plane of life. The fundamental principle of her educational
system was the necessity of Christian instruction. She recognized
the close relationship of education and religion, and gauged well the
significance of the historical fact of woman's debt to Christianity
for her elevation. The question which she asked was not that of social
utility, but that of personal character. She saw too much of the
utilitarian principle in its actual workings, the reducing of human
life to the plane of mechanism, to permit her to base her educational
efforts upon a utilitarian foundation. She sought to cultivate that
"sensibility which has its seat in the heart rather than in the
nerves." Anything which detracted from modesty or delicacy, or tended
to make a girl bold or forward, she severely rebuked. She taught the
wastefulness of expending time upon the cultivation of a talent which
one does not possess, and held that excessive cultivation of the
aesthetic range of subjects contributes to a decline in those more
stable factors upon which is based the security of states. Neither
indelicate exposure of the person in style of dress nor extravagance
in dancing found favor at her hands. Such were some of the views which
were entertained and promulgated by the woman who created an epoch
in the attitude of society toward her sex. She taught the dignity of
womanhood, from which the duties of domesticity cannot detract, the
performance of them as a function of womankind being of all things
honorable. The pure common sense of Hannah More did for the women of
her time the service which had failed of performance by the Church.
Passing from the theoretical to the practical part of Hannah
More's work, it is interesting to see her putting into effect her
philanthropic labors. The people among whom she labored were destitute
of almost everything that makes life comfortable. Among the Mendip
Hills, out from Bristol, lived a wild, barbarous, lawless population,
compared with which the millers and the colliers of the mines were
mild and tractable. Among these people Hannah More established her
schools. Some of the children had already had the schooling of the
prison, and all of them had been tutored in vice beyond comprehension
for persons so young. Hannah More's schemes were regarded by many
as visionary and impracticable, and received opposition from sources
where sympathy and helpfulness were to be expected. Gradually,
however, her school work was extended until it covered an area of
twenty-eight miles.
In the Sunday schools the children received religious instruction,
and in the day schools they were taught to spin flax and wool. No
missionary bishop travelled more constantly, no Methodist itinerant
cultivated his circuit district more assiduously, than did Hannah and
her sister Patty More their lay diocese. The many difficulties which
had to be overcome by them cannot be appreciated by workers among the
destitute to-day, with all the appliances and books and methods which
represent a century's experience in such lines. Nothing of the sort
was to hand for these sisters; but Hannah More was an author as well
as a philanthropist, and the tales for the interest and instruction of
the children she wrote herself.
While Hannah More lived and worked in the eighteenth century, her
life's service extended over into the nineteenth century also. She was
a contemporary of Miss Mitford, Mary Carpenter, Mrs. Summerville, and
Maria Edgeworth. The eighteenth century brought forth the women who
were to carry into the nineteenth century the elements of service for
society, which were to be like the seed sown in good ground and to
bring forth the maximum fold of fruitage.
The national system of education had not been developed in the
eighteenth century, making the acquirement of an education somewhat
dependent upon individual circumstances as affected by personal
ambitions. There was nothing in the way of general education for
women. But the dawn of better things intellectually was shown by
the development of a group of women of literary comprehension and
productivity, who formed a set apart and yet were in a real sense
prophets in a wilderness, proclaiming the democracy of letters. Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu writes very bitterly of the low esteem in which
was held the intellectuality of the sex, and in speaking of the study
of classics, says: "My sex is usually forbid studies of this nature,
and folly reckoned so much our proper sphere we are sooner pardoned
any excesses of that, than the least pretensions to reading or
good sense.... Our minds are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of
reflections, filled with nothing but the trifling objects our eyes
are daily entertained with. This custom so long established and
industriously upheld makes it even ridiculous to go out of the common
road, and forces one to find as many excuses as if it was a thing
altogether criminal not to play the fool in concert with other women
of quality, whose birth and leisure only serve to render them the most
useless and most worthless part of the creation. There is hardly a
creature in the world more despicable or more liable to universal
ridicule than a learned woman! These words imply, according to
the received sense, a tattling, impertinent, vain, and conceited
creature.... The Abbe Bellegarde gives a reason for women's talking
over much: they know nothing, and every outward object strikes their
imagination and produces a multitude of thoughts, which, if they knew
more, they would know not worth thinking of. I am not now arguing
for an equality of the two sexes. I do not doubt God and nature have
thrown us into an inferior rank; we are a lower part of the creation,
we owe obedience and submission to the superior sex, and any woman who
suffers her folly and vanity to deny this rebels against the laws of
the Creator, and indisputable order of nature; but there is a worse
effect than this, which follows the careless education given to women
of quality--it's being so easy for any man of sense, that finds it
either his interest or his pleasure to corrupt them. The common
method is to begin by attacking their religion: they bring a thousand
fallacious arguments their excessive ignorance hinders them from
refuting; and, I speak now from my own knowledge and conversation
among them, there are more atheists among the fine ladies than among
the lowest sort of rakes." This bitter plaint of a lady of quality,
with its humiliating acknowledgment of the inferiority of her sex
and the hopelessness of that inferiority, sounds very pathetic in
the light of the present-day estimate of woman and her acknowledged
equality with man in all matters, saving only in the exercise of the
public functions for which the advocates of the full programme of
woman's rights contend.
It is not surprising that women of intellectual gifts grew morbid
under a sense of social inferiority; it is not strange that they hid
their light under a bushel, and were afraid of acknowledging their
talents or their aspirations, when men regarded learning for their
daughters "as great a profanation as the clergy would do if the laity
should undertake to exercise the functions of the priesthood." In
matters intellectual, woman was negative. She must not embarrass her
superiors by displaying in their presence indications of talent or
evidences of learning; her theories and opinions were not worthy
of statement or consideration in the presence of the male sex. Her
gentility was one of breeding, but it did not involve the brain.
Of necessity the intellectual development of woman in such a mental
atmosphere was slow. Her elevation was dependent upon an awakening of
thought in all departments of life. There was lacking an incentive
to intellectual industry when the fruits of such toil might not be
enjoyed.
Under such adverse conditions, the names of the women of exceptional
intellectual gifts in the eighteenth century constitute a roll of
honor worthy to be inscribed in every hall of learning devoted to the
education of women. This literary coterie included, besides Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Parker, Mrs. Vesey,
Hannah More, Mrs. Chapone, Elizabeth Carter, and Miss Talbot.
Lady Montagu was of an aggressive nature, and well fitted to conquer
difficulties rather than to despair in their presence. She was a good
classical scholar, a student under Bishop Burnet, and was abreast of
all the thought of her time. She is credited, among other things,
with the courage to introduce the system of inoculation for smallpox,
having had her son so treated.
Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu was an insatiable devotee of society, and
abounded with a fund of mirth for the enlivenment of the dullest
company. In her correspondence, amid a lively flow of chatter, she
introduces discussions of Dr. Middleton's _Life of Cicero_ and other
critical and historical allusions relating to the classic authors,
and evinces familiarity with such literature. Again, she is found
descanting in a critical vein on the qualities of Warburton's
_Notes on Shakespeare_. Her observations upon English history are
appreciative of its distinguishing features. In these remarks she
says: "In some reigns, the kingdom is in the most terrible confusion,
in others it appears mean and corrupt; in Charles II.'s time, what a
figure we make with French measures and French mistresses! But when
our times are written, England will recover its glory; such conquests
abroad, such prosperity at home, such prudence in council, such vigor
in execution, so many men clothed in scarlet, so many fine tents,
so many cannon that do not so much as roar, such easy taxes, such
flourishing trade! Can posterity believe it? I wish our history, from
its incredibility, may not get bound up with fairy tales and serve to
amuse children, and make nursery maids moralize." The same light touch
and whimsical insight displayed in this quotation are evidenced in all
her writings. It matters not the subject--balls or books, flirtations
or syllogisms, the same delicate vein of humor runs throughout them.
Miss Carter, the particular friend of Mrs. Montagu, frail in health
and devoted, a beauty, a wit, a brilliant conversationalist, was yet
of a much more retiring disposition than was her friend. She created
no Hillstreet and Portman Square assemblies, although she was by
no means a recluse; and even if she did not have so strong a social
following as Mrs. Montagu, her presence possessed charm for those who
assembled about her. She had a wide acquaintance with literature, and
patronized the libraries extensively; her linguistic accomplishments
included French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and, most rare
acquirement in those days, German. She was discriminating in her
literary tastes, and is found commenting upon German books of fiction.
She says that they are dangerous for young people, for the reason
that they possess the singular art of sanctifying the passions. Mere
sentimentality was repugnant to her feelings, and she dismissed from
her attention a German book, with the expression: "A detestable book,
but I know of no other in German that is exceptionable in the same
horrid way."
Mrs. Vesey was another literary character whose salon, made thoroughly
delightful, was frequented only by persons of the greatest culture.
Just how the name _bas-bleu_ came to be identified with the assembly
which Mrs. Vesey gathered about her is not known. One explanation
which was current at the time attributes the term to a foreign
gentleman who was invited to go to either Mrs. Montagu's or Mrs.
Vesey's, and was assured as to the informality of the occasion by an
acquaintance, who told him that full dress was quite optional, and,
in fact, he might go in blue stockings if he was so minded. Other
accounts do not agree with this; one lays the phrase at the door
of Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, the naturalist, who always wore
blue stockings; but it is asserted by Miss Carter's biographer that
Stillingfleet died before the name came into vogue. Hannah More, in
some whimsical lines, describes a _bas-bleu_ assembly:
"Here sober Duchesses are seen,
Chaste wits and critics void of spleen:
Physicians fraught with real science,
And Whigs and Tories in alliance;
Poets fulfilling Christian duties,
Just Lawyers, reasonable Beauties,
Bishops who preach and Peers who pray,
And Countesses who seldom play,
Learn'd Antiquaries who from college
Reject the rust and bring the knowledge;
And hear it, _age_, believe it, _youth_,--
Polemics really seeking truth;
And Travellers of that rare tribe
Who've seen the countries they describe."
The brilliant woman who gathered about her such a representative
gathering of celebrities as is suggested by these lines--an assemblage
in which Dr. Johnson could discourse in one corner on moral duties,
and Horace Walpole amuse another group with his lively wit, while the
younger portion discussed the opera or the fashions--was the daughter
of Sir Thomas Vesey, Archbishop of Tuam. By her second marriage--with
a relative, Mr. A. Vesey--she resumed her maiden name. Prominent
persons, other than those mentioned, who were attracted to her salon
were Burke, Pulteney, Garrick, Lord Lyttleton, Dr. Burney, and Lord
Monboddo.
Women were not only given to shining in exclusive social circles, but
brilliant representatives of the sex were keenly interested in the
political trend of the times. The Duchess of Marlborough was one of
the most notable and politically active women of the age of Anne.
This was a time of ascendency in politics of the Dissenters, who are
described by Burton in his history of that age as a clog upon the free
movements of the complicated machinery of British social and political
life. Another of the famous women at court was the Countess of
Suffolk, who appears in Swift's correspondence as Mrs. Howard. These
women were thoroughly informed as to the political movements of their
time, as is revealed by their correspondence; and they, with others
as noteworthy, often shaped state policy. Among names which appear
prominently in the political movements of the century are those of
the Countess of Bristol, Mrs. Selwyn, who was one of the ladies of the
bedchamber to the queen of George II., Lady Hervey, and the Duchess
of Queensborough. The latter declared herself so wearied of elections
that, in all good conscience, they ought to occur only once in an age.
The Countess of Huntingdon, the supporter of Whitfield, the Duchess of
Devonshire, and other women of position, had vital interest in public
questions.
The interest which English ladies took in politics was a matter
of constant surprise to foreigners, but it was significant of the
awakening to a sense of privilege which led in the next century to the
various female declarations of rights, of which the most extreme was
the claim to suffrage.