Inspired with a Flame Divine

This blog is now switching it’s focus.  Last semester I was writing on my Women’s Writing course, and this semester it is a Pre-1800 Prose narrative course.  When we look at literature from the past, it is always good to put in into context.

Who was reading/writing?

What were they reading/writing?

Why were they reading/writing?

The answers to these questions change over time and impact what is written and how we understand it as modern readers.

Looking at Pre-1800 narrative prose, we must look at the emergence and development of the English novel.  If you look anywhere there are people arguing over what the first English novel is (a quick google search brought me a Wikipedia page dedicated to various candidates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_claimed_first_novels_in_English) and a lot of this discussion is based around the argument of what classifies a piece of writing as a “novel.”

For me, going into this course, I would have to say a novel is a piece of writing that:

1. Is a certain length.  (I’m not sure exactly what I think the cutoff is, but definitely no shorter than 100 pages.)
2. Holds one coherent narrative.  (It cannot be a collection of short stories, there has to be an overarching plot.)
3. Is fictional and written in prose.

I’m sure that my opinions will change, especially as we discuss the definition of “novel” in class, but that is where I stand today.

Going into this book I read a lot of comparisons to Robinson Crusoe. These comparisons didn’t really mean anything to me or help inform my reading because I have never read Robinson Crusoe. I appreciate the excerpts in the appendices, specifically Appendix C, because it helped me understand the comparison.

The reviews featured in Appendix E were also very interesting.  The first features a reference to Robinson Crusoe and is very positive, despite being only one sentence. The second review is not as kind. I think it’s strange that the critic seems to think the novel is only appropriate for Native Americans when, as we discussed in class, the novel seems to depict very little knowledge about actual Native Americans.

It is interesting that we are ending the course with another text whose authorship is uncertain.  I don’t think that knowing the author is always important, but in a course that is specifically about women’s writing I think it should carry more weight than usual.

Regardless of who wrote it, I found this book very strange.  Having a Native American protagonist introduce Christianity to other Indigenous people is very odd to me.  I think this should be evidence that the author is probably not Native American and if they are, they definitely seem disconnected from that side of themselves.

As a narrative choice it makes some sense, Unca Eliza Winkfield was disconnected from her mothers side of the family after she passed away, but turning the Native American heroine into a representative of Christianity/colonization for another Indigenous group is a bizarre thing to read.

 

The appendices that interested me the most were Appendix C and Appendix D.

In Appendix C we get to see some reviews of Sophia, which I love.  I love to be able to put the work in the context of it’s time and seeing what critics at the time thought is vital for that.  The review from The British Magazine “Ingenious, delicate, and interesting” reads to me like an excerpt from a movie or book review that they would put on the poster or cover. I can’t believe that is the whole review.

Maybe I just really like context, (I am very interested in history) but I found Appendix D interesting for the same reason that I liked Appendix C.  Getting to read other works that would have been placed alongside Sophia allows you to imagine more clearly what type of periodical The Lady’s Museum was.  I enjoyed the letter to the editor and find it funny that it was common for editors and writers to send their own publications letters to the editor under pseudonyms.  I wonder if this still happens today.

I had a very difficult time getting into this book.  I’m not sure if it was the subject matter, the format, or the fact that I am so busy this time of the year, but I had a hard time.  The presentations in class got me more excited about the book though, and I think I will have to revisit it at some point.

The Bluestockings, or Blues, were a short-lived informal group of English women who adapted the French tradition of salonieres to fit their needs and beliefs.  While the French had a long saloniere tradition, the English salon was only around about forty years from roughly 1750 to 1790.  The women who attended were educated wealthy women who were very disciplined in their learning.  Unlike their French counterparts, the Bluestockings did not use their meetings for food and pleasure, believing “ignorance and pleasure were the unpardonable sins” and that “their guests [should] feed their minds and not their bodies.”  They focused on hosting gatherings which fostered intellectual conversations.  While men were included, the Bluestockings were not dependant on them like the French women were.  English salons could function with or without men present.  Hannah More wrote after a dinner party of nine women “we all agreed that men were by no means so necessary as we had all been so foolish enough to fancy.”  These women were highly disciplined, ambitious, and religious.

The Bluestockings were not an official group, but they were held together by their mutual beliefs, as well as their friendships and support for one another.  The group functioned as a type of guild, all the women learning from one another and teaching each other through their discussions.  They were able to have intelligent discussions about topics with other educated men and women.  By doing this they were feminizing the male dominated spheres of writing, publishing, and public intellectual discussion.  Their support for one another helped them flourish as writers.  All of their published works were published after the formation of the group.  Wealthier members would house, finance, and encourage the others.  While less affluent and socially prominent members would also do favours for the others, such as teaching them Greek, reading to them, or helping them organize their papers at the end of their life.  This system of support helped the Bluestockings thrive instead of competing with one another.

They believed that women should seek education and that any differences between men and women were because of customs and laws.  Hester Chapone wrote “the rules of the world which being made by men, are always more severe on women than on themselves.”  They did not confine themselves to the salons and challenged the stereotype of the passive women, often having “extracurricular” activities outside of the salon.  They are sometimes considered early or proto-feminists because of this, but they were still very conservative in a lot of respects.  They wrote and published works that were usually very widely read and well received, but what they wrote would be in the genres that were deemed appropriate for women.  They challenged traditional views of women, but only among their own class. They were “in the pursuit of intellectual improvement, polite sociability, the refinement of the arts through patronage, and national stability through philanthropy” and they held conservative, Angelical beliefs.  They upheld a lot of the values of the time, while still trying to make room for themselves in society.

While all of the Bluestockings are notable, I’ve decided to highlight three today: Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Carter, and Hannah More.  Montagu was the sister of Sarah Scott.  She was born into a wealthy family and married a wealthy man, making her one of the richest women of the time.  She used the wealth to foster and support aspiring writers and help the poor.  Known as the “Queen of the Blues” because of her role in organizing the group, she was praised for being a model of traditional female virtue as a dispenser of hospitality, patronage, and philanthropy.  She acted as a sort of school mistress for the Bluestockings because she led the meetings, suggested the topic of discussion and guided the conversation.  This led to William Cowper calling Mrs. Montagu’s rooms “Mrs. Montagu’s Academy”.  She published only two works in her lifetime and posthumously her letters were published.  Elizabeth Carter was very skilled in languages and known for her translations.  She knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as well as French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Arabic.  Her translations and knowledge of languages showed off her classical training, a type of education that would not have been available to many women.  Hannah More was a religious writer and focused on educating and reforming the poor through her works.  She emphasized sobriety, hard work, religion, and pride in Britain’s constitution.  In 1757, when she was 12, she and her four sisters opened a school for girls in Bristol.  She wrote the poem The Bas Bleu: or, Conversation in 1787 about her fellow Bluestockings and is sometimes seen as a Bluestocking historian as she was part of the second generation of Bluestockings.  These were not average women for the time or even among their fellow upper-class women.  These women had a passion for writing, learning, and helping others.

While it is not entirely certain where their name came from the most commonly accepted anecdote about their name is that when Benjamin Stillingfleet was invited to one of their parties he responded that he had nothing appropriate to wear.  Mrs. Vesey replied that he should come in his blue stockings, his ordinary clothes.  Blue stockings were considered casual, while black stockings were formal wear.  The term originally could be applied to men or women, but by 1782 it only referred to women.

The Cambridge dictionary defines Bluestocking as: “An intelligent and well-educated woman who spends most of her time studying and is therefore not approved of by some men.”  This is referring to the fact that although they received praise, these women faced a lot of criticism because they were challenging the status quo.  While their writing stayed in line with what it was thought that women should write at the time, and a lot of the writing focused on morality and religion, a lot of people did not like that they were writing at all.  They were usually seen as lacking social grace and refinement and were described as vain, egotistical, and pretentious.  A famous French caricaturist Honoré Daumier published a series of forty lithographs called Les Bas Bleus satirizing them.  In these lithographs the women are seen abandoning their babies and speaking back to their husbands.  They are obsessed with writing and don’t perform their wifely duties.  Most of them have cruel expressions on their faces and when the husband is depicted he is being emasculated, caring for the child, or taking on another female role.

These women were significant because they helped usher in the first wave of feminism.  They were also the first group of women writers to gain a lot of fame.  Their works were widely read, they were in the public sphere, and they received a lot of praise for their works.  However, these women were all wealthy, upper-class, and educated, and therefore represent a small percentage of the population at the time.  They were certainly ambitious, pushed boundaries, and wanted more for themselves, but seem content upholding the class-based status quo of their time.  Bluestockings sought to be the moral and social models of the nation and are seen as having achieved that.  They played a major role in shaping the culture of England at the time.

Do you think the Bluestockings can be considered feminists?

 

 

 

Works Cited

Bodek, Evelyn Gordon. “Salonières and Bluestockings: Educated Obsolescence and Germinating Feminism.” Feminist Studies, vol. 3, no. 3/4, 1976, pp. 185–199.

Guest, Harriet. “Bluestocking Feminism.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 1/2, 2002, pp. 59–80

Pohl, Nicole, and Betty A. Schellenberg. “Introduction: A Bluestocking Historiography.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 1/2, 2002, pp. 1–19.

Scott, Sarah. Introduction. Millennium Hall, by Gary Kelly, 2004, pp. 11-43.

I found reading Millennium Hall a nice change from all the poetry we have covered so far in the course.  I love poetry, but reading a long form story with lots of characters was good.  It is interesting that while we are following women’s writing through this course we also get to follow the greater literary trends.

I liked the view of her utopia as it seemed very representative of Sarah Scott as a person.  Very structured and focused on the arts.  I don’t think it would be a world that worked for everyone, especially because of the focus on religion and how everything was structured on a pretty strict schedule, but it really feels like Scott was putting the world that she wanted into this book.

The fact that the narrator is a man stood out to me.  Scott could have made this a story about a woman finding a utopia filled with other women, instead, it is a man.  Since we follow a gentleman that finds Millennium Hall he, and by extension us as readers, are held at arms length from the wonder of the female dominated utopia.  We can learn about their lives, but we cannot follow them.

This poem by Katherine Philips is actually the reason I chose to do my Wiki and Library assignments on her.  I remembered reading and enjoying it in either my first or second year.

Like I’ve said in other posts, one of my favourite parts of reading all these works by women is getting the insight into their minds at various points in history and I feel like this poem is a good example of that.

The most interesting part to me is the fact that this poem was written when she was very young, around 15, and how jaded she already is to the concept of marriage.  I feel like this shows off the position women were in in society at the time.  So young, and she would prefer to live alone because of the burden that marriage and motherhood bring.  And not only is she saying that she does not want to face this fate, she is also trying to convince someone else away from marriage.

I think that this may be the best example of a writer using the “master’s tools” that we have seen so far in class.  In this excerpt, Amelia Lanyer uses the Bible to turn the arguments against women, back at men.  She takes the biblical argument that Eve doomed all women because of her actions and turns it around, asking “Well, what about Adam?”

I don’t know if this work actually changed any minds of the people that read it, but I feel like engaging with the same text as the people she was disputing was probably more effective than trying to get them to respect women, just because they’re, you know,  people.  People get set in their ways and want to uphold the status quo, but allowing for an alternate reading may be a starting point that is easier to accept and gets people to question the world around them.  Presenting an argument based on a text that they respect, despite the fact that it can’t “dismantle the house” because it is still working within it, might have been a good starting point.

It is so amazing to be able to have writing from a woman from so long ago.  The fact that a lot of the writing can still translate and speak to us as a modern audience is even more amazing.  I love reading texts that still come across as funny through the translation and hundreds of years.  Some humor is very specific to the time and place in which it was written, but sometimes it can transcend.

The thing I loved most about this translation is that it has the original welsh writing, a literal translation, and a rhyming translation.  I found reading both the literal and rhyming translations gave me a better understanding of the poems.