LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

of public opinion may be fairly indicated by a few scattered utterances from contemporary poems and essays.

      Sir Thomas Overbury, in his Characters (1614), describes "A Good Woman" as one "whose husband's welfare is the business of her actions." Her chief virtue is that "Shee is Hee." In A Wife he says that "Books are a part of Man's Prerogative." He praises a "passive understanding" in women and deprecates learning since

      What it finds malleable it maketh frail

      And doth not add more ballast, but more sail.

      Powell, in Tom of All Trades (1631), is emphatic in his plea for the domestic as against the learned lady: "Let them learne plaine workes of all kinds, so they take heed of too open seaming. Instead of Song and Musicke, let them learn Cookerie and Laundrie. And instead of reading in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, let them reade the grounds of good huswifery. I like not a female Poetresse at any hand."[55] William Habington, in Castara (1634), a series of poems in honor of Lucy Herbert, his wife, gave a comprehensive description of the ideal wife's attitude towards her husband: "Shee is inquisitive onely of new wayes to please him, and her wit sayles by no other compass then that of his direction. Shee lookes upon him as Conjurers upon the Circle, beyond which there is nothing but Death and Hell; and in him shee beleeves Paradice circumscrib'd. His vertues are her wonder and imitation; and his errors, her credulitie thinkes no more frailtie, then makes him descend to the title of Man."[56] Richard Brathwait, in The English Gentleman, comments with apparent approval on the ancient seclusion of women. He says, "The Ægyptians, by an especiall decree (as Plutarch reports) injoined their Women to weare no shooes, because they should abide at home. The Grecians accustomed to burne, before the doore of the new married, the axletree of that coach, wherein she was brought to her husbands house, letting her understand that she was ever after to dwell there."[57]

      Sir Ralph Verney said of his own daughter: "Pegg is very backward. … I doubt not but she will be schollar enough for a Woeman." With regard to little Nancy Denton he wrote: "Let not your girl learn Latin nor short hand: The difficulty of the first may keep her from that vice, for soe I must esteem it in a woeman; but the easinesse of the other may be a prejudice to her; for the pride of taking sermon noates hath made multitudes of women unfortunate." Miss Nancy was quite in advance of her godfather in her conception of the studies appropriate for her. She wrote to him: "I know you and my coussenes wil out rech me in french, but i am a goeng whaar i hop i shal out rech you in ebri grek and laten." Sir Ralph answered: "I did not think you had been guilty of soe much learning as I see you are; and yet it seems you rest unsatisfied or else you would not threaten Lattin, Greeke, and Hebrew too. Good sweet harte bee not soe covitous; beleeve me a Bible (with y^e Common prayer) and a good plaine cattichisme in your mother tongue being well read and practised, is well worth all the rest and much more sutable to your sex; I know your Father thinks thise false doctrine, but be confident your husband will bee of my oppinion. In French you can not be too cunning for that language affords many admirable books fit for you as Romances, Plays, Poetry, Stories of illustrious (not learned) Woemen, receipts for preserving, makinge creames and all sorts of cookeryes, ordring your gardens and in Breif, all manner of good housewifery."[58]

      The general opinion was quite in accord with Luther when he said: "Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children";[59] or, at the best, with Milton's "He for God only, she for God in him."[60]

      Mr. Baldwyn, it is true, in 1619, in his New Help to Discourse, praises England as the place where women had the greatest prerogatives. In England, he says, women "are not kept so severely submiss" as in France, nor so jealously guarded as in Italy. "England is termed by foreigners the Paradise of Women as it is by some accounted the Hell of horses and the Purgatory of Servants. And it is a common byword among the Italians that if there were a bridge built over the narrow seas all women in Europe would run into England."[61] But this favorable opinion must be discounted as being a retrospective estimate based mainly on the attitude towards women in the sixteenth century; and further, as being an Englishman's attempt to exalt English as against continental customs.

      Of more curious interest is the ingenious attempt of the Bishop of London to interpret the account of the creation of Eve from Adam's rib as an intention on the part of the Creator to teach the equality of woman with man. The Bishop says: "The species of this bone is exprest to be costa, a rib, a bone of the side, not of the head: a woman is not domina, the ruler; nor of any anterior part; she is not prælata, preferred before the man; nor a bone of the foote; she is not serva, a handmaid; nor of any hinder part; she is not post-posita, set behind the man; but a bone of the side, of a middle and indifferent part, to show that she is socia, a companion to her husband. For qui jungunter lateribus, socii sunt, they that walke side to side, cheeke to cheeke, walke as companions."[62]

      One book definitely in honor of the ladies came out rather late in the period. This was Charles Gerbier's Elogium Heroinum. The Ladies' Vindication: or, The Praise of Worthy Women. The threefold dedication to the Princess of Bohemia, "whose marvellous wisdom and profound knowledge in Arts, Sciences, and Languages, is admired by all men," to the Countess Dowager of Claire, "a Patroness of the Muses, a general Lover of the Languages, and Knowledge"; and to the "Vertuous Accomplisht Lady Anne Hudson," is justified by the three principles in natural philosophy, the three theological virtues, and the three graces. "Woman," says Mr. Gerbier, "is capable of as high improvement as man," an assertion which he proceeds to establish by the following arguments: "Does not Sophia signify wisdom? Are not Faith, Hope and Charity represented as Women? Are not the Seven Liberal Arts exprest in Women's Shapes? Are not the Nine Muses Daughters of Jupiter? Is not Wisdom called the Daughter of the Highest?" His list of worthy women begins with the Queen of Sheba who disputed with Solomon, goes enthusiastically through the famous dames of Greece and Rome, including the Muses and the Sibyls, and touches upon later learned women such as "Christine de Pisan, Margaret of Vallois, Lady Jane Grey, the Countess of Pembroke, the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke," and a few other outstanding personages of Tudor times. Praise so heterogeneous and uncritical was perhaps of little value, but such as it is, it stands alone in England in the period between Elizabeth and Charles II as a defense of learned women. And no defense or protest comes from the pen of a woman.

      It should, however, be noted that in European countries women were more vitally concerned in their own destinies. Between 1600 and 1641 there appeared at least three significant books by women dealing with the intellectual emancipation of their sex. The earliest of these came from Italy in 1608 with a second edition in 1621. It was written by a young Venetian widow, Lucrecia Marinelli (1571–1653), and was entitled Della notabilità e della eccellenza delle donne e dei difetti degli uomini. A second and better known book was by Marie de Jars, the fille d'alliance of Montaigne, usually known as Mlle. de Gournay.[63] Her book, entitled L'Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes, appeared in 1604 when "the Pride of Gournay," "the French Siren," as she was called, had become well known in the cultivated circles of Paris through her definitive edition of Montaigne's works in 1595. Mlle. de Gournay's thesis as to the dignity and capacity of women is established by divine authority and by citations from the church fathers and ancient philosophers. She follows up these expressions of opinion by a thorough résumé from sacred and profane history of the women who have worthily held high places. M. Feugère[64] voices what must be the opinion of any modern reader when he says that L'Egalité would be plus piquant without the pedantic form in which it is cast, without les citations fréquentes et les raisonnements scholastiques qui le surchargent. But however cumbersome we may find her method, it apparently suited her public, for the book was enthusiastically received.

      The third and by far the most important book on the position and desirable training of women was by Anna van Schurman of Utrecht. The extremes to which Mlle. de Gournay carried her doctrines were distasteful to Anna van Schurman, yet many of her ideas were doubtless based on the work of her French predecessor, la mère du féminisme moderne. Anna van Schurman's book was translated into English and had a direct influence on the progress of English educational ideals for women. It is taken up in detail later in this discussion.

      The low estimate of learning, in the first half of the seventeenth century, as an appropriate pursuit for women, had as its natural outcome a great decrease in the number of women

Скачать книгу