Mary Wollstonecraft and the beginnings of female emancipation in France and England by Jacob Bouten

Author:Jacob Bouten [Bouten, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Google: P1mxDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Prabhat Prakashan
Published: 2021-01-01T04:15:43+00:00

Everything should be done to render intriguing dangerous, if not impossible. The building should be of three plain fronts, "that the eye might at a glance see from one coin to the other, the gardens walled in the same triangular figure, with a large moat and but one entrance." But the restraint would be only relative, for only those were to be admitted into the seclusion of the college who were willing to live there, and even they were not to be confined a moment longer than the same voluntary choice inclined them.

Defoe realised that upon an absolute separation from the opposite sex depended the success of his undertaking. We seem to be listening to Lilia in Tennyson's Princess saying: "But I would make it death for any male thing but to peep at us", when Defoe pleads the advisability of an act of parliament making it "felony for any man to enter by force or fraud into the house, or to solicit any woman though it were to marry, while she was in the house." Any woman willing to receive the advances of a suitor, might leave the establishment, whilst those anxious to "discharge themselves of impertinent addresses" would be sure at any time to find a refuge in it.

The plan of instruction is made relative to the natural inclinations of the sex. An important place is to be given to music and dancing, "because they are their darlings", and to foreign languages, particularly French and Italian, "and I would venture the injury of giving a woman more tongues than one." Books are recommended, especially on historical subjects, to make them understand the world, nor are "the graces of speech", and "the necessary air of conversation" forgotten, in which the usual education was so defective.

In the solution he proposes to the problem of female erudition, Defoe was equally effective. He recognises that it will not do to fit all women into a universal harness. Allowance must be made for individuality. "To such whose genius would lead them to it" he would deny no sort of learning. He is even roused to an ecstatic pitch of enthusiasm by the contemplation of the ideal female which his imagination conjures up before his mind's eye. "Without partiality; a woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate part of God's creation, the glory of her Maker, and the great instance of his singular regard to man, his darling creature, to whom he gave the best gift either God could bestow or man receive", to which he adds that education may make of any woman "a creature without comparison, whose society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments." God has given to all mankind souls equally capable, and the entire difference between the sexes proceeds "either from accidental differences in the make of their bodies, or from the foolish difference of education." And Defoe winds up with the bold assertion that all the world are mistaken in their practice about women, "for

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