Danika Rockett
English 371
Summer 2010
June 2
Worked a variety of professions:
Spinning thread
Goldsmithing
Running shops
Brewing beer
Women’s lives went
from this …
… to this. But why?
 Work
conditions
changed drastically
 Cottage industries
turned into largescale factories
 Men went out to work
 Women stayed home
 Women
were “morally
weak”
 The public sphere was
morally dangerous
 The Angel in the House
 Education

Limited to “genteel”
skills
 Work

opportunities
Seamstress, governess,
ladies’ companion
 Marriage
 Custody
of children
 Property inheritance
 Social perception
 Bodily freedom
 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
Man
Man
Man
Man
for the field and woman for the hearth,
for the sword and for the needle she,
with the head and woman with the heart,
to command and woman to obey.
~from Tennyson’s The Princess (1847)
"Literature cannot
be the business of
a woman's life..."
I would like your
advice about my
poetry …
VS.
Charlotte Brontë a.k.a. Currer Bell
Robert Southey, Poet Laureate
Unmarried women
are unnatural. Send
them to the
colonies to find
husbands
30% of women do
not marry … let’s
educate them!
VS.
Frances Power Cobbe
“What Shall We Do With Our Old Maids?”
W. R. Greg
“Why Are Women Redundant?”
 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”
 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
 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)
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 …
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?
In 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"
 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
 Response
to Wollstonecraft
 Is Barabauld a feminist?
 Look at these lines:





4
6
9 – 12
25 – 28
29
 Born
in Dublin, Ireland
 British Union for the
Abolition of Vivisection
 Spoke out passionately
about the treatment of
women and other
disenfranchised groups





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)




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)
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 . . .
 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?
 Born
in New York
 Spoke only Dutch
until age 9
 Escaped slavery at
age 26 with infant
 First AfricanAmerican woman to
win court case
against a White man
 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?
 Most
successful AfricanAmerican 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





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
 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

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