homework nov 27th

Elizabeth Carter was unusually learned and self-educated. She translated many languages, including Greek and Arabic, wrote poetry and essays. Carter was admired by female and male colleagues alike and a welcome guest at Bluestocking meetings. Her Ode To Melancholy owes much to the literary movement of sensibility, indulging in feeling, addressing, personifying and inviting it. On the Indulgence of Fancy mainly deals with the imagination, which is inspired with by a nostalgic view of the past.

William Collins worked along the same sensibilious lines when he wrote Ode to Fear, addressing and personifying a feeling, and Ode to the Poetical Character, which seeks the place of the imagination for poetic inspiration.

Edmund Burke, politician and philosopher, wrote A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, a text that became very influential for the Romantic Movement. It is concerned with a lot of terms central to Sensibility, such as the sublime and terror, and in itself a very sensibilious text, dwelling on feeling and emotion. But it moves beyond Sensibility because it does not promote paralysis and absorption by emotions, but seeks to explain how those feelings come about, taking a cool philosophical approach to the subject.

homework nov 13th

rescheduled from last week. homework already done, see below.

homework nov 6th

It is amazing that these writers were self-educated and managed to write poetry while having jobs as washer-woman and milkmaid to earn a living. While sometimes writing out of their daily life’s experience, they are at other times concerned with the same issues as better educated and more wealthy writers, such as the role of women, or establish a discourse of their own by answering to another poet’s writing.

Stephen Duck wrote about his daily toil in the field, accusing women of not working as hard as men. He was lucky to gain the attention of Queen Caroline, who gave him a salary, so he did not have to work as a laborer anymore, and made him the keeper of her library.

Mary Collier, a washer-woman her whole life, answered his poem The Thresher’s Labour with an epistle, defending women. Not only does she claim women to work as hard as men, but indeed even harder, because in addition to their work in the field they have to attend to a husband and raise the children.

Mary Leapor no doubt puts herself in the role of the country maid in The Month of August, rejecting her courtier who tries to tempt her with riches. The country maid claims to be quite happy with what she owns and her life, advising him to look for a woman of his rank. Leapor also refers to herself in her poetry by the name of Mira, as in An Epistle to a Lady and Mira’s Will. An Essay on Woman deals with the familiar theme of women’s fate.

Anne Yearsley in On Mrs. Montagu both praises women as equally capable as men, and also thanks her patron Elizabeth Montagu. To Indifference shows her on the brink of Romanticism, rejecting sensibility. To those who accuse the Author of Ingratitude is directed at her other patron, Hannah More, with whom she broke.

sensibility webpage

http://sensibilityandromanticism.webonsites.com/

homework oct 30th

The London Gazette entry struck me as peculiar. Defoe as most wanted because of a pamphlet he wrote, with a 50 pound reward for anyone who reports him. He was not allowed to speak his mind on religious issues, heavily fined for his ironic essay and even sent to prison.

On the other hand Swift got away with his cynical and disgusting satire without being censored. At least we do not get a newspaper entry looking for him. Despite the fact that he criticises the government just as much as Defoe does, only for a different matter. Swift accuses the government of not taking any measures to relieve the poor, esp. in Ireland, and most of all poor children. His proposal shows how difficult the situation is, for he can only point his finger at politics by coming up with an idea completely ineligible, instead of making a valuable contribution and thinking of something realistic.

The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that religion is more important than humans. The abstract idea of a higher being and worshipping it by believing in the ‘right’ faith is valued higher than concrete problems of real people.

While Swift’s satires in verse on the fair sex are not as horrifying, they are just as repulsive. Who wants to know the icky details? I do not doubt that his descriptions have a realistic touch. But Montagu’s response to The Lady’s Dressing Room makes Swift look like a revengeful wimp unable to accept rejection.

Homework oct 23rd

This weeks reading was concerned with the education of women. In the 18th century women were bound by strict conventions and expected to be a good wife rather than a writer.  Sarah Fyge Egerton in her poem The Emulation sees women enslaved by tradition, by the ‘Tyrant Custom’, which makes ‘Poor Womankind ['s] in every State, a Slave’. She must be loving and obedient, while ‘The husband with insulting Tyranny/ Can have ill Manners justified by Law’. In a patriarchy men have all the rights. But the author admits that women in a matriarchy would do the same: ‘They’re Wise to keep us Slaves, for well they know,/ If we were loose, we soon should make them so.’ If women developed their intellectual powers, women woul ‘be Wits, and then Men must be Fools’.

Mary Barber describes her husband’s dislike for her writing in The Conclusion of a Letter to the Rev. Mr. C-. She is careful to finish her writing before her husband comes home, because he does not like her poetry. She imagines him advising her to write in form of a letter, as that would be more becoming to her role as a woman. She then anticipates the reaction of the addressee to a poetical letter – hideous. Women are not even supposed to read, let alone write letters, and in verse. The addressee would sure pity her husband for having such a frantic wife and even suggest punishment. What a man expects of his wife are abilities solely concerned with the home, cleaning, cooking, ‘serve and obey’, help her husband to dress. But bringing up the children also falls into the female realm, and here she is free to exercise some power and influence her son. She advises him not to take a ‘housewifely Shrew ‘, who is only concerned with her beauty and too stupid to find another occupation than playing cards. She wants him to look for a woman who is educated and speaks her own mind. In turn, he should treat her with respect and be a ‘Friend and Protector‘, not ‘Tyrant and Hector‘.

In To the Memory of Mr Congreve Mary Wortley Montagu praises the deceased, showing that not all men are tyrants. ‘[T]he best and loveliest of Mankind’ had the ‘softest temper’ and was one of the few honourable men, ‘[i]n this Lewd age when Honour is a Jest’. Maybe he was raised by a mother whose thoughts ran along the same lines as Mary Barber’s.

Anne Kingsmill Finch picks up again the notion that women’s writing is not considered worthy enough and censured. In The Introduction she laments that a woman writer is considered as ‘an intruder on the rights of men’. She also lists what men expect women to be and to do, and makes a clear distinction between nature and education. Women are not naturally housewifely and illiterate, but restrained by education. Custom and tradition do not allow for women to excel intellectually. Yet, as all these women writers show, they are well able to not only break tradition, but to actively question it.

homework oct 9th

This was an interesting class. I found it hilarious that Robinson Crusoe is not that origninal at all, but pieced together of other similar accounts. So Defoe did quite a bit of “research” before working on his novel. It is a work of its time, not only because it owes a lot to contemporary literature, but also because it is concerned with religion. A modern castaway will very likely worry about his provisions just as much, but probably not pray and think about religious issues.

homework oct 2nd

Behn claims at the beginning of Oroonoko to tell a true story, and indeed, even though I never heard of Oroonoko before, the tale is plausible enough and sticks to what I know about slave history. Blacks in Africa started the slave trade in the first place, fighting against each other and using their captives as slaves themselves or selling them. The sold Black people were then deported to faraway countries and rarely set free or able to buy themselves out of slavery. Nonetheless, friendly relationships between owners and slaves were possible. Some owners were fine men like Trevy and treated their “possessions” well. In return, Oroonoko helps them negotiate with the Indians instead of leading them into a trap and good riddance. But slave rebellions were punished severely. And some Blacks, if not whipped to death by their masters, saw no way out other than suicide and the killing of their whole family. There is a novel which tells a similar story but from the female perspective. When the runaway slave is about to be captured she kills her children, as she’d rather see them dead than in slavery. Unfortunately I forgot the title. Another title I do remember is ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’, an autobiography by a slave who suffered terribly from her owner.

The second reading was not nearly as desperate. Though sold as a slave, the author of the autobiogrphy not only managed to buy his freedom and make quite a career in the white world. Equiano also embraced England as his home and lived there out of his own will. This is interesting, as it shows the often neglected side of slavery and the possibility of pursuit of happiness for everyone, as well as the successful fight for equal rights. Although there is no doubt that slavery is and always was wrong, it forced and forged a cultural contact which otherwise might never have come about. Who knows what our multicultural society would look like without Blacks. Or, with Blacks only starting to live in the “White” world now, without having had to fight for their rights already more than 150 years before. Discrimination would probably be worse. For, no matter how idealistic one is, the fact that people with a dark skin colour still are discriminated cannot be denied. But it gets less. The longer people of different ethnicities – or races, if that is a politcally correct term at the moment – live together, the more they get used to each other.

Homework Sep 25th

The online version of Behn’s The Adventures of the Black Lady is neat as it keeps the original order and gives numbered pages instead of letting it run down till the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, this is just what our text book does – and Robinson Crusoe as well. No chapters. If I am lucky there are at least paragraphs. Thank God writing conventions have changed since.

Behn’s, Manley’s and Haywood’s stories all sound more or less alike, they all deal with morals, love and its place in society. Especially Behn’s short story reminded me of Tom Jones – loads of people get involved in a private business, it looks bad and messed up, but in the end all falls into place.

I found Haywood’s feminist critique rather hilarious. Yes, it is somehow sad that the well-bred girl has to dress up as a whore to make the Beaux talk to her in a relaxed way – or talk to her at all. But is also fun.

homework sep 18th

This week’s reading assignment focuses on diaries, reflections, letters, and biographies with a strong personal contribution of the author.

John Bunyan was not to my taste at all, but this is probably just because my personal preferences don’t lie in spiritual literature. Didn’t like his wailing  about his spiritual calling and excursions among the poor.

Samual Pepys is a household name. I remember reading his diary entry on the fire in London in 1666 at school and listening to a part of it on the ‘English Literature’ Audio CD.

Montagu’s letters are interesting since she is writing from abroad and tell us something about how an English women of the 18th century experienced other European countries.

Boswell, Johnson, Piozzi and Burney formed the Streatham circle centerd around Samual Johnson. Boswell’s biography of Johnson is very subjective and Piozzi’s record of the friendship with Johnson can also be considered as a kind of bio, but of course it bears a strong personal print as well. Today an author would rather try to avoid that and want to be – or at least appear – objective. What also strikes me as different from our modern times are the extensive journals and very long and sophisticated letters. Does anyone still write letters like this? Or emails? We tend to be rather short.