Catharine Beecher was a proponent of the cult of ‘True Womanhood’. Women, she believed, derived power specifically from domesticity, so that there was no need for political action. She therefore disagreed strongly with Angelina Grimke’s call to women to mobilize against slavery, and in her response to Grimke, An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism (1837), she wrote: Woman is to win every thing by peace and love; by making herself so much respected, esteemed and loved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify her wishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. The kind of direct political action Grimke recommended - petitioning Congress - could jeopardize the influence that women had already achieved and any future progress they might make. To illustrate what she saw as the inherent wrongness of Grimke’s abolitionist writings, she cited the example of another woman writer and activist, Frances Wright. Frances Wright, a Scottish philosopher who emigrated to America and attempted experiments to abolish slavery and extend republican rights to women went counter to everything Beecher believed in. Not only does she step out into the public sphere, but she stands on a stage: ‘If the female advocate chooses to come upon a stage, and expose her person, her dress, and elocution to public criticism, it is right to express disgust at whatever is offensive and indecorous, as it is to criticize the book of an author.’ (Essay on Slavery, 121) Beecher had previously expanded on what see found ‘offensive and indecorous’ in Wright’s public appearances in her Letters on the Difficulty of Religion (1836). The ‘appropriate character of a woman’ she says, ‘demands delicacy of appearance and manners, refinement of sentiment, gentleness of speech, modesty in feeling and action, a shrinking from notoriety and public gaze, a love of dependence, and protection, aversion to all that is coarse and rued, and an instinctive abhorrence of all that tends to indelicacy and impurity, either in principles or actions.’ (22) Fanny Wright fails on all these counts, because of her looks, her demeanour and her actions: ‘with her great masculine person, her loud voice, her untasteful attire, going about unprotected, and feeling no need of protection, mingling with men in stormy debate, and standing up with bare-faced impudence, to lecture to a public assembly. And what are the topics of her discourse, that in some cases may be a palliation for such indecorum? Nothing better than broad attacks on all those principles that protect the purity, the dignity, and the safety of her sex. There she stands, with brazen front and brawny arms, attacking the safeguards of all that is venerable and sacred in religion, all that is safe and wise in law, all that is pure and lovely in domestic virtue.’ (23). Beecher was very invested in arguing for women’s domestic power - to the extent where one feels that for her, a good housewife could manipulate the world of politics from afar, righting wrongs without stepping out of her sphere. Part of her investment was educational. She taught, she started her own school, and she defended in writing (white) women’s right to education, and argued that domestic science ought to be taught properly, so that women would not suffer or cause others to suffer when put in charge of a family’s welfare.
To be a woman, for Beecher, came to mean being an expert in domestic science, a keeper of health, morals, safety and general well-being. But in these earlier writings, it also means looking a certain way. Part of what is wrong with Fanny Wright is that she is physically, mentally and emotionally not fragile enough. She can stand up for herself, and does not need to ‘lean on an arm of flesh, to sit as a doll […] to be admired for her personal charms’ (Angelina Grimke, Letter to Catharine Beecher XII, 2 October 1837). Fanny Wright looks too manly, she holds herself too straight, her muscles are too big, too apparent. She is crossing a visible line between femininity and masculinity, one meant to safeguard the distinctions of the spheres: for after, all, why would a woman who ‘feels no need of protection’ stay inside her home?
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 Lucrezia Marinella by Giacomo Piccini, 1652 Lucrezia Marinella, Venetian 17th century philosopher, wrote lives of saints, romances, and a famous contribution to the Querelle de Femmes in which she defended women’s superiority to men, turning some of Aristotles’ arguments on their heads: The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Vices and Defects of Men (1601). Women, she said, should work to develop their intellect, naturally superior to men’s, and to do so, they should not be confined to the home. Then, at the age of 74, she apparently recanted all this in a final book, Exhortations to Women and Others if they Please (1645), claiming that “A woman’s reputation must not leave the walls of her home”. Women, she seems to argue, this time following Aristotle, ought not to pursue an intellectual life, but should focus on the domestic arts and virtues. This is what they are naturally suited for, and what will make them, and their husbands, happiest. What happened there? Did Marinella simply become more conservative as she grew older, denying younger generations of women what she had taken for herself? That’s possible, but before we demote Marinella from the ranks of feminist heroine to those Boomerdom, let’s consider other possibilities. First, let’s look at what the Exhortations have to say about domestic work, its value, and whom it is good for. Marinella’s spin on Aristotle |
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Friedan travelled to Paris to interview Beauvoir in her home. She felt that the feminist movement was floundering, and that an alliance between the most famous feminists in France and the United States might help revive it. The feminist movement in the States needed to be unified, Friedan thought, because it was loosing strength due to the dissociation of some 'extreme' feminists, possibly 'agents provocateurs' who want to make 'a political ideology out of lesbianism' and are 'down with men, childbearing and motherhood'.
One way to bring power back to 'non-extremist' feminism, Friedan thought, is by arguing for a minimum wage for housework. Does Beauvoir agree, she wonders?
Beauvoir strongly disagrees. And she feels that the problem with feminism is a failure of widespread societal change. Tokenism, and individual women breaking the glass ceiling isn't going to bring that about. She thinks that in many ways, women are better off taking jobs as teachers than they are becoming presidents of universities as this is more likely to bring overall change. Friedan asks 'how are they to eat' in response to Beauvoir arguing that women do not need to take the top jobs. In an interview conducted four years later with Alice Jardine, she comes back to that point:
Yes, that "we want to be just like men," that is, men as they are today, when in truth we need to change the society itself, men as well as women, to change everything. It is very striking in Betty Friedan: What she wants is for women to have as much power as men do. Obviously, if you are truly on the left, if you reject ideas of power and hierarchy, what you want is equality. Otherwise, it won't work at all.
(A. Jardine. Interview with Simone de Beauvoir. Signs, 1979 5:2. 224-236, 226)
She doesn't want women to become what men are: she wants both men and women to change. This means refusing to play the game, and that includes the 'star system': many younger feminists, she says, are not signing their names to their writings.
Beauvoir gives an example of what a universal feminist movement can look like: the pro-abortion movement in France. It worked because it engaged women from all classes: peasant, working class, bourgeoises.
When Friedan proposes the minimum wage for housework idea, Beauvoir rejects it immediately: it would reinforce the division of the spheres. It would make it much harder to bring the sort of change that doesn't regard women as cleaners first. Friedan objects that the women who currently do this work and have been doing it for years should nonetheless be rewarded for it, but Beauvoir doesn't budge. She now says that women should not be offered the choice of staying home to raise children, 'precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.' She gives a Chinese example of communal washing and socks darning, where every man, woman and children get together to darn socks - not necessarily their own.
Friedan opposes a 'pluralistic situation of real options' that takes into account the fact that 'the sense of individual family and the values of motherhood are so strong in people that I don't see any viable or even valuable political attempt to wipe them out. If people should choose a communal life-style such as you spoke of, that possibility should soon be open to them'.
Beauvoir replies that we need to destroy the 'myth of the family and the myth of maternity and of the maternal instinct'.
But, Friedan asks, shouldn't women be paid for their work? Why women? asks Beauvoir, why not get both men and women and indeed everyone in the community to share the work, and then, why pay in separately?
One way to bring power back to 'non-extremist' feminism, Friedan thought, is by arguing for a minimum wage for housework. Does Beauvoir agree, she wonders?
Beauvoir strongly disagrees. And she feels that the problem with feminism is a failure of widespread societal change. Tokenism, and individual women breaking the glass ceiling isn't going to bring that about. She thinks that in many ways, women are better off taking jobs as teachers than they are becoming presidents of universities as this is more likely to bring overall change. Friedan asks 'how are they to eat' in response to Beauvoir arguing that women do not need to take the top jobs. In an interview conducted four years later with Alice Jardine, she comes back to that point:
Yes, that "we want to be just like men," that is, men as they are today, when in truth we need to change the society itself, men as well as women, to change everything. It is very striking in Betty Friedan: What she wants is for women to have as much power as men do. Obviously, if you are truly on the left, if you reject ideas of power and hierarchy, what you want is equality. Otherwise, it won't work at all.
(A. Jardine. Interview with Simone de Beauvoir. Signs, 1979 5:2. 224-236, 226)
She doesn't want women to become what men are: she wants both men and women to change. This means refusing to play the game, and that includes the 'star system': many younger feminists, she says, are not signing their names to their writings.
Beauvoir gives an example of what a universal feminist movement can look like: the pro-abortion movement in France. It worked because it engaged women from all classes: peasant, working class, bourgeoises.
When Friedan proposes the minimum wage for housework idea, Beauvoir rejects it immediately: it would reinforce the division of the spheres. It would make it much harder to bring the sort of change that doesn't regard women as cleaners first. Friedan objects that the women who currently do this work and have been doing it for years should nonetheless be rewarded for it, but Beauvoir doesn't budge. She now says that women should not be offered the choice of staying home to raise children, 'precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.' She gives a Chinese example of communal washing and socks darning, where every man, woman and children get together to darn socks - not necessarily their own.
Friedan opposes a 'pluralistic situation of real options' that takes into account the fact that 'the sense of individual family and the values of motherhood are so strong in people that I don't see any viable or even valuable political attempt to wipe them out. If people should choose a communal life-style such as you spoke of, that possibility should soon be open to them'.
Beauvoir replies that we need to destroy the 'myth of the family and the myth of maternity and of the maternal instinct'.
But, Friedan asks, shouldn't women be paid for their work? Why women? asks Beauvoir, why not get both men and women and indeed everyone in the community to share the work, and then, why pay in separately?
No Gods, No Goddesses
Friedan, clearly disappointed, published, in the same issue, a short article where she steps back from Beauvoir (whom she calls throughout 'de Beauvoir'). The piece, entitled 'No Gods, No Goddesses' traces her history with Beauvoir: it was the Second Sex which introduced her to Existentialism (not feminism), but it also caused her to be depressed for years - until she wrote her own book. Friedan then proceeds to deal with her disappointment by launching a number of accusations on Beauvoir. Her disagreements with Friedan are merely a product of her repeating Sartres's Maoism - just as she had once repeated his existentialism. Beauvoir's repudiation of elitism, she says, elevates ' the anonymous working-class woman in the abstract' and her praise of anonymous feminist writings doesn't stop her from collecting her royalties. Also, although she says women should make do with normal teaching jobs so as not to fall into the 'equality with the top men' interpretation of feminism, she herself has had 'exceptionally good jobs' - this is not entirely true as Beauvoir spent a great deal of her life teaching in high schools. Finally, Beauvoir wanting to keep the interview with Friedan down to one hour because she wants to visit Sartre in hospital demonstrates her life-long dependence on a man, which is hypocritical in the light of her rejections of the traditional values of marriage and motherhood. Friedan ends by saying 'I wish her well'.
Roman Stoics, like Hierocles and Musonius, wrote about more than metaphysics, psychology or religion. They wrote about human affairs, and in particular marriage, the family, and household management. They regarded these topics as properly philosophical, a feature of their thought that later accounts and editions of their work have tended to obscure. So what did they think? Stoics beleived that the purpose of marriage is not merely procreation, but the common pursuit of the good life. For Musonius this meant that husband and wife belong to each other body and soul and he pretty much left it at that. Hierocles went into more details in his discussion of what husband and wife must have in common. Being married, he says, is a solace in old age and illness, as it provides companionship and the sharing of burdens. A wife is a blessing because she will help her husband in all areas of his life, and where she cannot reach physically, because she is not allowed to be out in the public place, she will listen to him recount his day, and either help him resolve problems, or if that is not possible, bring him comfort and relief.
But marriage is more than just sharing emotional burdens, Hierocles tells us: a husband and wife must also share physical ones. Household management is ‘a matter of shared activities between husband and wife.’
We know what to expect from the Stoics. No matter how generous they are in their principles, nothing will convince them to attempt to effect changes in the way human society works. They are more likely to recommend that we work on acceptance and try to achieve peace of mind than start a revolution. So does Hierocles draw back from the claim that all activities are to be shared by husband and wife? Yes, to some extent. His treatise on Household Management makes the claim that household tasks ought to be divided between husband and wife according to their appropriateness:
But marriage is more than just sharing emotional burdens, Hierocles tells us: a husband and wife must also share physical ones. Household management is ‘a matter of shared activities between husband and wife.’
We know what to expect from the Stoics. No matter how generous they are in their principles, nothing will convince them to attempt to effect changes in the way human society works. They are more likely to recommend that we work on acceptance and try to achieve peace of mind than start a revolution. So does Hierocles draw back from the claim that all activities are to be shared by husband and wife? Yes, to some extent. His treatise on Household Management makes the claim that household tasks ought to be divided between husband and wife according to their appropriateness:
These, then, should be divided according to what is most [pertinent to each spouse]: thus, to the husband are referred tasks concerning fields, marketplaces, and city business, whereas to the wife are referred those relating to the spinning of wool, breadmaking, and, in general, domestic tasks. (93)
Egyptian man ploughing, The Met https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/544255
But although Hierocles thinks that some activities are better suited to men than to women, he does not believe that the two sets of tasks ought to be strictly separated, and indeed, thinks that husbands should receive some training in womanly duties and vice versa: ‘But one must not think that the one group should be without a taste of the other tasks’ (93).
He also believes that women ought to be physically strong, so as to be able to do agricultural work, and that their husband should share with them business and political concerns, so that they may solve problems together and take over from them when the husband is sick or traveling:
He also believes that women ought to be physically strong, so as to be able to do agricultural work, and that their husband should share with them business and political concerns, so that they may solve problems together and take over from them when the husband is sick or traveling:
And in truth, in festivals she can take care of sacrifices and rites along with us; during her husband’s trips abroad she can maintain the house in order and not altogether without a manager; she can take charge of the slaves; she can be an assistant during illnesses—it would be a long story to go through everything one by one. (73-75)
For of other domestic tasks should not one believe that most, indeed, are suitable to husbands rather than to wives? For some are very tiring and require bodily strength, such as grinding, kneading flour, splitting wood, drawing water, moving furniture, shaking out bedding, and all that is similar to these things.
But about what about more delicate work, such as spinning? There is nothing wrong with men doing these things, says Hierocles, unless their masculinity is not secure:
But about what about more delicate work, such as spinning? There is nothing wrong with men doing these things, says Hierocles, unless their masculinity is not secure:
Men who are too respectable feel something not unreasonable, indeed, in imagining that taking up weaving is not for them. For since for the most part shabby little manikins and a tribe of effeminate and womanish types rush headlong into wool-working in their zeal for femininity, stooping to these things does not seem to be in line with a true man. Thus I myself would not advise any men who did not exhibit complete confidence in their own masculinity and restraint to touch such a thing. If, however, through a life of this kind he should have rendered himself free of every absurd suspicion, what will prevent a husband from sharing in these things too with his wife? (95).
Detail from Attic lekythoi depicting two women at a standing loom. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The best woman is she about whom there is least talk - for better or for worse.
So said Pericles, in his funerary oration, when he was attempting to comfort the Athenians grieving for their dead (Thucydides II45). It is ironical that Plato, in Menexenus (236a), claims that the speech in question had been written by Pericles's mistress, Aspasia of Miletus. But since when is it a requirement that we hold men to consistency when they talk about women?
One housewife who did not pay heed to Pericles’s injunction was Xanthippe, Socrates’ younger second wife. Xanthippe is ‘known’ to Socrates’ disciples, Plato tells us in Phaedo (66b), even to those who come from distant foreign cities.[1] This means that she had a bit of a reputation, and certainly, we find plenty of anecdotes about her in the ancient gossip literature. She is reported as having thrown water on her husband (‘I knew that after her thunder, rain would come’, he apparently remarked), chased after him in the market place and torn his coat off him. His friends thought her a shrew and asked why he tolerated her. The answer was ‘Because she is my wife and the mother of my children’.
Xanthippe pouring water on Socrates by Otho Vaenius, from: Emblemata Horatiana, Imaginibus In Aes Incisis Atque Latino, Germanico, Gallico Et Belgico Carmine Illustrata, 1607.
Xanthippe had plenty of reasons to be angry, of course, expected as she was to run Socrates’ home and bring up his children, without any financial security – as he was not working – and to cater for his rich friends, at a moment notice, with only cheap fare to offer them. As to her reputation, one must consider that she had very little to protect. A wive’s reputation was a husband’s guarantee for social standing. But Socrates’s own place in society was far too unusual to require that his wife be anything other than she wished or could be. So he had not interest in ‘training’ her to be a proper housewife, and no reason to make her homelife more satisfactory or easier for her.
Xanthippe, was probably, as other women have been since, the victim of her husband’s ill thought-out ideology: her life was not regulated by the sort of superficial social mores Socrates disliked, but nor was it an examined life, as she was still expected to make sure food was on the table, and that the children were washed and fed. She might have been less angry had she been instead encouraged to follow Socrates around the market place, asking and answering questions.
Xanthippe's life may have been not unlike that of Abby May Alcott’s (the mother of novelist Louisa May) whose transcendentalist husband took his family to live in a commune called Fruitland. During this failed Utopic experiment, the women worked day and night to make sure the philosophers did not starve, without any access to the usual tools and goods that would make that task easier. Abby May and her daughters, much like Xanthippe, were living the applied philosophy of the men, but without any help in implementing the principles, and under the blind assumption that the principles had to be right, and should not be questioned by failure.
Xanthippe, was probably, as other women have been since, the victim of her husband’s ill thought-out ideology: her life was not regulated by the sort of superficial social mores Socrates disliked, but nor was it an examined life, as she was still expected to make sure food was on the table, and that the children were washed and fed. She might have been less angry had she been instead encouraged to follow Socrates around the market place, asking and answering questions.
Xanthippe's life may have been not unlike that of Abby May Alcott’s (the mother of novelist Louisa May) whose transcendentalist husband took his family to live in a commune called Fruitland. During this failed Utopic experiment, the women worked day and night to make sure the philosophers did not starve, without any access to the usual tools and goods that would make that task easier. Abby May and her daughters, much like Xanthippe, were living the applied philosophy of the men, but without any help in implementing the principles, and under the blind assumption that the principles had to be right, and should not be questioned by failure.
[1] Arlene Saxonhouse, 2018 “Xanthippe: Shrew or Muse” Hypatia, 33(4): 610-635, 617
When a philosopher seems insensitive about the plight of a class of people, we are tempted to say that they are writing from the perspective of the ivory tower, and that they lack the knowledge needed to understand what the people they write about are really going through. Some commentators have been skeptical of Wollstonecraft’s views on marriage and love in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman because she was still single when she’d written it. Those same commentators don’t stop and note that her last work, written when she had been in two relationships and was a mother, gave an even straker account of the marital state, reaffirming all the caution she had put forward in the Vindication and more.
It is tempting to take a similar attitude to early 18th century philosopher, Mary Astell, who wrote a book about the marital state without having ever been married herself. But here, we have evidence that she knew in some details what she was talking about, even if not from personal experience. She was writing about the marriage of her famous neighbour, Hortense Mancini, the Duchess of Mazarin, who had just died, at the age of fifty-three, when Astell published her Reflections on Marriage, in 1700.
Mancini who was the niece of the Cardinal Mazarin, had run one of the most celebrated literary salon in 17th-century London, a salon infamous because she allowed women to drink and gamble as well as men. Married at 15 to a very rich man, who inherited through her the wealth and title of the Cardinal of Mazarin, Mancini ran away from her husband’s home after seven years of unhappy and abusive marriage, leaving behind their four children. Mancini survived – and indeed, thrived - through the patronage of powerful men, including Louis XIV and Charles II, while having affairs with both men and women. All these details Astell almost certainly knew as Mancini had recorded them on one of the earliest Memoirs published by a woman in 1775. Although she kept some details to herself (she was after all still alive), Mancini did not hold back when describing her marriage, and although we might be tempted to attribute some of the goriest details to spite, they are in fact confirmed elsewhere.
Given that Astell knew of the details of the Mazarin marriage, her diagnosis seems a little harsh. She writes that Mancini sought ‘Consolation under Domestick troubles from the Gaieties of a Court, from Gaming and Courtship, from Rambling and odd Adventures, and the Amusements mixt Company affords’. But this, Astell carries on, could only provide temporary relief, ‘Plaister up the Sore, but will never heal it; nay, which is worse, she makes it Fester beyond a possibility of Cure.’
Certainly there was no real way out for Mancini, no escape from the need for dependence on men for her survival. She could not take up a profession, or even receive an income – as she did from Louis XIV – without her husband being allowed to confiscate it. As a married woman in the seventeenth century, she had no right to property of her own. Nor did she have a right to her children. Had she attempted to take them with her, they would have been captured again and brought back to their father. So Mancini could not choose to take up a quiet domestic life, away from her tyrant of her husband, where she would be a virtuous mother to her children. Nor was retiring to a convent apparently much of an option: her husband did send her to a convent, but this was another way for him to control her. And shortly after he had her released, she escaped. Mancini’s only options were to put up with the domestic conditions that were her lot, or to set up on her own as a courtesan and a saloniere.
Astell does not argue that Mancini simply ought to have made the best of her domestic situation. She pities Mancini for having been forced into marriage with an extremely unsuitable husband and without having been prepared for it through education. Mancini, as a teenager, was a party girl, not a studious one. She did not have the resources to make the best of the isolation her husband inforced on her, or to attempt to reform her husband by modelling virtuous behaviour.
In her Memoirs, Mancini portrays her husband as extremely religious, mentally unstable and with a pronounced mean streak. Distrustful of his young wife’s fidelity, he took her away from Paris whenever the King did not require his presence there. And noting how she did not like to travel to remote parts of France, he made sure to take her with him whenever the King sent him on business, even insisting she travel long distance while heavily pregnant. Not only did h forbid her to have male visitors, but he conducted midnight searches to make sure she wasn’t smuggling them in. While they were not traveling, he required his wife to spend hours every day praying. The Duke of Mazarin’s unstability was well-known as it affected not only his wife, but his extensive art collection, in part inherited from his wife’s uncle. He was known for attacking and emasculating his sculptures with a hammer – either because he disapprove of sexual organs on display, or because he was jealous of the admiration they’d received from one of his wife’s friends. The Mazarin Adonis at the Louvres (now restored) was one of the statues he mutilated.
Although she cannot condone the wife’s running away, Astell aslo strongly condemns the husband’s treatment of the wife:
It is tempting to take a similar attitude to early 18th century philosopher, Mary Astell, who wrote a book about the marital state without having ever been married herself. But here, we have evidence that she knew in some details what she was talking about, even if not from personal experience. She was writing about the marriage of her famous neighbour, Hortense Mancini, the Duchess of Mazarin, who had just died, at the age of fifty-three, when Astell published her Reflections on Marriage, in 1700.
Mancini who was the niece of the Cardinal Mazarin, had run one of the most celebrated literary salon in 17th-century London, a salon infamous because she allowed women to drink and gamble as well as men. Married at 15 to a very rich man, who inherited through her the wealth and title of the Cardinal of Mazarin, Mancini ran away from her husband’s home after seven years of unhappy and abusive marriage, leaving behind their four children. Mancini survived – and indeed, thrived - through the patronage of powerful men, including Louis XIV and Charles II, while having affairs with both men and women. All these details Astell almost certainly knew as Mancini had recorded them on one of the earliest Memoirs published by a woman in 1775. Although she kept some details to herself (she was after all still alive), Mancini did not hold back when describing her marriage, and although we might be tempted to attribute some of the goriest details to spite, they are in fact confirmed elsewhere.
Given that Astell knew of the details of the Mazarin marriage, her diagnosis seems a little harsh. She writes that Mancini sought ‘Consolation under Domestick troubles from the Gaieties of a Court, from Gaming and Courtship, from Rambling and odd Adventures, and the Amusements mixt Company affords’. But this, Astell carries on, could only provide temporary relief, ‘Plaister up the Sore, but will never heal it; nay, which is worse, she makes it Fester beyond a possibility of Cure.’
Certainly there was no real way out for Mancini, no escape from the need for dependence on men for her survival. She could not take up a profession, or even receive an income – as she did from Louis XIV – without her husband being allowed to confiscate it. As a married woman in the seventeenth century, she had no right to property of her own. Nor did she have a right to her children. Had she attempted to take them with her, they would have been captured again and brought back to their father. So Mancini could not choose to take up a quiet domestic life, away from her tyrant of her husband, where she would be a virtuous mother to her children. Nor was retiring to a convent apparently much of an option: her husband did send her to a convent, but this was another way for him to control her. And shortly after he had her released, she escaped. Mancini’s only options were to put up with the domestic conditions that were her lot, or to set up on her own as a courtesan and a saloniere.
Astell does not argue that Mancini simply ought to have made the best of her domestic situation. She pities Mancini for having been forced into marriage with an extremely unsuitable husband and without having been prepared for it through education. Mancini, as a teenager, was a party girl, not a studious one. She did not have the resources to make the best of the isolation her husband inforced on her, or to attempt to reform her husband by modelling virtuous behaviour.
In her Memoirs, Mancini portrays her husband as extremely religious, mentally unstable and with a pronounced mean streak. Distrustful of his young wife’s fidelity, he took her away from Paris whenever the King did not require his presence there. And noting how she did not like to travel to remote parts of France, he made sure to take her with him whenever the King sent him on business, even insisting she travel long distance while heavily pregnant. Not only did h forbid her to have male visitors, but he conducted midnight searches to make sure she wasn’t smuggling them in. While they were not traveling, he required his wife to spend hours every day praying. The Duke of Mazarin’s unstability was well-known as it affected not only his wife, but his extensive art collection, in part inherited from his wife’s uncle. He was known for attacking and emasculating his sculptures with a hammer – either because he disapprove of sexual organs on display, or because he was jealous of the admiration they’d received from one of his wife’s friends. The Mazarin Adonis at the Louvres (now restored) was one of the statues he mutilated.
Although she cannot condone the wife’s running away, Astell aslo strongly condemns the husband’s treatment of the wife:
To be yoak'd for Life to a disagreeable Person and Temper; to have Folly and Ignorance tyrannize over Wit and Sense; to be contradicted in every thing one does or says, and bore down not by Reason but Authority; to be denied ones most innocent desires for no other cause, but the Will and Pleasure of an absolute Lord and Master, whose follies a Woman with all her Prudence cannot hide, and whose Commands she cannot but despise at the same time she obeys them, is a misery none can have a just Idea of, but those who have felt it.
But Astell does not believe that even documented cruelty of a husband justifies a woman leaving home:
The Christian Institution of Marriage provides the best that may be for Domestick Quiet and Content, and for the Education of Children; so that if we were not under the tye of Religion, even the Good of Society and civil Duty would oblige us to what that requires at our Hands.
Domesticity, Astell thinks, is a natural way for people to live with one another in mutual dependence, and improve one another. An older, patient husband may educated by his wife, so that she is better able to live with him in peace and harmony. An educated wife may set the example for her husband, helping improve his character, and also educate her children, so that they may in turn have happier lives. But just as importantly, an educated woman will have the inner resources to bear an unhappy marriage, to have the necessary patience to live with a tyrannical husband, and to preserve themselves from falling into a slave-like dependency, their spirits crushed by the constant need to obey.
This is cross-posted from my other blog, with some corrections.
Phillis Wheatley Peters was born circa 1753 in Africa. At the age of 7 or thereabouts she was captured and transported to the coast where she was sold to a slaver on his way to Boston. The ship that transported her, and many others, as cargo was called The Phillis. This was the name the man who bought her in Boston gave her, along with his own surname, Wheatley.
Phillis was taken to the Wheatley family home, and, we are told by biographers, some who knew people who had met her, that she was treated as ‘one of the family’. Boston philosopher, Hannah Mather Crocker reported that
Phillis Wheatley Peters was born circa 1753 in Africa. At the age of 7 or thereabouts she was captured and transported to the coast where she was sold to a slaver on his way to Boston. The ship that transported her, and many others, as cargo was called The Phillis. This was the name the man who bought her in Boston gave her, along with his own surname, Wheatley.
Phillis was taken to the Wheatley family home, and, we are told by biographers, some who knew people who had met her, that she was treated as ‘one of the family’. Boston philosopher, Hannah Mather Crocker reported that
“Mr Wheatley purchased her [Phillis] he bought her to wait on his only daughter. She was a pretty smart sprightly child. they grew very fond of her and treated her as well as if their own. her young Mrs who was Miss Mary Wheatly [sic], and was afterwards the very amiable wife of Dr John Lathrop [1740–1816]. Phillis was sent to school and educated with Miss Mary. She soon acquired the English language and made some progress in the latin She never was looked on as a slave she could work handsome [i.e., sew and do needlework skillfully], and read and write well for that day.” (Carretta, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of A Genius in Bondage, 23)
We know, however, that she worked as a maid, she ‘tended tables’ at 13 and later was a ‘sempstress’. While the daughter of the family, Mary, (grown up when Phillis was bought) may have done some sewing, or at least embroidery, it is unlikely that she waited tables.
Phillis’s biographer Caretta also suggested that was treated somewhat better than the indentured servant who ran away from the Wheatly home (22). But Phillis was a child at the time the young male servant ran away, and with no prospect of being freed. Her escape would have led to an advert being placed for her capture with a reward.
One thing that is clear is that the Wheatley family taught Phillis to read and write. And when it became clear that she had talent as a poet, they encouraged it, had her work published, in newspapers, and later as a book, for she travelled to London. This could have been kindness on their part, or the recognition that genius had to be encouraged, wherever it was. Or perhaps they benefitted from her fame socially and financially.
So where was ‘home’ for Phillis?
Phillis’s writings rarely talk about home life. The word ‘home’ itself is used in her poems to refer to heaven. Many of her poems are elegies, addressed to bereaved mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, or in one case of the preacher Whitefield, to his patron, an English aristocrat. The dead have gone ‘home’ in her poems, suggesting that any previous dwelling was not that.
In one letter, Wheatley refers to her masters’ house as ‘home’, when she writes to Obour Tanner in 1773, and again to John Thornton, one of her London friends. These letters are written upon her return from England, where she spent a mere six weeks (after a passage lasting …) and was celebrated and shown the attractions of the town. Rather than staying in England where she would be free, Wheatley extracted a promise from the son of the man who had purchased her as a child that she would be freed upon her return. And when she did return, it was to the house where she had been a slave.
Nations also take on family roles in Wheatley’s poetry: England – Britannia - is in many poems the mother of America, who should not overtax her child. In later poems, England’s sons are the soldiers she sends to fight Americans, and they are recalled in shame and disgrace. Africa is never a parent. It is the place untouched by religion. The only time when her going back to Africa was suggested (by others) was so that she could chase ‘away the thick Darkness which broods over the Land of Africa’ and trave ‘to her Native Country as a Female Preacher to her kindred, you know Quaker Women are alow’d to preach, and why not others in an Extraordinary Case’ Phillis refused, perhaps because she would have had to travel with two men she did not know, and take one of them as her husband, or perhaps because she saw herself as a writer more than a preacher.
Phillis’s own attitude to Africa has been harshly criticized by some modern critiques who thought she was turning her back on her own heritage and participating in America’s and Europe’s racism. Her short poem, ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’ describes her being taken from her native land as a ‘mercy’ because it brought Christianity to her, a blessing she would not have known had she stayed:
Phillis’s biographer Caretta also suggested that was treated somewhat better than the indentured servant who ran away from the Wheatly home (22). But Phillis was a child at the time the young male servant ran away, and with no prospect of being freed. Her escape would have led to an advert being placed for her capture with a reward.
One thing that is clear is that the Wheatley family taught Phillis to read and write. And when it became clear that she had talent as a poet, they encouraged it, had her work published, in newspapers, and later as a book, for she travelled to London. This could have been kindness on their part, or the recognition that genius had to be encouraged, wherever it was. Or perhaps they benefitted from her fame socially and financially.
So where was ‘home’ for Phillis?
Phillis’s writings rarely talk about home life. The word ‘home’ itself is used in her poems to refer to heaven. Many of her poems are elegies, addressed to bereaved mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, or in one case of the preacher Whitefield, to his patron, an English aristocrat. The dead have gone ‘home’ in her poems, suggesting that any previous dwelling was not that.
In one letter, Wheatley refers to her masters’ house as ‘home’, when she writes to Obour Tanner in 1773, and again to John Thornton, one of her London friends. These letters are written upon her return from England, where she spent a mere six weeks (after a passage lasting …) and was celebrated and shown the attractions of the town. Rather than staying in England where she would be free, Wheatley extracted a promise from the son of the man who had purchased her as a child that she would be freed upon her return. And when she did return, it was to the house where she had been a slave.
Nations also take on family roles in Wheatley’s poetry: England – Britannia - is in many poems the mother of America, who should not overtax her child. In later poems, England’s sons are the soldiers she sends to fight Americans, and they are recalled in shame and disgrace. Africa is never a parent. It is the place untouched by religion. The only time when her going back to Africa was suggested (by others) was so that she could chase ‘away the thick Darkness which broods over the Land of Africa’ and trave ‘to her Native Country as a Female Preacher to her kindred, you know Quaker Women are alow’d to preach, and why not others in an Extraordinary Case’ Phillis refused, perhaps because she would have had to travel with two men she did not know, and take one of them as her husband, or perhaps because she saw herself as a writer more than a preacher.
Phillis’s own attitude to Africa has been harshly criticized by some modern critiques who thought she was turning her back on her own heritage and participating in America’s and Europe’s racism. Her short poem, ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’ describes her being taken from her native land as a ‘mercy’ because it brought Christianity to her, a blessing she would not have known had she stayed:
Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
The last four lines address the issue of racism. All are equal in the eye of God, and all can be taught to worship so that they will go to heaven. This suggest that she should have found the idea of Christian missions to Africa attractive – many of her country men and women would receive the same ‘mercy’ that she did, without having to be kidnapped and enslaved. But her biographer, Caretta, reminds us not to read her poems as autobiographical. She was a manipulator or words, and wrote elegies on demand, so why not also a defense of the slave trade in the name of religion? It could also be that she felt no ties to Africa as she had left at a very young age. She never mentions her childhood there in the writings we have.
Later in life she might have wanted to revisit memories of her childhood, reacquaint herself with the land and the people she grew up with. She might even have recalled that she once had her own religion, whether Pagan, as she writes in the poem, or Islam, as has been suggested by Wheatley scholar Will Harris and the author of a beautiful Wheatley biography in verse by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Age of Phillis. But Wheatly died at the age of 31, after a mere ten years of freedom, which is too young, perhaps to turn back to one’s childhood.
Phillis Wheatley was freed when she returned from London in 1773. Had she remained in England, she would have become automatically freed. But she would have had no home, and no friends she had known for more than the six weeks of her visit. In Boston, she had connections. So she extracted a promise from her master, in writing, and sailed back to Boston. She stayed with the Wheatleys for some years, probably working as a maid still, perhaps paid, or simply granted the right to sleep and eat in the house. She stayed with them until the death of her mistress in 1774, and then moved in with John Peters, a free black man, educated, and with a business of his own. They were married a few years later. But his business failed – as many during the war – and the couple had to move around to avoid prison. They had three children who did not survive infanthood. Peters eventually did go to prison, and Phillis died shortly afterwards, in 1784.
Later in life she might have wanted to revisit memories of her childhood, reacquaint herself with the land and the people she grew up with. She might even have recalled that she once had her own religion, whether Pagan, as she writes in the poem, or Islam, as has been suggested by Wheatley scholar Will Harris and the author of a beautiful Wheatley biography in verse by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Age of Phillis. But Wheatly died at the age of 31, after a mere ten years of freedom, which is too young, perhaps to turn back to one’s childhood.
Phillis Wheatley was freed when she returned from London in 1773. Had she remained in England, she would have become automatically freed. But she would have had no home, and no friends she had known for more than the six weeks of her visit. In Boston, she had connections. So she extracted a promise from her master, in writing, and sailed back to Boston. She stayed with the Wheatleys for some years, probably working as a maid still, perhaps paid, or simply granted the right to sleep and eat in the house. She stayed with them until the death of her mistress in 1774, and then moved in with John Peters, a free black man, educated, and with a business of his own. They were married a few years later. But his business failed – as many during the war – and the couple had to move around to avoid prison. They had three children who did not survive infanthood. Peters eventually did go to prison, and Phillis died shortly afterwards, in 1784.
Mary Wollstonecraft was not known for her dedication to domesticity. She is said to have once entertained the Marquis de Talleyrand in her lodgings on George Street, and served him tea, then wine, in a breached teacup (Elizabeth Pennell, 1885. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. London: W.H. Allen &co, p.72). Wondering where Pennell had gotten the anecdote from, I asked the Twitter Wollstonecraft community, and got the following story:
First Emma Clery, specified the source of the Pennell reference: John Knowles, the 19th century biographer of the man who rejected Wollstonecraft in 1792, Henri Fuseli, described her as a 'sloven ', citing the breached teacup anecdote as evidence.
First Emma Clery, specified the source of the Pennell reference: John Knowles, the 19th century biographer of the man who rejected Wollstonecraft in 1792, Henri Fuseli, described her as a 'sloven ', citing the breached teacup anecdote as evidence.
Fuseli found in her (what he most disliked in woman) a philosophical sloven: her usual dress being a habit of coarse cloth, such as is now worn by milk-women, black worsted stockings, and a beaver hat, with her hair hanging lank about her shoulders. These notions had their influence also in regard to the conveniences of life; for when the Prince Talleyrand was in this country, in a low condition with regard to his pecuniary affairs, and visited her, they drank their tea, and the little wine they took, indiscriminately from tea-cups.
John Knowles, Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Vol 1, 1831, p.164-5.
Derby porcelain teacup, c1790.
But this, it turns out was not the first reference to the anecdote, but Eileen Hunt Botting pointed me to one published 4 years before that, in a Vermont journal:
Perhaps their idea of an "educated lady" is associated in their mind with nothing better than some starched nun, or round mouth pedant; or the famous authoress of England, M. Woolstonecroft [sic], who could appear before her guests in a ragged garment, and serve their drink in a broken tea-cup; because, forsooth, her literary occupations would not allow her otherwise.
'What can be done, by a mother', Vermont Watchman and State Gazette (Montpelier), 31 July 1827, issue 1084, col
(From E.H.Botting, Botting, Eileen Hunt. "MAKING AN AMERICAN FEMINIST ICON: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT'S RECEPTION IN US NEWSPAPERS, 1800–1869." History of Political Thought 34, no. 2 (2013): 273-95. Accessed July 23, 2020. )
Note that the Vermont piece, but not the Knowles or Pernell ones, mentions that the cup was breached!
Knowles's biography was published six years after Fuseli's death. Knowles claims that his evidence came from letters from Wollstonecraft to Fuseli, letters that Fuseli had refused to return when Wollstonecraft asked him to. Knowles was Fuseli's literary executor, so had access to the letters straightaway.
The Vermont piece appeared three years before the publication of Knowles's memoirs, and two years after Wollstonecrafts' death? Was there another source? Or could someone else have seen the letters and quoted from them? Certainly Sophia Fuseli, Henry's wife saw them – possibly before Fuseli's death. Godwin asked to see them after Wollstonecraft died, so he could use them for his biography, but was refused. Their grandson, Sir Percy Florence Shelley ('Percy Jr annoys me to death' twitted another Wollstonecraft expert), bought them and had them burnt. According to Emma Clery, C Kegan Paul, friend of Godwin and supporter of Wollstonecraft, did see the letters before they were destroyed and claims there was nothing in them that could bring shame on Wollstonecraft (not that a breached tea-cup is shameful!).
Knowles's biography was published six years after Fuseli's death. Knowles claims that his evidence came from letters from Wollstonecraft to Fuseli, letters that Fuseli had refused to return when Wollstonecraft asked him to. Knowles was Fuseli's literary executor, so had access to the letters straightaway.
The Vermont piece appeared three years before the publication of Knowles's memoirs, and two years after Wollstonecrafts' death? Was there another source? Or could someone else have seen the letters and quoted from them? Certainly Sophia Fuseli, Henry's wife saw them – possibly before Fuseli's death. Godwin asked to see them after Wollstonecraft died, so he could use them for his biography, but was refused. Their grandson, Sir Percy Florence Shelley ('Percy Jr annoys me to death' twitted another Wollstonecraft expert), bought them and had them burnt. According to Emma Clery, C Kegan Paul, friend of Godwin and supporter of Wollstonecraft, did see the letters before they were destroyed and claims there was nothing in them that could bring shame on Wollstonecraft (not that a breached tea-cup is shameful!).
So possibly the reports of slovenliness are simply that – retellings of their contents, exaggerated for the sake of gossip. This could have been the work of Knowles himself, or perhaps Fuseli's widow, Sophia, who may have born a grudge from Wollstonecraft's attempts at forming a ménage à trois with Henry and Sophia.
Stirring away from malicious gossip, the tea-cup story has a much more plausible explanation Wollstonecraft was poor. And at the time she lived in George Street, where Talleyrand visited her, she was just starting out as a professional writer, had debts to pay and family to support, so she had very few furnishings. Although glass objects were already a consumer item, wine glasses were nonetheless expensive, and a luxury that the singly professional woman, who had to move frequently, could perhaps not afford. It was not until she moved from George St, after meeting with Talleyrand, that she started to buy furniture:
Stirring away from malicious gossip, the tea-cup story has a much more plausible explanation Wollstonecraft was poor. And at the time she lived in George Street, where Talleyrand visited her, she was just starting out as a professional writer, had debts to pay and family to support, so she had very few furnishings. Although glass objects were already a consumer item, wine glasses were nonetheless expensive, and a luxury that the singly professional woman, who had to move frequently, could perhaps not afford. It was not until she moved from George St, after meeting with Talleyrand, that she started to buy furniture:
In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store street, Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had always scrupulously observed a certain degree of elegance, and those temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure. Godwin. Memoirs. Chapter 6.
With thanks to Eileen Hunt Botting (@EileenHBotting) Emma Clery (@austeneconomics) and Bee Rowlatt (@BeeRowlatt) for sharing all these sources and making yesterday afternoon's work much more fun than it would have been otherwise!
What does philosophy have to contribute to the understanding of 'home'?
Analytic philosophy is in the business of conceptual analysis, finding the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be what it is. Plato started it with his questions about the forms: 'What is Justice?' 'What is Beauty?' etc. Descartes pursued it from his armchair by the fire, asking 'What am I?', and philosophers have been chasing concepts with definitions ever since.
A conceptual analysis attempts to capture a set of intuitions we have about a concept, so that once we come up with a definition, every instance of that concept and nothing else falls under it. So for instance, armchairs cannot be defined as 'comfy seats' because there are things that are comfortable to seat on which are not armchairs, such as sofas. So is an armchair a comfy seat for one person? Perhaps, but a good conceptual analysis would look for armchairs that don't fulfill the conditions of 'comfy' or 'seat', and for things that do that aren't armchairs before settling on that definition.
Analytic philosophy is in the business of conceptual analysis, finding the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be what it is. Plato started it with his questions about the forms: 'What is Justice?' 'What is Beauty?' etc. Descartes pursued it from his armchair by the fire, asking 'What am I?', and philosophers have been chasing concepts with definitions ever since.
A conceptual analysis attempts to capture a set of intuitions we have about a concept, so that once we come up with a definition, every instance of that concept and nothing else falls under it. So for instance, armchairs cannot be defined as 'comfy seats' because there are things that are comfortable to seat on which are not armchairs, such as sofas. So is an armchair a comfy seat for one person? Perhaps, but a good conceptual analysis would look for armchairs that don't fulfill the conditions of 'comfy' or 'seat', and for things that do that aren't armchairs before settling on that definition.
Montaigne's armchair
Can we use appeal to the tools of conceptual analysis to help define the home? Attempting to capture the home in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions is a task that, if not doomed to failure, turns out to be singularly unproductive. Although most of us agree on the basic intuition that we need homes, these homes tend to look different according to what needs they serve, and that varies a great deal according to places and times. A home may or may not be a dwelling, something physical or not, that ties a family together, or a community, it may or may not involve property and land. This leaves room for plural definitions, perhaps definitions that succeed in capturing a certain 'family resemblance' in uses of the word across time and space.
The idea that instances of a concept sometimes shared a 'family resemblance' rather than a set of necessary and sufficient conditions comes from Wittgenstein, who, when he attempted to say what a game was, found that some games had very little in common with others (say bouncing a ball against a wall, and D&D). He concluded that games, though definitely belonging to one concept, were not tied together by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions:
The idea that instances of a concept sometimes shared a 'family resemblance' rather than a set of necessary and sufficient conditions comes from Wittgenstein, who, when he attempted to say what a game was, found that some games had very little in common with others (say bouncing a ball against a wall, and D&D). He concluded that games, though definitely belonging to one concept, were not tied together by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions:
I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. – And I shall say: "games" form a family.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Brow Book , 67.
Morris Weitz applied the Wittgensteinian idea of family resemblance to the concept of art, after noticing that it was impossible to bring all the things that we count as instances of that concept under a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. A definition of art would have to accommodate that have as little in common as a Greek tragedy and an 18thcentury piece of furniture. (Weitz, Morris (1956). "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics". Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 15: 27–35.) Weitz concluded that art was an open concept, that could expand in order to accommodate new forms of art.
It seems that had analytic philosophers bothered to define the home, they would have come to the same conclusion, for reasons stated above. The home covers too many disparate intuitions for it to be reasonable to expect it to fall under one set of necessary and sufficient conditions. But it does not follow that the home cannot be defined philosophically: it simply needs to be stated that the definitions capture only one version of the home, at one place or one time. And in order to do that, what better strategy than to study what women philosophers of the past have written about the home?
It seems that had analytic philosophers bothered to define the home, they would have come to the same conclusion, for reasons stated above. The home covers too many disparate intuitions for it to be reasonable to expect it to fall under one set of necessary and sufficient conditions. But it does not follow that the home cannot be defined philosophically: it simply needs to be stated that the definitions capture only one version of the home, at one place or one time. And in order to do that, what better strategy than to study what women philosophers of the past have written about the home?
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This is where I blog about my new book project (under contract with OUP): a history of the philosophy of the home and domesticity, from the perspective of women philosophers.
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