18th century women’s writers
18th century:
-women writers were frowned upon
-pope said women are not good writers
Rise of the Novel
-the first English novel might be Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719)
-novels are constructed by different and
competing discourses
-the subject is embedded in a multiplicity
of discourses
-the subject must negotiate competing
discourses
-the the novel as a form cannot completely
reconcile competing discourses to form one seamless ideology
-middle class genre; abduction plot, exotic
Aphra Behn (1640-1698)
-“Scandalous plays”
-Johnson family
-Was in a lot of debt
-Spied on the Dutch for King Charles and
was never paid back but then incarcerated
-Talks about love, sex and homoeroticism
“The
Rover”
-gender: new freedoms for women
-crossdressing, gives more power to women
-carnivalesque day (any class tension
building up then allow the switching of roles for a day)
-theatre is a carnivalesque; festive
atmosphere
-the disguise allows for a carnivalesque
reordering of society
-Marriage Market: hellena challenges the
whore/virgin dichotomy by being roguish like willmore; belvile’s marriage to
florinda reaffirms the power of the sword/phallus over the power of money and
commerce; Angellica Bianca (prostitute figure in the play) exposes the
incompatibility of love and money in marriage
-marriage is not based on money and the
woman needing a man to “save them”
-women are not to be seen as a woman in the
marketplace
-clothes as a social hierarchy
-policing of what people wear
-women who wanted to remain chaste, were
never telling you that they were good, they were a good person because they
would not leave their home (good women are defined by their location); moral
geography and dress (define females in society)
-prologue is written in poetry style,
talking about how many get all bent out of shape when someone else outwits them
and when women are better writers than themselves.
-story is written in dialogue format
-song: about how she feels likes a young
lover, a sheep among her Shepard
-The Rover-Willmore has a small part that
is written in a heroic couplet to portray the love he feels for Angellica
-some of the story is written in lines of
poetry where others are just straight dialogue
-the carnivalesque is feeling is
enlightened by the fact that it is a play she has written because people dress
up for plays and play out of real character
-the epilogue is written the same as the
prologue, a summary of how people judge you merely on a superficial level
“Oroonoko”
(1688)
(Page 75 to start)
-written in the restoration period
-a travel account as well as romance
-novella
-Is he worthy subject for literature-an
outcast African in a remote part of the globe?
-Elevation of Oroonoko to a worthy subject
undermines the anti-slavery narrative; he is hardly the “typical” slave
-Narrator takes up the cause of the African
slave because of a connection between his position and the female position
-Oroonoko is a slave who has been a slave
trader himself; text says he is the best of the slave; the text says he doesn’t
deserve to be slaved and the others do
-how blunted is the anti-slavery message in
the text when it is saying that it is okay for others to be slaves?
-the issue of the story revolves around a
“prince of the slaves”
-a fairy tale-like love aspect
-the royal prince is caught and enslaved;
since he is a prince and a slave he has some freedoms while others have none
-the royal slave is seen as holding the
traits of women in society, he is a man and has male roles but also has female
roles while still being man.
-the theme is around how horrible it is
when a royal noble character is enslaved
-women and kids must make themselves appear
as innocent and naïve to remain safe and unharmed by men
-long sentence structure at times but very
chopped up
-the lovers are separated; she is sold for
slavery
-“harlequin romance”
-the plot is to get them back together and
away from the evil king (abduction plot)
-the woman likes the man because he knows
what it is like to be a woman/slave
-comic or tragic ending: marriage or death
-oroonoko is a chivalric, highly respected,
greatest general, royalty, noble, etc. but is also involved in slave trade
-scenes of violence have sexuality coded
into them; it is done because in this society a person could murder someone in
the goriest way and it is uncensored but then people having sex is censored
(shows how aphra behn can portray violence but not sex)
-ends with the male lover chopping up the
female lover
-both male and female are caught up in a
sado-masochism; dominate or be-dominated
-he chops her up so no one else could have
her if he can’t
-Oroonoko is a “noble savage” with an
enlightened education
-he is a mythic hero trapped in the realism
of the commercial slave trade
-he is both an animal and a hunter
-he is African but not as African
(civilized individual)
-incest was very taboo in the 18th
century
-loss of male masculinity; to get it back,
(the iron john movement) men needed to go to a forest, bang on drums and dress
like natives
“The
Disappointment”
-poem, heroic couplets
-list similar to
-desire meaning lust or horniness
-
“Poems
Upon Several Occasions: The Golden Age”
-Ode: a long stately lyrics poem in stanzas of varied metrical poem
-Pastoral: a poem about a Shepard;
idealizes the innocent love and the rustic customs of country life
-The Golden Age was when the human race
lived in a peaceful, ungoverned time, and men were the ones who applied the
economic, society and civilization thus ruining it. The Golden Age is a
simplistic, naïve time for human race. “Free Love” would be a way to explain
it. Women could express themselves without worrying about hurting their
reputation and honour. Now in society and 18th century, losing your
honour and reputation makes you worthless
-In the post Golden age, Virgin (innocent
and pure) or not virigin (fallen woman) are the two ways to describe a woman.
-in the poem, Behn is talking about the
golden age when there was no split in society between sexes, but with the
things such as plough and other phallic images she shows how men have made
things change and placed themselves on top
Anne Finch (1661-1720)
“Countess
of Winchilsea: The Introduction” (1689)
-Heroic Couplet: 2 rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
(unstressed/stressed x5)
-Alliteration: repetition of initial
consonant
-Assonance:
repetition of initial or middle vowel sound
-Parallelism: The grammatical placement of
comparable items or elements side by side as in a list
-Anne is reluctant to publish her writing
because she knows that as soon as her critics know it is the writing of a
woman, it would be unfairly criticised, because for a female writer to pick up
the pen they are deemed unchaste, a shrew, because it is similar to be picking
up arms against men
-She is writing in a very rational,
traditional verse form, trying to earn the respect of her judgers
-Finch addresses the issue of unfair
judgment by her male peers as jealousy
-line 4 is an example of parallelism, in
this case it is a list of words used against woman writers
-Finch uses a lot of diction and sounds of
words to get her points across strongly
-Wit is an important aspect of writing in
the 18th century, and men were expected to aspire to that, but not
women, which Finch was doing
-Line 14 is a metrical variation in the
meter of the poem to get the idea of a “silly dance” across to the reader, the
things listed are “the same song and dance” for women
-Women are taught that learning is getting
in the way of meeting a husband
-Women are supposed to be merely to have
around the house
Jonathon Swift:
“Letter
to a young lady on marriage”
-“conduct book”
-these conduct books for females and was
used to make females into perfect wives
-patriarchal
-“policing of virginity and innocence”
-adult males don’t get conduct books,
because there is no “ruinous loss of virginity on the male’s part”
-“the virgin-whore dichotomy” that only
exists for women, not men
-The diction of the reading gives the tone
and voice of the reading: virginity must be there to qualify women to be a
wife; page 35 of cancopy, there are examples of diction that clarify how
“professional” and “business-like”, marriage is
-“I must…” very God-like, and patriarchal
voice
-Even after marriage, the woman still needs
to be looked at as a virgin by her peers and her husband’s peers; no
“PDA-public display of affection”
-psycho analysis of this would show that
Swift is afraid of women
-Policing, control, iron fist rule,
oppressive are good ways to look at this reading
-parallelism of lists
-pauses after words or in sentences give
the reader a moment to reflect on what is said
-alliteration of “f” sound which is harsh
and vulgar
-consonance of “bell” and “door”, very
harsh sounds
-Chiasmus: placing cross-wise; think of
alliterations and the “x” cross pattern, in one line the d and b words are on
before the other and in the next line, it switches
-swift had a bit of an obsession with the
female body
-swift says women need to: Act as though
they are virgins, women need to bathe, women should always care for their husband,
should always answer the door, not nag her man, replace beauty and youth with
durable qualities, when in a room with men women should never involve
themselves with men talk but talk amongst each other about fashion and etc.
sell yourself to a man (basically)
-swift uses a lot of chiasmus, switches the
P and B or B and D around a lot
-many cacophonic sounds
-Swift makes women look superficial and
unintelligent
-refers to women as monkeys, in terms of
chaos etc.
-consonance sounds that are harsh do not have
to always be the same sounds
“Lady’s
Dressing Room”
-Swift is obsessed with the woman’s body
and being “fooled” by women
-Swift is writing a poem that is
deconstructing the woman with choppy like writing
-the woman is seen as the sight of filth
and disease
-iambic tentrameter
-imagery of grotesqueness
-diction of grotesqueness and raunchiness
-men in the 18th century would
mock women as vain and superficial because they apparently only care about
balls and gowns; women are only left to care about superficial and vain things
-policing of women (surveillance)
-“peeping tom”
-no gothic tone or cult tone, however their
closet is supposed to be some sort of magical, cauldron like cell
-swift is trying to make men aware of
women’s trickery
-lists and parallelism
-alliteration of begund, etc.
-man getting quite involved with bodily
functions, very human, but he is saying women are pretty toilets
Mary Astell:
“Reflections
Upon Marriage”
-This reading talks about how the threat
women pose to men, must be fairly large because men seem to always try to talk
down women
-she mocks men by praising them in an
ironic way
-women put no boundaries around men, why
must men build boundaries around women
-all the things men think are so important
are actually not
-uses irony to undercut men as “makers of
culture”
-elevated tone, sometimes comedic but also
dramatic and superficial
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
***“Letter
to Lady Bute”*** EXAM?
-she is saying don’t let your daughter set
her standards too high
-she is also saying that education is good
for the daughter however, it is only good if she is a shut in because then she
can meet an author; the education is being useful to keep virginity and
innocence
-she is saying that girls your time is much
more precious, you don’t have long to be beautiful
-she is saying it is good for women to not
work, so she can learn languages and behave herself
-women are expected to become either a
virgin for her whole life, a fallen women or get married
-the one who chooses to remain virginal,
and single, she basically will need to closet themselves from the world
-There were women such as Aphra Behn who
worked out side of the stereotypes, BUT a women like this needs to move around
a lot or the stereotype will sink in where she lives
-any woman who leaves home to live freely
in the big city, and then returns to the small town is seeing as a whore in a
manner of speaking
-use of harsh “f” sounds
-women are only going to be educated enough
that prepare them for the closeted role they in society; Mary says, don’t waste
your time trying to over achieve
-a women should know how to use a needle
like a man knows how to wield a sword (men and women, binary opposites; sword
versus the needle, strength and power)
-Phallic imagery of sword
-drawing master is like a drawing expert
who will teach one how to draw, it goes to show that Lady Montagu was apart of
the court
-fashion and poetry was not about thoughts
and feelings or spontaneous emotions
- the life of a studious young lady is what
lady mary thinks is the best way to live however, she doesn’t think a working
woman or a married woman are very good for a lady
FEMALE ENCLOSURE:
-women are defined by the policing of
virginity which takes on a spatial dimension;
-women who are not in the their “proper
place” are no longer defined as feminine
-they are subject to violence, therefore,
according to the patriarchal order
FEMALE TYPES:
-Virgin/Wife/Mother v.s. Fallen Woman
“Epitaph”
-Lady Mary is writing this in response to
Pope saying that it was good that the couple died because now the innocent
couple goes straight to heaven
-iambic tetrameter because most lines only
have four metrical feet
-written in couplets
-Pope is deliberately trying to show off to
seem lofty
-the epitaph is merely about two lovers
running for their lives
-enjambment
-diction “cocking” makes one believe that
the couple was not so innocent and was “rolling in the hay”
-she switches into lofty sound to mock Pope
-the irony is located in the parentheses
-pope was saying that the lightning is sent
on purpose by God to snatch up the innocence; however Montagu is saying that a
random bolt of lightning merely hit them just because
-Montagu says that the lovers would not
have been innocent in the future, the wife would have cheated and the husband
would have beat her
-Montagu was saying that Pope doesn’t care
about the lovers, she is saying that Pope just wrote about them because he
thought he could make them timeless
“Reasons
that Introduced Dr.S”
-swift is dismissing women for vanity and
bodily functions (vain and superficial)
-montagu is saying men mean are just as
superficial and vain as women (snuffboxes, canes, hats)
-swift is a nig name dropper and bragger,
he is trying to impress a prostitute with his accomplishments so that he doesn’t
have to pay, but he is failing
-she is deconstructing or “pulling apart”
the male body
-just like women, men are using “art” to
advance themselves sexually
-swift is trying to steal the money back
from the prostitute
-triplet; instead of a heroic couplet:
probably put that there because it may be trying to mirror what it is the
character in the poem is doing; drawn out like what was happening in the poem
-“f” alliteration
-roaring, bellowing, pouring, poor “our”
sound
-dissects male ego and pride
Sample Passage 1-Swift “Lady’sDressing
Room”
-reinforces the superficiality of women
-don’t see the world in all its entirety,
its broken and a fragmented collection
Sample Passage- Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (pg136)
-first line is a shift in tone;
-a lot of pauses; the commas which
represent the chopping up of the character
-intermitting irresolutions; diction of
politics and law
-I gotta kill you fro love and for
political reasons as well (colonial gov’t and slavery as well)
-playing out for love and politics as well
-a love and economic political plot as well
-gotta kill because I love you and gotta
kill because I don’t want u to become a slave
-harsh sounds to make it sound harsh like
the politics
-alliteration of “s”
-chiasm
-the more he kills and obliterates her, he
keeps her decent
-leaves and flowers recreate the image of
marriage
***-understand the tone and voice of work
***-don’t speak in generalities when
writing about passages; be precise
Short list of Literacy Terms:
-Alliteration
-Assonance/consonance
-diction/word choice
-image
-irony
-parallelism/lists
-sentence length
-enjambment
-pause
-caesura
****golden age and letter to lady bute will
not be on there
****Oroonoko will be
things to watchà
-talk about the specific rhyme scheme
-don’t over analyze capitalizations
Feb 09
Earl of
“Imperfect Enjoyment” Poems of the
Restoration Period
-the age became concerned with the male who
is feminized or emasculated
-loss of authority brought about by a lack
of social power feminizes the male-the female is that which is defined as
powerless and subject to violence
-such a construction is secretly born out
of the anxiety that the female is powerful and the male is powerless
-the obsession with the virgin/whore
dichotomy denies the female subjectivity and constructs her as an economic
commodity.
-uses the technique of self-ridicule to
avoid other people from ridiculing them
-women are considered chaotic and
disorderly so should therefore thank men for coming and putting them in their
place
-the fall of masculinity is failing and its
not the women’s fault
-it was the men who failed, but they are
blaming the women
-space of humiliation with the female
-phallic imagery of thunder and lightning
-vagina is inverted cock
-written in poem, enjambment, caesuras
-lists; the first is a list of body parts,
to create the separate images, a man must encounter each piece of a woman
individually because they like when a man loves every part of them; it also
shows the quick movement of each body part moving individually in one swift
movement
-the enjambment is creating a scene of sex,
every line is a movement, builds the quick thoughts and movements, we see it
slowly come to an end as the poem goes on
-caesuras, only two in the whole poem, it
is the part of the poem when you know that sex is officially over because the
pause between thoughts and movements slow down so much that they have basically
been halted.
-another list of her hand, her foot and her
very look; it shows how the focus is on the lady and not so much on the beauty
of who she is but the different parts of her, and the parts of her that are
useful for meaningful things, like work, ,walking, or writing are turned into
sexual images, objectification
-“s” sound is pretty consistent throughout
the poem to convey thee image of sex, squirting, sperm
-desire is a kind way of saying lust
-line 35 is another list of a man’s
failure, his greatness left; trembling, confused, limber, despairing, dry;
continues on into the next line; wishing, weak, unmoving lump I lie—this is
showing the man finished, lying there satisfied, which is contrasting how the
lady feels as she tries even jerking him off a little bit to get him stiff
again
-ironically uses the word stiffly in line
41 which is when he is in fact no longer stiff
-whore imagery of nimble tongue, body parts
-all-dissolving, could mean 1)the penis
goes all the way into he vagina OR 2)after blowing a load, it goes soft
-dissolve is a sperm image
-melting means they are getting wet
-heat is reference to the intensity that
things are getting to
-taken as a bit of joke in courts
-saying man is judged by woman based on his
sexual performance
-penis compared to flower...tree would have
made more sense, “shrunk up and sapless”
-connotation of Swift, he says to fuck the
lady
-alliteration of line 14..the first three
words start with “h” and the last three letters start with “b” there is aa
striking line between the transition…the two sounds are soft, “hovering” and
“bliss” could be a number of things 1)could represent the sounds of sex vs. the
sound of the people having sex 2)emphasis on the smoothness and pleasure or
euphoric sounds and the sex that feels good
-love vs. lust
feb/28th
Elizabeth Inchbald,
A Simple Story
-issues in the text are: Marriage, male
authority, female subjectivity, transgression, carnival and masquerade, early
feminism vs. marketplace
-very Freudian
-self policing of sexual orientation
-a sexually motivated relationship between
daughter and father
-while reinstating the oppression of women,
a women is also able to break the chains of oppression
(Feb/29th)
-Mary Wolsencroft did an essay on the book;
she says women deserve better but are viewed as objects to men and pawns in
marriage, if they are not treated the way they should be then they will forever
remain beautiful flaws in nature. Women are not given the power that men lead
them to believe.
-Rushbrook is the product of a marriage that
was not accepted, lived in poverty and banishment which made him viewed as a
feminine character because of his oppression-voked character
-Matilda is more like her mother making her
more powerful than Dorriforth because she is able to rebel against him
-Matilda and Milnar both are very unwilling
to follow Dorriforth’s order, thus the reason Milnar and Matilda are banned
-But Matilda is still subordinate to the
father figure even though she is fighting the dominance. Matilda is described
in the book as a mix between her father and mother, but in the end becomes more
like her father and abides by patriarchcal rule
-Dorriforth was too controlling over Milnar
which in turn made her more rebellious
-Margrave takes Matilda (damsel in distress
plot) because she made herself vulnerable for Dorriforth and Rushbrook
-This novel moves back from fairytale
structure, and adds psychology and sensibility (the emotions of characters are
quite important)
-melodramatic plot, two lovers who are
taken away from each other by an evil force
-a taboo that keeps lovers apart for many
pages
-romance comedies are built around these:
married couple, quarrel between them, romantic gesture that brings them
together
-this type of writing is seen and was seen
as lower writing making it not bad for women to write
-the women writer can explore early
feminist ideas and inherit the style as theirs as well as introduce other types
of characters.
-the dark psychology can be used as a
vehicle for feminist ideas
-19th century female novelists
were great cause they took English commentary and put it in the novel
-taboo subject of woman in a nun costume is
wanted more than if she wasn’t
-to make the novel and relationships in the
novel to be more interesting, and more realistic, a stubbornness must be made
between the couple, “I will not submit, you submit” and sparks fly between the
two people which leads to an intense love affair which is problematic “rape vs.
passion”
-Matilda is a better woman in the eyes of
the patriarchy, represents female subordination
-there are two version of to approach
patriarchy, 1) active resistance, 2) passive resistance
-active resistance, is when u just rebel
and fight for your right
-passive resistance is where you keep quiet
and be good until they realize or someone else realizes how extremist her
“captors” are and it changes (Cinderella and “the little princess”)
-Rushbrook is the powerful, saving
patriarch who was once an oppressed person by the patriarch
-reversal of roles between Matilda and
Rushbrook
-in theory then lady Matilda is going to be
rewarded by her father in the end for being a humble, obedient and well behaved
-the novel allows the reader to decide
which approach to patriarchy works
-the author is saying there is no middle
ground
-patriarchy only can see woman in one of
two ways, virgin, or whore
-virgin/whore dichotomy
-no character that solves the text or gives
an ending
-romantic comedies always give a solution
that solves it all
-the novel is broken into two parts, very
controversial beginning and more calm and controlled second half
-the book is split into two halves each
with a different type of feminism
-duels in the novel could be a way of
talking about the duality of the two types of feminism
-she earns the love of Rushbrook by
submitting to her father’s restraints/putting herself in the position of
helpless woman which gets her captured by lord Margrave and rescued then by
Rushbrook
-Milnar is a “ghost” in the novel as the
reader reads on and can see how Milnar’s approach would have been more
practical and helpful
-Milnar conquers with her looks
-Rushbrook and Matilda swap roles, he is
banished while Matilda is not, but then is not banished when Matilda is
-Matilda is the product of a mother who was
unchaste
-Mrs.Milnar and Mrs.Woodley could get
Dorriforth to accept Rushbrook as a nephew
-but Rushbrook would not be able to get
dorhal to accept him as family because he was too passive.
-Milnar is the rescuing person in Rushbrook’s
life
-Rushbrook lunges at Dorriforth for
acceptance just as Matilda falls at the feet of Dorriforth for saving
-the marriage of Rushbrook and Matilda
would in theory create a very equal relationship because they would both know
each other’s power and pain
-lord Fredrick Longly and Mrs.Milnar were
hanging out as friends but Dorriforth gets jealous
-Dorriforth goes away for three years and Milnar
cheats on him
-Milnar will take Dorriforth as a lover after
he fights for her
-Dorrforth irrationality of hitting
Fredrick can be understood as he really does love her, or he is proving that he
owns her
-feminism says that Milnar has changed
Dorriforth from rational moralist to irrational lover
-the downfall of Mrs.Milnar, she is
banished to the borderlands of
-
(March/06)
-if Mrs.Milnar would have been a “good
girl” the marriage would have worked out
-when Matilda is abducted and saved, Matilda’s
father is imagining the saving of Mrs.Milnar because Dorriforth wishes it was Milnar
that was captured by Longley so she would see Dorriforth as her saviour
-the “-“ is used to create the image of
change in movement, mind frame, a chance for the reader to follow the movement
of Matilda’s thoughts
-“unmaned” is a bit of a binary opposition
in the sense that when a man expresses thoughts and feelings of anything other
then cold heartedness, he is no longer a man
-when Matilda is at his feet saying “Mrs.
Milnar, dear Mrs Milnar”, is when Dorriforth one of three things..
1)his recognition in his mistakes made with
Mrs.Milnar
2)how he wishes Mrs.Milnar said and did
what Matilda did and said
3)he was getting aroused by his daughter
-he asks for his pistols “phallic imagery”,
he wished that this was how it went down with Mrs.Milnar and Longley
-the audience is caught up in a beautiful
father saving daughter plot, but is that a good thing? Did Matilda have to be abducted
and raped to be reclaimed as Dorriforth’s daughter?
-gender politics were so messed up that a
woman was just passed around and abducting women could possibly be done without
consequence.
-the fallen woman seeking forgiveness, (Matilda
weeping at his feet and what not) this is “happiest they may both have/ever
will been/be”
-“good girl” reunited with powerful
patriarch-the book is implying to the reader that if Mrs.Milnar did what Matilda
did then she would be rewarded and treated the same, but is asking the reader
to decide..
-gender politics of popular romance novels
is a little uhhh fucked up to put it lightly.
-father-daughter relationship is a little
incest to say the least
-the novel is about the clash between the
popular romance novel and elevated novel to generate thought among people
March 07
-rover (2 maybe) (aphra behn)
-simple story (2 passages) (inchbald)
-the imperfect enjoyment (
Essay
-MLA handbook
-titles in quotes are written in italics
Secondary sources
-take what is going on in the 18th
century and apply it to a specific work
Thesis
-what were the problems for women in the 18th
century women writers?
-use quotes that outline a clear argument
March 29
EXAM: Topics for essay
-female character types
àvirgin/whore dichotomy
àinstruction manual for women
àoroonoko
àepitaph
-violence against women
àoroonoko
àthe rover
àswift
àthe perfect enjoyment (earle of
-patriarchs
àthe rover
àinstruction manual for women (acts
as a policing tool)
àfocus on specific characters, male
and female
àromance of the forest
àoroonoko
àa simple story
-popular romance and transgression
àcan’t move beyond the virgin/whore
dichotomy
àthe introduction (where women
declare they will write from the margins)
àsimple story
àoroonoko
àmontague’s Turkish baths which is
very different than many male writers
àwomen take up popular romance
writing because they don’t have many other options
àwomen are writing these patriarchies
controlling over female characters because they are writing “what they know”
and the genre calls for a damsel in distress
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