A2
Synoptic Module 6
Gender, Equality and Education
Extract
A
Bathsua
Makin was born around 1612. She became highly accomplished in languages
('Tongues') and mathematics and was appointed to teach Princess Elizabeth, the
daughter of King Charles I. She believed firmly in the value of good education
for women at a time when it was very unusual. The text that follows is part of
an essay that she published in pamphlet form. She uses various tactics here,
such as pretending to be a man - in order to be taken seriously — and
inventing an imaginary 'objector' around whose 'letter' the essay is structured.
An
ESSAY To Revive the Antient Education OF Gentlewomen IN Religion, Manners, Arts
& TonguesWITH An Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education. To
all Ingenious and Vertuous Ladies, more especially to her Highness the Lady
MARY, Eldest Daughter to his Royal Highness the Duke of YORK.
Custom,
when it is inveterate, hath a mighty influence: it hath the force of Nature it
self. The Barbarous custom to breed Women low,
is grown general amongst us, and hath prevailed so far, that it is verily
believed (especially amongst a sort of debauched Sots) that Women are not endued
with such Reason, as Men; nor capable of improvement by Education, as they are.
It is lookt upon as a monstrous thing, to pretend the contrary. A Learned Woman
is thought to be a Comet, that bodes mischief, when ever it appears. To offer to
the World the liberal Education of Women is to deface the Image of God in Man,
it will make Women so high, and men so low, like Fire in the House-top, it will
set the whole world in a Flame.
These
things and worse then these, are commonly talked of, and verily believed by
many, who think themselves wise Men: to contradict these is a bold attempt;
where the Attempter must expect to meet with much opposition. Therefore, Ladyes,
I beg the candid Opinion of your sex, whose Interest I assert.
More
especially I implore the Favour of your Royal Highness, a Person most Eminent
amongst them, whose Patronage alone will be a sufficient Protection. What I have
written is not out of humour to show how much may be said of a trivial thing to
little purpose. I verily think. Women were formerly Educated in the knowledge of
Arts and Tongues, and by their Education, many did rise to a great height in
Learning. Were Women thus Educated now, I am confident the advantage would be
very great: The Women would have Honour and Pleasure, their Relations Profit,
and the whole Nation Advantage. ...
Were
a competent number of Schools erected to Educate Ladyes ingenuously, methinks I
see how asham'd Men would be of their Ignorance, and how industrious the next
Generation would be to wipe off their Reproach.
I expect to meet with many Scoffes and Taunts from inconsiderate and
illiterate Men, that prize their own Lusts and Pleasure more than your Profit
and Content. I shall be the less concern'd at these, so long as I am in your
favour, and this discourse may be a Weapon in your hands to defend your selves,
whilst you endeavour to polish your Souls, that you may glorify God, and answer
the end of your Creation, to be meet helps to your Husbands. Let not your
Ladiships be offended, that I do not (as some have wittily done) plead for
Female Preeminence. To ask too much is the way to be denied all. God hath made
the Man the Head, if you be educated and instructed, as I propose, I am sure you
will acknowledge it, and be satisfied that you are helps, that your Husbands do
consult and advise with you (which if you be wife they will be glad of) and that
your Husbands have the casting-Voice, in whose determinations you will
acquiesce. That this may be the effect of this Education in all Ladyes that
shall attempt it, is the desire of
Your
Servant.
To
the Reader
I
hope I shall not need to beg the patience of Ladyes to peruse this Pamphlet: I
have bespoken, and do expect your Patronage; because it is your Cause I plead
against an ill custom, pre-judicial to you, which Men will not willingly
suffer to be broken. I would desire
Men not to prejudge and cast aside this Book upon the
sight of the Title. If I have solidly proposed something that may be
profitable to Man-kind, let it not be rejected. If this way of Educating
ladies should (as its like, it
never will) be generally practised, the greatest hurt,
that I fore-see, can ensue,
is, to put your Sons upon
greater diligence to advance themselves in
Arts and Languages, that they may
be Superior to Women in Parts as well as in Place. This
is the great thing I designe. I am a Man my Self, that would not suggest
a thing prejudicial to our Sex. To
propose Women rivals with us to Learning, will make
us court Minerva more heartily, lest they should be more in her Favour. I
do verily think this to be the best
way to dispell the Clouds of Ignorance, and to stop the Flouds of Debauchery, that the next Generation may be
more wise and vertuous than any of
their Predecessours. It is an easie matter to quibble and droll
upon a subject of this nature, to scoff at Women kept ignorant, on
purpose to be made slaves. This
savours not at all of a Manly Spirit, to trample upon those that are
down. I forbid Scoffing and Scolding. Let any think themselves agrived, and
come forth fairly into the Field against this feeble Sex, with solid
Arguments to refute what I have asserted, I think I may promise to be their
Champion.
SIR,
I have heard you discourse of the Education of Gentlewomen in Arts and
Tongues. I wonder any should think of so vain a thing.
Women do not much desire Knowledge; they are of low parts, soft fickle
natures, they have other things to do they will not mind if they be once
Bookish; The end of Learning is to
fit one for publick employment, which Women are not capable of. Women must not speak in the Church, its against
custom. Solomon's good
House-wife is not commended for Arts and Tongues, but for looking after her Servants; And that which is worst of all, they are of
such ill natures, they will abuse
their Education, and be so intolerably Proud, there will be no living with
them: If all these things could be answered, they would not have leisure.
We
send our Sons to School seven years, and yet not above one in five get so
much of the Tongues only, so as to keep them, and nothing of Arts.
Girls cannot have more than half the time allotted them. If they were
capable, and had time, I cannot
imagine what good it would do them. If it would do them good, where should they
be Instructed, their converse with Boyes would do them
more hurt than all their Learning would do them good.
I have no prejudice against the Sex, but would gladly have a fair answer
to these things, or else shall breed up my Daughters as our fore-fathers did.
Sir your Condescension herein will very much oblige,
Your affectionate Friend.
May
19. 1673.
After
this fictional 'letter', in which she presents some of the arguments against
women's education that were commonplace at the time, Makin sets about answering
them in the main part of her essay, from which the next passage is taken.
Care
ought to be taken by us to Educate Women in Learning ...I do not deny but Women
ought to be brought up to a comely and decent carriage, to their Needle, to
Neatness, to understand all those things that do particularly belong to their
Sex. But when these things are competently cared for, and where there are
Endowments of Nature and leasure, then higher things ought to be endeavoured
after. Meerly to teach Gentlewomen to Frisk and Dance, to paint their Faces, to
curl their Hair, to put on a Whisk, to wear gay Clothes, is not truly to adorn,
but to adulterate their Bodies; yea, (what is worse) to defile their Souls. This
... turns them to Beasts; whilst their Belly is their God, they become Swine;
whilst Lust, they become Goats; and whilst Pride is their God, they become very
Devils. Doubtless this under-breeding of Women began amongst Heathen and
Barbarous People; it continues with the Indians, where they make their Women
meer slaves, and wear them out in drudgery ...
Had God Intended Women onely as a finer sort of Cattle, he would not have
made them reasonable. Bruits, a few degrees higher than Drils or Monkies, (which
the Indians use to do many Offices) might have better fitted some mens Lust,
Pride, and Pleasure; especially those that desire to keep them ignorant to be tyrranized
over.
God
intended woman as a helpmeet to man, in his constant conversation and in the
concerns of His family and Estate, when he should most need, in sickness,
weakness, absence, death, etc. Whilst we neglect to fit them for these things,
we renounce God’s Blessing, he hath appointed Women for, are ungrateful to
Him, cruel to them and injurious to ourselves.
TASKS:
Read
through the extracts again, making notes on the following:
1.
The effect of the opening sentences (‘inveterate’ means deep rooted
or ‘long-lasting’)
2.
The tone Makin adopts in he different sections of the text. What response
is she expecting from her audience in the opening address? Look at the
objector’s letter. Has she succeeded in making this a ‘separate’ voice?
Does anything give away the fact that this is a fictional device|/
3.
Look at the arguments given for and against the education of women.
Which, if any, carry the most weight and why?
4.
Evaluate Makin’s tactics and techniques of persuasion
5.
Look carefully at the language she uses to describe women and men. How do
her lexical choices add to or detract from the purpose of the writing?
6.
What evidence of language change do you see in these pieces?
Extract
B
The
next piece is by the Romantic poet Anna Barbauld (1743-1825). Despite the title
and opening lines of her poem, she was not really a campaigner for women's
rights, as you will see.
The
Rights of Woman
Yes,
injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!
Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed;
0 born to rule in partial Law's despite,
Resume
thy native empire o'er the breast!
Go
forth arrayed in panoply divine,
That angel pureness which admits no stain;
Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign
And kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign.
Go,
gird thyself with grace, collect thy store
Of bright artillery glancing from afar;
Soft melting tones thy thundering cannon's roar,
Blushes and fears thy magazine of war.
Thy
rights are empire: urge no meaner claim, -
Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost;
Like sacred mysteries, which withheld from fame,
Shunning discussion, are revered the most.
Try
all that wit and art suggest to bend
Of thy imperial foe the stubborn knee;
Make treacherous Man thy subject, not thy friend;
Thou mayst command, but never canst be free.
Awe
the licentious and restrain the rude;
Soften the sullen, clear the cloudy brow:
Be, more than princes' gifts, thy favours sued; -
She hazards all, who will the least allow.
But
hope not, courted idol of mankind,
On this proud eminence secure to stay;
Subduing and subdued, thou soon shalt find
Thy coldness soften, and thy pride give way.
Then,
then, abandon each ambitious thought;
Conquest or rule thy heart shall feeble move,
In
Nature's school, by her soft maxims taught
That separate rights are lost in mutual love.
Anna
Barbauld
Extract
C
Most
of Virginia Woolf's novels are 'serious', and in her essays she often tackles
the issue of the inequality of the sexes. However, in Orlando, which she called
'a writer's holiday', she let her imagination run riot and created a character
who lives for several centuries and changes sex half way through the book. At
this point, not long after she has turned from a man into a woman, Orlando
begins to think about 'the penalties and privileges of her position', in other
words, to wonder which sex has the better deal. The novel was published in 1928.
Orlando
'Lord,'
she thought, when she had recovered from her start, stretching herself out at
length under her awning, 'this is a pleasant, lazy way of life, to be sure.
But,' she thought, giving her legs a kick, 'these skirts are plaguey things to
have about one's heels. Yet the stuff (flowered paduasoy (1)) is the loveliest
in the world. Never have I seen my own skin (here she laid her hand on her knee)
look to such advantage as now. Could I, however, leap'overboard and swim in
clothes like these? No! Therefore, I should have to trust to the protection of a
blue-jacket.(2) Do I object to that? Now do I?' she wondered, here encountering
the first knot in the smooth skein of her argument.
Dinner came before she had untied it, and then it was the Captain himself -
Captain Nicholas Benedict Bartolus, a sea captain of distinguished aspect, who
did it for her as he helped her to a slice of corned beef.
'A little of the fat, Ma'am?' he asked. 'Let me cut you just the tiniest little
slice the size of your finger-nail.' At those words a delicious tremor ran
through her frame. Birds sang; the torrents rushed. It recalled the feeling of
indescribable pleasure with which she had first seen Sasha, hundreds of years
ago. Then she had pursued, now she fled. Which is the greater ecstasy? The man's
or the woman's? And are they not perhaps the same? No, she thought, this is the
most delicious (thanking the Captain but refusing), to refuse and see him frown.
Well, she would, if he wished it, have the very thinnest, smallest sliver in the
world.
This was the most delicious of all, to yield and see him smile. 'For nothing,'
she thought, regaining her couch on deck, and continung the argument, 'is more
heavenly, to resist and to yield; to yield and to resist. Surely it throws the
spirit into such a rapture as nothing else can. So that I'm not sure,' she
continued, 'that I won't throw myself overboard, for the mere pleasure of being
rescued by a blue-jacket after all.'
(It must be remembered that she was like a child entering into possession of a
pleasaunce or toy-cupboard; her arguments would not commend themselves to mature
women, who have had the run of it all their lives.)
'But what used we young fellows in the cockpit of the Marie Rose to say about a
woman who threw herself overboard for the pleasure of being rescued by a
blue-jacket?' she said. 'We had a word for the. Ah! I have it. ...' (But we must
omit that word; it was disrespectful in the extreme and passing strange on a
lady's lips.) 'Lord! Lord!' she cried again at the conclusion of her thoughts,
'must I then begin to respect the opinion of the other sex, however monstrous I
think it? If I wear skirts, if I can't swim, if I have to be rescued by a
blue-jacket, by God!' she cried, 'I must!' Upon which a gloom fell over her.
Candid by nature, and averse to all kinds of equivocation, to tell lies bored
her. It seemed to her a roundabout way of going to work. Yet, she reflected, the
flowered paduasoy - the pleasure of being rescued by a blue-jacket - if these
were only to be obtained by roundabout ways, roundabout one must go, she
supposed. She remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that women must
be obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled. 'Now I shall have to
pay in my own person for those desires,' she reflected; 'for women are not
(judging by my own short experience of the sex) obedient, chaste, scented, and
exquisitely apparelled by nature. They can only attain these graces, without
which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious
discipline. There's the hairdressing,' she thought, 'that alone will take an
hour of my morning; there's looking in the looking-glass another hour; there's
staying and lacing; there's washing and powdering; there's changing from silk to
lace and from lace to paduasoy; there's being chaste year in, year out....' Here
she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on
the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he
missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. 'If the
sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and
family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,' Orlando thought.
Yet her legs were among her chiefest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an
odd pass we have come to when all a woman's beauty has to be kept covered lest a
sailor may fall from a masthead. 'A pox on them!' she said, realizing for the
first time what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child,
that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood.
'And that's the last oath I shall ever be able to swear,' she thought; 'once I
set foot on English soil. And I shall never be able to crack a man over the
head, or tell him he lies in his teeth, or draw my sword and run him through the
body, or sit among my peers, or wear a coronet, or walk in procession, or
sentence a man to death, or lead an army, or prance down Whitehall on a charger,
or wear seventy-two different medals on my breast. All I can do, once I set foot
on English soil, is to pour out tea and ask my lords how they like it. "D'you
take sugar? D'you take cream?"' And mincing out the words, she was
horrified to perceive how low an opinion she was forming of the other sex, the
manly, to which it had once been her pride to belong. 'To fall from a masthead,'
she thought, 'because you see a woman's ankles; to dress up like a Guy Fawkes
and parade the streets, so that women may praise you; to deny a woman teaching
lest she may laugh at you; to be the slave of the frailest chit in petticoats,
and yet to go about as if you were the Lords of creation - Heavens!' she
thought, 'what fools they make of us - what fools we are!'
Virginia
Woolf
1
paduasoy. silk from Padua, Italy.
2 blue-jacket: sailor
TASK
1.
How does Woolf use humour to make serios points about the respective
roles and stereotypes of women and men and the way relationships between them
are traditionally supposed to operate?
2.
How many ways can you find to connect this with extracts A and B? How
does Woolf’s approach to the central issue differ from that of the earlier
authors?
3.
In the poem, how does the author expect women to ‘win’ their
‘rights’? What are they?
4.
Look closely
at the imagery used (especially in the poem) to describe women and their
relationship to men.
5.
How do you, as
a 21st century reader, respond to extract B?
Extract
D
Fay
Weldon's novel 'Praxis' was written in the 1970's when the women's movement was
at its most militant and outspoken. It is what can be described as a 'women's
world' novel, focusing on the daily lives of women and the issues that affect
them most. Here the heroine looks back to when she and her friends Irma and Colleen were students at Reading University.
She has just become involved with Willy, an older student.
Praxis
Willy
and Praxis went to bed together between lectures: that, at any rate, was how
they described it. They seldom actually reached the bed. No sooner were they
inside the door than he would bear down upon her, pressing her on to the floor,
table, chair, anywhere, in his urgency ...
'Thank
you', he would say: and he was fond of her and she of him: the nakedness of his
need touched her: but neither he, nor she herself, seemed to expect a female
response in the least equivalent to the male. She never cried out, or thought
she should, or knew that women did, or why they would.
She
typed Willy's essays though, and found books for him in the library, getting
there early so as to be first in the queue when work was set. After Willy's
essays were completed and typed, she would then begin on her own. She typed
slowly, using only two fingers. It was assumed by both of them that this was the
proper distribution of their joint
energies. He got A's and she got C's.
'Well
and truly snapped up,' said Irma, 'more fool you. It's war, you know. They lose
and you win, or vice versa. It's vice versa for you. Mind you, they're all like
that in the Humanities Department. They talk virtue and practice vice.'
Irma
often got A's, but pretended she got C's. To look at her, as Colleen remarked,
you wouldn't think she had a brain in her head, and that was the way Irma wanted
it. Irma was
looking for a husband. She'd
tried to get into Oxford and had
failed - there were few places available for women - and so had missed out, she
felt, on her chances of marrying a future Prime Minister. She was, perforce, now
prepared to settle for an embryo famous novelist, atomic scientist or Nobel
prize winner, of the kind who could presumably be found at the lesser provincial
universities. Provided, of course, one could spot a winner. Irma was certain she
could.
Skirts
were narrow and calf-length and split up the back. Irma wiggled her bottom,
pouted her orangey-red lips and wriggled out of goodnight kisses and away from
groping, futureless hands ...
One
week Praxis got an A for her essay, on political establishments in the USA in
the eighteenth century, and Willy got a C for his on the same theme. Praxis
could not understand why he was so cross, or why he felt obliged to hurt her.
But he certainly did ... Praxis, said Willy, was a neurotic, a bore, a rotten
cook, and a slow typist.
Praxis
reeled, at the sudden presentation of the malice which underlies love; the
resentment which interleaves affection between the sexes, of which whe had until
that moment no notion. She was shocked; she would not cry. ...
The
next day, Willy came round and apologised, and even bought her a half of shandy
and paid for it himself. She was vastly relieved. Her main fear had been that
she would presently find Willy in the students' bar investing in the gin and
lime which would buy him his next term's sex, comfort, company and secretarial
services.
Praxis
made sure that her next essay was poorly executed and badly presented, and she
inserted a few good extra paragraphs of her own composition into Willy's essay
while typing it out for him; this time he got a straight A and she a C minus and
a sorrowful note from her tutor.
The
earlier A had been a flash in the pan, her tutor could only suppose. One of the
tantalising little flashes girls in higher education would occasionally display:
for the most part flickering dimly and then going out, extinguished by the
basic, domestic nature of the female sex, altogether quenched by desire to serve
the male. Indeed, the consensus of the college authorities was, not
surprisingly, that girls seldom lived up to early promise: were rarely capable
of intellectual excellence; seemed to somehow go rotten and fall off before
ripening, like plums in a bad season. The extension of equal educational
facilities to girls had been a hopeful, and perhaps an inevitable undertaking,
but was scarcely justifiable by results. He had hoped it was not true, but was
beginning to believe it was.
For
Praxis, Willy's A's and her own C's seemed a small price to pay for Willy's
protection, Willy's interest, Willy's concern; for the status of having a steady
boyfriend.
Fay Weldon
TASKS
What differences in attitude do you find in the last extract, from those which have gone before? Can you account for the change?
What
differences in style do you notice in the Fay Weldon extract? Why do you
think this happened?
Sample
examination questions
The
question that follows illustrates how you might be expected to write about texts
on a theme, whether you have studied a pre-release anthology or done your own
wide reading.
Choose
three of the extracts A, B, C, or D. Compare the ways in which these writers
treat their subject matter, paying attention to how this has changed over time.
Look
at:
1.
Changes in
language, form and structure
2.
The ways writers use different genres to explore their ideas and feelings.
Can you account for the choice of genre in each extract?
3.
The attitudes towards men and women, which are shown in your extracts
(Try to account for them, if you can)
4.
The tone of the writing and also the attitudes displayed by the writer.
5.
The purpose of each piece and how you think the audience would respond a)
at the time of writing and b) at the present time.