Perhaps I should have called this late thoughts!
Musing on 18th century literature I have such a wide variety of thoughts that I've had difficulty formulating a topic for this final blog. So pardon my Ramblering (sorry Mr. Johnson).
Feminism seems to be one of the hot topics for discussion, the changing of gender roles in particular so here goes....
The tiny circle in English society that was made up of writers seems to have somewhat provided a glimpse of changes that were to take place in general but not for quite a long time afterward. Prior to the 18th century, it seems that the number of women found in thus circle of writers was extremely small. Those women had to endure a kind of criticism that would be hard to imagine today. I think that the scene from "Orlando" with Pope, Swift and Johnson discussing women is amusing to us now because of just how foolish these great men, renown for their ideas and liberalism, were made to appear when it came to expressing their opinions about women. Naturally this is a Hollywood rendering of these men, but the words rang true. These words, in various forms, appeared in many writings by these and other male authors of at the turn of the 17th century and into the 18th. Alexander Pope in particular, was quite outspoken concerning the foibles and follies of women both within and outside of the circle of writers. Of course the members of our own small circle, the 2012 ENGL 470 class, have been reading and discussing this quite a bit this semester, so I don't need to elaborate too much, but I do recommend that over the break you all take a look at the Dunciad it reveals just how deeply men of the early 18th century were will to delve to criticize their female peers and women in general.
Now that I've finished that pre-ramble, I want to summarize some thoughts about the rise of feminism and the rise of the woman novelist versus the strong resistance that was put up by men such as Pope.
It's been observed that the rise of the novel appears to correlate closely to the rise of the women writer. Since novel writing was the undiscovered country and women writers were forced to create texts mostly outside of the boundaries set down by men it was natural for women to write novels. The early expectations of novelized literature was small, in fact so small that the genre was considered suitable only for trivial writings, such as women's little stories. Needless to say this proved to be completely wrong. But this attitude did create an opening for women writers that would not have otherwise existed. For them the novel was the great opportunity. It was a vast unclaimed territory on the fringes of the patriarchal empire, few men were yet brave enough to risk the scorn of their peers and write novels. So into the breach, pen in hand, marched a growing number of bold women writers. With them came ideas that had been hidden to the eyes and minds of the public. Ideas that other women shared in private if they dared, but never would talk about to men. Though to us in the early 21st century these ideas seem very mild and not at all challenging to our modern notion of gender roles, in the 18th century they were shocking, at least to most men.
At this point I would be remiss if didn't include a nod to the few male novelists, whom, at least for the male critic validated novel as a literary form suitable for high thought. So thank-you Mr. Defoe, Mr. Fielding, and Mr. Richardson. Without you men may have taken another 100 years or more before they bought into novels. This is isn't to say that the writings of the growing number of women who were adding to the rapid growth of novelized literature were inferior to those men who dared to cross the frontier, my point is to show how few men dared to boldly go where no man had gone before, and endure the initial scorn of their peers in order to bring novels into the eyes of the male readership. It's a testimony to the strength of the fortifications that centuries of unchallenged patriarchy had built around the arts that it was so difficult for men to see beyond the narrow confines of the walls and observe the colorful flowers being grown in the literary gardens tended by women.
Back to my original digression. Through the art of novels, women were the for the first time allowed the opportunity to take hold of some small facet of the arts in relatively large numbers . Because female authors seized this opportunity with zeal the genre grew as well. It was a mutual relationship. The hand of the woman writer was set free to create in the pages of novels, and the novels grew and flourished like flowers in a garden when properly nurtured by a loving hand. More importantly, women's issues were being written about. The frustrations and sense of hopelessness that women felt became more and more exposed AND, thanks to the opening in the wall created by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, more and more husbands and fathers were being shown how unfair the system was.
Before anyone jumps ahead and things that I'm suggesting that there was a revolution in the making thanks to the rise of women writers and their novels let me reassure you that this was (sadly) not the case. In fact it seems to have had an opposite effect. Men redoubled the fortifications, added cannons and archers, and chained their women to the walls lest they get "ideas" that they could have agency. Laws that had been only lightly enforced previously suddenly were given teeth and women lost freedom as a whole throughout much of the 18th century. Backlash? Perhaps, but regardless there was no feminist revolution, yet.
Interestingly, the more the patriarchy put women into trammels the more they forced them to seek subtle ways to find freedom and agency, i.e. by writing. Women could earn their own, often secret, money by writing. It was something that men had a hard time stopping. Moreover, the books often showed women how they could get more education on their own than men would ever normally allow, by reading more. So the entire system fed off itself, reaching a sort of critical mass. The more women read the more books sold the more publishers wanted women writers, and so there were more and more books and more and more ideas about how women could gain power through the written word. This was bound to explode, and though this explosive event is outside of the scope of our class, I think it's interesting to note that the explosion took place in France in 1787. Women, enlightened and inflamed with a passion for radical reform led the charge on the Bastille, and on the Palace at Versailles. The rise of the novel, the rise of women writers, the French Revolution, all are inextricably related. Woman's Sufferage became mainstream in the 19th century, but it took the spark of feminism brought to the public eye in the 18th century to force this to happen. Had men not scorned the novel, had the realized that it was a crack in the foundation of the patriarchal fortress, perhaps history would have been much different, think about it!
Have a great Christmas everyone, and thanks for an awesome semester!