The Matrimonial Trap : Eighteenth-Century Women Writers Redefine Marriage 9781611485271, 9781611487053

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The Matrimonial Trap

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T R A N S I T S LITERATURE, THOUGHT & CULTURE Series Editor Greg Clingham Bucknell University Transits is the next horizon. The series of books, essays, and monographs aims to extend recent achievements in eighteenth-century studies and to publish work on any aspects of the literature, thought, and culture of the years 1650–1850. Without ideological or methodological restrictions, Transits seeks to provide transformative readings of the literary, cultural, and historical interconnections between Britain, Europe, the Far East, Oceania, and the Americas in the long eighteenth century, and as they extend down to present time. In addition to literature and history, such “global” perspectives might entail considerations of time, space, nature, economics, politics, environment, and material culture, and might necessitate the development of new modes of critical imagination, which we welcome. But the series does not thereby repudiate the local and the national for original new work on particular writers and readers in particular places in time continues to be the bedrock of the discipline. Titles in the Series The Family, Marriage, and Radicalism in British Women’s Novels of the 1790s: Public Affection and Private Affliction Jennifer Golightly Feminism and the Politics of Travel after the Enlightenment Yaël Schlick John Galt: Observations and Conjectures on Literature, History, and Society Regina Hewitt Performing Authorship in Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals Manushag N. Powell Excitable Imaginations: Eroticism and Reading in Britain, 1660–1760 Kathleen Lubey The French Revolution Debate and the British Novel, 1790–1814: The Struggle for History’s Authority Morgan Rooney Rococo Fiction in France, 1600–1715: Seditious Frivolity Allison Stedman

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Poetic Sisters: Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets Deborah Kennedy Richard Brinsley Sheridan: The Impresario in Political and Cultural Context Jack E. DeRochi and Daniel J. Ennis Studies in Ephemera: Text and Image in Eighteenth-Century Print Kevin Murphy and Sally O’Driscoll Developments in the Histories of Sexualities Chris Mounsey Enlightenment in Ruins: The Geographies of Oliver Goldsmith Michael Griffin Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-First Century: “By Succession of Delight” Edited by Min Wild and Noel Chevalier Wordsworth, Hemans, and Politics, 1800–1830: Romantic Crises Benjamin Kim Print Technology in Scotland and America 1740–1800 Louis Kirk McAuley For a complete list of titles in this series, please visit http://www.bucknell.edu/universitypress

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T R A N S I T S

The Matrimonial Trap EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WOMEN WRITERS REDEFINE MARRIAGE

LAURA E. THOMASON

B U C K N E L L

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L E W I S B U R G U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

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Published by Bucknell University Press Copublished with Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2014 by Laura E. Thomason All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomason, Laura E., 1973– The matrimonial trap : eighteenth-century women writers redefine marriage / Laura E. Thomason. pages cm. — (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61148-526-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61148-527-1 (electronic) 1. English literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 2. Marriage in literature. 3. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. I. Title. PR448.W65T48 2014 820.9'928709033—dc23 2013032826

™

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Eighteenth-Century Marriage in Crisis?

1

Intimacy, Identity, and Marital Choice: The Osborne-Temple Correspondence

19

2

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: The Power of Self-Fashioning

41

3

Hester Chapone as a Living Clarissa in Letters on Filial Obedience and A Matrimonial Creed

67

4

“Perfect Friendship”: Mary Delany, Companionacy, and Control

85

5

Duty and Sentiment in Sarah Scott’s The Test of Filial Duty

107

6

Eliza Haywood: The Limits of Feminine Agency

129

Afterword: From Clarissa Harlowe to Elizabeth Bennet

153

Notes

163

Bibliography

193

Index

201

About the Author

205

1

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

G R A T E F U L L Y A C K N O W L E D G E the support and assistance of Rima Abunasser, Elizabeth Bennett, Crystal Elerson, Kathy King, Marilyn Morris, Deborah Needleman Armintor, Devoney Looser and my fellow members of the 2012 NEH seminar “Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries,” Dianna Walker and her fellow students in Eighteenth-Century Poetry and Prose (Fall 2010), my students in Women, Writers, and the Marriage Plot (Fall 2012), Alexander Pettit, and especially Daniel Boudreault and Peggy and Randy Thomason. The Department of English and the School of Liberal Arts at Middle Georgia State College generously provided funding for the payment of licensing fees. An early version of chapter 3 appeared in Eighteenth-Century Fiction 21, no. 3 (Spring 2009) as “Hester Chapone as a Living Clarissa in Letters on Filial Obedience and A Matrimonial Creed.” An early version of chapter 5 appeared in Papers on Language and Literature as “‘A Consolation under Every Affliction’: Marriage, Duty, and Sentiment in Sarah Scott’s The Test of Filial Duty.” Reprinted by permission. Papers on Language and Literature, v. 46, no. 4, Fall 2010. Copyright © 2010 by The Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

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INTRODUCTION Eighteenth-Century Marriage in Crisis?

M

A R Y D E L A N Y ’ S P H R A S E “the matrimonial trap” illuminates the apprehension with which genteel women of the eighteenth century viewed marriage.1 These women were generally required to marry in order to secure their futures, yet were hindered from freely choosing a husband. They faced marriage anxiously because they lacked the power either to avoid it or to define it for themselves. For some women, the written word became a means by which to exercise the power that they otherwise lacked. Through their writing, they made the inevitable acceptable while registering their dissatisfaction with their circumstances. Rhetoric, exercised both in public and in private, allowed these women to define their identities as individuals and as wives, to lay out and test the boundaries of more egalitarian spousal relationships, and to criticize the traditional marriage system as their culture had defined it. This book examines the writing of six women from the period—Dorothy Osborne, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hester Chapone, Sarah Scott, Mary Delany, and Eliza Haywood. These women, faced with near-mandatory participation in a restrictive marriage system, used rhetoric to criticize that system, to reshape their marital relationships as egalitarian friendships, and to present themselves as desirable wives. Their writing reveals their participation in and reactions to a larger sense of crisis about marriage in eighteenth-century society. It documents the complex interplay of pressures that bore on the most important decision in an eighteenth-century woman’s life. When Anne Donnellan wrote to Elizabeth Montagu in 1742 that marriage was “the settlement in the world we should aim at, and the only way we females have of making ourselves of use to Society and raising ourselves in this world,” she was expressing an opinion that was both typical and, from the two correspondents’ perspectives, accurate.2 For women of a certain social standing, matrimony was expected [1]

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

because it was considered desirable for social stability and necessary for economic security. In the eighteenth century, aristocratic women as well as women of the class that called itself “the polite” or “the genteel” did not earn a living by working. Nor, once married, did they own property independently, thanks to a legal system that transferred family assets through the patriarchal line.3 As Susan Staves explains, “Rules concerning married women’s property have always functioned to facilitate the transmission of significant property from male to male; entitlements of women have been to provide them with subsistence for themselves and minor children who are dependent upon them.” 4 The law largely kept women from accumulating capital, investing in property, or participating in financial decisions. Lady Mary Pierrepont, for example, wrote to her future husband, Edward Wortley Montagu, in 1710 that “since I am so unfortunate to have nothing in my own disposal, do not think I have any hand in makeing Settlements.”5 Without financial self-sufficiency and under familial and social constraints, she and her contemporaries felt that they lacked control over their lives. Montagu, like other women writers, saw this state of affairs as persistently problematic because it robbed women of security and autonomy and, in effect, forced them into marriage. In 1806, Jane West lamented that “the manner of the times, and the prevailing style of education, render women at once extravagant and dependent: girls can do nothing to maintain themselves; they must therefore at all events get husbands.”6 These circumstances, codified in law and reinforced by social expectations, rendered marriage virtually compulsory for genteel women. Their choices of husbands would determine their financial security and cement their place in their class. In view of these factors, it is perhaps unsurprising that Donnellan was silent on the prospects of marital choice and emotional fulfillment in marriage, yet those ideals were becoming prevalent. In 1710, Montagu (then Pierrepont) claimed that she wanted to marry “one . . . that I very much lovd, and that very much lovd me”;7 and in 1751, Delany called marriage “a state that should always be a matter of choice.”8 However, the competing factors of emotion, duty, social mores, and economic necessity coexisted uneasily. Conventional morality tightly restricted women’s behavior and thereby limited their ability to seek out and form relationships with men on their own. Law and tradition placed marital choice in the hands of parents, not of sons or daughters. The society to which my subjects belonged limited women’s power to make the marriages they wanted, to avoid those they did not want, and to criticize the marriage system. Nevertheless, they used what power they had, although it was often limited and contingent, restricted by expectations regarding women’s roles in general and women’s writing in particular. The present study examines ways in which women used writing to shape their marriages according to their wishes and ways in which they constructed and criticized [2]

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matrimony both before and after their own marriages. The women I consider here recorded their anxieties about and their criticisms of marriage in public and private writings from the 1650s well into the 1750s. The persistence of their concerns over more than a century additionally suggests that the so-called rise of companionacy was not as smooth as scholars of marriage have previously suggested. These women’s writing suggests that greater freedom to choose a spouse was a prerequisite for a companionate relationship. While even the most conservative commentators granted young women veto power over a parent’s chosen suitors, my subjects demonstrate that marital choice was not, as Lawrence Stone described it, “a position already conceded” either in the public’s perception or in theirs: all of them view an arranged or prudential marriage as the default position against which they are reacting—or from which they are trying to escape.9 Multiple, competing, and mutually exclusive pressures and concerns made marriage a vexed decision and required women to find ways of circumventing its difficulties. In many ways the law, religion, and conventional morality overpowered growing interest in marital choice. As a result, the companionate ideal, which opposed so many other social values, became an expectation that women struggled to fulfill from a position that they describe as perilous and powerless. Marriage assumed its extraordinary importance to my subjects because it united the period’s concerns about class, property, sexuality, duty, and emotion under a single rubric with broad consequences and implications for women. As a focus for anxiety about women’s place in society, matrimony became a nearly obsessive topic of imaginative, legal, and didactic literature in the eighteenth century. The centrality of what we would today call “women’s issues” in eighteenth-century discourse has led scholars such as Amanda Vickery, Ruth Perry, and Eve Tavor Bannet to examine in detail the roles of women as writers, readers, and wives. These researchers’ emphases and methods diverge, but each notes the period’s increased discussion and codification of women’s place in society. As Vickery explains, “The early eighteenth century has been isolated as a key period of innovation in prescriptions for manners, a period when courtesy writers began to dwell at some length on the naturalness of female virtue, the benefits for men of female company and the positive pleasures of domestic life.”10 It is no coincidence that these elements—feminine chastity, heterosociability, and domesticity—dominate discussions of the value and purpose of marriage. But the female role, and thus the wifely role, that conduct writers valorized as natural was one that required conscious submission to a male authority figure and constant attention to one’s duty. In other words, the supposedly natural did not come naturally but demanded endless self-monitoring and self-denial. Perry points out that women were urged into this submissive role at the same time that their place in the family structure was changing. Particularly in the second half of the eighteenth [3]

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century, novels reflected the growing importance of what Ruth Perry calls the “chosen family constructed by marriage.” Perry argues that “it was a mixed blessing for women to exchange whatever power and status they had in their families of origin for the power and status of women in conjugal families.”11 In this period of transition, questions arose about where a woman’s primary loyalty lay and where she could turn for protection if it were needed.12 Socially and legally vulnerable and constrained by their role, genteel women had many reasons to regard marriage with skepticism or even outright hostility. It is no surprise, then, that for the early feminist writers studied by Bannet, “marriage was a duty which, on the whole, they and their heroines preferred to leave to others.”13 My subjects share with Bannet’s a sense that the risk of marriage was not commensurate with its reward. The discourse of love and romance that Vickery identifies as arising concurrently with the conduct books’ promotion of virtue did not guarantee or even prioritize emotional fulfillment in marriage.14 Rather, it created an additional source of pressure on women. Society asked them to bear increasing responsibility for marital success and familial happiness even as it weakened the support system that would have made that success and happiness possible. The term “companionate marriage,” used by Stone in 1977 and widely adopted since, usefully labels a marriage “based mainly on temperamental compatibility with the aim of lasting companionship,” but perhaps does not accurately describe the desires and aspirations of women writers who were suspicious of companionacy as an unreachable ideal or as an abstract concept too easily and problematically conflated with romantic love.15 Although I retain the term, I will argue that its rise as an ideal was less a comforting prospect than a stressful one, requiring women further to adapt their rhetorical strategies to conflicting versions of the role of the wife. The conflict for women over what it meant to be a wife was tied to a larger sense of crisis in eighteenth-century society about the value and purpose of marriage. Stone acknowledges this cultural ambivalence when he quotes from Astell’s Some Reflections on Marriage, observing broad skepticism about people’s motivations for marrying: “[By] the eighteenth century both interest and love were equally rejected, and in 1703 it was observed that ‘there is no great odds between his marrying for the love of money or for the love of beauty; the man does not act in accordance with reason in either case.’”16 Men, it could be surmised, had little legitimate motivation to marry if neither wealth nor attraction were seen as meeting the demands of reason. Randolph Trumbach, likewise, acknowledges complications: despite the prevalence of the companionate ideal, “between 1690 and 1750, parents sought and won the right to control the marriages of their minor children.”17 Furthermore, “in the generation after 1690 . . . daughters were the traditional means of making alliances” between landed families.18 If men saw little reason to marry and daughters were still subjected [4]

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to patriarchal pressures in marriage, then women such as those studied here would have had good reason to be anxious about matrimony. These women would use their writing to define the terms of their own marriages but also to participate in the culture’s evolving justification and redefinition of marriage. In spite of pervasive skepticism about motivation, marriage served to confirm a woman’s moral value while it met financial and familial needs. A proper courtship culminating in a parentally approved marriage buttressed by the appropriate legal settlements showed that the bride was everything she should be—ideally “handsome, clever, and rich” like Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse but also impeccably virtuous—and that neither she nor her family had anything to hide.19 The passage of Lord Hardwicke’s Act for the Better Prevention of Clandestine Marriages in 1753 turned these traditions into law by removing the legal protections afforded to women who were promised marriage or who married privately, outside of a church or system of licensure. Though nominally intended to regularize marriage and eliminate polygamy and desertion by requiring church ceremonies, banns, licenses, marriage registers, and parental permission for those under twenty-one, the act also had the effect of nullifying the private promises of marriage that the courts had formerly protected. Thus, as Bannet explains, “because the Marriage Act meant that women could be entrapped into ruinous sexual relationships by promises of marriage which no longer had contractual force, sex before marriage and sex outside marriage became important feminist issues.”20 More important for the present study is the way in which the public scrutiny of female sexuality gained, via the act, the force of law. As Bannet further describes, “The Marriage Act had problematized female ‘virtue’ and women’s sexual conduct by creating a disjunction between the morality or ‘troth’ of sexual unions and their legality.”21 Both before and after the act, women were judged and valued by their “virtue”; the act simply wrote into law a restriction on female conduct that had long been exercised, confirmed, and promoted by genteel society and didactic literature. The Marriage Act was only one response to a series of overlapping concerns about the definition and value of marriage. The institution of marriage was, according to many, in the throes of a crisis that encompassed “anxieties about female sexual aggression, financial independence, and fashion.”22 While Astell suggests somewhat sardonically that a man who married for money acted irrationally, others blame mercenary marriages on “the unreasonable demands made by fashionable women.”23 However, women could not overlook monetary concerns. Financial arrangements were, of course, part and parcel of marriage arrangements. At a time when landed families “formed the dominant social and political order of society,” the “strict settlement” dominated marriage negotiations in landed families.24 H. J. Habakkuk explains that the strict settlement [5]

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provided for the succession to the estate by creating two successive life tenancies followed by an estate tail on the unborn son of the marriage. Secondly, the settlement empowered the life tenants to charge the estate with a jointure, that is, an annual income for a wife if she survived her husband, and with provision for younger sons and daughters.25

In effect, this arrangement not only passed an estate from father to son but required that the son pass it, in turn, to his son. The system of primogeniture meant that younger sons as well as daughters could find themselves homeless when the eldest son inherited his life tenancy in the family estate. These settlements, often drawn up when the eldest son married, ensured that a wife would have a place to live during and after her husband’s life. A woman brought into her marriage her “portion”—the “provision” that Habakkuk identifies—and the expectation that she and her children would be provided for by the jointures and portions assigned in her marriage contract. Families of modest means or with many children to provide for relied on the marital economy of portions and jointures to meet current and future financial exigencies and to put roofs over their children’s heads. Austen’s Charlotte Lucas could thus credibly claim in 1813 that she would marry to secure “a comfortable home,” with little consideration for the marriage relationship.26 Despite these realities, women were often considered at fault for unhappy or failed marriages. They were blamed in hindsight, seen as fortune-hunters, as temptresses, or as giddily susceptible to their unregulated passions in courtship. According to Ingrid Tague, this sense of crisis prompted conduct writers’ increased attention to marriage and wifely roles and created a discourse of obedience and submission that both grew out of love and proved love’s sincerity: “Women were told that they had to love the man they married in order to obey him; they would be sure that they did indeed love him, conversely, by their willingness to obey him.”27 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the subjects of this study were unwilling to accept this bit of circular reasoning. Their writing reflects their view of love as a potentially dangerous passion and their concern that submission could—and did—all too easily become a license for tyranny. As Dorothy Osborne remarked in 1653, “Seriously I finde I want Courage to marry where I doe not like. If we should once come to disputes, I know who would have the worst on’t.”28 A woman who needed to marry needed to marry a friend: a rational companion with whom she could stand on equal footing and whose respect for her would protect her from becoming the object of ridicule, neglect, or brutality. She could use the limited autonomy created by the period of courtship to present herself as a deserving friend and to define her marriage as mutually advantageous.

[6]

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As writers, readers, and wives, then, these women were participating in a complex cultural movement that questioned the nature of the spousal relationship and the value of marital choice. Marriage was the most important practical decision affecting a woman’s life: the means of fulfilling an accepted social role and ensuring financial security. Meanwhile, social constraints on women’s behavior impeded choice and companionacy. When Stone cites Mary Astell’s description, written in 1694, of women’s ability to choose a marriage partner, he intends to demonstrate the period’s growing emphasis on choice in marriage. But Astell’s observation emphasizes the social restrictions that impeded that choice: “Modesty requiring that a Woman should not love before Marriage, but only make choice of one whom she can love hereafter: She who has none but innocent affections, being easily able to fix them where Duty requires.”29 Stone maintains that in arguing for choice, Astell is arguing for “a position already conceded, even to girls, by more advanced parents for at least half a century.”30 Her comment instead hints at the persistence of pressures on upper-class women facing marriage and suggests that marital choice and the rise of companionacy were not unalloyed advantages for women. The standards of duty and modesty required that women control and restrict their behavior in courtship even as the legally and religiously mandated presence of love in marriage required them to feel affection for and attachment to their husbands. The idea that a woman should participate in the choice of a marriage partner gained acceptance, but it arose as an ideal that could not wholly be realized because it was disconnected from the guidelines that delimited women’s interactions with men. Love, the conventional wisdom suggested, could develop just as well after marriage, and choice could be limited to veto power if it were offered at all. Not coincidentally, these interpretations of companionacy kept the marriage decision and thus the transfer of wealth across generations largely in the hands of parents. An appealing but potentially destabilizing ideal thereby became an additional source of pressure on women. As I will illustrate, having more latitude—perceived or actual—to choose a husband did not diminish the enormous impact that the choice would have on the rest of a woman’s life. If anything, the prospect of choice might increase that impact. The many social restrictions placed on unmarried women often undercut freedom of choice when it was offered to them by their families. Women were left in the position of choosing a husband, so to speak, blindly, to the extent that they could choose at all. Trumbach observes that “throughout the century aristocratic women moved freely in society before their marriage,” but the women studied here, including the aristocratic Montagu, neither expected nor received the same degree of freedom.31 In addition, any freedom of movement that young women possessed was etiolated [7]

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by limitations on their speech and behavior, as Trumbach acknowledges. He cites the example of Lady Harriet Spencer, whom he describes as “trained to hide anything that might seem like an immodest interest in sexuality.”32 That sort of training, taken to the extreme that was idealized in conduct literature, meant that a young woman expressed no strong emotion in general, much less any interest in a particular suitor. The perfect young woman was modest, unaffected, and timid, neither eager to marry nor opposed to “changing her condition” under the proper circumstances: namely, a parentally approved, legally contracted marriage. Because marriage was necessary, a tacit endorsement of marriage was necessary for young women as well. Overly strident objections to a particular marriage or to the prospect of marriage in general were thought to arise from an unspoken and improper attachment to another man. This assumption is most famously fictionalized in Richardson’s Clarissa, where the heroine’s parents believe she must be refusing Mr. Solmes because she is in love with someone else rather than because she finds him intolerable. Objections presumably motivated by such an attachment could label a young woman unmarriageable, casting doubt on her carefully guarded virtue and her suitability as a wife. In view of these contradictory values, exemplified by an illusory choice grudgingly offered, the idea of marital choice became less a blessing than an additional source of anxiety. The period of courtship provided an opportunity to act on that anxiety. The women studied here recognized that courtship represented a rare moment of feminine autonomy, a brief period during which a daughter, no matter how dutiful, might play some role in choosing her future. Although Bannet asserts that this understanding of courtship as a rare taste of power existed largely in fiction, my subjects’ manipulations of, in some cases, their eventual husbands, suggest that the fictional portrayals were rooted in real-life interactions.33 However, the pressures of filial and social duty often eclipsed those moments of freedom. Young women were taught to please and to trust their families above themselves. As Sarah Scott’s character Emilia Leonard explains in The Test of Filial Duty (1772), “It is very true that I do suffer extremely, when I give pain to those who are rendered sensible of it only by their partiality to me; to grieve those who wish to please me, seems an ungrateful and unnatural return.”34 Women thus trained acquiesced in the choices made for them rather than choosing for themselves. Scott and my other subjects suggest that an arranged marriage was likely to be the main concrete expedient of the abstract value labeled “filial duty.” In turn, they often conflate arranged marriage with mercenary marriage, which they uniformly reject as immoral. Although Elizabeth Montagu frankly acknowledged in 1740 that for her, “living in a cottage on love is the worst diet and the worst habitation one can find out,” these female intellectuals were more likely to see economically motivated marriages as a main cause of marital misery.35 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, [8]

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for example, repeatedly acknowledged “the mistake of interested Matches, which are gennerally unfortunate.”36 Such “interested Matches,” whether arranged or chosen, were at odds with the moral superiority that Montagu and her contemporaries claimed for themselves. These women’s writing shows their recognition that they risk their financial security when they hold out for a freely chosen companionate marriage, but they hold out all the same. They consider the risk to be worth the reward, understanding companionacy as a necessary, if elusive, corrective to the imbalance of power that marriage would create. They promote an ideal of marriage based on similarity of character, suggesting that friendship is more reasonable, honest, and durable than romantic love. None of them rejects outright the traditional expectation of wifely obedience. Instead, they variously justify or rationalize it, using the prospect of a mutually respectful marriage relationship to recast the idea of obedience as a mutual obligation or as a natural consequence of friendship. This reasoning minimizes the importance of romantic love, whereas conduct books emphasized the presence of love in marriage as a means of both cementing and confirming obedience. These women viewed love as a dangerous threat to their already limited autonomy. In their writing, passionate love represents a loss of control and judgment, qualities of which women were often deprived and qualities that they believed a companionate marriage should enable, protect, and preserve. A woman’s right to select her husband is a prerequisite for a relationship in which a wife maintains some selfdetermination. Defining ideal marriage as requiring friendship and respect enables these women to argue, in effect, for more egalitarian marital relationships, without overtly calling for a change in the wife’s traditional role. At the same time, it allows them to present themselves as intelligent and rational potential partners, deserving of a companionate relationship. The advancement of this ideal of companionacy— marriage understood as a form of friendship—gave women a means of promoting gender equality in marriage at a time when they considered marriage “serious and hazardous” but socially and economically necessary.37 Defining the ideal marriage as a relationship of friendship also meant redefining friendship itself. The traditional understanding of that relationship, rooted in classical antiquity and rearticulated through the Renaissance, specified that friendship was a relationship between men. For the ancients and for the philosophers of the Renaissance, social equality was a prerequisite for friendship and social equality between the sexes was impossible. Cicero’s Laelius de Amicitia (129 BC) describes friendship in much the same terms that Osborne would use centuries later: “For friendship is nothing else than an accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection.” Cicero further specifies that virtue is the “parent [9]

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and preserver” of friendship.38 However, all of his examples of friends, whether ideal or flawed, are male, with proofs and downfalls of friendship drawn from men’s lives in politics or on the battlefield.39 Those who say that “helpless women, more than men, seek [friendship’s] shelter” misunderstand the relationship as a form of cowardice rather than as a proof of virtue, Cicero says.40 Women could not achieve the rigorous moral character required of a friend, nor did they participate in the public life that was the test of friendship. Michel de Montaigne would make a similar argument in On Friendship (1580): “willing freedom” is friendship’s necessary prerequisite and “congruity and affinity” its hallmark.41 These qualities are the same ones that Haywood, for example, would emphasize in arguing for a woman’s right to refuse an unwanted suitor.42 Montaigne, however, specifies that marriage is not a type of friendship and that physical relationships between men and women preclude friendships between them: As for marriage, apart from being a bargain where only the entrance is free . . . it is a bargain struck for other purposes; within it you soon have to unsnarl hundreds of extraneous tangled ends, which are enough to break the thread of a living passion and to trouble its course, whereas in friendship there is no traffic or commerce but with itself. In addition, women are in truth not normally capable of responding to such familiarity and mutual confidence as sustain that holy bond of friendship, nor do their souls seem firm enough to withstand the clasp of a knot so lasting and so tightly drawn . . . there is no example yet of women attaining to it and by the common agreement of the Ancient schools of philosophy she is excluded from it.43

Like Cicero, Montaigne sees friendship as a union of kindred souls in which boundaries do not exist and favors are not tallied. He points out that some authorities outlaw exchanges of gifts between spouses “so as to honour marriage with some imagined resemblance to that holy bond [of friendship], wishing to infer by it that everything must belong to them both, so that there is nothing to divide or to split up between them.”44 Both the ancient philosophers, by “common agreement,” and Montaigne, by explicit proscription, excluded women from friendship. But Montaigne’s reference to a “holy bond” suggests the logic by which my subjects extended the definition of friendship to include their relationships to their husbands. Marriage, also a “holy bond” understood to unite two as one, would become in these women’s definition a friendship: freely chosen, based in reason and commonality rather than passion, and fundamentally egalitarian. Despite the leveling emphasis of this model, the economic necessity of marriage as well as the class consciousness of the period placed limits on these women’s marital [ 10 ]

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activism. As products of (or, in Haywood’s case, pretenders to) the upper classes, they do not entirely reject upper-class comforts. They do, however, present themselves as willing to live with only a minimum of those comforts: Montagu, for example, could tell her future husband in 1712 that she would bring only “a Nightgown and petticoat” to their marriage, then criticize “disporportionate [sic] matches” such as that between the Duchess of Manchester and Edward Hussey in 1735—and use both assertions as confirmation of her moral superiority with no contradiction implied.45 Marrying within the bounds of one’s class is perhaps the one aspect of traditional marriage that these marital revisionists uniformly retain and accept. However, they conceive of class as inhering in a person or a family rather than in a lifestyle. They distance themselves from the amoral excess associated with marital fortune-hunting while demonstrating that they still value their places in society. In a period that valorized a modest, tranquil, retired life even as it retained a high degree of class consciousness, Montagu and her contemporaries found a context in which to cast their sacrifices, however modest, as morally superior and even fashionable.46 Of course, criticism of an acquisitive society was a common theme for moralists in a period that was both increasingly consumerist and increasingly worried about its consumerist tendencies. William Hogarth’s famous series of paintings Marriage A-la-Mode (1743–1745) depicts the disastrous consequences when a marriage contract becomes a vehicle for conspicuous consumption. But Hogarth villainizes multiple genders, generations, and classes: parents, husbands, wives, and even servants are all culpable in the young couple’s moral and physical ruin. In contrast, the women studied here participate in the moralizing rejection of materialism with specific ends in mind. When they reject what they call “the world” as amorally materialistic, they do so as a way to gain power over the constant sense of surveillance that characterized their lives. Although held to rigorous standards, which they typically endorse, of emotion and thought as well as behavior, the women in this study share a sense that they have something to prove. They strive to demonstrate that they are morally excellent enough to deserve the egalitarian relationships that they desire. In every case, a sense of moral superiority is central to the identity that each woman creates through her writing. Moral superiority was necessary because, for an eighteenth-century woman, the job of safeguarding one’s reputation was never done. Conduct books from the period illustrate a set of behavioral standards that are stringent but abstract, by turns impractically specific and frustratingly broad. Although urged to live rigorously private lives, women were often reminded that they were the public faces of their families. This paradoxical relationship to society was a source of pressure, but for these writers it also created a sense of audience. In order to mediate between the prospect of censure and the [ 11 ]

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desire to communicate, they often elide or ignore their own complicated backgrounds in favor of generalized policy statements about what constitutes a good and suitable marriage. Of course, these women differ in their rhetorical stances and emphases, varying from the market-driven—but still activist—stance of a professional writer such as Eliza Haywood, through the feminist moralizing of a Hester Chapone or Sarah Scott, to the more personalized philosophical pronouncements of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Dorothy Osborne, or Mary Delany. In each case they wrote, even when nominally addressing only a single recipient, with a sense that posterity might be reading. Given that concern for posterity, it is no accident that much of eighteenthcentury women’s writing about marriage, whether factual, fictional, or a mixture of both, takes the form of letters. Although my subjects’ emphases differed along with their audiences and time periods, all of the women studied here relied in various ways on the personalized and yet deliberately constructed genre of the personal letter. A major constituent of the “swarm of print forms” proliferating in the eighteenth century, the letter maintained a paradoxical and flexible status that moved between the public and the private.47 Clare Brant explains these mobile boundaries: In the context of letter-writing, “personal” is useful in that it recognises the significance of letters to individuals and to relationships. It is preferable to “private,” a term that is simply inaccurate for many eighteenth-century familiar letters, which were composed in company, voluntarily circulated beyond the addressee, and frequently found their way into print.48

Yet for several reasons, letters were viewed as sufficiently private to serve as an appropriate vehicle for women’s writing. Perry suggests that “literate women wrote letters even in the days when they put pen to paper for no other reason.”49 Correspondence was a necessary outlet for women who, at this time, “led rather cloistered lives.”50 It was also considered private enough to be a safe outlet for genteel women who expected and were expected by their society to remain “cloistered.” Moreover, women’s writing style, conceived as simple, direct, and emotional, was synonymous with the ideal letter-writing style.51 Women’s “highly developed art of pleasing” was considered ideal for a genre in which “it is possible to tailor a self on paper to suit the expectations and desires of the audience.”52 Letter writing remained largely exempt from the general social condemnation of women’s writing: professional women writers were vulnerable to bad publicity in a way that avid female correspondents were not, even if the private correspondents were as prolific as the professionals.53 And the combination of artifice and artlessness that was understood as characteristic of the personal letter made fictional epistles ideal vehicles for women, such as Haywood and Scott, who wrote professionally. [ 12 ]

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It is well known that novels and periodicals were often read aloud in the eighteenth century; Bannet suggests that, likewise, a letter was expected eventually to be read aloud and constituted a document “conceived as issuing from speech and as returning to speech at the point of oral delivery.”54 The period’s definition of privacy, in which “family” included the retinue of servants and a “friend” might be anyone with a vested interest in one’s well-being, attenuates a letter’s private nature still further. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s letters were read not just by their addressees but among her acquaintances, who were presumably eager for news of her adventures; and Samuel Richardson, who corresponded with Hester Chapone, was known for circulating his correspondences.55 Such informal circulation of letters sometimes led to their unauthorized publication, such as Edmund Curll’s printing of Alexander Pope’s letters in 1726.56 Putatively private letters written for publication and the proliferation of letter-writing manuals in the period further suggest a general awareness of the letter’s flexible status as well as its social influence. Letter-manuals were, according to Bannet, “among the most frequently reprinted books on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the long eighteenth century.”57 If epistolary skill was worthy of individual study, it must have been a public marker of talent, intelligence, and good manners. Letters also had a more general cultural importance: Dena Goodman calls the letter “the dominant form of writing in the eighteenth century” and again explains that it bridged the categories of private and public that we now take for granted as separate.58 Brant explains that the prevalence of letters enabled people to become “letter-literate,” that is, “able to follow a special kind of narrative,” through repeated exposure to epistolary conventions repeated in individuals’ letters, periodicals, and novels.59 The epistolary structure of so many early novels, as well as the “commercial viability” of published correspondences identified by Patricia Meyer Spacks, attests once more to the letter’s public nature and its ubiquity as a genre.60 Of course, for some of the women studied here (for example, Montagu, who admired the published letters of Mme. de Sévigné), the publicity of a published correspondence existed in their lifetimes mainly as unfulfilled potential.61 Letters could thus be considered public or private or could, paradoxically, sustain both interpretations. Read as ostensibly private documents, they protected women’s reputations by allowing them to communicate otherwise repressed emotions without transgressing their roles.62 Read as potentially public literary productions, they gave women access to power. In a letter a woman could not only create a specific version of herself but also dictate the terms of her relationship with her correspondent. This power allowed Dorothy Osborne to construct hypothetically her future marriage to Sir William Temple. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu used it to present herself as a moral exemplar, first to her eventual husband, Edward Wortley Montagu, [ 13 ]

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and then to a range of other correspondents. Hester Chapone applied the same power to her epistolary friendship with Samuel Richardson, arguing for marital choice while flattering Richardson by addressing him as a wise mentor. Mary Delany cast herself as an authority on the consequences of compulsory marriage by describing her first marriage as both standard operating procedure and worst-case scenario. Although methods and emphases vary, of course, among writers, audiences, and genres, the individual power of a personal letter may be said to multiply when a letter is fictionalized. Readers who were already experienced interpreters of letters could transfer their expectations of veracity and intimacy onto published, fictionalized correspondences. Sarah Scott and Eliza Haywood thus move the power of the letter into the public realm, using fictional letters to criticize women’s powerlessness in society by taking advantage of letters’ understood affective appeal, creating versions of correspondents for specific ideological reasons. In each case, the eighteenth century’s paradoxical conception of the personal letter as both confidential and literary allowed the writer simultaneously to fulfill and to transcend her socially dictated role. Each chapter in this book examines a different aspect of the complex issues surrounding eighteenth-century marriage. I do not intend to write what Vickery calls “a history of Everywoman” nor to account for every possible permutation of a matter that is both complicated (thus resistant to generalization) and personal (thus resistant to analysis).63 I hope instead to illustrate, through close reading of texts, both the pressures that women felt and the ways in which they overcame those pressures through their rhetoric, using their writing to create power, construct a self, and theorize necessary changes in the nature of marriage. Writing over more than a century and across several genres, these women express specific concerns but also explore similar themes: the painful vulnerability created by a restrictive marriage system, the confining narrowness of women’s social roles, and the potential for friendship-based companionacy to alleviate those shortcomings. Chapter 1 focuses on Dorothy Osborne (1627–1695). Osborne’s experiences and her writing reflect the characteristic issues that genteel women faced over at least a century as they attempted to define both themselves and their marriages. With limited individual power to affect change, Osborne uses her letters as a textual alternative by which to define her values and sketch her expectations for the future. In those letters, she combines a conservative self-image—dutiful, loyal, religious, and obedient—with a progressive vision of marriage that emphasizes friendship and equality between the partners. She expresses her anxiety about an affectionless marriage and the likelihood that it would remove what little autonomy she had. Living with a family that insisted on its right to “tutor & governe” her health and her privacy as well as her courtships, she retains her loyalty to her family while practicing a passive resistance to unwanted [ 14 ]

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marriage by capitalizing on that loyalty.64 Through a clandestine correspondence with Sir William Temple, her eventual husband, she creates a sense of intimacy that allows her simultaneously to theorize about her ideals and to put those ideals into practice, building a relationship even when they were not sure their marriage would ever take place. The correspondence thus gives Osborne a sense of power that, despite existing only on paper, enables her to define her own desires rather than simply accepting the duties dictated to her by family and friends. A century later, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) would also use correspondence to create power. Chapter 2 examines Montagu’s evolving self-image as expressed in private and public writing. Like her contemporaries, she viewed marriage as a risky necessity. To mitigate the risk, she constructs a series of identities through which she can control the direction of her life: the demure but desirable maiden who dared to elope with Edward Wortley Montagu; the capable and highly independent wife; the socially critical matron. At each stage she uses her chosen identity to achieve the lifestyle she desires, a practice that enabled her to escape an unwanted marriage in her twenties, follow a would-be lover overseas at fifty, and, in her sixties, criticize the necessity of her granddaughter’s marrying. The roles and goals differ but are united by Montagu’s self-fashioning as a moral arbiter rather than a moral exemplar. She pays lip service to conventionality and ignores the unconventionality of her own life as a means of encouraging her reader to accept the selves that she creates. Hester Mulso Chapone (1727–1801) makes similar use of selective argumentation and demure tone in her correspondence with Samuel Richardson, later published as Letters on Filial Obedience (1750–1751), and a follow-up essay, A Matrimonial Creed (1751). Chapter 3 examines the young Hester Mulso’s rhetorical maneuvering in these two documents. In a particularly vulnerable position as a young single woman writing to a prominent author who was known for circulating his correspondence, she creates a filial relationship with Richardson and uses that relationship to cajole and flatter him into accepting her ideas about marital equality and marital choice. Styling herself as a demure, naïve, morally upright young lady—a real-life Clarissa Harlowe—Chapone alters the tone of her argument but never its substance, using philosophical and religious authorities such as John Locke and the Book of Common Prayer to establish female inferiority as a cultural construct that must change and that can be changed without compromising feminine morality. Apparently criticized for the Letters despite her rhetorical efforts, she responded with A Matrimonial Creed. This later document, ostensibly a reconsideration of the Letters, actually rehearses conventional ideas about marital roles, allowing Chapone to reaffirm her traditional views and thus her marriageability. Chapter 4 focuses on the autobiography and correspondence of Mary Granville (Pendarves) Delany (1700–1788), tracing the evolution of her opinions about [ 15 ]

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marriage from her first forced marriage at age seventeen to Alexander Pendarves through her nineteen-year widowhood and eventual second marriage, by choice, to Patrick Delany. Like Montagu, Delany is skeptical about the value of marriage for young women, an assessment colored by her own early experience as a wife. She condemns financially motivated marriages, arguing that companionacy can never succeed when marriage is an economic necessity. Still, she promotes companionacy based on similarity of character and on friendship, a relationship that she, like Osborne, considered more honest than love and certainly more moral than marrying for money. Delany draws on the Bible to support her assertions about companionacy, making progressive arguments based on conservative authorities. In the seventeenth century, the clergy had begun to stress the need for companionship in marriage according to the Biblical description of a wife as “help meet,” an emphasis evident in the marriage ceremony outlined in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.65 Secular sources similarly praise “perfect friendship” and “respect” between husbands and wives. Romantic love, physical attraction, or financial worth were regarded as unsuitable bases for a lifelong commitment. Delany advances similar opinions in her writing and argues that friendship, as a more rational and reliable relationship than love, is the best basis for marriage. She suggests that the authorities that she cites share her view, so that the key to happiness in marriage lies in a closer attention to moral standards. Thus, Delany can argue for a change in marital roles without suggesting that women should behave unconventionally. Chapter 5 shifts the focus of the study from personal writing to fiction. In her last novel, The Test of Filial Duty (1769), Sarah Scott (1721–1795) differs from the other writers studied here in that she accepts the inevitability of marriage—an acceptance that Montagu and Delany, for example, did not share. Rather than redefining marriage, Scott condemns the period’s obsession with “filial duty,” a broad term indicating a young woman’s willingness to allow her family to dictate not only her choices, but also her emotions. Using the epistolary structure of her novel to demonstrate its heroines’ need for an emotional outlet, Scott suggests that strict adherence to filial duty destroys marital choice and, more important, freedom of expression. The young women subjected to duty’s strict standards live within a figurative panopticon, taught to condemn themselves for any strong feelings and isolate themselves until they can regain control. Scott shows that the dominance of filial duty in the period threatens women’s participation in the cultural movement toward individual subjectivity, a participation that she argues is necessary. Eliza Haywood (1693?–1756), like Scott, endorses marriage as necessary for women, thereby tacitly endorsing the social strictures that make it necessary. Chapter 6 considers the limits of that endorsement and the critique that accompanies it. [ 16 ]

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The four works studied here—The Female Spectator (1744–1746), The Wife (1756), The Husband (1756), and The Young Lady (1756)—condemn women’s relationship to society: women must rely for support on the same moral codes that restrict their agency. Women, Haywood’s interpolated letters and stories suggest, can expect only survival, not happiness, even from a lifetime spent on their best behavior. Expedients such as women’s education and wives’ careful manipulation of their husbands can improve the balance of power in some measure, but ultimately happiness lies in a companionate marriage based on friendship. Such marriages will become widespread only if women are educated and if parents and husbands begin to consider women’s interests as equal to their own. Haywood criticizes her society for placing too much emphasis on the importance of reputation at the expense of a woman’s intellectual development and individual happiness. Doing so through a series of authorial personae allows Haywood—a businesswoman who lived with a man out of wedlock and who may have had illegitimate children—indirectly to demonstrate reputation’s elusiveness. From outside the class of which she wrote, Haywood establishes herself as a moral authority, repurposing the erotically charged tales characteristic of her earlier amatory fiction for didactic ends. All these women communicate a sense that marriage, though socially and economically necessary, is hazardous. Marriage can be hazardous for the researcher as well: its enduring importance makes the study of it both attractive and dangerous. The temptation to draw sweeping conclusions from limited evidence is enormous. My goal, then, is not to advance a single, straightforward theory about the transition to companionate marriage, but rather to emphasize the complexities and conflicts inherent in the choice of a husband and the construction of the marital relationship. Each of the women studied here gives voice to two interrelated truths: for upper-class women of the eighteenth century, marriage was virtually compulsory; and, as with any action taken by compulsion, marriage was a source of apprehension. Therefore, although none of the women I consider could afford, literally or figuratively, to dismiss marriage, all of them approach the subject skeptically. These women were, in various ways, in the public eye. They were, or in Haywood’s case pretended to be, genteel. They wrote prodigiously and, with the arguable exceptions of Osborne and Delany, expected their writings to have some public exposure. Their varied experiences relating to marriage serve in themselves to illustrate the seriousness of women’s concerns about matrimony. What follows is an examination of how these highly literate and rhetorically skilled women made room for their criticisms of marriage and made, or imaginatively created, the marriages they wanted.

[ 17 ]

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1 INTIMACY, IDENTITY, AND MARITAL CHOICE The Osborne-Temple Correspondence

D

O R O T H Y O S B O R N E (1627–1695) lived decades before the other women studied here, but her writing defines the issues of power, equality, and intimacy that genteel women faced throughout the Restoration and eighteenth century in constructing identity and creating companionate marriages. Her letters to Sir William Temple (1628–1699)—whom Jonathan Swift served as secretary near the end of Temple’s life—demonstrate her self-presentation as an intelligent wife: rational and independent, loyal and discreet, and a friend who lived on equal terms with her husband. Osborne and Temple are well known through her letters as an exemplary upper-class love match of the 1650s. But the letters also record Osborne’s efforts to create an egalitarian marriage with Temple. At a time when religious and secular authorities advised women to be silent, dutiful, and obliging, Osborne used those conventionally feminine qualities to her advantage in dealing with her family while describing her own marital ideal in her letters. Osborne creates a vision of herself and of marriage that is radical but deliberately limited. She applies her rhetorical skill in personal letters—a genre appropriate for women, but one seen as a symbol of privacy which nevertheless “retained its actual historical function as a form of public communication and exchange.”1 The letters create a textual alternative to the courtship system that deprived her of agency and choice, allowing Osborne to claim power—albeit at times only hypothetically—despite her potentially powerless position. In these letters, Osborne chooses the elements of traditional marriage that she wants to retain and rhetorically reinvents those she sees as irrational, limiting, or damaging. Her conventional values of duty, obedience, and devotion to family become sources of the moral rectitude and personal power that protect her individuality. Alongside these ideals she promotes progressive ideas [ 19 ]

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of moderation, friendship, and equality in marriage. The hard-won privacy of her clandestine correspondence with Temple allows her not only to theorize these ideals but also to put her theories into practice. Whereas a century later, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu would capitalize on the transgressive frisson of a secret correspondence, Osborne uses the intimacy of such exchanges to build an egalitarian relationship with Temple before their marriage in a way that a conventional courtship might not have allowed. She could thereby remove, at least imaginatively, the anxiety attendant upon marriage and replace it with a sense of individuality and mutuality. Osborne “has become famous in the history of English literature as an early and brilliant exponent of the epistolary art” but she would never have expected her letters to be published.2 She was concerned about what Temple would do with them and urged him to leave them in “safe hands” if he could not keep them with him.3 Like Mary Delany, Osborne expected her correspondence with her future husband to remain private; however, her connection to Temple drew scholars to her writing. Whereas Delany’s letters were published only in a single, heavily expurgated edition by her great-niece and are not widely studied today, Osborne’s correspondence has remained in print since the nineteenth century. The textual history, as related by the letters’ most recent editor, Kenneth Parker, is fairly straightforward although Osborne’s reputation has evolved. The letters passed down through the Temple family and heavily edited extracts began to be published in the 1800s, incorporated into biographies and commentaries on Sir William Temple. Although the family kept the original letters closely guarded, E. A. (later Sir Edward) Parry compiled an edition based on transcripts, which was published by Griffith, Farren, and Okeden in 1888 to “instantaneous” success.4 All but seven of the letters were then sold to the British Library in 1891. A new edition by Professor G. C. Moore Smith appeared in 1928, incorporating extracts from the diary of Henry Osborne, Dorothy’s brother, as a means of corroborating dates and details. While Parry modernized spellings, Moore Smith reverted to the original texts. Both Parry and Moore Smith described Osborne with patronizing reverence as a Victorian lady avant la lettre in contrast to her contemporary Margaret Cavendish; as Carrie Hintz notes, “Being the darling of Victorian and Edwardian critics and reviewers has not served Osborne well, trapping her in a dichotomy that opposes the brilliant and outré Cavendish and the decorous Osborne.”5 Nevertheless, the letters have acquired a value independent of Temple’s reputation and have been reexamined by feminist critics and historians. Kenneth Parker has edited two editions of Osborne’s letters, one in 1987 (Penguin Classics) and one in 2002 (Ashgate), basing his editions on the original manuscripts with the exception of the seven letters, now lost, not held in the British Library. Via her correspondence, Osborne has become known as a literary talent, a [ 20 ]

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serious social and political commentator, and an exponent of the rise of companionacy. Hintz’s study focuses on Osborne’s epistolary skills and her role as “one who used the letter form to exert control over her own life in the face of a wide variety of constraints and difficulties.”6 I will demonstrate that her correspondence was a crucial factor in the eventual success of her marriage, and that her letters represent a preliminary benchmark in the redefinition of marriage that would continue through the eighteenth century. They demonstrate the value of the personal letter for constructing feminine identity, redefining the role of the wife, and testing an egalitarian marital relationship. Osborne and Temple both came from prominent political families, hers Royalist, his Parliamentarian. They met on the Isle of Wight in 1648. Osborne and her brother were on their way to Guernsey where their father, Sir Peter Osborne, was lieutenant governor.7 In an early example of her independent-mindedness, Osborne apparently impressed Temple by taking the blame when her brother carved a Biblical verse into a window in protest of Charles I’s imprisonment. Temple subsequently joined the Osbornes on their trip to Guernsey. “In this Journey begun a [sic] amour between Sir William Temple and Mrs. Osborne, of which the accidents for seven years might make a History, & the letters that pass’d between them a Volume,” says Temple’s sister and biographer Martha, Lady Giffard.8 Stymied by parental objections to their marriage on both sides, the couple persevered through years of clandestine correspondence, infrequent visits, and frustrated hopes before their families reluctantly acceded and they were married in 1654. Osborne’s experience suggests that her successful relationship with Temple survived despite, not because of, her family’s and society’s ideal of good behavior in courtship. Following the conventions of feminine reticence and silence would have brought her a lucrative but potentially affectionless marriage—a prospect that Osborne dreaded. Osborne’s letters make clear that she disliked and feared the prospect of a mercenary match: “Tis much Easier sure to get a good fortune then a good Husband,” she wrote.9 But the relationship that she considered ideal is more difficult to define. Readers of Osborne’s letters have struggled to reconcile the apparent contradictions in her expressed views. Osborne says that love is “a terrible word,” yet she acknowledges that her affection for Temple is “greater then is allowable for things of this world.”10 When she articulated her vision for her marriage, she insisted on choice and companionacy, but she refused to marry without the consent of her family and their participation in the negotiations. The witty and teasing tone that she often employs in her letters makes these contradictions still more difficult to navigate. Nevertheless, some patterns emerge. Osborne uses the epistolary genre to test and develop an identity for herself as well as for her reader. As Kenneth Parker notes, the letters are “discourses [ 21 ]

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concerning philosophies—arguments not only with [Temple] but especially with herself.”11 Being removed from Temple’s daily presence was difficult, but it allowed Osborne the time and space to define her understanding of, and priorities for, her eventual marriage. The contradictions in her views reflect her desire to demonstrate her intelligence, morality, and powers of reasoning. Like any good rhetorician, she chooses the strongest available ideas to support each aspect of her argument. Even her prose style is chosen with practicality in mind: she states early on that letters should not be “studdyed, as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a Charme.”12 In her letters, she works out the implications of the ideas that she sees as practical but that the rest of the world, according to her, saw as misguided. The marriage negotiation that Osborne carried out in the letters required that she display confidence in Temple’s attraction to her. Osborne clearly felt secure in the affections of her eventual husband—so secure, in fact, that on two occasions in the letters she proposes marriage to him.13 However, she felt less secure about the likelihood of the marriage itself, remaining unsure through most of the correspondence about whether they would ever be able to marry. Osborne dreaded the prospect of being forced into an unwanted marriage. In her letters, she insists that successful companionacy always begins with choice. Surrounded by familially chosen suitors, she suggests (as Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectator would almost a century later) that unhappy arranged marriages are endemic to her social sphere: “I can give noe reason why (Almost,) all are denyed the sattisfaction of disposeing themselves to theire owne desyr’s,” she tells Temple in May 1653, “but that it is a happinesse too great for this world, and might indanger on’s forgetting the next.”14 A freely chosen marriage, in other words, would give a person happiness comparable to that of ascending to heaven. Choice is the factor that makes a happy marriage possible; denying that choice would remove all possibility of a satisfying relationship. Thus she remains devoted to the heavenly prospect of marriage to Temple even when it seems least likely, and calls him “Cruell” when he apparently offered in 1653 to release her from their engagement, saying “If I could purchase the Empire of the world at that rate I should think it much too deare.”15 Despite an overt distrust of romantic passion, she passionately defends not only her particular relationship with Temple but also marital choice in general. A letter from 1654 both implies the moral superiority of choice and conflates, as my subjects often do, arranged and prudential marriage: “I would not have the worlde beleeve I marryed out of Interest and to please my friends, I had much rather they should know I chose the Person, and took his fortune because twas necessary and that I preffer a competency with one I esteem infinitly before a Vaste Estate in Other hands.” 16 Though she frequently expresses a desire to keep her court[ 22 ]

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ship with Temple out of the public eye, here she suggests that as a matter of policy she wishes to be known as someone who chose her spouse for herself. Here as in many cases, then, Osborne moves fluidly between policy statements about marriage and descriptions of her then-hypothetical union with Temple. Her generalizations about marriage categorically deny that an affectionless arranged union could succeed, while her visions of her married life emphasize the happiness possible in the ideal marriage that she constructs. The cumulative effect reinforces an assertion that Osborne also makes more explicitly: that Temple is the only man with whom she could be happy in marriage and thereby fulfill her ideal of what a wife should be. One man, Sir Justinian Isham, whom she jocularly calls “the Emperour,” courted her on more than one occasion. She concludes to Temple that Isham “would have bin to mee rather a Jaylor than a husband, and tis as true that (though for my own sake I think I should not make an ill wife to any body) I can not bee a good one to any, but one.” In the same letter she asserts that although she and Temple may never be able to marry, “I dare almost promise you shall never receive the displeasure of seeing mee anothers.”17 She overcomes the uncertainty of their courtship by a process of elimination: having defined her expectations of a good marriage and rejected all the compromises she is unwilling to make, she looks to Temple as, so to speak, the only man left standing. Their relationship is both a personal dream and a philosophical ideal for whose realization she continues to hope. Like her contemporaries studied here, she prefigures the feminist commonplace that unites the personal with the political, recognizing that the social forces affecting her marriage are particular instances of a general trend. And although Osborne seems never to have imagined seeing her letters published, the literary references and elements that she incorporates carry the letters, like the marriage debate itself, beyond the personal and into the public realm.18 Osborne’s comments about marriage in general and about her suitors in particular suggest that for her, a marriage of mutual affection is a matter of common sense. Osborne argues that mutual attachment is logically necessary to make a marriage successful: Let them truste to it that think good, for my Parte I am cleerly of opinion (and shall dye int) that as the more one sees, and know’s, a person that one likes, one has still the more kindenesse for them, soe on the other side one is but the more weary of and the more averse to an unpleasant humor for haveing it perpetually by one, and though I easily beleeve that to marry one for whome we have already some affection, will infinitely Encrease that kindenesse yet I shall never bee perswaded that Marriage has a Charme to raise love out of nothing, much lesse out of dislike.19 [ 23 ]

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Her opinion reverses the commonplace understanding that love was the result of, not the impetus toward, marriage. In one letter, she displays skepticism at the prospect of love developing after marriage,20 describing her objection to several suitors presented by family members: “It was nothing that I expected made me refuse these, but something that I feared, and seriously I finde I want Courage to marry where I doe not like. If we should once come to disputes, I know who would have the worst on’t.”21 For women, Osborne suggests, affection is a necessary corrective to the imbalance of power that marriage creates: in a disagreement, the wife—Biblically bound to be subordinate to her husband and sworn at marriage to obey him—is bound to be the loser. A mutual attraction or attachment offsets that imbalance by accruing power to the wife: a husband would be more likely to treat as an equal a wife for whom he feels affection. Putting this idea into practice, Osborne makes the language of affection the “carefully exploited tool” that Ingrid Tague describes.22 In this case, Osborne overturns the expectation, commonly expressed in the period’s conduct books, that love will cement wifely obedience and thus shore up patriarchal power. She instead suggests that love will make a marriage more egalitarian. Rather than using expressions of love as indices of conventional moral correctness, Osborne argues that mutual love will create the mutual vulnerability that cements interdependence. Conventional wisdom in Osborne’s time suggested that the familiarity and intimacy of married life would breed affection in relative strangers; Osborne calls the idea “a doctrine that is often preached.”23 Not only wealth and beauty but also mutual attraction were considered unreliable bases for a good marriage. Caleb Grantham argues in The Godly Man’s Choice (1644), for example, that the source of marital love is not only, or chiefly, the commendable parts and endowments that are in each of you, but the neer relation into which you are now entred. . . . You must therefore love her (as before you are taught) because God hath made her your wife; And you must so love him, because God hath made him your husband.24

In other words, being married creates the love that nourishes the marriage. Love becomes a duty owed to one’s spouse rather than an emotion. Osborne holds instead that in an arranged marriage, a husband and wife will never move beyond first impressions, positive or negative. Getting to know one another after marriage merely cements those impressions. Because only a positive first impression would provide a basis for a successful marriage, an arranged marriage with no affection between the partners could not be successful. Osborne argues that this kind of marriage would insult the husband and emotionally damage the wife: [ 24 ]

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Sure the whole worlde could never perswade mee (unlesse a Parent comanded it) to marry one that I had noe Esteem for, and . . . I should never bee brought to doe them the injury as to give them a wife whose affections they could never hope for, besydes that I must sacrifice my self int and live a walking missery till the only hope that would then be left mee, were perfected.25

Osborne specifies that not merely “Esteem” but affection is required of a successful marriage. Without affection or esteem, both partners would sacrifice any hope of satisfaction in their married life. Despite Osborne’s recurrent use in her letters of the euphemism “dispose of myself ” to mean “marry,” Osborne refuses to throw herself away by accepting a proposal from someone to whom she feels no attachment. Those repeated references to self-disposal hint at a prospective autonomy. Laura Gowing notes that the conventional language of self-surrender could become a source of power for women, arguing that “if women’s identity in early modern society was constituted in part by the sense of ‘being given away,’ the time when they [women] answered marriage proposals and ‘gave themselves away’ could constitute a special moment of self-definition and autonomy.”26 Osborne seizes the independence created by courtship and uses it to ensure that Temple sees her as an individual, not merely as a prospective bride. She stipulates mutual attraction such as that which she and Temple feel as a requirement for successful marriage, and in doing so, implies her own value in contrast to the value of a generic or abstract dutiful wife. Although she would do her duty “for [her] own sake” and “should not make an ill wife to any body,” she encourages Temple to see her as capable, when matched with the right person, of more than the minimum of affection and obedience that duty prescribes. However, she recognizes that the excitement of a new romance, or the enjoyment of a newlywed relationship, does not last forever.27 She emphasizes to Temple that she is not seeking everlasting passion: And to remove the Opinion you have of my Nicenesse or being hard to please, let mee assure you, I am soe farr from desyreing my husband should bee fond of mee at threescore, that I would not have him soe at all, ’tis true I should bee glad to have him always’s kinde, and know noe reason why hee should bee wearier of being my Master than hee was of being my Servant.28

According to Millamant in William Congreve’s The Way of the World, a woman must “dwindle” from the role of a belle into that of a wife, an observation that Sarah Scott would echo more than a century later.29 Osborne suggests the effect of the same transition on a man, arguing that marriage should be easier than courtship. Instead [ 25 ]

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of diminishing the partners, it should relieve them of the pressures of pursuing and being pursued, pressures that Osborne and Temple felt acutely.30 Marriage, she argues, should begin with affection and continue with kindness, so that it becomes a relationship of ease and comfort rather than one of anxiety. Although Osborne emphasizes the effect of this change on a man, a positive transition was equally important for women, for whom the decision to marry was itself such a source of concern. Marriage was an emotional risk, yet inevitable in most cases. In the liminal state of courtship, a woman might enjoy a brief moment of agency, but her society nevertheless cautioned her against applying that agency too brazenly. Richard Brathwaite’s The English Gentlewoman (1631) warns, “As you tender your preferrement, seeme milde while you are maids, lest you prove scare-crowes to a young mans bed.”31 Osborne, seemingly confident in Temple’s affection, could “seeme milde” while spelling out the terms of her eventual marriage. Osborne’s vision of companionacy rests on the rational pleasures of friendship rather than the turbulence of romance. She displays a conflicted opinion about strong emotions. “Of all passions,” Osborne says to Temple, “love is perhaps least pardonable in a woman.”32 Like Allestree, Brathwaite, and other authors of conduct and devotional literature, she sees love as dangerous, spilling over into the lust and passion that the conduct books depicted as sinful and Osborne feared as irrational. Conduct literature prescribed strict adherence to duty—and thus abdication of independent decision-making—as the remedy for love. For Osborne, reason is the answer: mesalliances are failures of reason that place permanent labels on those who enter into them. Falling prey to love would mean making a fool of one’s self in public through an ill-conceived marriage: “I doe not see that it putts any Valew upon men, when Women marry them for Love (as they terme it), ’tis not theire merritt but our ffolly that is always’s presumed to cause it; and would it bee any advantage to you to have your wife thought an indiscreet person.”33 She does not wish either society or her future husband to see her as such a person. Thus, although Osborne might marry for love, she hesitates to allow even Temple to see their marriage as a love match: “To marry for Love were noe reproachful thing if wee did not see that of ten thousand couples that doe it, hardly one can be brought for an Example that it may be done & not repented afterwards, is there any thing soe indiscreet, or that makes one more contemptible.”34 Mismatches labeled as love matches have given love a bad name, Osborne argues. Though she does not directly suggest a remedy for this problem, she says that she and Temple will avoid it because they will remain “tousjours les mesmes” (“always the same”), again indirectly emphasizing that spouses should bring similar characters and stable, reasonable feelings into their marriages.35 [ 26 ]

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Nevertheless, she does at times employ the very words she typically seeks to avoid, telling Temple in October 1653 “quoy qui’l en sera vous ne sçaurois jamais doubté que Je vous ayme plus que toutes les Choses du monde” (“whatever may happen you shall never doubt that I love you more than anything on earth”); in December 1653 that “if I could help it I would not love you”; and in February 1654 “I think (nay I am sure) I love you more than Ever.”36 Various critics have tried to reconcile her contradictory approaches: Sheila Ottway argues that Osborne is “caught up between the poles of passion and reason” and that she “performs a balancing act” in pursuit of her dream of a companionate marriage.37 Parker holds that Osborne is not balancing but struggling, her contradictory language pointing to “a constant tussle between several competing alternatives.”38 Undoubtedly, the courtship was a struggle for Osborne (and for Temple as well). Brant argues that “the struggle to write about love is also a struggle to write about language,” but Osborne’s deployment of language is purposeful, indicating deliberate rhetorical self-fashioning.39 She must reassure Temple of her attachment to him while protecting her commitment to her ideals, including an egalitarian marriage. Thus, her overt declarations of love appear at moments of crisis. She offers her love when she must, but prefers to dwell and expand on her friendship, maintaining it as the basis of their relationship even if—as she sometimes fears—they are never able to marry. Ultimately suspicious of emotional excess, she prefers a vocabulary of respect, consideration, and mutuality in place of dangerous words such as “love” or “passion.”40 She calls herself “a friend that is capable of the highest degree of friendship you can propounde that has already given an intire heart for that which she received and tis noe more in her will then in her power ever to recall it or divide it.”41 We would unquestionably label this devotion to Temple as “love,” but she defines it as “friendship.” The definition is, in part, aspirational: “Friendship” is the most accurate term for the relationship Osborne desires with her husband although friendship had traditionally been defined as a relationship between men. The choice of words also demonstrates to Temple that she deserves that relationship: that it is possible to be devoted to another person without becoming the kind of fickle, overly emotional woman who would enter into an “indiscreet” match. Osborne’s deliberate high-mindedness offsets the weakness that Enlightenmentera women believed love would create. As Patricia Meyer Spacks notes, for women of the period, “To submit to passion means to abandon the controls by which women even more than men—given their social condition—must live.”42 Avoiding that loss of control, Osborne seizes the rational egalitarianism of friendship instead of the irrationality and foolishness of love.43 Her reflections suggest that women, perhaps too [ 27 ]

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easily viewed in their own time as passive recipients of male attention, could be—and, in her view, needed to be—canny and cautious in their approaches to courtship, keeping their feelings private. She therefore must deploy her expressions of emotion strategically. In particular, she refuses to be the first to make herself vulnerable through a declaration of love. She explains, “I am certaine I could not love the most Perfect Person in the worlde unlesse I did first firmly beleeve hee had a passion for mee,”44 and extends her argument to women in general: “It will never enter into my head that tis possible any woman can Love where she is not first Loved, & much lesse that if they should doe that, they could have the face to owne it.”45 Loving only in response to love would offset the weakness that love could engender; a woman who loved responsively would have at least some protection from a humiliating rejection that could damage her reputation. Such caution was necessary for a woman who wished to take an active role in choosing her husband. Osborne expresses the opinion—commonplace, but in her case seemingly sincere—that society is a source of corrupt values and hypocritical reflections. The codes of behavior intended to protect women and meet their needs often allowed them financial security at best, but not happiness, a state of affairs that Eliza Haywood would later criticize in The Female Spectator.46 Osborne could not have counted on her family to arrange the type of marriage she wanted: their goals for her differed from her goals for herself. Nor could she have relied on Temple to secure her future without the support of both of their families, because the money they would live on would be provided by his father. Although she had little room to maneuver, Osborne had to protect her emotional, familial, and financial interests. Osborne’s letters articulate a wish to avoid society’s influence and define satisfaction for herself. Although she recognizes the need to protect her reputation, her repeated wish is for invisibility: “Since all people are seen and knowne, and shall bee talked of in spight of their Teeth’s, whoe is it that do’s not desire at least that nothing of ill may be sayed of them.”47 Knowing that self-protection is necessary, she carries hers out in her letters, making it a part of the image she projects to Temple and inviting him to admire her common sense. Protecting her interests, she suggests, required skepticism about emotion. A woman carried away by love would make a bad decision about whom to marry, she tells Temple: “But it will Easily bee granted that most People make hast to bee miserable, that they put on theire ffetter’s as inconsiderately as a woodcock run’s into a noose, and are carried by the weakest considerations imaginable, to doe a thing of the greatest consequence of any thing that concern’s this world.”48 Osborne clearly shares with her counterparts a consciousness that marriage is the single most important decision in a woman’s life. Her definition of “love” makes it [ 28 ]

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an insufficient justification for that decision. Thus, when Temple apparently used the word “love” in a letter to her in 1653, her response insists that he emend it to “friendship,” explaining that “Love is a terrible word, and I should blush to death if any thing but a letter accused mee on’t.”49 Of course, the charming image of his blushing beloved could not have done much to dissuade Temple from using the word. Nevertheless, she carefully controls her language and attempts to dictate his as well. Society’s perception of a genteel woman becomes that woman’s reality; thus, she has a vested interest in shaping that perception. Despite her avowed rejection of “passion,” Osborne’s use of the word “love” and her definition of the boundary between passion and friendship change over the course of the correspondence. The changes suggest a sense of being observed even in a private correspondence—a self-policing similar to that which Sarah Scott would describe in The Test of Filial Duty and which seems to have been a common expectation for women.50 Osborne’s word choices imply conclusions, but leave them for the reader to draw. In July 1653, she conflates “friendship” and “passion” as she recounts a conversation with her brother: My B. would perswade mee there is noe such thing in the worlde as a constant friendship, People (hee say’s) that marry with great passion for one another as they think, come afterwards to loose it they know not how, besydes the multitude of such as are false and meane it. I cannot bee of his opinion (though I confesse there are too many Examples on’t) I have always’s beleeved there might bee a friendship perfect like that you describe and mee thinks I finde something like it in my selfe, but sure tis not to be taught, it must come Naturaly to those that have it, and those that have it not can ne’ere bee made to understand it.51

Osborne obliquely suggests that friendship in marriage is, in fact, founded on passion and that such a relationship is available to husbands and wives, despite the traditional view of marriage promulgated by Cicero and Montaigne.52 However, at this stage she will not directly acknowledge a passion for Temple, instead saying that theirs is the type of true, natural friendship that such a passion ideally produces, allowing Temple to draw the conclusion himself. Jeremy Taylor, whose works Osborne admired, similarly acknowledges that passion is part of friendship and that friendship can be heterosexual when he describes women’s capacity to be friends: “A woman can love as passionately, and converse as pleasantly, and retain a secret as faithfully, and be useful in her proper ministeries; and she can die for her friend as well as the bravest Roman Knight.” Taylor’s diction of “love” and “passion” gives Osborne an authoritative reference for her claims about the nature of her relationship with Temple.53 [ 29 ]

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But rather than confess to passion in the moment, Osborne refers to it retrospectively and, often, regretfully. In December 1653, she believed that marriage to Temple would be impossible. Moreover, her father was terminally ill and her younger brother Robin had recently died. Osborne asks Temple to release her from their engagement, “out of wisdome and kindnesse to your self.”54 She acknowledges her feelings, but in the present perfect tense that emphasizes their history rather than their future: I think I need not tell you how dear you have bin to mee nor that in your kindenesse I placed all the satisfaction of my life, ’twas the onely happinesse I proposed to my selfe, and had sett my heart soe much upon it, that it was therfore made my punishment, to let mee see that how innocent soever I thought my affection, it was guilty, in being greater then is allowable for things of this world. ’Tis not a melancholy humor gives mee these aprehensions and inclinations, nor the Perswasions of Others, tis the result of a longe Strife with my selfe, before my Reason could overcome my passion, or bring mee to a perfect Resignation to whatsoever is allotted for mee.55

Though Osborne takes a seemingly progressive stance in emphasizing her independent decision-making and the exercise of her reason, she applies what Carrie Hintz correctly identifies as a conservative idea, implicitly making the successful exercise of her reason synonymous with a total surrender of agency.56 Parker identifies this idea as drawn from Osborne’s study of the works of Jeremy Taylor, which advocate such resignation as an exercise of Christian obedience. “Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion,” Taylor explained in 1650; “it is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine Providence, which governs all the world, and hath so ordered us in the administration of his great family.”57 Taylor suggests that surrender to Providence is, much like Osborne’s view of companionacy, a matter of common sense. At the end of 1653, Osborne’s circumstances were such that to her, common sense dictated abandoning her hopes of marriage to Temple; the only apparent comfort following that step was the cold one, frequently offered to women, of having done her duty. No matter how scant that comfort, Osborne took her duty seriously. Like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, Osborne demonstrates a belief that Temple’s respect for her stems from her feminine propriety as well as from her individuality. The more radical aspects of her beliefs suggest that she wishes simply to be accepted at face value, but she recognizes that women must earn the respect that is so necessary to friendship and thus to marital equality. It is not given. To show herself appropriately willing to accept the duties of her role, she reminds Temple early in the correspondence that she will not marry without her father’s consent: [ 30 ]

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[Your father] may be confident I can never think of disposing myself without my father’s consent, and though he has left it more in my power than almost anybody leaves a daughter, yet certainly I were the worst natured person in the world if his kindness were not a greater lie upon me than any advantage he could have reserved, besides that, ’tis my duty from which nothing can ever tempt me. Nor could you like it in mee if I should doe otherwise, ’twould make mee unworthy of your Esteem.58

Here, one may productively draw a parallel between family bonds and marriage bonds in the period.59 Because the sense of duty that Osborne shows toward her father would be transferred to her husband when she married, she emphasizes the dutiful nature that will become part of her identity as a wife. Her sincere love for her father and her devotion to duty make her a woman worth respecting and suggest that such love and duty will carry over from her father to her chosen husband. In this passage, quoted earlier, she further specifies that duty requires her not merely to marry but to be a good wife: I should never bee brought to doe them the injury as to give them a wife whose affections they could never hope for, besydes that I must sacrifice my self int and live a walking missery till the only hope that would then be left mee, were perfected.60

Osborne identifies several aspects of duty that would keep her from marrying anyone other than Temple: Her duty to her family would oblige her to marry someone whom she disliked if her father required it. But her duty to her hypothetical husband would prevent her from marrying someone she respected but did not care for. Finally, her duty to herself would require her to avoid an affectionless union. In laying out these boundaries Osborne reinforces for Temple both her commitment to him and her commitment to the conventional value of duty: she can fulfill all the duties that present themselves only by waiting for her family’s permission to marry Temple. For similar reasons, Hester Chapone and Sarah Scott would later depict filial duty as emotionally confining. It clearly was for Osborne as well, but she would not break with the tradition of a familially approved marriage. Such a break would damage the moral superiority she claims as a friend who intends to stand on equal footing with her future husband. Osborne thus uses her letters to cultivate Temple’s respect by demonstrating her moral character and careful reasoning. Although she refers to authorities, particularly to Taylor, she is not parroting their views. Rather, she is working out her own position, showing Temple her reasoning to make him aware of her independence of mind. [ 31 ]

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Over time the letters become more explicit in their depiction of the marital relationship Osborne hoped she and Temple would achieve. Mutual affection and a deliberate decision to regard each other as equals would create that ideal relationship. As such, Osborne’s insistence on the use of the word “friendship” to describe her relationship with Temple is an ideological statement, not merely a flourish of maiden modesty. In July 1653, she defines the term: ’Tis generally believed it owes it’s birth to an agreement & conformity of humors, and that it lives no longer than tis preserved by the Mutuall care of those that bred it, tis wholly Governde by Equality, and can there bee such a thing in it, as a distinction of Power. Noe sure, if wee are friends wee must both comande & both obay alike. Indeed a Mistresse and a Servant, soundes otherwise, but that is Ceremony, and this is truth.61

Naomi Tadmor traces the eighteenth century’s understanding of the idea of friendship to Taylor’s The Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship (1657), which describes friendship as “the greatest love, and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the noblest sufferings, and the most exemplar faithfulness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of mindes of which brave men and women are capable.”62 Taylor further specifies that the ideal friendship is one founded upon choice.63 A friend could be anyone from a family member to a trusted advisor, so the term “friendship” predominantly indicated a relationship of mutual respect, trust, and above all, equality. Although Osborne’s letters to Temple antedate The Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship, Osborne uses her knowledge of Taylor’s works to unite her ideal of friendship with Taylor’s definition of obedience. Obedience, especially to parents under the label “filial duty,” was a cornerstone of women’s lives, but Osborne also recognizes that it is a virtue for all. As a student of Taylor, she echoes closely his assertion that there is “a very great peace and immunity from sin in resigning our wills up to the command of others”:64 I had rather agree to what you say then tell you that Dr Taylor (whose devote you must know I am) say’s there is a great advantage to bee gained in resigning up on’s will to the comande of another, because the same Action which in it selfe is wholy indifferent if done upon our owne Choice, becom’s an Act of Duty and Religion if don in Obedience to the comande of any Person whome Nature and the Law or our selv’s have given a power over us.65

While Taylor focuses on obedience to superiors, Osborne emphasizes the element of choice that distinguishes both friendship and her ideal of marriage: [ 32 ]

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an individual (“our selv’s”) can choose the person whom he (or, more important, she) wishes to obey. The spiritual benefits of obedience derive equally from obeying natural and legal superiors or from obeying superiors freely chosen. A freely chosen superior could be a friend, a spouse, or, ideally, someone who fulfills both roles. By juxtaposing the ideal of friendship with the prospect of obedience, Osborne reminds Temple that obedience is not merely a feminine virtue. It is a requirement for both of them if they are to call themselves friends, and Taylor confirms that marriage is “the noblest of friendships.”66 Moreover, neither Osborne nor Temple could have been ignorant of the presence and significance of the word “obey” in English marriage vows. According to the 1559 Church of England marriage service, the woman promises obedience not once but twice.67 Likewise, the Cromwellian civil marriage form that was prescribed during Osborne and Temple’s courtship requires the woman to vow that she will be a “Loving, Faithful, and Obedient Wife.”68 Osborne emphasizes the Christian duty of obedience in marriage, extending it beyond the mere “ceremony” of the marriage vow to the “truth” of successfully living together: a husband, as well as a wife, should obey. With this gesture she can appear conservative and progressive at the same time, knowing her prescribed role but advocating a rational updating of that role toward a more egalitarian relationship. The letters go beyond making philosophical inquiries about “perfect friendship” to allowing Osborne to rehearse such a friendship. The opposition to Osborne and Temple’s marriage troubled them both, but it gave Osborne a reason to create a melodramatic, “us against the world” tone in her letters to Temple.69 In this respect, the couple’s separation and their families’ objections to their marriage became advantages. When she laments their separation, when she asks him for favors, and when she imagines their future, Osborne creates a sense of intimacy with Temple. She suggests that a shared bond or purpose is necessary to a successful companionate relationship, encouraging Temple, “In Earnest tis true you must use to tell mee freely of any thing you see amisse in mee” and suggesting that she would do likewise because “’tis the part of a freind to advise you.”70 The protection and maintenance of their covert courtship provides a common purpose—beyond that of simply moving toward marriage—from which to begin building the desired relationship of individuals and equals. Her comments show Osborne’s recognition that intimacy is necessary to companionacy, as well as demonstrating a tacit realization that such intimacy was largely prohibited by the social mores under which she lived. Her philosophical deliberations and personal revelations might not have been possible face to face. Osborne accepts the risks of a clandestine correspondence and the challenges of a long-distance relationship in exchange for the chance to build, direct, and shape that relationship through her rhetoric. [ 33 ]

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Because Osborne encourages frankness and openness between Temple and herself, she need never refer directly to the most obvious anxiety attending an arranged marriage: the prospect of entering, with little preparation or prelude, into an intimate relationship with a virtual stranger. She implies a contrast between a typical courtship and her and Temple’s long and deliberate acquaintance before their marriage. The suitors presented by Osborne’s brother seem to arrive as strangers or near strangers, but with clear marital intentions. The process of courtship, as Osborne depicts it, has more in common with a job interview than with “dating” as we would recognize it today. As anachronistic as it sounds, Osborne and Temple are dating through their letters: discussing books, buying each other gifts, trading gossip. Creating this type of relationship before their marriage relieves the anxiety of marrying a stranger—an anxiety particularly acute for a woman, who would rely on that stranger for her way of life. It also helps Osborne ensure that she will not be consigned to a separate, reductively feminine sphere as a wife. Intimacy, once established, would be likely to continue. Osborne’s intimacy with Temple not only secures for her the nature of their married relationship but also gives her some assurance that he will respect her individuality, a quality that she vociferously defends. Despite the considerable pressures attending a woman on the marriage market, Osborne suggests that she cherishes the freedom she has as an unmarried daughter, a freedom that has protected her individuality: “I have lived soe longe in the world and soe much at my owne liberty that whosoever has mee must bee content to take mee as they finde mee, without hope of ever making me other than I am.”71 Elsewhere, Osborne emphasizes her conventional nature by asserting that reason and duty will guide her decisions. Those assertions serve to balance and soften this one. “Liberty” has made her frank, loyal, and honest, but not dangerously rebellious. Despite Osborne’s claim to have had “my owne liberty” as a single woman living in her family’s home, Osborne found that intimacy of any kind was scarce in her life outside the correspondence with Temple. As was common for women of her era and class, she often lacked privacy, finding herself supervised and directed by family members focused more on her social value as a wife than on her individual happiness.72 She turns this close surveillance to her rhetorical advantage, however, seeking Temple’s sympathy. Particularly when she was in ill health, her family attempted to “tutor & governe” her: “I am neither to eate drink nor sleep without their leave. . . . You cannot imagin how Cruell they are to mee and yet will perswade mee it is for my good, I know they mean it soe and therfore say nothing but submitt.”73 Osborne can accomplish multiple goals with statements such as this one. She reminds Temple that she is good-natured and devoted to her family, making that devotion a positive part [ 34 ]

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of her identity, as when she acknowledges her own susceptibility to familial affection after another conversation with her brother about her suitors: “I have found it a much harder thing not to yield to the Power of a neer relation and a great kindenesse then I could then imagine it.”74 Alongside that devotion, her darkly humorous description of her family as “Cruell” reminds him that he is her only outlet for such sentiments. Hintz observes that “although [Osborne] was constantly under surveillance, she wished for a space where she could be alone with Temple, free of the wishes and interventions of others.”75 The letters provided her with such a figurative space, in which she could practice “the formation of her own beliefs and . . . the testing of her resolve” for both her own and her future husband’s benefit.76 In accepting her family’s interventions into her health while protesting against their interference, she sketches the boundaries that she will maintain as marriage negotiations with Temple finally begin to proceed. Osborne wanted to preserve her relationships with her family, and made those relationships a positive part of her identity. Although she was unwilling to accept the kind of marriage for which her family hoped, neither could she reject her relationship with them in favor of her relationship with Temple. Like the Harlowes in Richardson’s Clarissa, the Osborne family was invested, in a rather literal sense of the word, in finding a wealthy spouse for their daughter. Sir Peter Osborne’s income had been reduced from £4000 to £400 a year in punishment for his loyalty to Charles I; thus, the Osbornes were “actively looking for a marriage that would help to solve their liquidity problems.”77 Temple, they felt, was not wealthy enough. Additionally, some members of the family apparently saw him as an “unprincipled adventurer.”78 In 1653, because their father was seriously ill, Dorothy Osborne’s brother Henry took charge of the effort to find his sister a husband—again prefiguring Clarissa.79 He presented her with a succession of suitors he considered preferable to Temple, whose motives he distrusted. However, his chief objection to Temple was financial: Dorothy describes in a letter to Temple her brother’s sense that “your fortune and mine, can never agree,” and that were the pair to marry, “in plaine term’s we forfeit our discretions and run willfully upon our owne ruin’s.”80 Henry Osborne’s goal was to see his sister “well bestow’d, and by that hee understands Richly.”81 A marriage that did not bring economic security was, in his view, illogical and unreasonable. According to this traditional view, in which marriage becomes a financial instrument, to be “well bestow’d” was the ideal circumstance for an upper-class daughter such as Osborne. H. J. Habakkuk acknowledges that although motives for marriage varied widely and resist generalization, in landed families, “marriage was a family rather than an individual matter and it was closely linked with decisions about property.”82 These decisions, codified in the marriage contract, would dictate a daughter’s standard of [ 35 ]

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living as a wife and, were her husband to predecease her, as a widow. For Osborne as for others of her class, marriage secured a permanent home and a fixed income, against the potential alternative of a life of poverty and living “on courtesy” with family members— a state of de facto homelessness. Osborne’s remarks suggest that such “courtesy” seems to have been both expensive and grudgingly extended. She draws attention in her letters to the fact that she had no right to remain in her family’s home after her father’s death, when it would pass to her eldest brother. This situation was, for her, intolerable: “I am left by [my father’s] death in the condition (which of all Others) is the most insuportable to my Nature; To depende upon Kindred that are not friends, and that though I Pay as much as I should doe to a stranger, yet think they doe mee a Curtesy.”83 Henry Osborne, as a younger brother, would find himself similarly homeless: As Osborne explained to Temple, “When this house break’s up, [Henry] is resolved to follow mee if hee can, which hee thinks hee might better doe to a house where I had some power, then where I am but upon Courtesy my self.”84 As a wife, Osborne could perhaps have prevailed on her husband to open their home to her brother. Were she single and living with other family members “on courtesy,” that costly, reluctant courtesy would have been unlikely to extend to Henry. This explanation suggests that Henry Osborne had a specific personal interest in his sister’s marriage, perhaps intending to secure a good home for himself as well as for her. He was, in any case, devoted to seeing her married, writing in his diary in July 1653 that he would pray for his sister every day “and when shee was married to give God thanks that day everie yeere so long as I lived.”85 His interest in her marriage argues both for sibling affection and for the traditional view of marriage as a familial decision made for economic reasons. Henry Osborne’s objections to Temple were ideological as well as economic. He apparently did not dislike Temple; Dorothy Osborne specifies to Temple that he is “spoken of [by her brother] with the Reverence due to a person what I seem to like.”86 Henry instead was suspicious of any feeling that could be described as “passion”—as was his sister, albeit for different reasons. He tried to dissuade Dorothy from believing that Temple’s feelings were genuine or that, if genuine, they could bring her any happiness.87 “Hee is of opinion,” she tells Temple, “that all passions, have more of trouble then satisfaction in them and therfore they are happiest that have least of them.”88 Henry would have been most satisfied to see Dorothy in a prudent but affectionless marriage. But Henry’s aversion to strong emotion made his traditional view of marriage a perverse advantage to his sister. Osborne suggests that Henry’s wariness about “passion” extended to a dislike of confrontation: Hee gives mee some trouble with his suspitions, yet on my conscience hee is a greater to himself and I deale with so much franchise as to tell him soe, [ 36 ]

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many times, and yet hee has noe more the heart to aske mee directly what he would soe faine know, then a Jealous man has to aske (one that might tell him) whither hee were a cuckolde or not for feare of being resolved of that which is yet a doubt to him.89

Henry’s mildness in the face of his sister’s “franchise” (frankness) made it easy for Osborne to avoid the suitors whom her brother presented to her. Despite her self-described plain-spokenness, Dorothy Osborne’s resistance was largely passive: without becoming improperly rebellious, she found reasons to refuse suitors or managed to ignore their presence while staying silent about her relationship with Temple. Henry could keep the peace that he valued in the household by not asking his sister about her controversial suitor. At times, however, this détente fell apart and Henry reproached Dorothy for her refusal to marry someone he chose. On at least one occasion such an argument “came soe neer an absolute falling out” that the siblings hardly spoke for days afterward.90 While she paints her brother as alternately—and paradoxically—overbearing and spineless, Osborne presents herself as quietly amused by the proceedings, a calm center around which her family whirls, importuning her to marry: Yet I was offerd a new servant tother day, and after two howr’s talk, and that they [her brothers] had told mee hee has as good as two thousand pound a year in present, and a thousand more to come, I had not the Curiosity to ask who twas, which they took soe ill that I think I shall hear noe more on’t.91

Her silent indifference to her brother’s chosen “servants” turns proper maiden passivity into a means of resistance while her cheerfully detailed report of the event to Temple reinforces her loyalty to him: he has no rivals; therefore, she has nothing to hide. But despite Dorothy and Henry’s disagreements, the siblings’ mutual loyalty preserved their relationship. Osborne tells Temple in June 1653 that her brother “never sayed to mee (what ere hee thought) a word in prejudice of you, in your owne person, and I never heard him accuse any thing but your fortune, and my indiscretion.”92 She defends her brother even when Temple suspects his motives, reminding him, “I cannot agree with you that my Brothers kindenesse to mee has any thing of trouble int.”93 Osborne’s remarks such as this one about her brother, as well as Henry’s eventual—if hard-won—consent to her marriage, suggest that the bond between the siblings was ultimately stronger than Henry’s reservations against Temple. They also remind Temple that Osborne is a loyal sister, and given a similar strong bond, would be a loyal wife. [ 37 ]

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Dorothy and Henry argued over her affection for Temple and her failure to accept the suitors that Henry presented to her, but their mutual devotion is clear, as is her expectation that her family will act in her best interest and must be allowed to do so. Her family’s support demonstrates her worthiness of respect; her insistence that their support continue shows her critical consideration of her own situation and her unwillingness to compromise her worth. She rebukes Temple in more than one letter for making comments against her brother. Once her engagement is made known, she comes to Henry’s defense again, insisting to Temple that her brother be allowed to act for her in the marriage negotiations: It must bee Expected whensoever I dispose of my self, hee should bee made noe Stranger to it, when that shall bee refused mee I may bee justly reproached that I deceived my self when I Expected to be at all Valewed in a family that I am a Stranger to, or that I should bee consider’d with any respect because I had a Kindenesse for you that made mee not Valew my owne interest.94

This last remark, concerning Osborne’s “owne interest,” seems particularly telling. Alluding again to the weakness that she believed love could create, she rejects the prospect that such a weakness might affect her. She presses Temple to recognize her as an independent, rational person, suggesting that this identity is compatible with that of a good wife. Despite the loving nature of her relationship with Temple, she looks for a means to protect her own interests—not for the sake of monetary gain but in order to protect his and his family’s “respect” for her. Likewise, she encourages Temple, albeit jokingly, to keep his own financial advantage in mind in choosing a wife: in urging him to consider a particular young lady, she asserts, “In Earnest I know not what to say, but if your father do’s not use all his kindenesse, and all his power, to make you consider your owne advantage, hee is not like other fathers.”95 This remark suggests the extent to which consideration of one’s “owne advantage” at marriage was common and expected among the genteel classes. The settlement, typically drawn up when an eldest son came of age or at his marriage, transferred wealth from one generation to the next and, through the system of portions and jointures, transferred it between families: Osborne’s remark to Temple serves as a reminder that a man could be just as likely as a woman to profit from a prudential marriage.96 Therefore, an intelligent person of Osborne and Temple’s social class literally could not afford to ignore the question of settlements, arrangements that would determine not only the couple’s financial security but that of their future offspring. Osborne’s willingness to discuss these issues with Temple confirms that legal and monetary aspects do not detract from a romance where one exists. Where none exists, she can easily joke with Temple about one mercenary-minded suitor (who [ 38 ]

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has not been identified by historians): “I guessed hee expected a better fortune than myne, and it proved soe, yet he prottested hee liked mee so well, that hee was very angry my Father would not bee perswaded to give up £1000 more with mee, and I him soe ill, that I vowed, if I had had £1000 less I should have thought it too much for him, and soe we parted.”97 As in other instances, she emphasizes the presence or absence of an attraction, but a genteel woman such as Osborne cannot overlook the realities of making a living—in this case, recognizing that she would depend on the money settled on her and her husband by their parents at their marriage. However, she specifies to Temple that she doesn’t need much, having “a minde that can bee sattisfyed within as narrow a compass as that of any person liveing of my rank.”98 She cannot live on less than her rank demands, but she will ask for no more than the necessary minimum: a via media that she depicts as the most morally correct choice. Like, as we shall see, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, she portrays herself as genuine and admirable because she rejects a blatantly mercenary marriage. Osborne thus disregards the love-or-money dichotomy that was a social commonplace in her own time.99 She depicts disregard for financial realities as morally compromising, recognizing that her station in life made monetary negotiations at marriage both routine and obligatory. “Tis much Easier sure to get a good fortune then a good husband,” she explains, “but whosoever marry’s without any consideration of fortune shall never bee allowed to doe it out of soe reasonable an aprehension; the whole worlde (without any reserve) shall pronounce they did it merely to sattisfie theire Giddy humor.”100 To choose what Elizabeth Montagu called “living in a cottage on love”—allowing passion to overcome common sense—would compromise her image as a rational moralist and show her to be susceptible to the excesses of feeling that make women weak.101 But to disregard affection in favor of financial security would be equally wrong: a positive relationship with one’s spouse is, as she describes it, a “reasonable . . . aprehension.”102 “Let mee assure you,” she writes to Temple in 1654, “that had you £10000 a year I could love you noe more than I doe and should bee far from showing it soe much least it should look like a desire on your fortune which as to my self I valew as little as any body breathing.”103 Osborne’s comment suggests that because marriage was a meal ticket and society constantly scrutinized female behavior, women had to police their expressions of affection lest their motives be understood as mercenary.104 Understanding of financial realities was expected, but overt fortune-hunting in a woman, like willingness to marry against her family’s wishes, would lower her in her suitor’s eyes and perhaps in her own. Family members could, however, acceptably press a suitor for a more generous settlement or influence a young woman to choose a wealthier man over a poorer one. Her brother Henry insisted that riches “made one respected in the world.” Osborne [ 39 ]

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agreed in principle, but told her brother “that was a respect I should not at all value when I owed it only to my fortune.”105 Osborne, presenting herself to Temple as a rational and moral person rather than as either a romantic or a gold-digger, locates her happiness in “a faithfull friend, a Moderate fortune, and a retired life.”106 In desiring to live out of the public eye, she unites personal preference with what would later become an intellectual fashion for quiet, private living. In Osborne’s case that preference is rooted in her moralistic rejection of social values she sees as superficial: “I doe naturaly hate the noise and talk of the worlde, and should bee best pleased never to have to bee knowne int upon any occasion whatsoever,” she explains.107 This position is a virtuous stance for a woman, as Brathwaite’s English Gentlewoman suggests: women “wedded to the world . . . afflict their spirits, macerate their bodies, [and] estrange themselves from offices of Neighbourhood.”108 Rejecting “the world” means rejecting both moral ruin and financial excess and thereby placing one’s self in a morally superior position. Nevertheless, her attachment to Temple slowly became known to “the world.” It was grudgingly accepted by their families, but only after two years spent creating a hypothetical future without certainty that it would be realized. Osborne’s letters to Temple examine the questions of choice, economics, privacy, and power that upper- and middle-class women would continue to face throughout the eighteenth century. Because of her class, her marriage would be both private and public, both personal and practical. Largely lacking control over the public, practical aspects, she used her letters to define the private, personal aspects. “Can there bee a more Romance Story then ours would make if the conclusion should prove happy?” Osborne asked Temple in January 1654, nearly a year before their still-uncertain marriage.109 Although the couple chafed at the long delay, that delay gave Osborne a reason—shared adversity—to strengthen her mutual attachment with Temple. Waiting for her family’s consent also provided Osborne with time and space in which to work out the terms of the couple’s eventual union. Her letters represent a different type of marriage negotiation: one that spells out emotional, rather than financial, rights and responsibilities. In the process, she also constructs an image of herself as a philosophically ideal partner: dutiful and modest, but also rational and intelligent. Like Montagu and Hester Chapone, Osborne presents a radical social vision and a conservative personal image. To resolve that contradiction, Osborne relies on her epistolary intimacy with Temple, detailing quotidian events and making small requests—projecting the reality of their life together. But even these gestures are significant: by building this shared life through letters, Osborne creates the expectation of a shared life in reality. In marriage, she will both offer and expect an egalitarian relationship. She theorizes a companionate marriage of rational individuals and begins hypothetically to put her theories into practice. [ 40 ]

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2 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU The Power of Self-Fashioning

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A D Y M A R Y W O R T L E Y M O N T A G U (1689–1762) said in 1711 that she “came early into the hurry of the world.”1 As the daughter of Lady Mary Fielding and Sir Evelyn Pierrepont, Marquis of Dorchester (later Duke of Kingston), Montagu was preceded wherever she went by her family’s reputation. Before she was born, four generations of male Pierreponts had “made marriages which gobbled up the distinguished surnames borne by their brides, incorporating into their heritage the genes, possessions, and honours of those families” to create a family “rich in privilege.”2 Montagu was exposed to the consequences of that privilege even as a child. At the age of eight, she was presented to the Kit-Kat Club after her father proposed her as a toast, which the members would not accept until they had seen her. According to Isobel Grundy, the episode held lasting significance for Montagu:

Lady Mary later presented the experience as one of intoxicating delight: to be dressed in her best, admired and made much of, to go ‘from the lap of one poet, or patriot, or statesman, to the arms of another,’ to have ‘her health drank by every one present, and her name engraved in due form upon the glasses.’ It was a taste of applause calculated to make applause an addiction. . . . Meanwhile she was not only honoured by this Whig centre of power as if she were a grown-up woman; unlike any woman, she had entered it.3

The anecdote illustrates Montagu’s delight in being admired; she was known as a beauty until she contracted smallpox, a disease she viewed with “the greatest terror,” in 1715.4 It equally demonstrates Sir Evelyn Pierrepont’s seeming view of his daughter as “a social asset, a luxury plaything.”5 She entered the Kit-Kat Club, but [ 41 ]

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she entered it as a sort of small mascot. These early experiences made Montagu aware of her social prominence and of its negative consequences. She was an aristocrat, saw herself as such, and took an interest in preserving that status.6 But precisely because of her aristocratic background, she recognized that familial power did not translate to individual power. Rather, she could expect her name and fortune to be “gobbled up” in their turn through marriage to a man that her father would choose with minimal regard for her opinion. Montagu’s childhood experience at the Kit-Kat Club illustrates her need to exploit sources of power other than those that her society denied to her such as inherited wealth, remunerative work, freedom of movement, and independent identity. Women could seize those types of power only indirectly or in limited, mediated ways. Similarly, leveraging physical beauty and personal charm to accomplish one’s goals could put reputation at risk. As Clare Brant suggests, women in this period often had “freedom and choice, but not freedom of choice.”7 As a young adult Montagu saw that she must marry to secure her social and financial position: though marriage was a risk, it was also a necessity. She would not have countenanced a marriage outside her own class and did not need to marry to bring her family a fortune. However, she needed the security that only marriage could bring, and she wanted a marriage that would allow her some measure of continued independence. Largely lacking the decision-making power to bring about such a marriage on her own, Montagu used her rhetorical power, through both public and private writing, to construct an image of herself as a desirable bride. Later, she would repeatedly recast that image in order to argue with increasing stringency that singlehood is preferable to any marriage, regardless of the couple’s feelings. Her writing demonstrates her growing suspicion about marriage as an institution with competing, often mutually exclusive demands of emotional fulfillment and financial security. Montagu remedied that suspicion by creating a series of self-images of which the best known, the bold and observant traveler of the Turkish Embassy Letters, is only one version of the writer who tried variously to reconcile her intellect and desire for independence with her understanding of social realities. Skeptical remarks on marriage are a common thread throughout Montagu’s work; as she successively redefines herself she casts increasing doubt on the necessity and value of matrimony for women. Over several decades she writes as an intellectual maiden willing to accept a country retirement with her future husband, a witty young gossip flexing her rhetorical power for her friends, a periodical writer whose anonymity sharpens her quill, and finally as a wise and protective grandmother. Her skill at self-fashioning unites her varied literary and epistolary output and, as I will demonstrate, allows her to position herself as an expert on the social and moral value of marriage. Each [ 42 ]

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manipulation of her image is both reactive and creative: she reacts to expectations by at least appearing to respect them while she creates for herself the way of life that she wanted, often at odds with those expectations. Although the roles differ, one commonality unites them: Montagu consistently positions herself as a moral and intellectual arbiter rather than an exemplar. Despite her apparent desire to be admired as a beauty, she emphasizes the value of her reason and intelligence. She elides her own unconventional marriage in favor of increasingly strident generalizations about the dangers of the institution.8 This carefully constructed position allows her to survive and even thrive outside of mainstream society while perpetuating the sense that she belongs in that society. At each stage of her life, Montagu used the contradictions between ideal female roles and her rhetorically created selves to further her ends—first, avoiding an unwanted marriage, then criticizing others’ mercenary matches, and finally condemning marriage in general. Knowing, as Hester Chapone also knew and demonstrated, that women’s marriageability and morality are judged by their expressed opinions, she presents her opinions with art and care. By casting her observations as general rather than personal, she encourages her reader to view her broadest criticisms of marriage as aimed at a social system rather than as expressing one individual’s anxiety. She uses contradictory positions, even making opposing statements within a single letter, to present herself to her reader in the most appealing light, becoming a moralist who proclaims, in effect, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Montagu’s contradictory opinions and self-images often appear in her correspondence with friends and family. As we have seen, letters maintained “an indeterminate status between public and private.”9 Writers could leverage this indeterminate status to advance their opinions while maintaining their social roles. Although ostensibly private, letters were shared among family members or close friends. Moreover, they were seen as potentially marketable. Montagu expected her letters to be shared among her circle; in one letter to Alexander Pope she notes, “I would write to Mr. C[ongreve] but suppose you will read this to him if he enquires after me.”10 She also hinted that she wished her letters would eventually be more widely read. Patricia Meyer Spacks points to “the commercial viability of private letters [which] became manifest in the eighteenth century,” citing the published correspondences of Pope and Boswell as well as, eventually, that of Montagu herself.11 Madame de Sévigné’s letters, which Montagu read in 1726, provided her with an example of what Kathryn Shevelow calls “the legitimacy of the translation of the private into the public.”12 Of these letters, Montagu wrote to her sister, “Very pretty they are, but I assert without the least vanity that mine will be full as entertaining 40 years hence. I advise you therefore to put none of ’em to the use of Wast paper.”13 Her comment suggests that [ 43 ]

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she knew she was writing for posterity and even participating in the rise of a new literary genre: Cynthia Lowenthal notes that “these remarks point not only to Lady Mary’s understanding that a tradition of female epistolary excellence was there to be cultivated but, more emphatically, to her intention to play a central role in it.”14 Such participation was not without risk: women, while encouraged to live rigorously private lives on the one hand, were often told on the other that their actions could either affirm or destroy their families’ reputations as well as their own.15 Nevertheless, a woman such as Montagu, already familiar with the public life of an aristocrat, could use writing as a way to assert control over the censorious observers that she had been taught were omnipresent. With an ambitious, if then still tentative, sense of audience, Montagu seized the opportunity to manipulate her readers and gain their tacit endorsements of her successive self-presentations. The earliest of those self-presentations focuses on her role as a prospective bride. She understood marriage as a practical necessity but clearly feared the prospect of an affectionless marriage to a tyrant, as a poem she wrote in 1712 melodramatically depicts: I know the fate of those by Interest wed, Doom’d to the Curse of a vexatious Bed, Days without Peace, and Nights without Desire, To mourn, and throw away my Youth for hire. Of Noble Maids, how wretched is the Fate! Ruin’d with Jointures, curs’d by an Estate, Destin’d to Greifs, and born to be undone, I see the Errors which I cannot shun. Pity my fate, disclos’d to you alone, And weep those Sorrows which may be your own.16

Although Montagu’s language is stylized, conventional, and histrionic, it captures the reality of her situation. Her emotions and actions were likely to be under constant scrutiny, and the choices that would determine her future likely would not be her own. At the time that Montagu composed this verse, her father was negotiating for her marriage to Clotworthy Skeffington, a wealthy Irish peer. However, Montagu had been corresponding in secret with a family friend, Edward Wortley Montagu, for two years. She eloped with Wortley in August 1712, just days before she was to have been married to Skeffington. The elopement was the end of a long campaign of “spin control” for Montagu. We know little of her opinions about her own role as an aristocratic woman maneuvering between an unwanted marriage and a potentially scandalous elopement. Her [ 44 ]

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letters suggest that Montagu was banking on the combination of Wortley’s interest in her and his conventional nature to bring her both security and a degree of liberty.17 Using her epistolary talent and rhetorical control, Montagu engineered her marriage to Wortley despite substantial obstacles, including his own reluctance. To secure her future husband’s affection despite few opportunities to see him face to face, she used her power as a writer to depict herself as an ideal wife: attractive, but moral, modest, and rational. Although Montagu broke nearly every social rule and convention when she pursued and married Wortley, she persuaded him that she would not be a liability to him. Grundy notes that “Wortley liked a woman to be sensible but decently subordinate, bright but modest. She must not be over-fond of pleasure, nor must she call attention to herself.”18 Montagu’s very willingness to correspond with Wortley might have led him to doubt her suitability as a wife: a correspondence between a couple who were not yet formally engaged was, as Grundy put it, “strictly forbidden (though not uncommon).”19 But keeping her correspondence with her future husband a secret from others was only a part of the rhetorical double-dealing in which she engaged. Rather than distance herself from any hint of impropriety, she deliberately draws Wortley’s attention to the sense of risky intimacy created by her illicit letters, making herself a valuable prize and capitalizing on the romantic allure of a clandestine courtship. 20 From the beginning of their correspondence, Wortley and Montagu discussed marriage, but their epistolary courtship was a potential danger to Montagu’s image in society, in her family, and even in her relationship with Wortley. She, however, uses that danger to her rhetorical advantage: she acknowledges it, and then excuses it, arguing that instead of being condemned for her forwardness, she should be admired for her honesty. Montagu had apparently used her friendship with Wortley’s sister Anne as a means by which to communicate with Wortley himself. In 1710, after Anne’s death, she wrote directly to Wortley for the first time, admitting, I know it is not Acting in Form but I do not look upon you as I do upon the rest of the world, and by what I do for you, you are not to judge my manner of acting with others. You are Brother to a Woman I tenderly lov’d. My protestations of freindship are not like other people’s. I never speak but what I mean, and when I say I love, it is for ever. I had that real concern for Mrs. Wortley I look with some regard on every one that is related to her. This and my long Acquaintance with you may in some measure excuse what I am now doing.21

Lowenthal suggests that Montagu’s self-justification in this letter is a “strategy . . . doomed to failure” because Montagu calls attention to the sexual significance of [ 45 ]

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their correspondence even as she tries to diffuse that significance.22 Admittedly, Montagu’s argument could be paraphrased as the eighteenth-century version of “I don’t normally do things like this.” But in this letter to this highly interested audience, her strategy succeeds. She admits to behaving unconventionally but justifies the move by a persuasive bit of special pleading. She shows that she knows the rules and the importance of reputation, but she flatters Wortley by suggesting that he is unique in her eyes and she would not treat anyone else as she treats him. Further, she sets herself apart as morally superior and unlike everyone else, being more sincere in her feelings and more honest in her expression of them. She also hints that she is in love with Wortley by suggesting that her feelings for his sister have transferred to him along with her correspondence. Finally, she separates herself and her suitor from “the rest of the world,” a phrase commonly used as shorthand for both questionable behavior and censorious public opinion. Thus she creates for him the suggestion that their feelings for each other are virtuous, and that virtue makes the two of them superior. Despite—or even because of—breaking the rules, she suggests, the two are united in a secret intimacy that is morally superior even as it carries a tantalizing hint of immorality. By the end of the letter, though, she becomes Wortley’s conventionally modest ideal woman. She suggests that she doubts his feelings as well as her own actions: “You distrust me. I can neither be easy nor lov’d where I am distrusted, nor do I believe your passion for me is what you pretend it; at least I’m sure, was I in love I could not talk as you do.”23 She concludes by entrusting him to burn her letter and vowing, “Tis the first I ever writ to one of your sex and shall be the last. You must never expect another. I resolve against all correspondance of this kind. My resolutions are seldom made and never broken.”24 Whether she is actually giving way to her anxiety or merely appearing to do so to prompt reassurances from Wortley, she forswears their clandestine correspondence, falling back on a combination of conventional etiquette, feminine modesty, and virtuous resolve as reasons for doing so. This letter to Wortley establishes a pattern for the letters preceding the couple’s elopement. When she acknowledges her feelings for him, Montagu points to her honesty and forthrightness as virtues. She suggests that she considers honesty more important than the conventions of discourse that required a woman only to accept, not to initiate, declarations of affection.25 When she becomes concerned that she has said too much, she reverts to those conventions as reasons to withdraw and insists on putting an end to their relationship. This back-and-forth pattern allows her to achieve simultaneously two contrasting goals: convincing Wortley of her affection and demonstrating her propriety. We cannot, of course, precisely identify Montagu’s true feelings for Wortley. The circumstances surrounding their marriage suggest that he was at least as much [ 46 ]

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an acceptable expedient as an agreeable partner. Grundy emphasizes Montagu’s feeling that “the persona of a girl in love, as figured in contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry, was unacceptable to her as a self-image.” Montagu hoped instead “to be known for sense and reason, balance and good judgment.”26 We can never prove her concern for her “self-image,” but in her correspondence, she fashions for Wortley an image that appears alternately passionate and modest. By this means she can keep her sometimes-recalcitrant suitor interested while keeping herself in control. Montagu uses contrasting expressions of emotion as a means to pull Wortley closer, or to push him away so that she can pull him back again. Lacking the power simply to marry a man of her choice, she creates power for herself through her rhetoric, switching between warmly declaring her attraction and coolly playing hard to get. Playing hard to get, so to speak, was a necessary part of a proper young woman’s image. The ideal woman would not simply hide her interest in a man but would not feel it at all, under the prevailing assumption that for a woman, the step from emotion to action is a negligibly short one. Montagu’s rhetorical strategy in her courtship letters works to disprove that view. She shows Wortley that she is capable of strong feelings for him but also capable of the strong self-control that she needed to protect herself and her eventual husband. She continues to remind him both of her emotional commitment and of her conventional morality, deliberately ignoring the implied contradiction between the two and counting on her suitor to do the same. In August 1710, Wortley wrote to Montagu that he had been trying to reach a marriage settlement with Montagu’s father. The negotiations broke down when Wortley refused to entail his estate on his (then hypothetical) first-born son even though such arrangements were routine.27 Montagu’s reply begins with an admission of her strong feelings for him, but then retreats: I think I have said a thing so favourable I ought to be asham’d of it . . . I think I have said enough, and as much as ought to be expected . . . I have no hand in the making of Settlements. My present Duty is to obey my Father. I shall so far obey blindly as not to accept where he refuses, tho’ perhaps I might refuse where he would accept. If you think tolerably of me, you think I would not marry where I hated. As for the rest, my Father may do some things disagreeable to my Inclinations, but passive Obedience is a doctrine should allwaies be receivd among wives and daughters.28

Montagu’s assertion that she will not “accept where [her father] refuses” is a veiled rejection of the prospect of a clandestine marriage to Wortley, while her admission that “I would not marry where I hated” leaves him with whatever sliver of hope her veto power might create as well as with a sense of her good judgment: she [ 47 ]

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takes marriage seriously and will not commit to an intolerable situation. With her safe statements about filial duty she allows herself some protection from the censure that might follow should her correspondence with Wortley be discovered, reminding him that by protecting her reputation, she also protects his. But by invoking the term “passive obedience,” which was “used by Tories and ‘high flyers’ to describe the proper response to objectionable political authority,” she leaves the exact extent of her deference to patriarchal authority ambiguous.29 Montagu, conservative in matters of social class and economics yet ultimately radical in matters of marriage and gender, uses “passive obedience” to recall simultaneously both halves of that divided view.30 The ambiguity is beneficial, if risky: although Wortley might realize that as Montagu’s husband he is likely to be on the receiving end of such minimal compliance, he can also be reassured that she is not dangerously rebellious and will not endanger his reputation. Meanwhile, Montagu acknowledges that she has been forward in admitting her feelings and that she should perhaps be “asham’d” of having done so. The shift to a reaffirmation of “Duty” serves as a reminder to Wortley, or to anyone else who might read the letter, that whatever her feelings, her actions will remain proper and virtuous. However, the letter as a whole is not discouraging. By admitting that she is in love with him, then calling attention to the impropriety of her admission, Montagu allows Wortley to hold two conflicting, but pleasing, ideas about her: she loves him, but she knows better than to admit it. Similarly, Montagu presents herself as a virtuous woman making a rare exception when she alludes to the forbidden allure of the couple’s secret courtship. Serving both of these ends, she repeatedly reminds Wortley of the risk that she is taking by continuing to correspond and meet with him. “I own tis Impudence to think of seeing you,” she writes in February 1711. “After so much Indiscretion I cannot blame you if you think me capable of every thing.”31 At this stage, more than a year before their elopement, she is still trying both to secure her virtuous image with her future husband and to keep him interested, not allowing him to take her for granted. Until they are married, she is gambling on two fronts. A woman who is “capable of every thing” is an attractive prospect, but she would not make a good and tractable wife. Wortley might have questioned Montagu’s virtue based on her willingness to continue their relationship, yet that willingness was obviously integral to her appeal. She creates for Wortley an image of a woman appropriately constrained by society’s expectations, but just passionate enough to chafe against those constraints, counting on her audience to admire those contradictory qualities. To appear acceptable to her conventionally minded suitor, Montagu had to “construct a less worldly, more bashful self ” in her letters to Wortley—in effect, [ 48 ]

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making herself the woman that he wanted.32 This strategy would also help her appear financially disinterested, a necessity considering that a woman “over-fond of pleasure” presumably could not be content to live modestly.33 Although Montagu was a daughter and Wortley a grandson of nobility, their circumstances, as well as the times in which they lived, would have led them to value rational moderation over aristocratic ostentation. As Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse demonstrate, middleclass domesticity and a corresponding skepticism toward conspicuous consumption were growing in the late seventeenth century—not coincidentally, the period during which Montagu was born. These changes in social values—exemplified, as Armstrong and Tennenhouse demonstrate, in conduct literature—were particularly significant for women: As femaleness was successfully redefined in these [middle-class] terms, the woman exalted by an aristocratic tradition of letters ceased to appear so desirable. In becoming the other side of a new sexual coin, the aristocratic woman in turn represented surface instead of depth, embodied material rather than moral values, and displayed idle sensuality where there should be constant vigilance and tireless concern for the well-being of others.34

Montagu needed to convince Wortley that she would happily reject those aristocratic qualities for both moral and financial reasons. She creates a version of herself that believes in modest retirement and wifely devotion, an image suited to Wortley’s desires and to the couple’s circumstances. These changes, carried out through her rhetorical presentation over the course of their courtship, appear most clearly when she describes her wishes for her future life. As their relationship progresses, Montagu alters her expressions of her preferences, subordinating her desires to the more immediate goal of marrying Wortley. In a letter from August 1710 (when the couple had been corresponding directly for only five months), she makes her choice for their future explicit: “If you realy intend to travel, as it is the thing upon Earth I should most wish, I should prefer that manner of living to any other.”35 In October 1710 she reiterates, “Was I to follow entirely my own Inclinations it would be to travel, my first and cheifest wish.”36 A few days before her elopement with Wortley in August 1712, she revisits the subject. Wortley had been contemplating a trip to Naples with his friend Joseph Addison; Montagu proposed that she instead be the friend who accompanied him. “At Naples we may live after our own fashion,” she writes. “A fine Country and beautifull prospects to people that are capable of tasting them are (at least) steps to promoting happynesse.”37 Within the same week, she elaborates on this prospect: “The Scheme I propose to my selfe is living in an agreeable Country, with a Man that I like, that likes me, and [ 49 ]

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forgetting the rest of the world as much as if there was no other people in the world, and that Naples were the Garden of Eden.”38 Here, Montagu folds a compliment to her future husband’s taste and discernment into a picture of companionacy as a “highly idyllic representation of married togetherness in a pastoral surround.”39 She suggests that living in Naples will allow the couple to enjoy each other’s company as well as their environment, rather than living with a marriage strictly defined by the conventional separate spheres. Montagu’s frequently reiterated desire to travel would not be realized until, as is well known, she accompanied Wortley on his embassy to Turkey in 1716, dramatizing the voyage in what would become the Turkish Embassy Letters. Meanwhile, her need to reshape her own wishes to match those of her suitor led her to minimize what was clearly a strong preference. In a letter from February 1711 she modulates that preference, apparently following a face-to-face meeting in which Wortley asked her in person whether she would be willing to settle in the country: “I have nothing to say but that . . . if you have the disposal of me, and think it convenient either for your Pleasure or Affairs to passe your Life in Yorkshire, I shall not be displeasd with it.”40 The double negative is unenthusiastic, but in the letters that follow, she affirms the sentiment in more positive language, writing to Wortley “I could be content to passe my life in the Country. A private manner of Living suits my Inclination,” and, a few weeks later, “If I marry, I propose to my selfe a Retirement.”41 On this subject she tailors her responses to match both Wortley’s desires and the current intellectual fashion for retired life, what Amanda Vickery calls “a cult of ostentatious solitude.”42 When she agrees to a country life, Montagu is saying what Wortley wants to hear. The English countryside, rather than Europe, would suffice as the site of their projected pastoral idyll and would still serve Montagu’s rhetorical purpose: convincing Wortley that she would happily give up the expensive and amoral pleasures of London life. As these examples suggest, though Montagu was constrained by the expectations placed on a woman in her position, she turns those expectations to her advantage by using them as counter-examples to point out her superiority of character. She describes herself as more genuine and admirable than other women because she rejects city life, marital fortune-hunting, and hypocritical adherence to social codes. In attacking these social codes, she repeatedly refers to “the World” as the source of a type of conduct she cannot condone or practice because it promotes dishonesty and shallow materialism. Decrying “the World” is a commonplace that Montagu puts to multiple uses. In earlier letters, she used “the World” as a sort of enemy against which she and Wortley can unite. As the couple moves closer to marriage, she again invokes “the World” to show that she is neither deaf to conventional morality nor hoping to marry for money. She uses this dual strategy to present herself as someone [ 50 ]

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uninterested in wealth precisely because she knows its value. “There is something of an unavoidable embarras in makeing what is called a great figure in the world,” she writes to Wortley in 1710; “I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to Fools.”43 Of course, as the daughter of a wealthy and prominent family, Montagu had already made “a great figure in the world.” While Wortley might wonder if she could give up the luxuries to which she was accustomed, at least she could be said to know what she was giving up. As Mona Scheuermann notes, Montagu “shows a keen awareness not just of the issues involved but of the sacrifices she as well as Wortley is called on to make.”44 Rhetorically, Montagu uses this awareness to demonstrate further her own selflessness and to deflate the aggrieved and anxious pose that Wortley assumed as the likely financial loser in their eventual marriage. Once it became clear that her father would not consent to the marriage and draw up formal settlements with Wortley, Montagu had immediate, practical reasons to convince Wortley that she did not care to be wealthy: were they to marry, they would likely forfeit financial support from their families. In the summer of 1712 her father had concluded marriage settlements for her with Skeffington, and she was about to be taken into the country to be married. In her most impassioned mode, she tells Wortley “I had rather be confine’d to a desart with you than enjoy the highest of Rank and fortune with him I am condemn’d to.”45 History suggests that this bit of flattery says more about Skeffington than it does about Wortley: Montagu is presenting herself as Wortley’s ideal woman to escape the highly conventional, prudential marriage arranged by her father. A month later, Montagu takes a more practical tone to persuade Wortley of her devotion, describing to him in detail what marriage to Skeffington would have brought her: a life in London, £300 per year pin money, “a considerable jointure,” and “every pleasure of life, those of love excepted.”46 These descriptions allow Wortley to believe that Montagu will not sacrifice the pleasures of love, but she will sacrifice the pleasures of money. “Consider a little whither there are manny other Women that would think as I do,” she invites him.47 Although her suggestion appears to reflect on her individual worth, she alludes to the couple’s prospective financial worth. She calls attention to her own understanding of what she would give up by marrying Wortley, knowing that he would be the couple’s sole financial resource. The suggestion is brazen, as Montagu effectively asks Wortley whether he can find a more attractive woman with similarly low financial expectations. She thus navigates cautiously but aggressively between financial reality and social constraint: while a woman in her position could acceptably acknowledge economic concerns, she could not care about money too much. Disregarding finances entirely would suggest that a woman would [ 51 ]

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be willing to marry outside her class, with no economic support, and thereby give up her social standing. Montagu would not go this far and Wortley, the conventional thinker, would not admire her for doing so. In this respect, they agree. Showing her willingness to live with less than the elegance in which she was brought up thus becomes a means of emphasizing that similarity and showing Wortley her sincere commitment to their relationship. Just as Montagu profitably contradicts herself in describing her own morality, she carefully modulates her opinions on finances to preserve her class while rejecting its trappings. Wortley, a grandson of the Earl of Sandwich, was a socially safe choice whom Montagu could marry without being accused of having transgressed her rank. But she would be giving up her accustomed economic standing. She had to convince him, through her treatment of the financial questions surrounding an elopement, that she did not expect the same lifestyle as a Wortley Montagu that she had enjoyed as a Pierrepont. She turns that requirement to her advantage by making herself appealingly vulnerable to her worried suitor, styling her potential poverty as a welcome sacrifice for love and integrity. Robert Halsband points out that “in the lovers’ contest as to who gave up more by elopement, [Montagu] held the trump card: that she threw herself entirely on [Wortley’s] generosity without the safeguards of a contracted marriage.”48 Without those written guarantees of allotted spending money and financial support in case of widowhood, Montagu would be dependent on what Wortley chose to give her during their marriage. As one who brought nothing to her marriage but “a Nightgown and petticoat,” Montagu had to appear less financially interested than most: aware of the realities but without expectations. Because she could offer nothing, she could ask for nothing.49 By rejecting the material aspects of her aristocratic lifestyle while retaining the underlying class identity, Montagu suggests that she values “middle-class love” as an alternative to other options that her society offers. As Armstrong and Tennenhouse suggest, “in contrast with both the landed aristocracy with its libertine appetites and the promiscuous mob was the sanctuary of middle-class love.”50 Although she does not wish actually to be middle-class, she exploits middle-class values for their social and moral currency. In 1710, Montagu had hesitated at the prospect of a clandestine marriage, a hesitation that reflected both her manipulation of her own image and her genuine worries for her future. But ultimately she suggests that just as she rejects “great Estates and Titles,” she would be a hypocrite to follow the moral standards of “the World” in determining whether to elope with Wortley. She depicts herself as willing to rely on her own conscience: the image of an independent moral exemplar that she presents throughout the correspondence. In August 1712, just weeks before their elopement, she insists to Wortley that they must go away as soon as they are married: “I cannot [ 52 ]

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think of living in the midst of my Relations and Acquaintance after so unjustifiable a step—unjustifiable to the World.—But I think I can justify my selfe to my selfe.”51 With this statement she performs that self-justification. She proclaims to Wortley that she will disregard the expectations of her society and pursue her own desires, choosing her conscience as a higher authority and removing herself from those who would most disapprove of her choice. However, her need to keep Wortley at a fervid pitch by expressing doubt persisted. Just days before her departure for the country and her prospective marriage to Skeffington (also days before Wortley purchased their marriage license), she wrote to Wortley, seemingly in an agony of indecision: Are you sure you will love me for ever? Shall we never repent? I fear, and I hope. I foresee all that will happen on this Occasion. I shall incense my Familly to the highest degree. The gennerallity of the World will blame my conduct, and the Relations and freinds of ——— will invent a thousand storys of me, yet—tis possible you may recompence every thing to me.

She concludes, “My resolution is taken—Love me and use me well.”52 As at the beginning of the courtship, her tone reflects genuine anxiety as well as deliberate manipulation. Thus she describes her decision and her commitment to Wortley in highly dramatic language that casts him as her hero. Montagu is taking one final look before she leaps, because she must be certain that Wortley will be there to catch her. Were he to hesitate, her reputation would be ruined, considering that even a successful elopement would be socially damaging. Again she rehearses the dangers attending their decision, then rhetorically places herself side by side with Wortley against their common enemies. Her tone of resolve in the face of her fears would seem to her reader to arise directly from the prospect of “recompence” through their prospective marriage. For every letter that ended on a note of doubt to draw out Wortley’s reassurance, this one ends with the resounding decisiveness that will spur them both to take the final step of elopement, perhaps recalling to Wortley the early letter in which Montagu asserted that her resolutions were “seldom made and never broken.” As an aristocratic young woman, Montagu recognized that marriage was necessary, if only to secure the greater degree of social freedom that she desired. Equally, she saw the danger of an affectionless, financially motivated match that would bring her neither freedom nor companionship. While her circumstances prevented her from making a contracted marriage without parental approval, she needed to control her choice and thereby control, to some extent, her husband. She gained that control through her rhetorical strategy, keeping marriage to Wortley alive as a possibility while leaving some room to save her reputation should that [ 53 ]

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possibility fail. In her letters she ignores or, just as frequently, embraces the contradictory aspects of her position: she depicts herself as a clear-eyed observer who knows the rules well enough to break them, as a wealthy woman whose experience of wealth motivates her to accept potential poverty, and as a dutiful lady whose understanding of her duty enables her to reject it. Of course, Wortley was not Montagu’s only correspondent, and her other correspondences reveal similar patterns of rhetorical self-fashioning.53 While she and Wortley were courting, she was corresponding regularly with Philippa Mundy, a close friend, contemporary, and social equal. Marriage was so important to these young women that they invented a shorthand way of describing their marriage prospects: “Paradise meant being married to a man one loved, Hell to a man one detested, and Limbo or Purgatory to a man one merely tolerated.”54 In September 1711 Montagu gave her friend, in love with one man but under pressure to accept another, some very conventional marriage advice: [Tho’] nobody can have more exalted Notions of Paradise than my selfe, yet if Hell is very tempting, I cannot advise you to resist it, since Virtue, in this wicked World, is seldom any thing but its own reward. I guesse Mr. Chester to be the Man; in point of prudence (contrary to point of Pleasure) you ought Not refuse him. I give you better Counsell than I can take my selfe, for I have that Aversion to Hell, I shall resist it all my Life, tho’ without Hope of Paradise, and I am very well convince’d I shall never go to Hell, except ’tis to lead Apes there.55

She admits that she is giving advice that she could not follow herself when she tells Mundy to marry for “prudence” rather than “Pleasure.” Indeed, she presents herself as willing to avoid “Hell” at any cost, including that of dying unmarried and “leading apes in Hell” as an old maid.56 Montagu’s letters suggest, however, that marriage to Wortley was not an escape to “Paradise” but an escape from “Hell”: between September 1711 and February 1712, she had fallen in love with a man—not Wortley—whom she could not marry, as letters to Mundy written just months before Montagu’s elopement confirm: I see no probable prospect of my ever entering Charming Paradice, but since I cannot convince him of the Necessity of what I do, I rack my selfe in giving him pain. These alternate Thoughts fight battles in my Breast; mean time I see daily preparations for my journey to Hell.57

Montagu suggests that her unnamed suitor does not understand the lack of agency of which she and Mundy were all too aware: another difficult element in [ 54 ]

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a situation fraught with challenges. As her father was negotiating the terms of her “journey to Hell”—her marriage to Skeffington—she apparently became increasingly willing to accept “Limbo” in the form of marriage to Wortley as preferable to “Hell” or to spinsterhood and “a settlement in the Country . . . after that mighty Sacrifice, I may find myself wither’d and forgotten.”58 Here, the purposeful inconsistency in her self-image is clearly visible: a country life, proposed to Wortley as a happy Horatian retirement, is described to Mundy as a miserable exile. If she did not marry, her father would send her into the country with a promise of “making my Maiden Life as miserable as lay in [his] power” and with only a £400 annuity, which was a livable sum but far less than her marriage to Skeffington would have brought.59 Despite the risks of a clandestine marriage, marrying Wortley would allow her freedom to travel in the social circles she had known from birth without the prospect of a husband—Skeffington—whom she apparently found intolerable. Reinventing herself as the perfect bride for Wortley became the most attractive option available to secure the autonomy that she desired. Love was both out of reach and potentially risky in itself; an arranged marriage was intolerable. Wortley was her best option to retain emotional, physical, and social freedom. Still, at this juncture she expresses uncertainty to Mundy at the alternative of marriage to Wortley. “I may go into Limbo if I please, but tis accompanny’d with such circumstances, my courrage will hardly come up to it, yet perhaps it may,” she writes to Mundy in August 1712.60 She could not ignore the “circumstances”; that is, the consequences of an elopement for her reputation. A clandestine marriage was among the most drastic steps an upper-class young woman could take. Any marriage not sanctioned by family was likely to cause a scandal; this one could create a permanent rupture with her father and other relations and in fact “divided public opinion” when the news of it began to circulate.61 Soon after her elopement, Montagu would advise Mundy to make a different choice than she herself had made and to marry with financial security in mind: I suppose your inclination is in favour of one unequal in point of Fortune to him proposed by your father. I know there is nothing more Natural than for a Heart in Love to imagine nothing more easy than to reduce all Expenses to a very narrow compasse . . . But, my Dear, can you be very sure of this? The Cares, the Selfe Denial, and the Novelty that you will find in that manner of Living, will it never be uneasy to you? [ . . . ] If the Gentleman propos’d to you has realy no other fault but a disagreable Person . . . [your dislike] cannot last long. There is no figure that after the Eyes have been accustom’d to, does not become pleasing, or at least not otherwise.62 [ 55 ]

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As she often does, Montagu suggests that Mundy follow her advice, not her example. She endorses the traditional view that love easily will grow after marriage, as long as a woman has only what conduct writers call “innocent affections” beforehand. Her counsel must have come in part from her own exposure to reduced circumstances in the first year of her marriage to Wortley.63 In addition, although as a married woman Montagu need not constrain her words and actions so strictly as she should have done when single, she does not entirely lose her concern for propriety. For this reason she presents a traditional view, arguing that “the progresse from Esteem to Love is shorter and easyer than it is gennnerally imagin’d.”64 However, in the same way that her letters to Wortley often contain contradictory sentiments, Montagu contradicts herself in writing to Mundy, placing the responsibility of interpretation on her. In the letter referenced above, Montagu adds, However, after all I have said, if the Difference between your choice and your Father’s is only between a great Estate and a Competency, tis better to be privately happy than Splendidly Miserable. The reputation of having acted prudently will be no comfort . . . [Please] your Selfe, and believe from my Experience there is no State so happy as with a man you like.65

Although she cannot, while “acting in Form,” advise her friend to a course of action like her own, she must have realized that she would appear too blatantly hypocritical had she, in effect, recommended that Mundy disregard her own inclinations and marry purely for financial security. By juxtaposing two contradictory views, she can maintain the role of dutiful wife who gives socially correct advice as well as that of the caring friend who wants to see her friend in a happy marriage. The latter role allows her to criticize the traditional emphasis on filial duty, with its assumption that dutifulness is its own reward. She confirms that in fact it is “no comfort.” She cannot endorse enduring poverty for love, but she can endorse companionacy by citing her own experience: a modest life with a man one likes is preferable to a grand life with a man for whom one feels indifference, or even aversion. Passion or attraction is out of the question; a life free of marked unhappiness is the goal.66 This understanding is typical of these women’s limited expectations of marriage. Montagu organized her married life to seize as much happiness as she could out of those limited parameters, largely by moving in circles separate from her husband’s. In her role as a newlywed, Montagu at first appears eager for her husband’s company: she re-creates herself in Wortley’s eyes again, this time as a loving wife. She wrote her first letter to Wortley after their marriage while he was in Durham “probably on colliery business” and she was staying with the Whites of Wallingwells, “a family of lesser gentry.”67 In this letter she calls herself “perfectly unacquainted with [ 56 ]

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a proper matrimonial stile” and proposes “to write as if we were not marry’d at all.” She says that the large family with whom she is staying makes her imagine “agreable pictures of our future Life” in which he will “retain the same fondnesse for me as I shall certainly mine for you,” and even mentions her “Sincere Love.”68 Although she begins the letter by suggesting that they write as if they were still unmarried, the very fact of being married enables her to write more freely and more warmly than before. The letter also represents one of few instances in which Montagu directly mentions to Wortley her role as his wife. She presents herself as a newlywed whose love for her husband is growing now that they are married, and she suggests that she is eagerly anticipating their next step together: starting a family. Thus she tacitly affirms to Wortley that the conventional wisdom is true: a newlywed woman’s affection for her husband increases after marriage, when she is freed from the constraints placed on a single woman’s conduct. Such an affirmation might well have been gratifying to Wortley, a conventional thinker often frustrated by what he saw as his bride’s constant reversals of feeling and intention. Later, though, she remains fond but becomes increasingly detached and businesslike. Neither the warm tone nor the overt consciousness of her new role lasts long. Although she continues to write freely, her tenderness disappears. Her next letter to Wortley, just a few days later, reproaches him for not writing, and further letters in the first years of their marriage take the same tone. Often traveling in pursuit of his business and political interests, he repeatedly left Montagu and their son Edward, born in May 1713, alone in whatever house the family was renting at the time. He not only failed to write as frequently as Montagu would have liked, but also left in her hands many decisions about travel arrangements and lodgings. When she is “in great trouble and irresolution” about whether to bring their son to London in December 1714,69 he says only that “if you do wrong about him, you will have no reason to blame me, for I desire it may be as you like best.”70 Repeatedly she asks for advice and receives either an indecisive reply or none at all, his frustratingly deliberate indecision recalling the recriminations and backpedaling of their courtship letters. Over time, though, she handles the business of their life with increasing confidence and even offers Wortley advice on his political career. Her assured and decisive tone demonstrates that she prefers independence and feels suspicious of intimacy.71 Even in the earliest days of their courtship she had cast doubt on passionate relationships, saying “I can esteem, I can be a freind, but I don’t know whether I can love.”72 Her description of an ideal relationship uses the word “love” but describes companionship rather than romance: [My companion] should be one . . . that I very much lovd, and that very much lovd me, one that thought that the truest wisdome which most [ 57 ]

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conduced to our happynesse, and that it was not below a man of sense to take satisfaction in the conversation of a reasonable woman.73

Like Dorothy Osborne, as we have seen, she describes a relationship of friendship even when she uses the word “love.” Four years later, Montagu’s enthusiasm for planning, arranging, and giving advice suggests she has returned to the role that she had proposed for herself before their marriage: the “reasonable woman” who would serve as a helpmate to her husband.74 Montagu would increasingly emphasize the “reasonable woman” aspect of her role but cease to be a companion, ultimately living on the Continent for the last twenty years of her marriage while Wortley remained in England.75 This next phase of her life required yet another rhetorical self-reinvention. Despite the highly unconventional separation, to Wortley she became a conventional rather than a companionate wife: a long-term silent partner rather than a close friend. Her letters to him suggest fond concern but no regret for their separation—which she apparently initiated in order to follow Francesco Algarotti, a handsome bisexual half her age, across the Atlantic.76 Wortley was willing to see her off on the pretense that the Italian climate would improve her health. The surviving correspondence is silent on the credibility of this pretense, but the couple perhaps got along better with an ocean between them. Writing to Wortley in December 1752 from Venice, Montagu laments having only recently received a letter he wrote from Leicestershire in August of that year: “It releiv’d me from a great deal of pain occasion’d by your Silence. I am glad you are in a place I have heard often celebrated for one of the Prettiest in England.”77 The letter, like many she sent him in this period, describes the weather and concludes with her wish for his continued good health. Others thank him for promptly sending her allowance or strategize with him about their son’s dissolute behavior, a source of constant concern for both husband and wife and one area in which the estranged couple continued to collaborate. She no longer seeks the “companionship” and “conversation” she promoted in their courtship days as part of the wifely role. Now, the more distant, conservative marital relationship, likely familiar to Wortley and easy for him, suits her goals best. In her letters to Wortley, Montagu never expounds on her own role as a wife and mother and rarely gives her opinion on other marriages within their social circle. When she does offer him an opinion about marital roles, that opinion is, like her overall approach, often conservative and class-based. She is particularly critical of marriages between social or economic non-equals, such as the Duchess of Manchester’s marriage to an Irishman, Edward Hussey. Hussey and the Duchess married secretly around 1743 but did not acknowledge their marriage until 1747.78 [ 58 ]

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On the subject of that marriage, Montagu opines to Wortley, perhaps ironically, “It is generally fatal to women to be at their own Disposal.”79 In response to another letter from Wortley, she explains, “I am not surpriz’d to hear the D[uches]s of Manchester has ill success in her adventure. I never knew it happen otherwise in such disporportionate [sic] Matches.”80 Having been unwilling to make a disproportionate match herself, Montagu—in a rare instance of consistency—condemns such marriages in others. The boundaries of class, she suggests, must be observed even when other social rules are broken. Montagu criticized the marriage system, but did not countenance marriages between members of different social strata. In a later letter to her friend Lady Pomfret, she recounts offering—in jest—to poison an earl’s daughter to keep her from marrying an actor: “[Since] the lady was capable of such amours, I did not doubt if this was broke off she would bestow her person and fortune on some hackney-coachman or chairman.”81 Her joke shows the limits of her marital activism, as do her remarks to Wortley on the Duchess of Manchester’s marriage. She does not believe in “disproportionate matches” between partners of differing social strata. In this letter, she suggests that her skepticism arises from a sense that misalliances retard the overall advancement of marital choice: “Such examples are very detrimental to our whole sex; and are apt to influence the other into a belief that we are unfit to manage either liberty or money.”82 The statement implies that women must prove their deservingness to men and that those who make bad decisions are harming society’s view of women in general. But it also frankly acknowledges that women deserve autonomy and financial freedom. The belief that women cannot manage for themselves is no more than a belief, not a fact; a position that Hester Chapone would echo and painstakingly prove in her letters to Samuel Richardson, which I will consider in a later chapter. In addressing these more conventional comments to Wortley, she is perhaps reminding him that she is an exemplary traditional wife, a woman of sense who retains socially conservative ideas and can therefore be trusted on her own and across an ocean. None of her surviving letters or essays gives readers many clues about her later feelings toward her own marriage. Halsband suggests that “if her friendship with Algarotti went beyond the bounds of convention, she could rationalize it by the fact that as a wife and mother she had paid her debt to morality”—a debt she also paid rhetorically by adjusting her image to suit both her circumstances and others’ expectations.83 Perhaps little more need be said than that she lived on the Continent, apart from Wortley, for the last twenty-two years of his life, returning to England only after his death. However, he agreed to her departure, supported her financially, and continued to exchange letters with her throughout those two decades. [ 59 ]

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Her correspondence shows an increasingly skeptical attitude toward matrimony in general. She criticized marriages among her acquaintances either as inappropriately mercenary or as lust-driven mismatches. According to Halsband, this skepticism arose from her disappointed idealism: marriage “disgusted her with its frequent failure through misalliance, infidelity, or the refusal of husbands and wives to believe in connubial happiness.”84 She may have been a frustrated idealist, but in letters to female friends after her marriage, she is also a social critic, highlighting the combination of risk and inevitability that made marriage such an anxious subject for women. Having made a marriage she could live with—albeit by living with it a continent away from her husband—she likely felt freer to criticize the necessity of making such marriages in the first place. Montagu condemns nearly every marriage that she describes in her letters to friends, usually because she finds them too mercenary but sometimes because she believes that one or both partners lack character. An element of selfcongratulation lurks in every gossipy criticism of someone else’s marriage, delivered with Montagu’s typical sharp wit. This self-congratulation might seem ironic in view of her own tepid marriage, but she recognizes that her marriage suited her purposes. Given that her marriage did not live up to society’s ideals either of romantic love or of financial success, she omits her experiences from her argument in favor of more general critiques. In addressing close friends and family, she can both exercise her wit and obliquely congratulate her audience—and herself—for having avoided all the possible pitfalls that claimed their peers. Montagu intends to amuse her friends, reinforcing their bond through the sense of intimacy that gossip promotes.85 Spacks notes that gossip “constitutes not only a discourse about power but in itself a code of power.”86 Montagu uses that power as part of her larger strategy of self-fashioning: she applies her wit, often in the form of hyperbole, to demonstrate the extreme social importance of marriage. As well, she highlights the extreme risk arising from the consequences of making a bad match and from the imbalance of power between men and women in marriage. In one such gossip-driven letter, to her sister Frances, Lady Mar, she summarizes a rumor about an adulterous wife, divorced by Act of Parliament, by joking that “the best Expedient for the public and to prevent the Expence of private familys would be a genneral Act of Divorceing all the people of England.” She follows with a hint at the value of companionacy: “You know, those that pleas’d might marry over again, and it would save the Reputations of several Ladys that are now in peril of being expos’d every day.”87 If everyone had the opportunity to divorce, she suggests, companionacy would increase and relationships between spouses would become more equitable: those happy in their relationships could easily remarry each other, while those risking adultery would have the opportunity to choose a partner for whom they [ 60 ]

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felt affection. Beneath the humorous exaggeration and joking at the expense of the “several Ladys” (one assumes that both Montagu and Lady Mar had specific people in mind) lies the suggestion that the current marriage system is untenable; the best recourse would be to divorce everyone and start from scratch, allowing people to choose their spouses with no financial or emotional strings attached. Writing to her sister at a time when each was well established in her wifely role, she could make such jokes, and thereby criticize the marriage system, without fear of damaging her reputation. As in her letters to Wortley, she takes advantage of the flexible nature of the personal letter to make public policy statements in a medium that was not overtly public. In another letter to Lady Mar, Montagu again focuses her criticism on women. Marriage, she argues, has fallen entirely out of fashion; women have become just as sexually immoral as men, and wedlock is “as much ridicul’d by our Young Ladys as it us’d to be by young fellows. . . . You may Imagine we marry’d Women look very silly; we have nothing to excuse our selves but that twas done a great while ago and we were very young when we did it.”88 This quip is formulaic but also ironic, Montagu having married at the comparatively advanced age of twenty-three. Nevertheless, her criticism of marriage in this letter is modulated and multi-pronged. Although she seems to denigrate the licentiousness of the young women who ridicule marriage, she also tacitly agrees with them by suggesting that wives must defend their married state. She clearly believes, or at least recognizes, that marriage still has an important place in society. Yet women compelled to marry, as she had effectively been eleven years earlier, “look very silly,” and must point to their youth and naïveté in their own defense. Montagu stands up for women but does not consider them exempt from criticism. These two letters suggest that she believes women should continue to hold themselves to a higher moral standard in order to demonstrate that they are worthy of more power and freedom in matrimonial matters. Her letters both communicate her criticisms of marriage and show her readers that she is the kind of moral exemplar that all women should be—a feedback loop that reinforces the truth of her assertions while emphasizing her qualifications to make such assertions. Thus Montagu’s success in promulgating her opinions about marriage stems from a kind of creative hypocrisy: she never endorses her own choice and in fact often urges others to make more conventional marriage choices. Where marriage is concerned, be it her own, her children’s and grandchildren’s, or the institution in general, she presents herself as exceptional in honesty, morality, and reason. Montagu does not urge others to imitate her but to heed her advice and opinions and to believe in her as a moral authority. She finesses the contradictions between her own choices and the choices she counsels for others by ignoring those contradictions. From this position she can establish herself as a chaste, virtuous, conventional woman: the risks she took [ 61 ]

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to elope with Wortley never went beyond the epistolary, and she never directly attacks the socioeconomic caste system that underpinned genteel marriage; in fact, she often affirms it. With these rhetorical nuances protecting her propriety and credibility, and writing in the safe genre of the personal letter, she is free to present herself as a social critic and a moral arbiter. She did not, however, criticize marriage only in her letters. Montagu’s personal letters catalogue poor marriage decisions and bad behavior by both sexes, but her published writing relating to marriage focuses her criticism on husbands.89 In 1714, she contributed an essay to the Spectator, writing in the persona of a president of a widows’ club and using the freedom granted by anonymity to construct a particularly sharp critique. Her essay responds to one in which Joseph Addison had depicted a club of greedy widows.90 He describes the widows from the perspective of a man who hoped to make his fortune by marrying one of them, only to find the courtship “broke off as soon as they came to the word settlement.”91 Addison had used familiar dramatic stereotypes to describe the widows: they are a sexually voracious band who urge other women to remain single so that they may “engross the whole male world to themselves.” These widows “do not weep so much for the loss of a husband, as for the want of one.”92 The piece hints at the widows’ financial greed but concentrates on their sexual greed, playing on the centuries-old theme of women as “the dangerous sex.”93 He outlines the stories of nine fictional widows, suggesting that their libidos are sending their husbands to early graves. Among the widows are “Lady Catherine Swallow . . . a widow at eighteen, and has since buried a second husband and two coachmen,” and “The Lady Waddle,” who at fifteen married a seventy-two-year-old knight, “by whom she had twins nine months after his decease. In the fifty-fifth year of her age she was married to James Spindle, Esq., a youth of one-and-twenty, who did not outlive the honeymoon.”94 In her response as “Mrs. President,” Montagu largely elides the matter of sexuality and instead enumerates the personal failings of her six deceased husbands, reversing Addison’s emphasis on corrupt women: “My first insulted me, my second was nothing to me, my third disgusted me, the fourth would have ruined me, the fifth tormented me, and the sixth would have starved me.”95 She was “married to [the first husband] at fourteen by my uncle and guardian (as I afterwards discovered) by way of sale” and chose her second husband, a sixty-year-old, “to comply with my friends.”96 Her third was a fox-hunting-obsessed boor, her fourth a debtor and thief. The fifth was a hypochondriac, and the last “loved money to distraction.”97 She questions why she should “have spent much time in grieving for an insolent, insignificant, negligent, extravagant, splenetic, or covetous husband.”98 Instead of overtly offering a moral, the essay argues by induction, stacking up six hopelessly flawed types to enable the [ 62 ]

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generalization that a woman can try again and again, even from the ostensibly more powerful position of widowhood, and still end up suffering in marriage. Leaving Addison’s bawdy jokes unacknowledged, Montagu writes a tongue-in-cheek catalogue of husbands’ personality failings in order to make a case for egalitarian marital relationships. Wives deserve good treatment, mourning should be a genuine emotional expression rather than a social nicety, and above all, women are largely powerless, restricted by law and social convention both before and after marriage. Complicating matters, the fictional Mrs. President describes another suitor in addition to her six husbands. The courtship of the “Honourable Edward Waitfort” closely parallels Wortley and Montagu’s courtship (to say nothing of the similarity of names), and was begun by “a cousin of his that was my intimate friend, and knew to a penny what I was worth.”99 Waitfort’s “esteem and love is all taken up, and by such an object as ’tis impossible to get the better of. I mean himself.”100 When his courtship of Mrs. President begins, he is interested only in her fortune, and expects to marry her quickly and easily. Angered by his presumption, Mrs. President gets her revenge by making Waitfort fall in love with her, playing the innocent, “best natured silly poor thing on earth . . . and when I used him like a dog for my diversion, he thought it was all prudence and fear.”101 Her treatment of this courtship is a sharply witty twist on the mutual hesitation that plagued the Wortley Montagus, and a nod to her own manipulation of the marriage market through her manipulation of Wortley. “Waitfort” perseveres through her six marriages, and she finally acknowledges that “so much constancy should be rewarded” by making him her seventh husband, “though I may not do it after all perhaps.”102 Although Mrs. President could be blamed for repeatedly passing over the one good apple in the bunch, six unfortunate matches represent solid evidence for at least hesitating before taking a seventh. As Mrs. President, Montagu becomes, as she does in her letters, a moral authority passing judgment on all she sees. Mrs. President demonstrates, from hard-won experience, that marriage is a trap that women cannot avoid falling into. In contrast, the courtship of “Waitfort” becomes a bit of fantasyfulfillment. Montagu humorously exaggerates, as she did in her letters to Lady Mar, to create a scenario in which a woman has sustainable power and no fear of using it— as far as possible from the reality of marriage in the period, in which the woman often remained powerless both before and after she was wedded. Whether or not Wortley knew of Montagu’s authorship, the depiction of marriage as a frustrating—because unavoidable—leap of misplaced faith, not the sideswipe at her own courtship, is the centerpiece of this essay.103 In her own short-lived periodical The Nonsense of Common-Sense (a response to the opposition journal Common Sense), published anonymously in 1737–38, [ 63 ]

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Montagu deals principally with economic and political issues but touches on marriage and gender roles, mostly in an economic context. Like Addison, Eliza Haywood, and other periodical writers of the period, Montagu creates a persona to act as the author of The Nonsense of Common-Sense. The eidolon is male, allowing Montagu more rhetorical freedom than she would have enjoyed by writing as a woman. She cites women’s desire for wealthy matches as a drain on the national economy: “But this Nation is now over-run with an odd Sort of Nuns, of a strange wandering Order, that declare against Marriage, if they cannot marry very great.”104 Here, her criticism of fortune-hunting women is only a small part of a larger argument against “luxury” and in favor of lowering the interest rate for the sinking fund, but it also reflects her general and repeatedly expressed distaste for blatantly mercenary marriage. Her letters suggest the view that an ideal marriage could be a bond between friends; her life suggests that it could be a means by which a woman could create an independent existence. These published writings tie Montagu’s more private views to the contemporary sense of a marriage crisis arising from women’s—and men’s—desire to, as she put it, “marry very great.” Having criticized fortune-hunting women, in a later number Montagu criticizes men in a tone reminiscent of her Spectator essay, attacking those who would gladly read “a Paper smartly wrote . . . either to ridicule or declaim against the Ladies” because practically every man in a coffee-house fancies he hath some Reason or other to curse some of the Sex most heartily.—Perhaps his Sister’s Fortunes are to run away with the Money that would be better bestowed at the Groom-Porter’s; or an old Mother, good for nothing, keeps a Jointure from a hopeful Son, that wants to make a settlement on his Mistress; or a handsome young Fellow is plagued with a Wife, that will remain alive, to hinder his running away with a great Fortune, having two or three of them in love with him.

Every example that she cites in this passage is of a man willing to sacrifice a woman (sister, mother, or wife) for her money. “These are serious Misfortunes, that are sufficient to exasperate the mildest Tempers to a Contempt of the Sex,” she concludes sarcastically, then offers a corrective vision of companionacy based on the Bible: “If I was a Divine, I would remember, that in their first Creation they were designed a Help for the other Sex, and nothing was ever made incapable of the End of its Creation.”105 Thus she suggests that valuing women only for their fortunes is a sin; the men who practice such treatment deserve the contempt that they instead direct toward women. Writing as an anonymous male, Montagu is able to sharpen her critique of relations between the sexes and of male behavior in particular. Her [ 64 ]

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authorial persona as a “Moralist” and a “Friend . . . to the Fair Sex” has the power directly to condemn mercenary males and to suggest a better course of action. It is the public, and therefore necessarily masculine, face of the female social critic who writes to Wortley and to Lady Mar. The rhetorical freedom present in The Nonsense of Common-Sense persists in Montagu’s letters to her daughter Mary Stuart, Countess of Bute. Marriage, as her Spectator essay and her own experience suggest, is a gamble that rarely pays off. As an elderly woman—wise, experienced, worthy of respect, and conventionally sexless— writing to her own daughter, Montagu had the rhetorical freedom overtly to cast doubt on marriage as an institution and to suggest that her granddaughters should remain single.106 As she does in writing to her friends, she repeatedly condemns marriages within her social circle as mercenary or simply inappropriate. Marriages for money are “gennerally unfortunate”; second marriages are “very ridiculous”; and marriages between unequal fortunes always find “ill success.”107 For her granddaughters, Montagu suggests that the possible risks simply are not worth the rewards. After all, not everyone could be as savvy in marriage as she was. In 1753, in a letter concerning her granddaughter Mary’s education, she writes to Lady Bute, The ultimate end of your Education was to make you a good Wife . . . hers ought to be, to make her Happy in a Virgin state. I will not say it is happier, but it is undoubtedly safer than any marriage . . . I have allwaies been so thoroughly persuaded of this Truth that notwithstanding the flattering views I had for you . . . I thought I ow’d you the Justice to lay before you all the hazards attending Matrimony. You may recollect I did so in the strongest manner.108

Montagu had entertained “flattering views” that Lady Bute would make a socially and economically advantageous marriage. Nevertheless, she could not overlook the “hazards” of marrying.109 For the next generation, she recommends a single life. A single woman, provided for by her parents, can at least rely on herself. Similarly, in 1755 she congratulates her daughter on the birth of a son by saying that she never worries about boys achieving “good fortune,” because so many paths are open to them. “We have but one [way] of establishing ours,” she writes, “and that surrounded with precipices, and perhaps, after all, better miss’d than found.”110 At this stage her expressed view of marriage has developed and sharpened. Marriage, always a serious risk, has gone from inevitable to ridiculous to avoidable. Her grandchildren’s generation should not follow her example and accept marriage as a dangerous necessity. After decades of carefully shaping her image through her writing, these letters written in later life demonstrate a congruence between her lived experience and her rhetorical [ 65 ]

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self-fashioning that was not previously present. Despite being married, she engineered her marriage so that it was in many ways “miss’d” rather than “found.” Montagu created for herself a way to live the independent life she hoped her granddaughter would embrace. Simultaneously, she developed a moralizing rhetorical stance that qualified her to live that pseudo-single life. Having succeeded in these projects, she could capitalize in her writing on her advanced age and social position, as well as her audience in these letters. She was thus ideally positioned to criticize marriage without being accused of “biting the hand that feeds her.” Although Montagu wrote prolifically, we can draw only limited conclusions about her opinions on marriage from reading the nearly five decades of her public and private writing. Montagu rarely gives her opinion of her own situation or details her own actions. However, on the topic of marriage, this absence of agency makes sense. Lacking the power to act, she makes rhetoric a substitute for action, fashioning a series of selves that will give her entrée into the social and intellectual situations that she desires: a marriage of relative (and increasing) freedom, an independent life abroad, a confident voice as a social commentator and critic. Where marriage is concerned, the theme of female powerlessness resonates throughout her writing. Without drawing attention to her own rhetorical power and her success in manipulating her image, she focuses on the generality of marriages in which, as she sees it, women are compelled to marry by the pressures of “the world” but also constrained by those pressures from finding happiness.

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3 HESTER CHAPONE AS A LIVING CLARISSA IN LETTER S ON FILIAL OBEDIENCE AND A MATRIMONIAL CREED

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R O A D L Y S P E A K I N G , the upper and middling classes in eighteenth-century England had begun to see marriage as, at least in theory, a matter of emotion as well as duty and socioeconomic necessity. But the theory that valued marital choice was not congruent with the social practice that required women to conform to others’ wills and distrust their own judgment. The mere existence of the theory, then, was enough to create debate. The change in emphasis from arranged to companionate marriage was, while perhaps inevitable, vigorously contested in law, in conversation, and in print. Hester Mulso Chapone (1727–1801) demonstrated the anxious nature of this transition in her personal life and explored it in her writing. In her correspondence with Samuel Richardson, published as Letters on Filial Obedience (1750–51), and her later A Matrimonial Creed (1751), Chapone exploits the rhetoric of feminine sensibility and traditional values to argue for marital choice and thus, indirectly, for gender equality. Chapone’s writing, which capitalizes on the gap in age, education, and experience between herself and Richardson, employs the selective argumentation and demure tone needed to advocate for companionacy at a time when women’s identities were often still defined in terms of roles rather than deeds.1 Her awareness of audience allows her to turn the potential disadvantage of her social position into a valuable rhetorical strategy. Chapone has mostly been known and studied as a Bluestocking—one of the group of “learned ladies” who, though sometimes ridiculed, were increasingly venerated in the latter half of the eighteenth century.2 Her best known and most studied work, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773), solidified her image in her own time as a member of this group: a “female intellectual moralist.”3 The learned woman would begin to be seen, after mid-century, as another possible antidote to social concerns [ 67 ]

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about feminine acquisitiveness and luxury. As Harriet Guest explains, “Learning both promotes the disavowal of desire, with its implications of luxurious consumption and conspicuous display, by teaching women not to be cheated . . . and confirms a capacity for appropriate feeling.”4 But in 1750–51 neither the Bluestocking image nor Chapone’s reputation were conceived in these terms. The Letters on Filial Obedience and Matrimonial Creed reflect a different role for both author and audience. Chapone, then Hester Mulso, was a single woman writing to a literary celebrity known for circulating his correspondences. Participating in the redefinition of marriage that characterized the first half of the century required a carefully crafted tone. Chapone made these adjustments to her rhetorical approach in order to avoid alienating her reader and prospective future readers. As Gordon Schochet observes, women in the early modern period were circumscribed by political, economic, and legal theories on the one hand; and “lower-level, non-theoretical, and often unwitting prejudices” on the other.5 Those prejudices required Chapone to craft her arguments with care; they also impeded marital choice. Mary Astell’s 1694 observation about women’s ability to choose a marriage partner, cited earlier, foregrounds the social strictures that impeded marital choice: “Modesty requiring that a Woman should not love before Marriage, but only make choice of one whom she can love hereafter: She who has none but innocent affections, being easily able to fix them where Duty requires.”6 Astell emphasizes the role of “Duty” in guiding choice. Genteel young women who had to marry had to endorse marriage. They could do their duty chiefly by accepting suitable matches. Overly strident objections to particular marriages or to the prospect of marriage in general could label them as unmarriageable.7 As Leslie Richardson observes, “admonitions such as Astell’s [in favor of more rights for wives] likely contributed to the retrenchment of patriarchal authority in the family. Early liberal political-economic discourse categorized women with those who had no right to rebel.”8 Chapone’s writing, which argues for marital choice while advertising her “modesty” and “innocent affections,” claims no right to rebel even as Chapone does exactly that. Social restrictions might impede women from choosing their husbands, but economic realities still pushed them toward marriage. Chapone’s own experience illustrates the consequences of that situation. Born Hester Mulso “into the upper reaches of the middle class, the daughter of . . . a gentleman farmer,” she was allowed to choose John Chapone as her husband, but her father delayed their marriage by four years for financial reasons.9 John Chapone then left his wife “relatively poor” when he died only ten months after their marriage.10 She thereafter earned a living as a writer, and “[her] name from the 1770s until the mid-nineteenth century was a byword for the female intellectual moralist.”11 In 1750, she was not yet widely known as a writer, [ 68 ]

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but she was already writing and circulating poetry as a member of the Bluestocking circle.12 Richardson knew her and sought her opinions; Anne Donnellan wrote that he “[took Chapone] as a model for his genteel characters.”13 Chapone clearly knew whereof she spoke in terms of class pressures, economic exigencies, morality, and the influence of those elements on the marriage decision. Taken together, the Letters and Creed demonstrate the rhetorical skill required when a woman—especially a young, single woman—addressed the subject of marriage. As an “intellectual moralist” Chapone needed to appear conventional while advancing progressive arguments. These two documents show that she did so through meticulous attention to audience. Rhoda Zuk explains that “the themes and modes of Chapone’s writing modify the intensely sociable and expansive but indubitably maledirected contexts which authorized her as an intellectual woman.”14 Chapone turns these “expansive” rhetorical situations to her advantage by personalizing her arguments and softening her tone without diminishing her intellectual rigor. Her writing thus suggests ways in which women writers could use the expectations associated with femininity and with the epistolary genre as tools of persuasion. In 1750, Richardson invited Hester Mulso to correspond with him about Clarissa. Richardson’s side of their correspondence has not survived; Chapone’s was published in 1750–51 as Letters on Filial Obedience. Responding to Richardson and to Clarissa, Chapone emphasizes her similarities to the novel’s heroine to suggest that women should have the right to refuse an unwanted marriage. She creates a fictional father-daughter relationship with Richardson that allows her to appear humble and charming while she presents controversial views. Although Chapone is not, as Osborne and Montagu were, writing to a suitor, her suasive power relies nonetheless on her ability to create intimacy with her correspondent in order to win his approval.15 Chapone thus flatters Richardson in hopes of persuading him: she modulates her tone so that it becomes, at times, comically effusive, but she never alters the substance of her argument. Later, in A Matrimonial Creed, Chapone appears to refute the Letters. Although we do not know the specific circumstances that prompted Chapone to write the Creed, its introduction suggests that in the Creed, Chapone reconsiders the ideas about marriage expressed in the Letters. A detailed examination of the two works, however, shows that Chapone has performed another rhetorical sleight of hand in the Creed. Rather than change her position on marital choice, Chapone shifts her focus to the matter of marital roles and to the proper relationship between a husband and a wife, a question on which she can present a more traditional opinion. Chapone doubtless wanted to take part in the debate over Clarissa; but she had to exercise care—and considerable art—to present her message in a way that would not [ 69 ]

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damage her reputation. Like her choice of tone in the Letters, her choice of subject in the Creed shows the rhetorical maneuvering required in a woman’s writing on the issue of marriage. Chapone spoke out in favor of marital choice, but the presentation and timing of the Creed suggest that her outspokenness required her to reaffirm the conventional aspects of her viewpoint. The Chapone-Richardson correspondence began with a disagreement over the novelist’s treatment of filial duty in Clarissa. After discussing the subject at Richardson’s home, North-End, Chapone wrote to Richardson at his invitation and at the urging of a mutual friend: “Miss Prescott has desired me not to neglect the proposal you made to me of telling you in writing my sentiments on the subject we touched on at North-End, of filial duty and parental authority.”16 Richardson wrote about this subject in his didactic literature as well as dramatizing it in his novels, with a stated goal in both cases of moral improvement for his readers.17 To this end, Richardson hoped that Clarissa’s readers would find the novel representative of genteel women’s lives and thus endorse its moral message. He cultivated the sense that Clarissa was closer to reportage than to fiction, noting that he “[could not] consent, that the History of Clarissa should be looked upon as a mere Novel or Amusement—since it is rather a History of Life and Manners.”18 Richardson’s circle of friends shared this perception of Clarissa. As Zuk notes, Chapone and her fellow Bluestockings were “intensely interested in the aesthetic integrity and practical implications” of Clarissa.19 They saw it both as highly realistic and as socially significant. Catherine Talbot wrote to Elizabeth Carter in 1747 that “one can scarce persuade oneself that [the novel’s characters] are not real characters, and living people.”20 Sarah Fielding characterized the novel in 1749 as “not intended as a Dramatic, but as a real Picture of human life.”21 The Bluestockings’ interest in parental authority and marital choice persisted into the latter half of the century, as we know from Sarah Scott’s novel The Test of Filial Duty (1772), the subject of a later chapter. Gary Kelly suggests that “the feminizing of patriarchy” through “conventionally acceptable feminine (and christian) virtues of patience, forbearance, and candour” creates The Test of Filial Duty’s happy ending.22 Chapone performs a similar transformation in her epistolary approach to Richardson, using an image of traditional femininity as a base on which to build her arguments. Richardson apparently approached Chapone about Clarissa because Chapone was a young, single woman with concerns similar to those of his heroine. This relationship allowed Chapone to make the most of Richardson’s interest by eliciting his sympathy. In the Letters, she emphasizes her resemblance to Clarissa, casting herself as a foster daughter to Richardson, whom she calls her “dear papa” while deprecating herself as a “saucy girl.” Like Clarissa, Chapone presents herself as deferent and [ 70 ]

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virtuous but sincere and impassioned. Clarissa proclaims her submission to her father without altering her principles; similarly, Chapone does not deviate from her initial position that women should be free to refuse an unwanted marriage. Only the language in which she couches this idea varies. Chapone’s letters demonstrate that Richardson refuted her assertions, but her thesis becomes more fixed and better supported. Simultaneously, the language of the Letters becomes more and more flowery, apologetic, and complimentary. The combination of effusiveness and logic fits her Clarissa-style persona—“She preserves her Will inviolate, her Sincerity unimpeachable,” Richardson writes of his heroine—and allows her greater freedom of tone with her correspondent.23 The same qualities help protect Chapone’s reputation and marital prospects, a necessary consideration when writing to Richardson, known for circulating his correspondence. Chapone’s elaborate deference toward the novelist simultaneously preserves her proper role and allows her to demonstrate that a paragon need not be a pushover. Although the Letters quickly evolved into general arguments for women’s right to refuse unwanted marriages, the catalyst for the correspondence was a scene in Clarissa in which the heroine is overcome with guilt when her father curses her for refusing an arranged marriage.24 Clarissa must appear virtuous at all costs, even as everyone around her doubts her motives. Proving Mary Astell’s assertion about “innocent affections,” Clarissa’s own parents cannot dismiss the possibility that she is in love with Lovelace; they will not believe that she would refuse to marry Solmes simply because she finds him “odious.”25 “How can you tell me your heart is free?” her mother asks. “Such extraordinary antipathies to a particular person must be owing to extraordinary prepossessions in another’s favor!”26 After further expostulating with her daughter, she adds, “Ah, girl, never say your heart is free! You deceive yourself if you think it is.”27 Clarissa dramatizes a woman’s need to concern herself with the public impression created by her feelings and actions, even as her own parents might perceive them. Clarissa’s family repeatedly urges her toward her duty, the performance of which would enable her to preserve her reputation by removing any suspicion that she is in love with the morally suspect Mr. Lovelace. In Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, Richardson prefigures Clarissa’s father’s famous curse when he suggests that for children of either sex, a lack of filial duty will resonate for generations: I have been a diligent Observer of the Dispensations of Providence in this respect, and have always seen the Sin of Undutifulness to parents punished in Kind, more than any one sin. I have seen the Son of the undutiful Son, revenging the Cause of his Grandfather; and at the same time, intailed a Curse upon his Son, if he has not been taken off childless, who, in his Turn, [ 71 ]

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has retorted the ungracious Behaviour; and thus a Curse has been intail’d by Descent upon the Family, from one Generation to another.28

In Clarissa, Richardson focuses the moral message on a female audience: duty should be a marriageable daughter’s first concern: “The Duty of a child to her parents may be said to be anterior to her very birth,” he notes in his published commentary to Clarissa.29 He adds, “It is better for a good Child to be able to say, her Parents were unkind to her, than that she was undutiful to them.”30 Clarissa’s “undutiful” behavior causes her ruined virtue, estrangement from her family, and eventual death.31 Both the novel and the author’s commentary link undutiful actions to unchaste ones: an undutiful daughter is a fallen woman.32 “Chastity, like piety, is an uniform grace,” Richardson explains in his commentary.33 For a daughter, doing one’s duty means endorsing patriarchal, family-arranged marriages and then accepting such a marriage. Richardson describes Clarissa as “having the strictest notions of filial duty.”34 Chapone takes this cue, but she takes it conditionally. She presents herself to her correspondent as a dutiful, virtuous living Clarissa in need of his correction and improvement. On the matter of Clarissa’s refusal to marry, for example, Chapone meekly suggests that her own reasoning is faulty: [I]t is with this view that I am contented to expose my opinions to you, in order to have them rectified by you. And you have given me leave to oppose my weak arguments to yours, till I can bring my reason to give its free assent to your opinion.35

She shows that she is willing to accept instruction from her correspondent, but she does not accept arranged marriage as the chief exponent of filial duty for girls. The Letters soon leave Clarissa behind to argue for real-life women’s rights in marriage. Chapone is careful to suggest that she has larger concerns than her own interest. She adds pathos to her argument by referring to her love for her own father. She draws the parallel, made familiar by Robert Filmer, between parents with their children and monarchs with their subjects: both must “maintain order amongst them, and provide for their safety and welfare” in order to ensure “the happiness and good of the person who is to submit.”36 But she follows John Locke in arguing that the nature of duty and parental authority changes over the life of the child. Young children must obey their parents because the parents, as adults, know what’s best for the children; but in an adult child who has her own power of reasoning, duty to her parents arises from “love and gratitude.” Grown children must show “the same observance and submission to the will of their parents” that they did in their youth, “in all cases except where a higher duty interferes, or where the sacrifice they are expected to make is greater [ 72 ]

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than any degree of gratitude can require.”37 In postulating this evolving definition of duty, Chapone argues that young women develop independent judgment as they mature and should—in fact, must—be allowed to exercise that judgment. Because Clarissa’s sacrifice is “greater than any degree of gratitude can require,” Chapone argues, it constitutes an abuse of parental authority. Marrying Solmes would not have created “happiness and good” for Clarissa, but misery. To have married Solmes would have been “solemn perjury before the altar of God.”38 Finally, Chapone notes that Clarissa’s terror at her father’s curse creates an inconsistency in Richardson’s characterization. “Why is Clarissa, who is drawn as a woman of so good and [sic] understanding, and who reasons so justly on all other subjects, to be so superstitious and weak in her apprehensions of parental authority?” Chapone asks.39 If Clarissa’s reasoning is weak, she suggests, her other virtues may be weak as well, and she will not withstand scrutiny as a moral exemplar to readers.40 Chapone concludes this first of the Letters with another demonstration of her humility and malleability: Will you forgive me, dear sir, for making this objection to a character which is otherwise unexceptionable, and which is calculated to promote religion and virtue more than any fiction that ever appeared in the world? I dare say that you will be able to convince me that I have considered this part of the character in a wrong light; at least, if you take the pains to try, you will convince me that you do not think my opinion below your notice, and that you have more regard for me than I can any way deserve.41

This letter sets the pattern for the two that will follow. Chapone relies on these obsequities to mask the fact that she is willing to soften only the tone, not the content, of her arguments. She precedes and follows her most serious statements with protestations of her own unworthiness and immaturity and her gratitude for Richardson’s stabilizing influence. As her arguments grow more detailed and her tone becomes more strident, those declarations become increasingly self-abasing. However, she uses such flattery throughout the Letters, particularly in the second and third entries, to hedge her most insistent assertions. Though she might have seen such statements as merely pro forma in a correspondence between a young intellectual woman and an author old enough to be her father, she realizes that form matters, especially for a single woman writing about marriage in a correspondence that she could reasonably expect to become public. Moreover, she uses this submissive language to remind Richardson that she is a real-life Clarissa, living proof that the novel’s concerns are real and that a virtuous young woman could insist, at least, on a right of refusal. By making him her “dear papa,” she parallels her relationship with him and Clarissa’s relationship with [ 73 ]

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her father, flattering him by offering the chance to be a better “father” to her than Mr. Harlowe was to Clarissa. She implicitly offers him more influence over her than Mr. Harlowe had over Clarissa, although her stated willingness to acquiesce in his views ultimately produces no more result than do Clarissa’s vows of obedience. Chapone bases her argument on the idea that Clarissa had the right to refuse the marriage arranged for her, without guilt or consequence, and extends the argument inductively to suggest that all daughters should have the same right of refusal. While “the father hath . . . the right of tuition during minority,” from a daughter of marriageable age he is owed only “the right of honor” motivated by a sense of gratitude.42 She applies Locke’s ideas about parental power, quoting at length from his Second Treatise of Government (1690) to bolster her argument that any child old enough to marry should have the power to refuse a marriage as Clarissa did. Quoting Locke, she redefines “duty” in a daughter: it is not the acceptance of an arranged marriage, but “‘an inward esteem and reverence to be shewn by all outward expressions.’”43 Locke specifies the limits of duty in adult children, explaining that as the father became free from “subjection” to others’ will, so must the child: But this is very far from giving parents a power of command over their children, or an authority to make laws and dispose as they please of their lives and liberties. It is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude, and assistance; another to require an absolute obedience and submission.44

Locke further stipulates that “that duty which is comprehended in the word ‘honour’ requires less obedience, though the obligation be stronger on grown than younger children.”45 Men—and, Chapone argues by inference, women—grow into “‘a state of maturity’” in which they are required to practice only this adult version of duty.46 They must respect, support, and show gratitude toward their parents, but unquestioning obedience in adult children would undermine the freedom for which Locke is arguing. Thus, Chapone explains, women should be free to make their own decisions because they are capable of knowing the law, both civil and natural, that affects them: “If such a state of reason, such an age of discretion made [a man] free, the same shall make his son free too.” (And if his son, I presume his daughter too; since the duty of a child is equally imposed on both, and since the natural liberty Mr. Locke speaks of arising from reason, it can never be proved that women have not a right to it, unless it can be proved that they are not capable of knowing the law they are under.)47

Neither Chapone nor Richardson would concede that women are incapable of “knowing the law they are under,” given that secular, religious, and parental au[ 74 ]

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thorities constantly reminded them of the law in all its forms, from the expectations of filial duty to the injunction of obedience in the marriage vow.48 But the implication here is broader: that women are just as capable of reasoning as are their male counterparts. Chapone refers here to an authority whom Richardson had called “the great Mr. Locke” in The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum; in this and other publications focused on morality he frequently borrowed from Locke.49 Like Richardson, Chapone reads Locke selectively. Although the novelist used Locke in his conduct works to bolster his arguments for Christianity and against deism, Chapone invokes Locke’s name to support a call for female intellectual and social equality. “Whether this doctrine will appear to you in any better light from Mr. Locke’s explanation of it, I know not,” she says. “To me, I must own, it appears highly reasonable, and the objections you have made, do not to me appear strong enough to overthrow it.”50 Chapone can point to the correctness of Locke’s doctrine—which her own ideas echo—without overtly overstepping the bounds of her role as a young female intellectual, and with confidence that she is citing an authority her correspondent will recognize and respect. In the fictional father-daughter relationship that she has created with Richardson, she can test her principles and show him by example that Clarissa deserves the right to choose her husband. Starting from Locke’s assertions, Chapone redefines filial duty as an emotional rather than a contractual obligation.51 She supports this redefinition by citing her own feelings toward her father, saying that her heart is “ready to sacrifice much of its own happiness to that of my dear papa; and that it will always acknowledge . . . the great debt of gratitude which it must for ever owe him.”52 Thus she both circumscribes her argument and personalizes it, thereby presenting herself as a dutiful young woman with a proper sense of gratitude toward her parents. Her stated willingness to “sacrifice much of [her] own happiness” in favor of her father’s implies that she would not abuse greater marital choice if she had it but would continue, as a good daughter should, to be guided by her parents’ wishes. Having also called Richardson her “dear papa,” Chapone here blurs the boundary between Richardson and her real father, adding a note of pathos to the discussion. Chapone further safeguards herself in her faux-filial role by arguing only for a daughter’s right of refusal. She then applies that standard to herself, acknowledging that “I, as well as Clarissa, only insist on a negative, and . . . it never entered into my mind to suppose a child at liberty to dispose of herself in marriage, without the consent of her parents. This gratitude, or the duty of honoring them, forbids.”53 Emphasizing this position gives her a means to align her views with Richardson’s, with Locke’s, and with conservative commentators’ all at once. In this assertion Chapone again follows Locke, who suggests that an adult child’s emotional duty to a parent [ 75 ]

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“‘ties up the child from any thing that may ever injure or affront, disturb, or endanger, the happiness or life of those from whom he received his.’”54 Veto power for women is likewise a common position in conduct literature, which typically decries the heavyhanded exercise of parental authority even as it urges women to obedience. Richard Allestree’s The Ladies’ Calling, for instance, asserts that “a negative voice in the case is sure as much the Childs right as the Parents.”55 By implication, Clarissa does the same, showing Clarissa’s misery and eventual ruin as arising from her family’s tyranny. This limitation on Chapone’s argument allows her to show that her opinions are both mainstream and morally correct, reminding Richardson that she is more willing to endorse the contemporary marriage system than to change it or overthrow it. In keeping with this image, Chapone describes her sense of the value of marriage to further reinforce her assertions: You think I expressed myself too strongly with regard to forced marriages; and perhaps I did; for I always considered marriage in a more solemn light than the generality of people do; and as I think highly of the felicity of the state where it is a marriage of souls as well as persons, so I have a dreadful idea of the misery of being “joined, and not matched.”56

As Susan Staves notes, “the rhetoric of free choice was apt to give [a woman] an added sense of personal responsibility for the consequences [of marriage], and to make her more psychologically dependent on her relationship with her husband.”57 Chapone makes this additional responsibility a virtue. Although she insists only on a negative, she implies the moral value of choice. By suggesting that she takes marriage more seriously than most, she presents herself as a moral exemplar, like Clarissa, and one who interprets the marriage vow literally: “It is nearly, if not quite, of equal dignity and force with any oath that words can frame.”58 This approach shows her to be as appropriately in awe of the prospect of marriage as a young single woman should be. It also makes marital choice an ethical issue. The binding nature of the vows, as well as their religious weight, means that “a woman ought not to trust to a possibility of being able to perform her solemn vow.”59 Therefore, she argues, the marriage vow itself becomes another reason for women to be allowed refusal of an unwanted marriage. Although she apparently read the Church of England marriage service at Richardson’s express request, Chapone finds that it bolsters her argument, not his; it equally allows her to demonstrate her virtue by deferring to Christian values.60 Chapone likewise turns the suggestion of any possible unfaithfulness on Clarissa’s part to her rhetorical advantage, delicately maintaining that [ 76 ]

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as to any danger which could follow of her breaking the other part of her vow, that of keeping only to the man she marries, forsaking all other, it never entered into my thoughts; nor ever could, whilst the woman in my view was a Clarissa, or even one infinitely short of Clarissa’s excellence.61

Chapone will not acknowledge the possibility of physical unfaithfulness, but incorporates the prospect of emotional infidelity into her argument, acknowledging that marriage to a “hated object” would neither keep a woman from falling in love with someone else nor cancel out feelings already present before the marriage. Although a “prudent woman” would try her best to avoid or suppress such feelings, Chapone suggests, “I am not quite sure that those endeavours will always succeed.”62 She presents this possibility of failure as another reason for marital choice. By subtly shifting the language of the argument from physical to emotional faithfulness, she is able to maintain her sense of propriety while using the issue to further her own line of reasoning. Throughout the Letters, Chapone teases and flatters Richardson in hopes of persuading him to agree with her. She wonders in the second of the three letters whether “the exemption of old people from the passions of youth, should be no better a privilege than to leave room for the love of money.” She then immediately denies that she is suggesting that Richardson is too old to understand the emotional import of a mercenary marriage and praises him again as a wise father figure. After all, his “benevolence and friendship have all the warmth of youth, though guided by maturest judgment” and he may “speak impartially on this subject.” She flatteringly reminds Richardson of his role in their exchange: “And you will shew me where my observations are false, and teach me how to make the best use of those which are true.”63 Similar interludes of humility appear at the beginning and end of each letter; she begins the third letter seemingly in transports of adulation, offering nothing but “an affection and reverence next to filial; nothing to entertain you with but the rude essays of an ignorant girl, the unconnected sallies of a wild imagination with but little judgment to direct or control it.”64 This self-denigration, echoing all the conventional criticisms of women in general and women writers in particular as ignorant, fantastical, undisciplined, and naïve, reads as deliberately constructed if not as overtly ironic. Amid these declarations of inferiority Chapone rarely concedes a point to Richardson or modifies her argument. The first letter introduces the broad bases of her position; the second expands that position with references to religious and secular authorities. In the third letter, Chapone initially looks for ideas about which she and Richardson agree, again referring to authorities rather than to her own assertions. She and Richardson both approve of Locke and of Bishop Fleetwood, she says, so she admits them “into the confederacy”; she will not admit Bishop Hall [ 77 ]

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or Allestree, either of whom would place a woman in the condition of “an Indian skreen” to be bought and sold.65 However, the third letter also contains her strongest statements on the social limitations placed on women and girls. Chapone does not present herself as willing to accept correction from a higher mind, but instead asks Richardson whether he will “give me leave, for once, to be a saucy girl, and catechize my adopted papa? Though indeed I do not mean to do it saucily, but really and truly for my information.”66 Instead of yielding to his opinion she seeks only to understand it correctly in order to refute it more accurately. She casts their disagreement as one of degree. Both agree that parents and children should respect one another’s “veto power,” but Chapone could support the parental veto wholeheartedly if Richardson would agree to another condition: [I]f the law you have laid down be allowed the weight it ought to have with all parents, that (at any time of the child’s life from eighteen to thirty and upwards) the parents shall not, unless they can give superior reasons, refuse their consent to a child who, by her wisdom, prudence, discretion, justifies unexceptionally her passion for a particular object.67

Though she does not positively declare it, Chapone argues here for real marital choice, not merely for veto power. In the paragraphs that follow, Chapone substantiates women’s claim to choice by emphasizing their “wisdom, prudence, discretion” and validating the nature of the “passion” she mentions. She presents a normative vision of companionate marriage, superior to the mercenary matches and romantic elopements she and my other subjects see as fashionable. She reminds Richardson that “wherever I have mentioned love with any degree of respect . . . I meant such a love as is founded on friendship.”68 If their society would promote marriages based on that type of love, she suggests, “we should not hear of so many wives that swear the peace against their husbands, nor of so many husbands that sue for divorces and damages.”69 Women’s inferiority is not natural, Chapone explains, but culturally imposed. She argues, “I do not see that God and Nature have made daughters more dependent on [parents] than sons. Custom indeed allows not the daughters of people of fashion to leave their father’s family to seek their own subsistence,” but the daughters of the laboring poor go out to earn a living as readily as do the sons.70 She leaves the conclusion of the analogy unstated, but that conclusion is nonetheless clear. Women’s inferiority is a cultural construct, and it is therefore subject to amendment. To substantiate this claim she returns to one of the starting points of her argument: that women’s ability to reason makes them morally responsible for their decisions. Because marriage “is an action in which her free will is essentially concerned . . . as a rational creature, [ 78 ]

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[a woman] must have a right to refuse to shackle her conscience with a vow, if she does not choose it.”71 She vows that she will not dispute “whatever superiority men may claim,” but in arguing for marital choice based on rationality and free will, she is also arguing for gender equality and for the right to stay single.72 After these broad claims, she returns to the original outlines of her dispute with Richardson by reminding him that “the marriage vow ought to be perfectly voluntary.” In the process she begins again to personalize the issue, shifting from a logical appeal to an emotional one. Chapone points out to Richardson that marriage can be frightening: Is [marriage] not an act whereby a woman places in a man a power over her of so great consequence to her ease and quiet, that nothing but death, or a dreadful appeal to the laws of the land in the face of the world, can release her from his tyranny if he should prove a tyrant, or procure her any redress for the greatest of injuries?73

Her words are a gentler version of those of Mary Astell, who explains that “to be yok’d for Life to a disagreeable Person and Temper . . . is a misery none can have a just Idea of, but those who have felt it.”74 Astell criticizes marriage in a forthright tone and absolute manner; Chapone makes the same argument in more affecting terms calculated for her reader’s sympathy. Previously Chapone had suggested that women should be equal to men in society’s eyes; now she returns to the status quo to reinforce her position as a woman within her proper role, someone who wants only “ease and quiet” and fears the censure of “the world” that a divorce proceeding would bring. As many contemporary women writers do, Chapone often sets up “the world” as women’s adversary, the source of repressive behavioral standards and moral hypocrisy, and presents herself as superior to it in choosing honesty and rationality over materialism. The Letters end with a reference to Clarissa and a last gesture toward propriety: Forgive me, dear sir, if I have expressed myself too peremptorily on this subject, and spare not to take me down, whenever I forget myself so far as to argue with you with unbecoming tenaciousness or decisiveness. And now may I not flatter myself that we are almost agreed? At least that you begin to think me not quite so rebellious a spirit as you did? I will hope so till you tell me otherwise, because I wish to think with you on all subjects.75

Although she claims to wish to “think with” her “dear papa Richardson,” she no longer urges him to correct her ideas, only the tone in which they are expressed, should [ 79 ]

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it stray into “unbecoming tenaciousness.” Her flattering apostrophes grow warmer in the course of the letters, perhaps in hopes of softening the impact of her ideas, which she expresses with increasing confidence and in successively broader terms from one letter to the next, first arguing for Clarissa’s marital choice in particular, then for marital choice in general, then for female equality as an Enlightenment virtue. In the last of the Letters, Chapone reiterates Richardson’s statement that “perpetrated crimes in a man hurt not his reputation in the world’s eye half so effectually as imprudences in a woman.”76 The Letters seem to have become one such “imprudence” for Chapone. Her letters to Richardson may even have affected national legislation limiting marital choice. Richardson hinted in a letter to Elizabeth Carter that his correspondence with Chapone influenced the passage of Lord Hardwicke’s Act for the Prevention of Clandestine Marriages in 1753 by motivating lawmakers who saw the letters to “establish the parental authority, so violently attacked by a young lady, who is admired by all that know her.”77 The precise extent of the Chapone-Richardson correspondence’s influence on the act is impossible to determine. Thomas Keymer calls Richardson’s claim “far-fetched” but “not impossible, given Richardson’s network of Parliamentary contacts and his habit of circulating his correspondences,”78 while Mary Vermillion holds that “Clarissa exerted as much—if not more—influence on the opposition to the Marriage Act.”79 In either case, Richardson could profit from the notoriety that his novel created, while Chapone’s position as a young, single intellectual at the time she wrote the Letters required extreme circumspection. Chapone seems to have hoped that by making herself a Clarissa-like figure, she could deflect criticism from the content of her statements, but this apparently was not the case. Chapone evidently felt pressure to moderate her stance on marriage and produced the Creed in 1751. The Creed suggests that Chapone is reconsidering the ideas presented in her correspondence with Richardson. Zuk notes that in the Creed Chapone “seems anxious to defend herself against stinging accusations from Richardson and others that her views on filial obedience and her tenacity in argument implicitly prove her to be unmanageable and unmarriageable.”80 The first few lines of the Creed support this view, echoing the self-abasing tone of the Letters: Being told one evening that I could not be quite a good girl, whilst I retained some particular notions concerning the behaviour of husbands and wives; being told that I was intoxicated with false sentiments of dignity; that I was proud, rebellious, a little spitfire, &c. I thought it behoved me to examine my own mind on these particulars, to distrust its rectitude, and eadeavour [sic] to detect those erroneous principles and faulty passions, which could draw on me censures so severe from some of my best friends.81 [ 80 ]

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Against this backdrop of controversy, Chapone apparently wrote the Creed to circumscribe her bold statements about women’s rights in marriage, with a larger audience than Richardson in mind and with the aim of rehabilitating her image as a proper young woman. In the Letters and the Creed Chapone attempts to finesse a position about marriage in an environment where readers could interpret a partial critique of the marriage system as a rejection of that system as a whole. She explains that she wrote the Creed at a time when her thoughts were “free, cool and sedate, and my reason unperplexed by . . . the desire of converting others to our own way of thinking.” 82 Her explanation excuses the more strident tone of the Letters by blaming the circumstances in which they were written. However, in order to appear logically consistent and intellectually honest, she must also account for any change of heart that readers may observe between the two works: If the opinions here set down shall be found to vary from those I set out with, be it imputed, not to designed evasion, but to the gradual effects which the arguments I have since heard, and the reflections I have made, may have imperceptibly produced in a mind, which, however tenacious, is not disingenuous, and would have acknowledged those effects at the time, had it, at the time, been sensible of them.83

This introductory explanation echoes her rhetorical positioning in her letters to Richardson, making her appear pliant, aware of her faults, and willing to accept correction, rather than “violent” and tenacious of her opinions. She adjusts her image to create in her audience the impression of a reasonable and moderate philosopher who is also a conventionally ideal woman: happy not only to consider others’ ideas but ultimately to be governed by them. In the Creed, Chapone chooses her words with care in order to endorse traditional spousal roles and simultaneously argue for rational companionacy. Chapone avoids directly addressing the issues of marital choice and parental consent that motivated the Letters; as such, the Creed represents a red herring. Chapone focuses instead on the relationship between husbands and wives. Shifting the terms of the argument in this way enables Chapone to remain silent on the controversy that began her correspondence with Richardson, while still appearing to be honest and complaisant. She ends the Creed by avowing, That I am not insincere and disingenuous, I can boldly and safely determine; and if I felt myself convinced, I am certain I could own it freely. . . . Perhaps I am still tenaciously persisting in the wrong, but I do not find that [ 81 ]

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I can, from any argument I have yet heard, retract from or concede any of the opinions contained in This Paper.84

“This Paper,” however, contains much safer language than its predecessor, and Chapone discusses marital roles rather than marital choice. Thus, she can “tenaciously persist” in a series of largely conventional and safe statements. Chapone states that “a husband has a divine right to the absolute obedience of his wife, in all cases where the first duties do not interfere . . . he is undoubtedly her superior.” For this reason, she suggests that women should choose husbands whom they can freely acknowledge as their superiors: “I believe it expedient that every woman should choose for her husband one whom she can heartily and willingly acknowledge her superior, and whose judgment and understanding she can prefer to her own.”85 The remark hints that marital choice would help, not hinder, preservation of traditional marital roles. Chapone presents these first two points as axioms; those that follow are contingent on the good will of both partners and on the wife in particular. While a wife should be her husband’s “first and dearest friend . . . with all the privileges, rights, and freedoms of the most perfect friendship,” that friendship is “a free and voluntary gift” that the husband may withdraw if the wife does not deserve it.86 In order to preserve that friendship, the “inequality and subjection” that might compromise it should “be laid aside or suffered to sleep, till such time as the woman shall shew herself unworthy of the high title of friend, with which her husband had honoured her.”87 Chapone again echoes Mary Astell, who had asserted that “An ill Husband may deprive a Wife of the Comfort and Quiet of her Life, give occasion of exercising her Vertue, try her Patience and Fortitude to the utmost, which is all he can do; it is herself only that can accomplish her Ruin.” 88 However, Chapone lays equal emphasis on the value of friendship and the responsibility for maintaining it. She also has forcefully implied a syllogism: friends are equals; husbands and wives should be friends; therefore, husbands and wives should be equals. Naomi Tadmor describes the use of the idiom of friendship to describe marriage as “formulaic” and notes that “the social and moral norms of ‘friendship’ contained in these formulae were no doubt familiar to Richardson and his original readership.”89 Using this familiar language of friendship, Chapone can refer obliquely to the value of marital choice. She adds, however, the caveat that friendship between spouses is the husband’s to give or take away and the wife’s to earn or lose. This restriction enables Chapone to express a more mainstream belief, as does her shift in emphasis from the choice of a spouse in the Letters to the roles of men and women within marriage in the Creed. Although she makes many of the same arguments in both works, in the Creed she begins by affirming a

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traditional view—the husband’s superiority over his wife—and follows that affirmation by describing companionacy as a privilege rather than a right. The latter sections of the Creed read more like a conduct manual than a position statement, a change that allows Chapone further to move away from the controversial issue of women’s rights. She suggests that both partners observe “a certain kind and degree of respect, politeness, or complaisance . . . even in this most intimate of unions.”90 They should “testify their mutual preference of each other’s happiness to their own”; a husband must not allow “a total change of those manners which perhaps first attracted [his wife’s] fancy” and a wife “freed from the restraints of maiden punctilio, must naturally be delighted with every proper occasion of shewing her grateful attention and observant tenderness.”91 Chapone presents these conventional guidelines as a means to distance herself from the riskier aspects of her letters to Richardson. Chapone uses the Creed to address specific criticisms of her own character, apparently based on reader reaction to the Letters. “I cannot, on self-examination, convince myself that any of the above sentiments are founded in pride, or in aversion to be governed, or in jealousy of power,” she asserts. Further, she claims to desire guidance and direction rather than autonomy: I have never yet been the mistress of myself, nor ever wished to be so; for I am convinced that it is generally a happiness, and often a relief to have some person to determine for us, either to point out our duty, or direct our choice. If I know myself in this respect, I should be a loyal subject, but a rebellious slave.92

Here, she again echoes Jeremy Taylor, who emphasized the spiritual value of resigned obedience in The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living (1650).93 When she disavows any desire for independent decision-making, Chapone comes closest to rejecting the arguments she made in the Letters; but she softens the impact of that rejection with the reminder that she still does not wish to accept slavery. In tandem with her earlier statements about friendship, this assertion suggests an attitude of Christian resignation rather than specifically feminine subordination: she seeks “some person” to influence her decision-making, but not a husband specifically. With that limitation in place, however, she is willing to acknowledge the “happiness” that comes with subordination, thus showing herself to be appropriately compliant as a daughter and future wife even as she obliquely places limits on that compliance. Living with very limited marital choice, a genteel woman had to be careful not to appear hostile to marriage and shut herself out of the market. In the Creed, [ 83 ]

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Chapone attempts to show that she is marriageable, but does so by making an argument that complements, rather than opposes, that of the Letters. Chapone wrote to a well-known public figure in her Letters, using quotations from the Bible and from contemporary philosophers and theologians to support her belief that young women should have the right at least to refuse an unwanted marriage. Although she criticizes only a single aspect of marriage and carefully compartmentalizes her argument, her choice of audience and her appeals to religious and philosophical authority suggest that she is calling for social change. This bold strategy from a young single woman created the need for a still more restrained, if equally public, restatement of her views on marriage in the Creed. Her humble rhetoric in the Creed creates a public image more conventionally suitable to a young woman of the eighteenth century: intelligent and well-read but fundamentally manageable and yielding.

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4 “PERFECT FRIENDSHIP ” Mary Delany, Companionacy, and Control

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A R Y G R A N V I L L E (Pendarves) Delany’s background, textual history, and rhetorical stance make her an ideal subject for the present study. Born in 1700 into a prominent but impoverished family, in 1717 she accepted a prudential marriage, arranged by her uncle, to the nearly sixty-year-old Alexander Pendarves, a man whom she would describe later as “ugly and disagreeable.”1 Despite Pendarves’s shortcomings, Delany married him in order to provide for herself and deflect her uncle’s potential retaliation against her father. As a wife she pursued the ideal behavior expected in that role, showing only “complaisance” to the husband whom she despised. Pendarves died after seven years of marriage, leaving Delany a young, attractive, childless widow. She had little money but, for the first time, considerable control over her life. For eighteen years she cherished her independence and refused numerous suitors. Finally, she married Patrick Delany, a clergyman and friend of Jonathan Swift. From their first meeting she had “a higher opinion of [Dr. Delany] than of any other man I had ever conversed with.”2 The marriage, a paradigmatic case of successful companionacy achieved through marital choice, took place despite her family’s objections to Dr. Delany’s lack of fortune and family connections. From the beginning, both Delanys described their marriage in terms of respect, friendship, and the shared appreciation of durable, rational pleasures. Although Delany’s opinions about marriage evolve in step with her experience of the institution, she consistently describes the prospect of marriage as threatening a dangerous loss of autonomy or control. Her concern for propriety and duty does not prevent her from arguing against obligatory marriage and being skeptical of the value of marriage, which she calls “the matrimonial trap,” in general. Rather, she suggests that a single woman can still be proper and morally upright, using her own experiences as [ 85 ]

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evidence for this position. Her descriptions of her first marriage are novelistic in their pathos, accentuating her role as a virtuous victim of an unjust system. Later, her comments on the suitors she receives during her widowhood convey forthrightly her distaste and distrust at the idea of remarriage and what she labels as the “inconveniences” belonging to it. The prospect of companionacy seems remote until she experiences it, and even then, marriage to Dr. Delany is not a panacea for her concerns about marriage in general. As Mrs. Delany she can, for the first time, offer empirical evidence that a relationship of friendship and mutual respect is possible. Such a relationship represents a moral framework within which a woman can maintain some control over her life. Yet she continues to criticize more marriages than she approves, seeing matches like hers as an exception, not a rule. Above all, Delany condemns compulsory marriage in all forms, whether parentally or financially motivated. She argues that where marriage is necessary, companionacy is impossible and that women must therefore be allowed to choose not only whom but whether to marry. The textual history of Delany’s writing complicates her role as an advocate for choice and companionacy and perhaps partially explains why she has been little studied. Opposed to publication for the conventional reasons associated with her class, Delany would likely never have thought of herself as a literary figure. However, she was a public figure in that she was connected to the court throughout her life and known among her friends and family as an authority on dress and etiquette. In the twenty-first century, she is known principally as an artist and craftswoman if she is known at all. The 2009–2010 exhibition of her flower collages and needlework at the Yale Center for British Art and at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London brought her into the public eye as a polymath and as the “pattern of accomplishment and curiosity for her contemporaries [who] became a model to subsequent generations.”3 Although her correspondence has historically been de-emphasized, her personal history and her epistolary output make her an ideal subject for this study: she experienced both extremes of eighteenth-century marriage and wrote extensively about those experiences. Known to contemporaries as a well-connected paragon of propriety, she turns her expertise with social roles into an implied justification for criticizing those roles, especially where marriage is concerned. Delany’s correspondence, consisting of more than fifteen hundred letters, was published in 1861–62 by Richard Bentley under the title The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany. Delany’s great-niece, Augusta Waddington Hall, Lady Llanover, was the editor. The original letters that are still in existence are now scattered throughout libraries and private collections in Great Britain and the United States. Some, including those that make up the so-called autobiography, are apparently lost, and a few letters that do not appear in Llanover’s edition have been [ 86 ]

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published in other volumes.4 Llanover’s editorial choices sometimes illuminate and sometimes obscure her subject. For example, while Llanover provides useful historical information, she also omits language, episodes, and entire letters that she apparently felt would be embarrassing to the descendants of the parties involved. The edition begins with Delany’s so-called autobiography, the first installment of which Llanover identifies as dictated by Delany “in her latter years, with the intention of completing a private record of her life for her own family.”5 The rest of the autobiography consists of the letters that Delany wrote to the Duchess of Portland in 1740, at the Duchess’s request, detailing the story of her life. However, Delany herself would not have recognized the word “autobiography”; the word did not appear in print until the end of the eighteenth century.6 Using it to label these letters may lead to misinterpretations based on present-day expectations of a genre that, for Delany and her addressee, did not exist. Yet despite these complications we must still regard Llanover’s edition as an authoritative source, if only for lack of alternatives. Moreover, Llanover’s efforts both to sanitize and to modernize Delany become a useful study in themselves. The editor apparently wished to protect her subject (and, by extension, Delany’s social circle and the descendants thereof ) from any hint of impropriety, but also to enhance the impression of Delany as a victim of what Llanover presents as the hyper-conservative, hyper-acquisitive values of the eighteenth century. By positioning the first letters to Portland at the beginning of the first volume, Llanover cultivates readers’ sympathy for Delany and heightens the contrast between Delany’s first and second marriages. And while the presentation of the 1740 letters to Portland as “autobiography” is anachronistic, the term accurately acknowledges the flexible status of the personal letter in the eighteenth century. As has been demonstrated, the personal letter was, similar to a modern autobiography, a document written with a presumption of wider readership and read with an expectation of artless honesty. Delany’s honesty, however, involves considerable art. Like Montagu, she emphasizes instances in which she flouted convention or behaved inappropriately in order to suggest that her willingness to tell the truth should excuse or redeem her unconventional actions. The only exception to the autobiographical letters’ sense of confessional honesty is their use of typical eighteenth-century poetic aliases for the people involved. However, Delany applied the aliases inconsistently, and also wrote a key to them, suggesting that their use was more a matter of convention than a genuine attempt at confidentiality. The aliases also point toward Delany’s participation in the period’s generic flexibility. Like Osborne and Montagu, she recognizes the novelistic possibilities inherent in a letter and, in this case, applies literary conventions to epistolary writing.7 Janice Farrar Thaddeus argues that Delany was particularly adept at the “self-dramatization” common in an era when [ 87 ]

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“the separation between news and novel, fact and fiction was a permeable partition.”8 Her aliases are one means among several that she employs to assert control over her story and to shape her reader’s response to it. A further editorial decision allows us to examine the changes in Delany’s tones and emphases from the time of her first marriage to the writing of the “autobiography.” Between the autobiographical letters to Portland, Llanover inserts, as supporting documents, relevant letters from the early 1720s, explaining that “to render the chain of events more complete the original letters of her uncle (George, Lord Lansdown) and other relations are introduced in the course of her own biographical narrative, with those of Mary Granville herself to her mother and sister, after her first marriage, and in their proper order of dates when written during the period to which her own history relates.”9 The contrast between Delany’s recollections addressed to Portland a quarter-century after the fact and the letters written at the time is marked. Delany uses the expectation that women’s letters are extemporaneous and emotional—written “to the moment” in Richardson’s famous phrase—both to sharpen the pathetic impact of the letters to Portland and as an oblique guarantee of honesty in the letters written in the 1720s. The “autobiography” describes Delany’s painful reactions to her unwanted marriage and subsequent removal to Pendarves’s gloomy estate, while the letters written during her years as Mary Pendarves describe everything but her unhappiness. The difference in circumstances and recipients helps to explain the difference in emphasis; her chief correspondent for many years was her younger sister Ann Granville and, moreover, Pendarves was still living. Ann Granville was just ten years old when her sister married Alexander Pendarves; “too young,” as Llanover explains, “to be entrusted with the sorrows and trials of the interior of her home.”10 As a result, only the letters to Portland acknowledge Delany’s misery. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of the retrospective letters with the contemporary ones illustrates the control that Delany exercised over her self-presentation as a wife, a widow, and a writer. Delany, attentive to propriety and to the demands of her role, took a circumspect tone in her early letters to her sister. As Hester Chapone’s experience suggests, a woman who objected to marriage in general or to a particular marriage could not be a good wife. Moreover, Ann Granville, still living at home, might have been obliged to share her sister’s letters with their parents, whom Delany identifies as “the only persons from whom I wished to hide my distress.”11 Letters describing a single event but written to different recipients at different times show Delany’s changing rhetorical strategy and attention to audience. While always demonstrating correct behavior, she chooses her subject matter with an eye toward what is proper for her reader to know. By these means she can illustrate her thesis that an independent woman can still be a morally upright woman. [ 88 ]

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For example, in 1729, five years after Pendarves’s death, she wrote to Ann Granville and gave a sanitized account of her breakup with a suitor, Lord Baltimore, who claimed to have been in love with her since her widowhood: I told him, as for “philosophy, I did not pretend to it;” but “I endeavoured to make my life easy by living according to reason, and that my opinion of love was that it either made people very miserable or very happy,” he said it “made him miserable.” “That, I suppose, my Lord,” said I, “proceeds from yourself: perhaps you place it upon a wrong foundation.” He looked confounded, turned the discourse, and went away immediately after. I must confess I could not behave myself with indifference. and I have been in no public place since. I shall not care to meet him; but if I do I will let you know how he behaves for the future.12

Delany’s letters both to her sister and to Portland suggest that Baltimore was a persistent flirt but never made a formal proposal. Her admission that “I could not behave myself with indifference” shows the extent to which she was attracted to Baltimore, but propriety demanded that she reject his declaration. Her reaction after the encounter—avoiding public places where she might meet him—is likewise proper. But her recounting of the same episode to Portland in 1740 demonstrates that Delany adjusted her writing to suit her audience while perpetuating her image as a moral exemplar. In earlier installments of the “autobiography,” she had acknowledged her interest in Baltimore even as she emphasized her circumspection in reciprocating that interest, but the description of the incident written for the Duchess makes clear that Delany and Baltimore’s differences went beyond the philosophical ones alluded to in the version written to Ann Granville: At last he said he was determined never to marry, unless he was well assured of the affection of the person he married. My reply was, can you have a stronger proof (if the person is at her own disposal) than her consenting to marry you? He replied that was not sufficient. I said he was unreasonable, upon which he started up and said, “I find, madam, this is a point in which we shall never agree.” He looked piqued and angry, made a low bow and went away immediately, and left me in such confusion that I could hardly recollect what had past, nor can I to this hour, —but from that time till he was married we never met.13

In the same letter, Delany attributes a lingering fever that she contracted on the day of her confrontation with Baltimore to the stress of this experience, combined with her aunt’s illness and subsequent death. Llanover characterizes [ 89 ]

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Baltimore’s departure as a “cruel desertion” rooted in his “extravagant habits [which] probably required a richer wife,” but Delany’s description of it both to her sister and, a decade later, to her friend, emphasize Baltimore’s dishonorable behavior in contrast to Delany’s own strict propriety.14 Although Delany acknowledges to Portland her hope that Baltimore had “a particular regard” for her, she points out that “he had never positively made any declaration.” Because he had not done so, she later decided not to see him in private even after he suffered a serious injury, nor to give him a miniature portrait of herself when he asked for one. She writes to Portland, “I looked upon him as a flutterer, and was at a loss to know what his intentions were.”15 Spacks has demonstrated that for eighteenth-century women, falling in love represented a loss of control.16 For Delany, who used her moral and social correctness to validate her autonomy, responding to Baltimore’s unconventional advance would have meant losing both emotional control and moral legitimacy. To protect that legitimacy, Delany elides the exact nature of Baltimore’s declaration in her letter to her sister, while the letter to Portland is more frank. Both versions are crafted for their recipients, and both share an emphasis on Delany’s carefully controlled response to an encounter that tested the boundaries of propriety. As a childhood friend of Delany through family connections, the Duchess of Portland would likely have known the factual outlines of the stories that Delany told in her autobiographical letters.17 In retelling those stories, Delany creates for Portland—and, by extension, for a potentially wider audience—a sympathetic image of the teenager she had been and the anxiety that she must have felt when facing the prospect of marriage to Pendarves. She uses the pathos and personalization of her story to particularize the abstract debates about parental authority and mercenary marriage that were then current in polite society. Although Delany’s story was over two decades old by the time she wrote it to Portland, the autobiography gives no indication that the issues that it raises have been settled. Rather, its emotional immediacy suggests the continued currency of those issues and, in turn, shows Delany’s recognition that her experience was representative of a larger trend.18 Mary Granville was born in 1700 to Bernard Granville and Mary Westcombe. She was the product of “a younger, and impecunious, branch of an exceptionally noble ‘old family’” that traced its ancestry back to the Norman Conquest.19 In the “autobiography” she explains that her father was a youngest son and thus was under many of the same financial and familial pressures that she would be. His “chief dependence was on the favour of the Court and his brother’s [Lord Lansdown’s] friendship.”20 Delany had been “brought up with the expectation of being Maid of Honour,” but on the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the family could no longer depend on the court for social or financial support.21 Bernard Granville and Lansdown [ 90 ]

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were sent to the Tower for their supposed collaboration with Robert Harley, who had been a favorite of the Queen but was accused of treason after her death. In November 1715, Granville was allowed to retire quietly into the country with his family, but Lord Lansdown remained imprisoned for two years. Shortly after his release, Lord Lansdown invited Delany to stay with his family at Longleat. She soon became a kind of adopted daughter to him. This position, according to the prevailing values of the time, brought with it more obligations than benefits, given that daughters were expected to do as they were told and accept others’ decisions made on their behalf. The Marquis of Halifax’s The Lady’s New-Year’s Gift, subtitled Advice to a Daughter (1688), emphasizes that daughters’ role is to “endeavour to make that easie which falleth to their Lot” because “their Friends Care and Experience are thought safer Guides to them, than their own Fancies.”22 By describing her experience under Lansdown’s protection, Delany suggests that these conventional ideals could easily serve as pretexts for emotional manipulation. Grounded in morality and presented as loving care for a daughter’s welfare, the ideal of filial duty becomes a belief that a daughter should sacrifice herself for the good of her family. Delany characterizes Lord Lansdown as capitalizing on that traditional sense of duty and on her emotional attachment to her family. When Bernard Granville brought his daughter to Lansdown’s house, Lord Lansdown told his younger brother Granville that he intended to reduce Granville’s allowance, explaining to him “that now he should lessen his income, supposing that by this time he was fallen into a method of living in the country, and did not want so large an income as at first setting out. [Lansdown] reminded him at the same time how kind he [Lansdown] was to [Granville’s] children.”23 Bernard Granville was unhappy with his brother’s treatment of him and told his daughter so, as Delany describes: [Granville] wanted no hints of the obligations he lay under to his brother, and the day before he left Lord Lansdown’s house, he opened his heart to me, and talked on the subject in so moving a way, that it made a deep impression on my mind, and often after he was gone I used to walk in the gallery where we had our last conversation, and recollect it with grief of heart.24

Delany’s loyalty to her immediate family, which this passage suggests, figures repeatedly in her letters. Her sense of filial duty colors her actions, as she describes them, throughout her life, even leading her to seek her mother’s and brother’s permission to remarry at the age of forty-two.25 This loyalty is part of her life but also part of her rhetorical self-presentation, being an element of the morally correct behavior that she characteristically displayed. Much later she would promote and reinforce the same values in writing to the young daughter of a friend: “The only way to be beloved [ 91 ]

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and happy (even in a parent’s house,) is to be humble, modest, attentive, and complying towards those who have taken you under their wing.”26 In this respect she aligns herself with conventional morality as expressed by moralists and philosophers from Allestree to Locke, who emphasize the durable nature of familial obligations.27 Delany was genuinely close to her family but also displayed that closeness in her writing as a moral value, encouraging readers to recognize and criticize instances in which her virtue had been manipulated and her happiness sacrificed. Her first marriage was the most significant such instance. Delany’s “grief of heart” at her family’s obligation to her uncle was compounded when a friend of Lord Lansdown, Alexander Pendarves, came to visit at Longleat. In the autobiographical letters to Portland, Delany recounts Pendarves’s visit—her first encounter with her eventual husband—in terms designed to elicit both laughter and sympathy. Her description invites the reader to sympathize with the awkwardness and embarrassment of the situation. She narrates her sudden realization that her family intended to marry her to the fusty old man at whom she had been giggling: “His wig, his coat, his dirty boots, his large unwieldy person, and his crimson countenance were all subjects of great mirth” to Delany, and she “diverted [herself ] at his expense several days.” But she soon realized she could not dismiss him with a laugh. Pendarves “talked of going every day,” she recalls, “but still stayed, and I (to my great sorrow) was after some time convinced I was the cause of this delay . . . and I could easily perceive I was the only person in the family that did not approve of it.”28 Anticipating Clarissa when she met Mr. Solmes, Delany found Pendarves “ugly and disagreeable”; in addition, at age sixty he was more than forty years her senior.29 Hoping to head off a proposal, she behaved toward him with obvious rudeness and disrespect, but to no avail; her uncle and his family welcomed the match. Pendarves was one of Lord Lansdown’s closest friends as well as a powerful political figure in the area. As Delany describes, Lord Lansdown “rejoiced at an opportunity of securing to his interest by such an alliance, one of some consequence in his country, whose services he at that time wanted, readily embraced the offer and engaged for [Delany’s] compliance; he might have said obedience, for [she] was not entreated, but commanded.”30 Delany’s invocation of the word “obedience” suggests a deliberate enlargement of her rhetorical purpose from recounting her experience to criticizing the social values that made that experience possible. Both the motivation for the marriage and her reaction to it seem lifted from the pages of a conduct book. Allestree, for example, discouraged parents from making blatantly mercenary matches for their children and from requiring children’s acquiescence in unwanted marriages: “I must here say the original and more inexcusable guilt is usually in the Parents, who are somtimes such idolaters to Wealth and Honor, that they sacrifice their children [ 92 ]

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to them; a more barbarous Immolation than that to Moloch.”31 But he and others also enjoined daughters to distrust their own judgment and rely on that of family members, reserving their refusal only for a command that is “unlawful.” Daughters were advised that their duty was to make the best of seemingly bad circumstances, trusting that parents were making good choices on their behalf. Allestree argues that “a will duly submissive to lawful Superiors, is not only an amiable thing in the eies of others, but exceedingly happy to oneself; ’tis the parant of peace, and order both public and private.”32 Allestree thus makes “obedience” a byword for correct feminine behavior: selfless, meek, and yielding. In Delany’s writing, the word signifies the misery that can arise from the effort to obey. Not just recounting her own sad story, she is criticizing the general practices of filial duty and mercenary marriage among the genteel class of which she was a member. Presenting her story, then, as one exemplum of many, Delany enumerates the pressures on young women in similar positions when she describes Lansdown’s “pathetic speech” detailing all the reasons that she should accept Pendarves. If she refused the match, Lansdown suggested, Delany would alienate her extended family, impoverish herself, and endanger her father’s circumstances. Moreover, she would throw her moral character into doubt by raising the suspicion that she was in love with someone else. Lansdown’s reasoning again suggests that Richardson was reporting, not inventing, when he described the Harlowe family’s suspicion of Clarissa’s motives for refusing Mr. Solmes.33 Lord Lansdown named Delany’s former suitor Mr. Twyford—“a name [she] had not heard or thought of for above half a year”—and threatened to “have him dragged through the horse-pond” if he were the reason for her refusal.34 All of his reasons, as recounted by Delany, indicate eighteenth-century society’s willingness to value the combination of filial duty and upward mobility over an individual woman’s feelings. Women were taught to suspect, distrust, and repress their emotions, as Sarah Scott would dramatize, and to welcome direction from superiors, which the Lady’s New-Year’s Gift called preferable to “the disquiet and uneasiness of Unlimited Liberty.”35 The intervening years led Delany to reconsider her behavior toward Pendarves—whom she acknowledges as having genuinely loved her—but not her reaction to him. Instead, in writing to the Duchess two decades later, she affirms the legitimacy of her feelings and the corresponding injustice that she suffered. Thus, the period’s ideals of feminine behavior made Delany’s devotion to her family a site for exploitation. Her feelings were, she reports, used to manipulate her: her description of Lansdown’s speech suggests it was less “pathetic” than guilt-ridden and bullying. He described his own “love and care” for her, her father’s “unhappy circumstances,” her own “want of fortune,” the “little prospect [she] had of being happy” if she “disobliged those friends that were desirous of serving [her],” “how [ 93 ]

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despicable [she] should be if [she] could refuse [Pendarves] because he was not young and handsome,” and last but certainly not least Pendarves’s offer to settle his entire estate on her.36 Recounting Lansdown’s speech almost a quarter-century after the fact, she obliquely criticizes her uncle and, more broadly, the society that made it acceptable to push a teenager to marry a man of sixty and make that marriage a referendum on her virtue. Again, she simultaneously seeks her reader’s sympathy and implies the currency of her concerns, this time by suggesting that the decades-old wounds are still fresh. “I assure you,” Delany writes, “the recollection of this part of my life makes me tremble at this day.”37 Pendarves’s courtship, such as it was, is one of the few areas she glosses over in the autobiography as “too painful to me to raise any entertainment to you from the relation.”38 The elision invites the reader to sympathize but also shields Delany from criticism, as she hints in an earlier part of the autobiography that her behavior toward Pendarves was “not altogether justifiable,” presumably because it was so radically at odds with what was expected of a young woman in her position.39 However, Delany is also relying on her tone of confessional honesty to create a sympathetic response. In refusing to describe the courtship she omits the details of a series of encounters that must have embarrassed Pendarves as well as Delany herself. She thus presents herself as an honest narrator, but not a vindictive or bitter one. The Granville-Pendarves match was a prudential one on both sides, anticipating—or likely creating—Delany’s aversion to mercenary marriages. Llanover suggests that Pendarves purposely came to Longleat to meet Delany because he needed someone on whom to settle his estate. He had intended to make his nephew, Francis Basset, his heir, but Basset refused to agree to the condition of taking the Pendarves name along with the inheritance.40 Pendarves had threatened to sell his estate if Basset would not accept his condition but apparently decided to marry in order to sidestep his own threat. Delany, for her part, feared repercussions against her parents if she refused Pendarves: knowing that “every one of the family” was in favor of the marriage, “I acted as they wished me to do, and for fear of their reproaches, made myself miserable: my chief motive, I may say, was the fear of my father and mother suffering if I disobliged [Lansdown].”41 This strong statement, characterizing not only herself but also her parents as potential victims of her uncle’s insistence, makes Delany a martyr to the political, financial, and emotional motives of her marriage to Pendarves. Being dutiful as well as genuinely devoted to her family, she “considered . . . being provided for would be a great satisfaction and relief ” to her father as well as a means to improve relations between her father and her uncle. She knew “that if [she] showed the least reluctance, [her] father and mother would never consent to the match, and that would inevitably expose them . . . to [Lansdown’s] resentment.”42 Like Sarah Scott’s heroines, Delany was trapped between competing influences with [ 94 ]

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no way of pleasing everyone except by sacrificing her own happiness and hiding the fact that she was doing so. With so much at stake for her family, and with a focus on her commitment to traditional moral rectitude at the expense of her own happiness, she made up her mind to accept Pendarves. For the same reasons, she decided to perform her duty to Pendarves by hiding her aversion to him after they were married, another effort that conduct writers depict as part of a good wife’s behavior.43 She admits that Pendarves genuinely loved her but nevertheless portrays herself as a victim of her circumstances and of her traditional role as a wife and daughter. She saw him as “my tyrant—my jailor; one that I was determined to obey and oblige, but found it impossible to love.”44 She describes him as drinking too much, suffering from attacks of gout, and behaving irrationally out of jealousy over his attractive young wife. In marrying him, she “lost all that makes life desirable—joy and peace of mind.”45 Her decision to disguise her dislike of her husband, she explains, was an effort to fulfill her traditional duty and thereby to place herself above the reproaches of her family or her own conscience. She avoids diluting the image of herself as a virtuous victim of circumstance, but she also aligns herself with the conventional expectation that a wife will take responsibility for her husband’s bad behavior and correct her own actions before she finds fault with those of others.46 In the process, she gives Pendarves what seems to be an unreasonable degree of credit: I must do him the justice to say he was very obliging in his behaviour to me, and I have often reproached myself bitterly for my ingratitude (if it can be strictly called so), in not loving a man, who had so true an affection for me.47

This self-abasing admission seems extraordinary in view of Delany’s other confessions about her husband’s drunken jealousy. Thaddeus questions whether Llanover may have edited this passage to make Delany seem more virtuous: “If this is what Delany said, her eighteenth-century doublethink was very well honed.”48 Elsewhere, however, Thaddeus acknowledges Delany’s efforts “to join as fully as she could her public to her private self, and to judge her public self by her private morality.”49 When Delany gives Pendarves as much credit as she can—even if it may be more than he deserved—she is carrying her traditional morality to its logical conclusion, keeping the focus of readers’ sympathy on herself, and even creating additional pathos by seeming to “turn the other cheek” to her difficult husband. Of course, it is impossible to say to what extent Delany (or Llanover) may have embroidered the facts in her autobiography to create a more moving story for the Duchess of Portland and to make herself appear as a moral paragon. Nevertheless, by calling the reader’s attention to instances of improper behavior on her [ 95 ]

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part, Delany suggests that she intends that her story be taken at face value and her warts-and-all honesty, or appearance thereof, be regarded as a virtue. Like Montagu, Delany suggests that her honesty in admitting to her shortcomings outweighs any perceived blight on her character created by the shortcomings themselves. When she describes her behavior toward Pendarves before their marriage, she declares, “I shall not disguise my thoughts, or soften any part of my behaviour, which I fear was not altogether justifiable.”50 A virtuous woman must critically examine her own thoughts and actions before blaming those of others. This habit of self-examination becomes a standing proof of her honesty. Delany thus sounds this note of unsparing veracity again when she relates the circumstances of Pendarves’s death. In 1724, Pendarves unexpectedly died after seven years of marriage. “I became a widow,” Delany describes in her autobiography, “a state you may believe (after the sincere confessions I have made) not unwelcome. . . . As to my fortune, it was very mediocre, but it was at my own command.”51 The italics are significant even if they are not Delany’s: the value of female autonomy is a theme that resonates throughout the correspondence. Each reminder of sincerity and truth accompanies an admission of a possible shortcoming on Delany’s part: her behavior during Pendarves’s courtship was less than ideal; she could not honestly mourn the end of her loveless forced marriage; she was not generously provided for at his death. Her willingness to admit to impropriety, she implies, proves her virtue more effectively than hypocritical kindness to Pendarves during their courtship or false mourning after his death would have done. By deliberately declining to justify her behavior when it does not live up to conventional norms, she can add to her upright character through rhetoric even when her actions do not fulfill traditional expectations. Despite his earlier promise regarding his estate, Pendarves died intestate: he had made, but never signed, a will in favor of his wife.52 As Llanover relates the circumstances, Delany dissuaded him from signing the will the day before he died: “thinking he was low,” she “begged him to defer it till the next day.”53 The next day, though, Delany found him dead in his bed. As a result, he left his widow only “a few hundreds a year.”54 Llanover notes that Lord Lansdown apparently agreed to only a “moderate jointure” for Delany when he arranged her marriage to Pendarves, evidently assuming that she would be well enough provided for during his lifetime and “implicitly depending on the will which was to make her the ‘rich widow’ he alluded to” in a letter.55 She did not gain the fortune her family expected by her husband’s death; but, as Delany suggests, the independence she gained as a widow was a more valuable acquisition. Having positioned herself rhetorically as a rational and virtuous woman, she could, like Osborne and Montagu, characterize her willingness to live modestly as further proof of her virtue. [ 96 ]

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Delany’s autobiographical letters to the Duchess end shortly after her widowhood, but her experience with Pendarves led her to remain a widow for nineteen years and to make highly critical remarks on marriage in her letters to her sister. As a widow, she finally had true marital choice: she could decide whether to marry as well as when and whom to marry. She was adequately supported by an income that she controlled: for that reason, she would not be expected to make another prudential match or to allow her family to choose her husband. Delany exercised her hard-won marital choice repeatedly during her widowhood, refusing numerous suitors. More pertinently, in her letters she takes advantage of the social and rhetorical freedom unique to widows and criticizes marriage in general. She equally takes advantage of the rhetorical freedom offered by her audience. Her sister was her chief correspondent from Delany’s marriage to Pendarves in 1717 to Ann Granville Dewes’s death in 1761, and the bulk and content of the letters between the sisters testify to the function of their correspondence as an emotional outlet. As Sarah Scott would dramatize in The Test of Filial Duty, such outlets were rare but essential in eighteenth-century women’s lives.56 Delany uses her epistolary relationship with her sister to present herself as unwilling to remarry, critical of the wifely role, and skeptical about others’ motivations for marriage. Using herself as an example, she argues that a virtuous woman could, and should be allowed to, remain single. The autobiographical letters suggest that Delany’s family was concerned about her finances and wanted her to remarry quickly; however, she resisted the idea of a second marriage. Her letters to Ann Granville dismiss the prospect of marriage for either sister, while those to Portland criticize her family’s efforts to arrange a second marriage for her. Both correspondences reflect Delany’s disdain for mercenary marriages and her belief that such an emphasis on finances is immoral. To the Duchess she describes her reaction when her uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Stanley, urged her to accept a proposal from their nephew Henry Monck about six months after Pendarves’s death. They assured her that they would “make his fortune” if she would marry him. She was surprised at their willingness to subject her to another marriage for money: “I was much astonished at my aunt’s being so zealous for him, and that fortune should ever sway so far with her generous nature as to wish me united to so insignificant a man!”57 Delany, like Montagu, would have been unwilling to marry outside of her class and perhaps saw Monck as “insignificant” in that sense. While she calls her aunt “generous,” she suggests that Lady Stanley’s financial concern impugns her generosity rather than confirming it. The best expression of that generosity, Delany implies, would have been a concern for her happiness, not for her fortune. The unwanted suitor seems not to have caused lasting familial conflict, however, and Delany continued to present herself as contentedly single and particularly uninterested in marrying for financial [ 97 ]

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security. Three years into her widowhood she wrote to her sister, “But to speak seriously, matrimony is no way in my favour—far from it.”58 Finally in control of her own choices, she could create an image in her letters of herself as a virtuous and strongminded young matron who understands her society’s values and has earned through her experiences the right to criticize them. She particularly aimed her criticism at mercenary marriages in her social circle, an unsurprising development given her own experiences both of prudential marriage and of modest but agreeable widowhood. She describes to her sister, for example, the marriage between Lord Carnavron and a daughter of Lord Bruce in terms that make the match just one example of a much larger trend: The ugliest couple this day in England, but then there’s riches, and great alliance, and that is first to be considered. Beauty, sense, and honour are things not required; if thrown into the bargain, why well and good; but the want of them will not spoil a match now-a-days, but if the fortune prove short of what was reported, and the lady has all other accomplishments that can be desired, it is said of her, as once of virtue “being its own reward,” the lady is a very pretty lady, but no match for me; this is the way of the world, and a sad world it is.59

Like Montagu and (as I shall demonstrate) Eliza Haywood in The Young Lady, Delany claims that “the world”—that is, her genteel society—is corrupt because it values money over common sense, honor, and even physical beauty. She seems to see evidence of the marriage crisis that Tague identifies as a contemporary concern: “Rather than being respected as an institution ordained by God and necessary to social stability, the argument went, marriage was an object of mockery, used only as a cynical means of increasing wealth.”60 Delany places herself above “the world,” superior in both virtue and reason, arguing that while money would always be considered, it should not be the principal motive for making a match. She wishes to maintain her position in her class but rejects the prospect of improving her financial standing through marriage. “I have no notion of love and a knapsack,” she concedes in an earlier letter, “but I cannot think riches the only thing that ought to be considered in matrimony.”61 Nearly forty years later she would reiterate this position to her niece: A poor marriage is a silly, disgraceful, and imprudent thing, and may bring on a life of sorrow and repentance for entering into that state without discretion, but to be united to a worthless wicked man must be attended with such bitter remorse as no advantages of rank or fortune can make amends for.62 [ 98 ]

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Delany maintains her position against mercenary marriage across the decades so that it becomes a policy statement, not merely a personal preference. Protecting one’s social and economic standing is appropriate and wise, but improving that standing at the cost of marriage to a morally corrupt man is always regrettable. In relating her opinions to her sister, Delany adopts a cynical tone suited to a woman of greater years and experience than she had at the time. Later letters to her niece, after her remarriage, are less overtly cynical but no less suspicious of traditional marriages. The genuine disappointment that surely lies behind both worldweary poses is an understandable reaction to her own unwanted marriage arranged for financial and political reasons, but it would not have been necessary for her overtly to draw this conclusion for her family’s benefit. She could, however, use that cynical tone to emphasize her role as an older, wiser, and more experienced mentor in writing to her sister and niece, thus communicating her negative opinions from her preferred position of virtue and moral correctness. Delany appropriates the genteel values of Horatian moderation and middle-class morality in order to lend a conservative moral weight to her arguments for marriage based on friendship, companionship, and rational pleasures.63 As an outgoing young woman, Delany clearly profited from the freedom—social and rhetorical—that her widowhood afforded her. However, her letters to her sister consistently place a premium on socially correct behavior, reminding the reader that Delany values propriety. In one letter, for example, she half-jokingly takes an acquaintance to task for characterizing her as “a flaunting frisking widow,” a description that the correspondence does not affirm.64 But Thaddeus suggests that Delany may have been more fun-loving and dynamic than Llanover makes her appear: “She retained throughout her life a rambunctiousness that she never even tried to suppress.” Ultimately, though, Delany was “not a true heteroclite.”65 Rather, she recognized that social conventions could be mechanisms for consolidating control over one’s life—as in the case of her rejection of Lord Baltimore—as well as for surrendering that control as she was forced to do in her first marriage. Remaining single into her thirties, she suggested that her behavior had become less lively from “the fear I have always had of appearing too gay” but called that fear “a wrong notion” that “hurts the temper.” She concludes that “our spirits ought to have their full career when our inclinations are innocent, and should not be checked but where they exceed the bounds of prudence.”66 Valuing propriety does not preclude questioning it: as a rational moralist and a proper lady, Delany will accept convention where she can verify its utility. Her widowhood, and the image of modest conservatism that she created, continued to be useful, and her letters from that period never suggest a wish to change her status. Until her remarriage in 1743, she articulates a consistent distaste for the [ 99 ]

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prospect of marriage, expressed in the most strident language seen in the correspondence. While her early opinions about friends’ marriages usually focus on the immorality of marrying for money, her statements about her own prospective remarriage disparage her potential role as a wife, a role with numerous risks and, as she describes it, no obvious rewards. In 1728 she wrote to Dewes, Matrimony! I marry! Yes, there’s a blessed scene before my eyes of the comforts of that state.—A sick husband, squalling brats, a cross mother-in-law, and a thousand unavoidable impertinences. . . . I may be dashed on the very rock I endeavour to avoid, and therefore I will say no more against a station of life which in the opinion of some people is not in our power to prevent.67

Delany depicts her control over her life as causally connected to her unmarried status, acknowledging that she cannot guarantee that she will stay single. In the process she implies that marriage itself is insidious and that she, or any woman, might be forced into it by unspecified circumstances. Unlike, for instance, Montagu or Haywood, she sees marriage as a state to be avoided rather than a relationship to be managed. Her skepticism persists: a year later she remarks on Lord and Lady Fitzwilliam’s divorce, “Fine encouragement this to wedlock. Shall I devote my life, my heart, to a man, that after all my painful services will be glad of an opportunity to quarrel with me?”68 In 1733 she calls marriage “the matrimonial trap,”69 and in 1734 describes refusing a suitor with five children, acknowledging that Matrimony is so little to my disposition that I was glad to lay hold of a reasonable excuse for not accepting the proposal, and I was as glad to find he had five children as some people would have been at hearing he had five thousand a-year!70

A second marriage would have meant giving up the security and social freedom of widowhood in exchange for insecurity in a strange family and no guarantee of reward even if one were to play the wifely role perfectly. The prospect of becoming a stepmother is particularly daunting; in 1736 she questions Lady Harold’s wisdom in marrying Lord Gower because he is “so encumbered with children.”71 Delany perhaps exaggerates for humorous effect, but her bold word choices make her opinion unmistakable. The mere prospect of a second marriage, particularly to a man with children, threatens her autonomy and offers no advantages. Alain Kerhervé argues that Delany envied the sight of her sister surrounded by children, but Delany’s letters suggest that she saw the idea of motherhood—and particularly stepmotherhood—as another prospective loss of control.72 As a widow Delany speaks from the strongest position available to a woman in her society and depicts the position of wife as a weak [ 100 ]

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one. Marriage is “serious and hazardous,” a gamble better avoided than undertaken.73 Adequately provisioned financially and under no familial pressure to remarry, she had nothing to gain from marriage and would, in fact, have been at a disadvantage compared to her role as a widow. In that role Delany had latitude to make bold criticisms. Meanwhile, her exaggerated tone—sometimes merry, sometimes biting—would have entertained her sister and created empathy between the two. Dewes, seven years younger than Delany, did not marry until 1740 (three years before her sister’s marriage to Patrick Delany), so in the 1730s they could commiserate and enjoy being young single women together, a situation Delany paints as a kind of cheerful predicament: “We are certainly the poorest of our family, but yet I would not change with any one of them every circumstance of my life,” she remarked to Dewes in 1734.74 Although much of her bold tone in her letters to Dewes can be attributed to the freedom to play for laughs and to vent frustrations with a sibling, her sister would of course have recognized that she was speaking from experience. Delany’s knowledge of the risks involved for women would make her reluctant to give up the comparatively rare privileges of comfortable singlehood and genuine matrimonial choice. To the present-day reader of the correspondence as Llanover presents it, the marriage between Mary Pendarves and Patrick Delany may seem to happen out of the blue. Dr. Delany, a well-respected Church of Ireland clergyman and writer who would eventually be advanced to the deanery of Down through Mary Delany’s court connections, shared his future wife’s views about virtue, moderation, and companionate marriage.75 In 1731, the two met for the first time; Dr. Delany’s first wife was then still living. Mary Delany claims in an autobiographical letter to Portland to have had, from that first meeting, “a higher opinion of [Dr. Delany] than of any other man I had ever conversed with.”76 The nature of his superiority is easy to see: she identifies him, in a letter excluded by Llanover, as “one who condescends to converse with women, and treat them like reasonable creatures.”77 This acknowledgment of her intellectual worth was the basis of her admiration of him and would become the basis of their marriage. However, the growth of that relationship is difficult to trace. Thaddeus documents Llanover’s omission from the published correspondence of letters “peppered with Delany’s comments about Dr. Delany,” suggesting that “Dr. Delany, in spite of his unavailability, lingered vividly in her mind. . . . One gets the sense that one way or another they were regularly in touch” through letters to and from Jonathan Swift and through a direct correspondence, which, on Dr. Delany’s side, always included greetings from his wife.78 In accordance with Delany’s philosophy of companionate marriage, they began their relationship as friends. Equally important for Delany’s self-presentation as a rational moralist, that relationship never transgressed [ 101 ]

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the bounds of propriety, though according to Thaddeus, Dr. Delany wrote to propose marriage “as soon as propriety allowed.”79 Llanover’s edition of Delany’s letters thus creates the mistaken impression of a sudden and unexpected proposal: the 1743 letter containing the proposal appears almost without preamble. In an echo of Montagu’s first letter to Wortley after his sister’s death, Dr. Delany calls his future wife “the person in the world [that his first wife] most esteemed and honoured” and offers her “the tenderness of affection, and the faith of friendship.”80 “I have long been persuaded that perfect friendship is nowhere to be found but in marriage,” he writes.81 The proposal could hardly have been better calculated for its recipient. Mary Delany, who was forty-three when she remarried, would use similar language to describe ideal marriages for the rest of her life. Throughout her correspondence, when she writes in favor of marriage or praises a marriage between acquaintances, Delany describes the relationship in terms of friendship, good character, and complementary temperaments. As such, she promotes rational companionacy much as Osborne and Montagu do, writing to her sister, “I think . . . if we are not happy it must be our own faults; we have both chosen worthy, and sensible friends, and if we act reasonably by them and ourselves, we may hope for as much happiness as this mortal state will afford.”82 Her diction in this statement emphasizes her autonomy while it provides a complete outline of her philosophy: a successful marriage requires mutual choice, moral worth on both sides, and a commitment to the use of reason. This is a formula for contentment. Nearly a decade later she reiterates this theme: Happy indeed is the woman who has a conscientious and reasonable companion: without truth and virtue there is no real happiness: other desirable accomplishments are additions that are very agreeable but to be possessed of both the good and the agreeable is an extraordinary share of good fortune. So circumstanced the common casualties of life (in marriage) are supportable, but otherwise intolerable.83

When she emphasizes the importance of friendship and moral character over romantic love, Delany demonstrates that she is not only reasonable but also virtuous. If those two qualities can be found together, then their combined presence ensures happiness. Long before her marriage to Dr. Delany she had described to her sister the value of friendship as a relationship that cannot easily be counterfeited, precisely because it is based on reason: “People may fancy themselves in love, and work up their imagination to such a pitch as to really believe themselves possessed of that passion, but I never yet heard of anybody’s carrying friendship on by mere imagination.”84 As a rational woman, she will seek friendship. As a virtuous woman she will not allow [ 102 ]

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herself to be carried away by an ephemeral emotion like love at the expense of both her morality and her self-control. Unsurprisingly, Delany’s attitude toward matrimony in general, as expressed in her letters, softens after her marriage to Dr. Delany. In Dr. Delany she had something she had not had before: a kind and caring husband “whose turn of mind is not foreign from [her] own.”85 In her letters, she uses their relationship as a point of reference: whereas her marriage to Pendarves had embodied everything that was wrong with prudential marriage, her marriage to Delany performs the opposite rhetorical function, showing what was possible with marital choice and dedication to the companionate ideal. She suggests that a marriage based on sincere friendship is not only superior to an arranged match but also more durable and resilient when the couple is faced with challenges: “When I married D. D. I had no view but that of securing a tender friend and a most valuable companion, and the frowns of fortune cannot rob me of those advantages,” she writes.86 At the time, Dr. Delany was involved in a lawsuit over his first wife’s estate, but as she did in her widowhood, Delany advocates modest happiness and autonomy—in this case, shared autonomy—over increased material wealth. Meanwhile, others’ marriages became, for Delany, a means for measuring society’s morality in general. In describing marriages within her social circle, she continues to report on fortunes—financial realities, after all, had not changed. But she now predicts the success or failure of each match based on the respective characters of the parties involved. A marriage between two ill-bred profligates, such as that between Lady Frances Leveson-Gower and Lord John Sackville, would never succeed: “A wretched couple I fear they will prove; he is ill-natured and a man of no principle, and she has shown the world that she has little prudence.”87 She had little optimism for a match between opposites like Lord and Lady Rawdon: “I fear no happiness can be expected where the dispositions are so different.”88 But well-bred, honest, cheerful types were likely to be happy together regardless of circumstances: [The Lord Chancellor] is going to marry his son (Mr. Jocelyn) to Lord Limerick’s daughter . . . the young gentleman has a very good character, and is a very pretty man; the lady much commended for her proper behavior— genteel but not handsome, and Mr. Jocelyn has preferred her to beauties and to fortunes: it is an agreeable and reasonable match, and I hope it will prove a happy one.89

Mr. Jocelyn and his future wife are good people who behave correctly; his choice of a bride proves his moral worth and suggests the presence of the kind of rational affection that Delany admires. On those bases, Delany expects the marriage [ 103 ]

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to succeed. It seems inconsistent for someone who had earlier deplored marriage so strongly to later condone it in broad terms of character and upbringing rather than individual preferences. Yet the success of her second marriage becomes evidence that other, similar matches could succeed. Moreover, Delany prided herself on her rational outlook and on judgments based on common sense. Character and friendship, and the empirical evidence for both provided by people’s behavior, would be better predictors for marital success than would be love, which intellectual women considered invisible, unreliable, and impermanent. Despite her willingness to approve of individual marriages between worthy people, Delany continues to criticize the extent to which marriage was both a necessity and a limiting factor in upper-class women’s lives. Like both Montagu and Chapone, she laments that women have only one way of making a living—that is, by marrying well: “Young men have a thousand ways of improving a little fortune . . . but young gentlewomen have no way, the fortune settled on them is all they are to expect.”90 The moral and emotional implications of prudential marriages, however, are more significant to Delany than the financial ones. Writing to her niece and goddaughter Mary Dewes, she blames parents and “friends” for hurrying daughters into such marriages: [How] can friends, (particularly parents), so easily agree to marry a daughter without time to prove the merit of the person they give her to!—and in general those virtues that principally constitute happiness in the married state are least attended to. A title, a good fortune, an air of the world, fantastically called ‘the bon ton,’ are sufficient pretensions, and virtue, religion, and all the amiable qualities, if thrown into the bargain ’tis very well, but they are too often not even enquired after!91

Delany’s close and frank relationship with her sister, combined with her advanced age of sixty-seven and station in life, enable her to speak directly and even angrily to her niece and to protest blatantly against the traditional priorities observed in genteel marriages. Because she experienced the extremes of the “marriage market,” Delany is reluctant to see young family members married and thus subjected to the vagaries of a system that she sees as hopelessly misguided. In an earlier letter, answering a question from her sister about her niece, then thirteen years old, she explains, “I should be very sorry to have Mary married before she was twenty, and yet if a very desirable match offers sooner, I don’t know how it can be refused, if she must marry at all?”92 Refusing a good match, Delany hints, could discourage future offers and ultimately leave Mary Dewes without the security that she needed. Delany questions the restrictions [ 104 ]

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of custom that leave young women “in an uncertain state,” powerless to act beyond accepting or refusing a proposal once one is offered.93 A woman’s momentary power in courtship is instantly dispelled by a proposal; here, moreover, Delany suggests that a woman’s refusal of one proposal would curtail her influence in future courtships. As in her comments on her own marriages, Delany speaks to particular cases but implies larger issues: the problem of values and customs that require a young woman to accept a good offer when it comes or risk being left single and without resources. Delany reserves her strongest criticism for marriage as an economic requirement rather than as an option. She writes to her sister in 1751, “Why must women be driven to the necessity of marrying? a state that should always be a matter of choice!” Here Delany points out the contradiction that limits the prospects for companionacy most severely: the “state,”—that is, the married state—not merely the partner, should be “a matter of choice.” Delany explains the consequences when a young woman is, in effect, required to marry: [I]f [she] has not fortune sufficient to maintain her in the station she has been bred to, what can she do, but marry? And to avoid living either very obscurely or running into debt, she accepts of a match with no other view than that of interest. Has not this made matrimony an irksome prison to many, and prevented its being that happy union of hearts where mutual choice and mutual obligation make it the most perfect state of friendship?94

This limited choice, she suggests, can never be truly mutual. A “happy union of hearts” created by “mutual choice” would make the obligations of marriage, which seemed to fall most heavily on the wife, not just bearable, but part of “the most perfect state of friendship,” such as that she achieved with Dr. Delany at a time when she was able to choose whether, as well as whom, to marry. Delany embraces the traditional and Biblical justifications for the spousal relationship but redefines the nature of that relationship. Much as Haywood would do, Delany positions herself as a moral exemplar so that she can appear correct and reasonable in conventional terms, even when she is advocating for a change in the typical relationship between husbands and wives. She disapproves of non-companionate marriages as offenses against reason and against Christian authority: “Our Maker created us ‘helps meet,’ which surely implies we are worthy of being their companions, their friends, their advisers, as well as they ours; without those privileges being our due, how could obedience to their will be a punishment?”95 She argues that a companionate relationship is what God wants for a married couple, and that friendship between husbands and wives makes it easier, not harder, to maintain traditional roles, of which she approves. Women, she says, are “designed by Providence to be more [ 105 ]

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domestic.”96 A woman should be able to choose whether and with whom to fulfill that domestic role. Without good character and friendship as the bases for marriage, the relationship of “helps meet” cannot succeed. Moreover, men and women must be held to the same standard of moral behavior. Again prefiguring Haywood, Delany suggests that men fail by governing women too harshly and themselves not at all: The minutest indiscretion in a woman (though occasioned by themselves) never fails of being enlarged into a notorious crime; but men are to sin on without limitation or blame; a hard case!—not the restraint we [women] are under, for that I extremely approve of, but the unreasonable license tolerated in the men.97

Here Delany presents herself as a moralist and as a rational thinker, willing to uphold a high standard of behavior as long as others do the same. She suggests that egalitarian relationships be achieved by requiring better conduct from men rather than by allowing amoral conduct in women. The logic allows her to endorse gender equality and traditional values simultaneously. With arguments such as this one, Delany shows that she possesses the Enlightenment virtues of reason and logic as well as conventional morality. She casts her belief system as a kind of intellectual virtue. Rather than embracing the more conventional views of marriage that she considers typical of her peers, she looks critically at the parties involved and judges their prospects of happiness on what she suggests are rational grounds: “Who can judge of our happiness but ourselves, and if one thousand pound a year and a great deal of love will content me, better than ten thousand with indifference, it is the reasonable part to choose that which will give me the most satisfaction.”98 Sidestepping the conventional dichotomy of reason and passion, she suggests that a woman can and should make emotional choices on rational grounds. Moreover, she argues that women should choose independently, using their own judgment: a rejection of the conduct books’ precepts that urged women to yield to the guidance of family and friends. Independent choice in marriage makes more sense than coercion, Delany suggests, and marrying a companion and friend is more reasonable than marrying for either lust or lucre. Although she sometimes objects to the restrictions and expectations placed on women’s behavior, and strongly decries the necessity of marriage as an alternative to poverty, Delany never advocates that women should behave unconventionally. Instead, she attacks society’s use of the conventions themselves, suggesting that genuine attention to morality and reason will lead couples to happiness by allowing women responsibility for their choices.

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5 DUTY AND SENTIMENT IN SARAH SCOTT’S THE TEST OF FILIAL DUTY

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I K E H E S T E R C H A P O N E , Sarah Scott (1721–95) was a Bluestocking writer who critiqued the primacy of filial duty in women’s lives, particularly its use as an ideological tool to force unwanted marriages. Scott, however, used fiction as a means to dramatize the larger damaging influence of the ideal of duty. In her final novel, The Test of Filial Duty (1772), Scott adopted the language of sentiment and sensibility to demonstrate the emotional toll that parentally arranged courtships could take on young upper-class women. The novel’s two heroines, Emilia Leonard and Charlotte Arlington, struggle to marry the men they’ve chosen without violating the tenets of obedience to which both women adhere. The Test of Filial Duty participates in the period’s interrogation and redefinition of marriage by emphasizing women’s need for freedom of expression. Its heroines demonstrate that such freedom can and should coexist with rigorous morality and feminine virtue. Like Scott’s other novels, The Test of Filial Duty suggests a need for social reform, but its emphasis differs from that of A Description of Millenium Hall (1762) and The History of Sir George Ellison (1766). Those novels depict what Gary Kelly calls a “feminized economy,”1 in which women largely freed from social constraints become positive moral forces. If the earlier novels “endorse a kind of nostalgic feudalism, a society structured on affective ties of obligation and deference” as Harriet Guest argues, then The Test of Filial Duty questions the value of those affective ties.2 Using the formulas of sentimental fiction, it criticizes parental suppression of young women’s individuality.3 Scott demonstrates that filial duty requires women to replace honest emotional expression with cheerful malleability and emotional fulfillment with satisfaction at having made a sacrifice. Although the dutiful ultimately are rewarded and the rebellious punished, that outcome is not assured: [ 107 ]

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the characters suffer isolation, confusion, and heartbreak as they try—and fail—to reconcile themselves to their duty. The novel’s epistolary form allows Emilia and Charlotte to give words to the emotions that they must otherwise hide, assured of a sympathetic audience in each other and in a readership beguiled by the novel’s romantic and fairy-tale elements. The Test of Filial Duty acknowledges that emotions must be regulated, but it criticizes devotion to duty as synonymous with repression and painful self-denial, two states that Scott consistently rejected during her life as a female intellectual and professional writer. Scott was known in her own time as a well-regarded but minor author and an energetic, virtuous reformer who carried out versions of the humanitarian projects that she describes in Millenium Hall. Betty Rizzo explains that Scott “lived the life that validated the work and pruned the work to validate the piety.”4 This description might suggest a conventional thinker who lived a conventional life free of controversy. Rather, Scott was a sharp social observer and critic. Her circumstances made her both a careful steward of her own image and an ideal commentator on women’s issues. As Rizzo suggests, “The tone of Scott’s novels . . . is therefore determinedly and deliberately earnest and worthy” but she “does exhibit a sly wit in her novels” all the same.5 Both Scott’s family life and her writing career encouraged this careful approach. As a younger sister in a family of nine, Scott (née Robinson) saw her marriage prospects curtailed by the need to provide settlements for her brothers and a portion for her older sister Elizabeth, who would marry Edward Montagu, grandson to the first Earl of Sandwich, and become known as the “Queen of the Bluestockings.” Through her, Scott was connected to the Bluestocking circle, but she never followed her sister into high society. Elizabeth Montagu embraced the social and economic necessity of marriage for a genteel woman, writing to the Duchess of Portland that “Gold is the chief ingredient in the composition of earthly happiness.”6 Montagu was far from alone in her view, and her marriage to a well-off and indulgent older man seems to confirm her assertion: his money, social position, and willingness to keep his distance allowed her to become prominent as a Bluestocking. Sarah Robinson, who like her sister received a marriage portion of only £1000 or £1500,7 married George Lewis Scott, a family friend, in 1751.8 However, the couple became estranged for reasons that remain unclear; and nine months after her marriage, Sarah Scott’s father and brothers removed her from her husband’s home. George Scott returned half of his wife’s marriage settlement and agreed to a separate maintenance for her of £100 per year.9 The couple stayed married but never lived together again. Both Elizabeth Montagu’s example and that of her sister demonstrate the necessity of marriage in the eighteenth century, a period in which genteel married [ 108 ]

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women did not independently own property or work for a living.10 However, Scott’s life was more typical for a woman in the Bluestocking circle. Kelly notes that “most Bluestocking ladies were unmarried, widowed, separated from their husbands, or living independently while married.”11 Similarly, Rizzo points out that women writers such as Scott and Sarah Fielding recognized “a great advantage to being unmarried . . . because only unmarried women were free to work toward their own ends.”12 Scott commented to Elizabeth Carter in 1767 that “the name old Maid had never any terrors for me, & the thing I like best in my situation is that I am one in effect.”13 In separating from her husband and living as “neither maid, nor wife, nor widow,” Scott gained the freedom from social scrutiny that a female intellectual often needed and subsequently began the practice—which would last the rest of her life—of living and collaborating with other women.14 Her earlier novels A Description of Millenium Hall and The History of Sir George Ellison recall this phase of her life, depicting the good works and virtuous lives of a society of moral, charitable, independent-minded women. Although Scott was, according to Gary Kelly, “the most prolific author of the first-generation Bluestockings and their associates,” Scott’s work other than Millenium Hall and The History of Sir George Ellison has been comparatively little studied.15 She is often seen as a Bluestocking who promoted a feminocentric way of life and who stood in the shadow of her sister’s social prominence. Scholarship on Millenium Hall focuses on the ways in which the novel defines women’s potential power when they are freed from the conventional boundaries created by marriage. Few women, however, were thus freed: most, including Scott, were constrained to and by marriage. Scott’s later novel, the focus of this chapter, accepts marriage as the necessity that it often was. The Test of Filial Duty attempts to reconcile marriage with feminist morality by calling attention to young women’s need for emotional expression. The novel thus shares with Scott’s earlier work an emphasis on what Guest calls the “instabilities and uncertainties in the relation between notions of public or private and gender difference.”16 The epistolary form of the novel allows Scott to draw on the period’s expectations for the verisimilitude as well as the gendering of the personal letter, so that the novel’s formal characteristics further emphasize its themes. The powerful emotions that Charlotte Arlington and Emilia Leonard learn to repress to their detriment allow marital choice and companionacy ultimately to triumph in The Test of Filial Duty. Taking compulsory marriage as a starting point, and nominally presenting a criticism of clandestine marriages, the novel examines how a moral, charitable, independent-minded woman can marry without compromising her principles or losing what autonomy she has. The novel criticizes the ways in which parental interference restricts young women’s emotional freedom, especially in courtship and [ 109 ]

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marriage. As Kelly notes in his introduction to a recent edition of The Test of Filial Duty, Scott adapts the “Richardsonian epistolary form to Bluestocking feminism.”17 Scott uses the immediacy and personalization of that form to show that genteel society holds women to a nearly impossible standard of self-control. This standard causes young women to deceive themselves and others about their emotions and encourages them to ignore their own preferences in favor of others’ choices. The letters exchanged by the novel’s heroines make strict adherence to duty possible by encouraging the self-knowledge that duty denies them. Emilia and Charlotte demonstrate that as part of the practice of filial duty, young women must deny or sublimate their feelings or else remove themselves from public view. Discussing “feelings” or “emotions” without qualifiers may seem anachronistic or overly broad, but the choice of words is purposeful. The novel suggests that all feelings must be regulated and suppressed because a young woman properly has only one emotion: the sense of filial duty. The characters assume that strong emotions inevitably lead to improper actions; thus, a dutiful girl polices not just her behavior but every emotion that she feels. Because Emilia and Charlotte are so accustomed to others’ scrutiny of their behavior, they routinely scrutinize themselves. They then censure themselves in accordance with duty’s strict standards. When she is upset, a dutiful daughter must isolate herself until she can restore her equanimity. In her isolation, she chooses what the novel calls “rational entertainments” in the form of typical feminine “accomplishments” to help her avoid inappropriate emotional excess and reconcile herself to what her parents expect of her. Although this type of selfpolicing usefully promotes the Enlightenment virtues of reason and moderation, it creates painful guilt at the mere presence of any forceful emotion. Spacks suggests that such themes are common: “Many eighteenth-century narratives by women share the theme of self-punishment. Although some conclude in happy marriages, the events that precede these alliances and the illustrative episodes that cluster about the main plot insist on the desperation of women’s condition.”18 Scott’s novel emphasizes the role of filial duty in creating that sense of “desperation.” Emilia’s and Charlotte’s sense of their duty creates a figurative panopticon in which each young woman continually strives for perfect behavior even when unobserved.19 The characters’ strict belief in filial duty allows the operation of what Foucault calls “the major effect of the panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.”20 Scott’s heroines experience that sense of “permanent visibility.” Filial duty confines them within a narrow compass of socially acceptable expression, and their sense of that duty requires them likewise to confine their feelings. [ 110 ]

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The Test of Filial Duty suggests that Emilia and Charlotte require relief from their impossibly high standards of self-control. Their letters provide this relief by allowing the characters to express freely the anxieties and desires that they must hide elsewhere. Simultaneously, the epistolary form communicates to its audience the need for such expression. In doing so, the novel endorses sentimentality and subjectivity by presenting Emilia and Charlotte as realistic individuals with feelings worthy of readers’ attention. Their status as models of dutiful daughterhood gives them an additional claim to that attention, so that readers admire them as moral exemplars. By writing to each other, Emilia and Charlotte can reclaim, communicate, and reflect on the feelings that filial duty requires them to repress. They seem compelled to write, and that compulsion suggests that emotion and action are almost synonymous. However, the novel refutes the conservative view of women as impulsive and irrational. The two heroines’ correspondence demonstrates their individual worth, showing that their emotions, in and of themselves, are valid and not harmful. Although their self-control and self-isolation may be seen as forms of what Spacks calls “female masochism,” the novel goes beyond “[converting] experienced weakness to imagined strength” by communicating that strength to sympathetic readers and by ultimately allowing its heroines the reward of a companionate marriage.21 Kelly remarks that “the epistolary novel was a preferred genre for representing the modern meritorious subject”; Scott uses her heroines to point out the particular merits of young women’s subjectivity and the persistent quashing of that subjectivity by traditional social norms.22 Critics of The Test of Filial Duty disagree about the novel’s social implications: Caroline Gonda calls the novel Scott’s “most conservative,” while Kelly suggests that it participates in a process of “modernization.”23 Both critics focus on Scott’s handling of marital choice as the focus of filial duty. By the time Scott wrote The Test of Filial Duty, moral and legal authorities as well as novelists (most famously Samuel Richardson) had been producing widely read works on the subject for decades. As is well known, these works typically forbade children, particularly daughters, to marry without parental approval, condemning them as undutiful if they did so.24 Richard Allestree’s The Whole Duty of Man, frequently reprinted throughout the eighteenth century, explains that Children are so much the goods, the possessions of the Parent, that they cannot without a kind of theft give away themselves without the allowance of those, that have the right in them, and therefore we see under the Law, the Maid that had made any vow, was not suffered to perform it, without the consent of the Parent.25

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The references to “goods” and “possessions” are telling, as the conservative model of marriage ensured the transmission of family assets to parentally approved husbands. Scott questions this model through her heroine Charlotte Arlington, who initially rejects a man she likes because she believes that he is interested only in her estate, and through Emilia Leonard’s father, whose focus on seeing his daughters married well, rather than happily, creates many of the novel’s complications. By the time Scott wrote The Test of Filial Duty, Allestree’s view of marital choice had been codified into law as the Hardwicke Act. The measure imposed age minimums, restricted marriage ceremonies to churches, and required advance public notice of a marriage by calling of banns or purchase of a license. Eliminating marriages that required only the free consent of both parties gave protesting parents a better chance of stopping an unapproved union. The law was widely considered to be an endorsement of parentally approved marriages.26 Sir William Blackstone calls parental consent to marriage “another means, which the law has put into the parent’s hands, in order the better to discharge his duty; first of protecting his children from the snares of artful and designing persons; and, next, of settling them properly in life, by preventing the ill consequences of too early and precipitate marriages.”27 While these commentators argue for parentally approved marriage as an instrument of social and economic stability, Scott uses the epistolary structure and the language of sentiment to emphasize the emotional cost of such marriages to the women who must accept them. However, Scott is not advocating independence for daughters. In her preface to The Test of Filial Duty, she begins from a conservative premise, explaining that she wrote the novel to discourage clandestine marriages. Like Allestree and Richardson, she describes such marriages as the ultimate betrayal of filial duty: I have long observed, and many others must have made the same observation, that no duty is so little regarded as filial obedience, more particularly in the article of matrimony. Few young persons consider a clandestine marriage as in any respect criminal; and were it not for pecuniary considerations, we should, I fear, seldom see any regard paid to the consent of parents.

She adds, however, a limited endorsement of marital choice: “I am no less an enemy to the tyranny of parents, than to the disobedience of children.” Like most commentators on marriage, she argues that both parents and children have “a just title to a negative voice” in the marriage decision.28 The novel’s comic ending suggests endorsement of strict principles of duty in choosing a spouse: Emilia’s and Charlotte’s scrupulous obedience is rewarded when each is allowed to marry the man of her [ 112 ]

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choice, while Emilia’s half-sister Sophia’s willfulness is punished when her clandestine marriage goes sour. Nevertheless, as is often the case with prefaces in the period, the novel offers a much broader critique than that which its preface promises: it argues for emotional freedom for young women and criticizes parents who are too controlling with their daughters. Although Scott professes to argue for daughters’ adherence to duty in marriage, her characters show that when duty goes beyond behavioral control to emotional control, it is limiting and even damaging. Although the debate over marital choice remained tied to the notion of filial duty, those words implied more than a parentally approved marriage. They suggested a general malleability—a willingness to allow one’s “friends” not only to choose one’s husband, but to dictate one’s conduct. Allestree requires of children “all kindness of behavior . . . avoiding whatever may grieve and afflict” a parent, and suggests that women should have “a great reverence of their Parents judgments, and distrust of their own.”29 A daughter must accept the judgment of even a bad parent, or a bad decision made by a good parent; she should disregard her own conclusions and accept those drawn by her parents. Again, the need for strict adherence to duty assumes that no gap exists between feelings or ideas and actions. Allestree suggests that a daughter should neither act nor think independently, but should accept what others think for her. A young woman who expressed strong feelings or made independent decisions was both undutiful and potentially sinful. Her duty was to remain unattached and tractable. This broad view of duty, like the conservative view of parentally approved marriage, had become legally recognized: Blackstone explains that “the law does not hold the tie of nature to be dissolved by any misbehavior of the parent; and therefore a child is equally justifiable in defending the person, or maintaining the cause or suit, of a bad parent, as a good one.”30 A daughter should always prefer her parents’ judgment to her own and repress strong emotions in deference to their desires. Prefiguring Scott, Mary Astell explained the proper extent of a young woman’s reaction to being courted in 1700: “A Woman of sense one would think should take little satisfaction in the Cringes and Courtship of her Adorers, even when she is single.”31 Blackstone, Astell, and others suggest that a sense of duty to her parents is the only forceful emotion appropriate to a marriageable daughter. In his Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, Samuel Richardson presents a model letter in which a young woman tells her father that a suitor has approached her. The young woman reassures her father, “I have given him no Encouragement; and [I] told him, that I had no Thoughts of changing my Condition, yet a while; and should never think of it but in obedience to my parents.”32 Likewise, an ideal suitor also endorses filial duty. The young woman’s suitor concurs with her view, writing to the father, “I should think myself intirely [ 113 ]

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unworthy of her favour, and of your Approbation, if I could have a Thought of influencing her Resolution but in Obedience to your Pleasure.”33 Richardson most clearly articulates the assumption that strong feelings lead directly to dangerous actions: lack of duty in a daughter, he implies, suggests that the daughter will not be faithful when she becomes a wife. Richardson again ties duty to virtue—that is, to chastity—in his commentary on Clarissa when he suggests that “[if ] in look, if in speech, a girl give way to undue levity, depend upon it . . . the devil has already got one of his cloven feet into her heart.”34 A young woman who avoids all expressions of strong emotion shows that she is trustworthy and appropriately free of prepossession. These attributes safeguard her morality while ensuring that she will agree to a parentally chosen marriage. The presence of this definition of duty in fiction, conduct literature, religion, and law suggests that Scott is placing her characters in circumstances that were commonplace for young women in their social position; their experiences are neither unique nor remarkable. Scott and her heroines follow the moralizing strain set forth by Richardson in suggesting that an undutiful young woman is also a morally corrupt one. The novel opens with Emilia and Charlotte’s discussion of Emilia’s half-sister Sophia, a foolish and headstrong coquette. Emilia’s father asked her mother before they married to “promise him that she would never contradict, or controul in any thing his little Sophia” (8). Sophia has thus grown up undisciplined and untrained. She falls in love with Emilia’s uncle, a military officer and “a very unsuitable match for a girl of so large a fortune,” and suggests to him a clandestine marriage—the ultimate betrayal of filial duty (16). Her family foils the plan, but Sophia is cemented in the reader’s mind, as well as in Emilia’s and Charlotte’s minds, as a cautionary object lesson. Charlotte in particular articulates the novel’s mission as identified in its preface when she condemns Sophia’s actions. In Letter XI, she criticizes women who agree to clandestine marriages on the grounds that such women are simultaneously undutiful and immoral: “How little right has a woman to expect her husband’s esteem and confidence when, to become his wife, she has violated the strongest ties of duty, broke the restraints of modesty, and laid aside all regard to decency and decorum!” (52). Charlotte echoes the author’s position as expressed in the preface; but her words also depict marital choice—or, in this case, the absence of it—as part of a larger set of restrictions on a daughter’s emotional freedom and behavior: the expectations of duty, modesty, decency, and decorum that are always uppermost in her mind. Throughout The Test of Filial Duty, Charlotte serves as the more vocal social critic while Emilia provides an example of perfect devotion to duty. In fact, Emilia is nearly ideal in all respects: well bred, kind, intelligent, and beautiful. When Charlotte points out to Emilia that “your person alone would be found irresistible by most [ 114 ]

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men,” Emilia insists that her mother explained to her the dangers of her beauty (33). Emilia learned to show that her “mind was too steady in prudence and virtue, ever to be seduced by [her beauty] into levity or folly” (37). Charlotte admires her friend’s dutiful nature and its reinforcement through Sophia’s negative example, but she criticizes the extremity of Emilia’s self-control: What girl is there whose spirit would not have been subdued by the joint persecutions of an ill-tempered sister, and a remonstrating mother? for I fear I should have included her admonitions among my persecutions, at least till my reason had come to it’s full growth; then indeed I must have seen them in the light you do; but if you are honest, I dare say you will acknowledge you often thought her cruel in shewing so little compassion for what you suffered. You can do no less than love Sophia; she has been the schoolmistress to your virtues. [Her methods] to be sure were somewhat severe, but the harshest masters are often said to form the best scholars; and pain, we are told, leaves stronger impressions on the mind than pleasure; therefore let us not accuse a practice so justified by the success. (12)

Charlotte suggests that Emilia, having internalized the strict discipline her mother taught her and all the self-control her sister lacked, may simply have no emotional energy remaining: “[Your] passions are reduced into such nice order,” she says, “that they never rebel; and a weak man may govern the elephant when made a passive beast” (12). Even as she advocates rationality over emotional excess, Scott hints through Charlotte that hyper-rationality is dangerous. Emilia, a paragon of virtue, should not be reduced to a “passive beast” entirely without feelings. The novel thus uses sentimentality to lead readers into questioning the commonplace values of dutiful self-denial and self-sacrifice. Emilia’s experiences with her cousin Mr. Leonard make explicit the danger of such passivity. When Mr. Leonard is introduced into the family as a suitor for Sophia, Emilia writes flatteringly of his appearance, education, and manners, stating—and seeming sincerely to believe—that she admires him only as a future brother-in-law. Charlotte correctly identifies a different motive for Emilia’s compliments. “If you would deceive me,” she replies, “you must be less warm and less circumstantial in your praises, however easy you may find self-deception. These, from you too, who I never heard observe that a man had eyes, features, shape or air” (25). As a proper young lady, Emilia has learned to control her emotions so thoroughly that she no longer recognizes them herself. The self-deception that Charlotte recognizes hurts both Emilia and Mr. Leonard when he declares his love for Emilia: “Must I now learn that your friendly, your affectionate behaviour, arose only, from considering me as a [ 115 ]

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brother!” (57). Emilia then realizes her reciprocal affection for him, but too late. Too accustomed to keeping her feelings in order, she becomes overwhelmed and confused: My mind was all confusion; but tears again came to my relief, and I wept for near an hour, without being able to assign a cause: This, however at length relieved me, and my spirits grew more composed; but whether I received greater pleasure from perceiving myself to be so tenderly beloved by one so dear to me, or pain from considering to how little purpose I was so, I could not possibly determine. (58)

Motivated by the stringent standards of filial duty, Emilia has acted with perfect propriety, but her actions have left her heartbroken rather than satisfied. She receives no reward for her scrupulous emotional control. Moreover, although understanding one’s feelings would seem a necessary prerequisite to controlling them, Emilia’s selfpolicing is so thorough that she stifles emotions before she identifies them, leading to painful confusion. Observing her friend’s struggles with duty and Sophia’s selfish actions, Charlotte promotes a more liberal emotionality for daughters even as she condemns clandestine marriages. Through her, Scott makes a sympathetic case for a daughter’s right to refuse an unwanted marriage whose goal is to unite estates and fortunes rather than people. As Charlotte characterizes it, marriage is an inevitable diminution of a woman’s energy and activity. She explains that “to marry one towards whom I feel a total indifference, appears to me very dreadful,” and suggests that no intelligent woman would agree to marriage “in this mercantile way”: “Our reason I think should be hood-winked before we can enter into matrimony with courage. It is impossible, without one is influenced by the delirium of passion, to give up one’s happiness into the power of another, with any tolerable composure of mind” (19–20). A husband’s control over a wife is such, Charlotte suggests, that only a sincere and reciprocal emotional attachment could make it tolerable. She reminds Emilia of the advantages of being a beloved and wealthy daughter, echoing Scott’s assertion to Elizabeth Carter: “Some of the happiest, as well as most useful persons that I know are old maids” (20). Emilia responds guardedly to her friend: “What you say of a single life, appears to me very just; but whenever I hint any thing of that kind, my mamma soberly answers, ‘Such notions are selfish, marriage is a duty’” (21). This exchange again emphasizes a feminist skepticism about compulsory matrimony. As Bannet remarks, women writers “recognized that marriage was an important public duty, especially after the discussions of the population question which surrounded the Marriage Act of 1753”; but this recognition of a public duty did not translate to an individual desire to marry.35 Through Charlotte’s criti[ 116 ]

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cisms of clandestine marriage the novel does what Scott says it will do; moreover, it participates in the larger public debate about the value and purpose of marriage. But Charlotte’s courtship also connects the novel’s specific concerns about marital choice to its larger criticism of duty as emotionally stifling. In her depiction of courtship, Scott shows that a strict adherence to duty requires a young woman to show reticence even toward a man whom her parents have chosen and whom she herself likes. Charlotte’s parents arrange for the son of Sir Edward Edmondbury to pay his addresses to her. Although she receives Mr. Edmondbury skeptically at first, believing him interested only in her estate, they develop a genuine mutual attraction. Nevertheless, Charlotte restrains herself from showing that attraction, albeit while complaining to Emilia about the preeminence of duty among feminine motivations. She notes that “we [women] follow the dictates of our inclinations with some dignity, when we can pretend that our compliance arises from an effort of duty” (54). She properly demonstrates reluctance, waiting for Mr. Edmondbury to confess his feelings first. This dutiful reticence leads to disaster: Sir Edward interferes and arranges his son’s engagement to a wealthier woman, Lady Mary Belmour. Lady Mary, notably, has broken with correct behavior by communicating her affection for Mr. Edmondbury through a relative. Although Mr. Edmondbury “pleaded prior engagements,” Charlotte tells Emilia, “I leave you to guess whether they are likely long to hold out against paternal authority, the suggestions of interest, and the persuasives of vanity; which must be gratified, not only with Lady Mary’s rank, but with so evident a proof of her strong attachment to him; small signs of which he imagines he sees in me” (98–99). While his father insists on his marriage to Lady Mary, Mr. Edmondbury persists in his preference for Charlotte. That preference is little comfort to a dutiful daughter who is doubly handicapped by her sense of duty: she will not marry without her father’s approval, nor can she confide in her would-be suitor.36 She outlines to Emilia the double standard that she experiences: “It is [Mr. Edmondbury’s] part, you know, to shew, at least, all the uneasiness he feels; female decorum obliges me as much as possible to conceal mine” (106). A sense of duty, then, is the only emotion a young woman can acceptably demonstrate, regardless of circumstances—to the extent that it is an emotion at all. Charlotte’s description of this standard and its consequences constitutes one of the novel’s clearest critiques of filial duty as emotionally stifling. Duty is an ever-present but abstract standard, forcing the scrupulous young woman to pretend a reluctance she does not feel, even when presented with a man her parents want her to like. Duty becomes a self-perpetuating force in these young women’s lives, but the denial of subjectivity that it entails begins at home. According to “the strictest notions of filial duty,” which Richardson assigns to Clarissa and Scott’s heroines claim [ 117 ]

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for themselves, a young woman must express only the emotions that her parents approve.37 Scott shows that parents are a daughter’s ever-present emotional arbiters and decision-makers, shaping her actions and ultimately endeavoring to dictate her feelings. They teach her to practice the constant self-censorship that will make duty self-reinforcing. A well-trained daughter learns that if she is dutiful, she will have the best marriage prospects because of her impeccable reputation. Her parents, in turn, know that she will be more inclined to accept a parentally arranged marriage precisely because she is dutiful. Parents also encourage a daughter to accept dutifulness as its own reward for the sacrifice of individuality. Early in The Test of Filial Duty, Emilia’s mother cautions her against anger at Emilia’s spoiled half-sister Sophia by reminding her that “[pity] should excite affection, and induce you to endeavour by gentleness and compliance to alleviate her vexations.” If Emilia cannot comfort Sophia, she will at least have tried, and “the consciousness of having done [her] duty will be a great reward” (10). Dutifulness may be its own reward, but Charlotte’s experience with Mr. Edmondbury implies that a dutiful daughter is unlikely to receive any other reward for her sacrifices. This invocation of the dutiful ideal quickly becomes a pattern. Whenever a woman is asked to stifle or forcibly change her reaction to a more acceptable one, she is reminded that she can find satisfaction in having done her duty. Yet these reminders come so frequently that one cannot help wondering how satisfying duty really is.38 Scott downplays even the traditional Christian view that duty will be rewarded in the afterlife. Duty appears to be its own reward and little more; while that reward seems meager, Scott’s heroines pursue it nonetheless. In order to hold themselves to such a strict standard, Charlotte and especially Emilia censure themselves for expressing any emotion strong enough to make those around them uncomfortable; in turn, they are praised for those efforts. Emilia’s mother compliments her by saying she has “learned to repress every undue emotion in [her] heart” (9). Even when a young woman is not showing Richardson’s “undue levity,” she transgresses duty if she shows her feelings to others. An ideal woman, Emilia’s mother’s remark suggests, goes further: controlling the feelings themselves so that there is no danger of their ever being expressed. But perfect equanimity is impossible even for Scott’s dutiful heroines. Emilia shows that when a young woman cannot remain calm, she routinely removes herself from public view. In keeping with the panoptical nature of duty, the “public” includes even her own family. When Emilia’s parents learn of her half-sister Sophia’s planned elopement with a married man, Captain Ireson, Emilia discovers her parents’ distress without immediately knowing its cause, and momentarily appears upset in front of them. “I should have retired,” she writes to Charlotte, “but amazement and concern . . . rivetted me for a considerable time to the floor. . . . As soon as I a little recovered [ 118 ]

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myself, I withdrew to my chamber, filled with anxiety and grief, which I believe was the more acute for my ignorance of the cause” (47). Although her actions, and the feelings that caused them, stem from sympathy with her beloved parents, Emilia must hide her “anxiety and grief ” as soon as she recovers the presence of mind to do so. Even after her mother has told her what happened, she cannot express herself openly. She fears that if her father sees her upset, he may think she is taking advantage of him: “I am sure [my heart] is deeply wounded at the sight of what he suffers; yet I dare not shew it, lest he should think I am endeavouring to take advantage of [Sophia’s] fault, by displaying my tenderness for him” (50). Despite Emilia’s reputation within both her family and her social circle for excellent behavior and purity of motive, she has internalized the idea that her emotions could be a burden to others or could be misinterpreted. Her habitual self-repression leads her to shortchange herself. Emilia’s normal self-scrutiny succeeds in that it keeps her extreme reaction from others, but it does not bring her self-awareness until she can reflect on the incident within the safe confines of a letter to her friend. Scott thus suggests that young women receive little or no personal benefit from the expectation that they constantly examine their emotions: they do not achieve better understanding of themselves, but only learn better to comply with society’s expectations. As Kelly explains, The Test of Filial Duty depicts “the exercise of autonomous subjectivity against ‘artificial’ social distinctions and material interests.”39 This subjectivity of the individual, as the novel suggests, was gaining importance as part of what is often called a “culture of sensibility.” Emilia’s experience shows young women potentially being left out of this cultural shift because they have learned to valorize the sense of duty over all other feelings. Later in the novel, Emilia’s father receives a letter from Lord Wilton, an earl who wishes to “pay his addresses” to her (67). Her father is delighted at the prospect, but Emilia is horrified, and not only leaves the room but seems almost to leave her own self-awareness: “Abashed, confused, frightened, I could make no answer, but, more dead than alive, retired to my chamber, where for some time I remained like one thunder struck; my heart scarcely beat, my blood seemed stagnated, my senses suspended” (68). So accustomed to controlling herself, Emilia has no readily available emotional vocabulary with which to respond to what she views as her father’s sudden and lightly taken decision to marry her to an earl who is little more than an acquaintance. The prospect of marrying a virtual stranger is, as Dorothy Osborne’s commentary reflects, extremely daunting, yet for Emilia the sudden rush of emotions is as alarming as the marriage itself.40 Her dramatic reaction demonstrates the potential for emotional damage arising from something like an obsession with filial duty. Moreover, the episode suggests that perfect dutifulness is not rewarded even with self-satisfaction. In this crisis, Emilia’s consciousness of having been dutiful [ 119 ]

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disappears, while her father exploits, rather than rewards, her excellent behavior. Readers are reminded that although daughters practice duty, parents inculcate it and thus must bear responsibility for their children’s eventual contentment or misery. Scott presents both positive and negative examples of the parental role: Charlotte’s parents are principally interested in her happiness, and thus provide positive reinforcement for her decisions.41 In contrast, Emilia’s parents—her father especially—take advantage of her dutiful nature, relying on her passive acceptance of their choices for her. Emilia will be expected to marry Lord Wilton because her father knows that she is tractable enough to accept the arrangement, while the man she admires, Mr. Leonard, is matched with Sophia: “Mr. Leonard’s virtue, prudence, and excellent understanding, rendered him of all men the most proper to regulate the conduct of a young woman, who eminently required such a director and guide” (66). Meanwhile, Emilia’s father believes, as her mother tells her, that he is “weaning you from an attachment which even his consent could not render successful; and establishing your fortune beyond the most ambitious wish of your partial friends, by uniting you with a man, who, we have no reason to believe unworthy of your heart, and whose affection and generosity he thinks cannot fail of making an impression on it” (68–69). As in the episode with Charlotte, Mr. Edmondbury, and Lady Mary, Scott suggests that the most dutiful woman may not receive the best rewards; instead, the best husbands go to women who break the rules, and the dutiful are left with the slim consolation of having been so. These repeated scenarios hint that in the hands of an overly controlling parent, even one with good intentions, the insistence on obedience can become emotional cruelty. Through Emilia’s mother, Mrs. Leonard, Scott demonstrates that young women are not the only ones to struggle to conform to their duty. Mrs. Leonard shows that roles and duties change as a woman matures, marries, and bears children, but that woman is never without a prescribed social function.42 At other moments, Mrs. Leonard is a source of conservative reminders about correct behavior. But she endorses her daughter’s reaction to Lord Wilton’s offer by entering Emilia’s room and embracing her. “Her tender embrace unlocked my senses, and I burst into tears. For a long time I wept on her neck, and by the heaving of her bosom I perceived that she tenderly participated in my grief, but was silent” (68). Later, she tries to help Emilia to dissuade her father from insisting on the match, only to receive an extraordinary reproof from her husband: “He told her, ‘this was the first time he ever had reason to complain of her behaviour; but he took it extremely amiss, that she should thus thwart his strongest inclination’” (75). This exchange suggests that Mrs. Leonard has, at least in her husband’s memory, been perfectly and consistently dutiful to him throughout their entire marriage, yet her previous behavior has no effect on his expec[ 120 ]

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tations. A headstrong father thus hurts two generations of women by requiring their silent compliance. Whether in courtship or in marriage, a woman must constantly prove herself: her virtue is paramount and is never entirely secured by her dutiful behavior. For a married woman, her husband—rather than her parents—becomes the arbiter who expects her to repress her feelings and opinions. Marriage is not a relaxation of standards; it is only a change of leadership. Emilia and Charlotte recognize and try to accept this reality when they discuss the prospect of marriage. Both recognize the obvious truth that a woman enjoys individuality only during the brief time that a man is courting her. Emilia explains that marriage brings diminution of that individuality: “[The] character of goddess cannot be kept up for life, you must descend, for sooner or later your parents will expect you to dwindle into a wife” (21).43 This process of “dwindling” will mean, as Charlotte describes, a return to the tight emotional control dictated by duty, now directed by a woman’s husband rather than her parents: “[No] longer will innocence be a sufficient regulator of my conduct; I must watch his eyes . . . for the rule of my actions; and yet, if they are not very intelligible, may ignorantly commit a thousand offences, for which my peace may be the sacrifice. I must smile when he smiles; but alas! must not frown when he frowns” (20). Charlotte qualifies that such treatment would come from a husband chosen by her parents, presumably not from a husband freely chosen, but her worries are for her subjective emotional freedom, not for the quality of the marital relationship (20). Emilia’s and Charlotte’s observations, as well as Mrs. Leonard’s encounter with her husband, demonstrate that like parents, husbands become part of the public before which women must sacrifice their own reactions and behave with cheerful compliance. After her parents’ argument over Lord Wilton, Emilia once again removes herself from the view of others, filled with guilt and confusion at having been the cause of her parents’ disagreement: “Shocked at having been the cause of my excellent mother’s incurring [my father’s] anger, and deprived of every hope of moving his compassion, I withdrew to my chamber, to lament, to reproach myself for an attachment which renders me so averse to my father’s will” (75). She is upset at her father’s decision, but especially at the effect of her feelings on others: expressing only the feelings that her parents approve is part of her filial duty, in which she has now failed. She berates herself not only for acting on her “attachment” but also for feeling an attachment in the first place. In addition, she faces a moral conflict: marrying Lord Wilton would be dutiful, but dishonest. Emilia explains that “by uniting myself in such sacred bands with Lord Wilton, when my heart is so averse, I should repay his generosity and love by an irreparable injury” (75). This conflict leaves a daughter with no morally correct actions available to her.44 Were a woman to marry a man [ 121 ]

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she did not care for, she would wound her own conscience, shortchange her duty to her husband, and repay her parents’ generosity by allowing them to see that she is miserable. Once again, the tenets of filial duty fall short: they do not suffice to dictate correct actions in such cases. Emilia’s only remaining recourse is to disappear, having received permission from her parents to refuse Lord Wilton and install herself in a remote location where Mr. Leonard cannot locate her. With assistance from an uncle, she flees into Wales, taking along her books, sketch pad, and harpsichord. Only by absenting herself from the public—including her friends and family—can Emilia succeed in her duty of showing only the emotions of which her family and friends approve. To do otherwise would be “ingratitude to [her] father’s indulgence” (82). If a young woman cannot control her feelings, she must banish them by banishing herself until she gains control and can acquiesce in the wishes of her parents. But Charlotte, the advocate for emotional freedom, questions the wisdom of this plan: “To whom can your oppressed heart unburthen itself? or to whom can your intelligent mind apply for rational converse? Can your spirits be in a proper state for such a solitude? To how dreadful a degree may not melancholy steal upon you! I tremble for the consequence. In a secluded state every care, every grief, becomes ten times doubled” (83). While in general the control of young women’s emotions is a means of controlling their actions, Charlotte’s concerns focus on the emotions themselves. Strong emotions experienced in solitude cannot hurt others, but they can hurt one’s self. Emilia accepts the traditional value of filial duty as a means to perfect tranquility despite her own experiences to the contrary. She interprets Charlotte’s worries as reasons for the strict emotional self-control imposed on young women, and she begins to look for people and activities to help her keep her feelings in check. Emilia finds evidence for her view when, on arrival in Wales, she hears through her uncle about the ap Griffiths, a family which is virtuously occupied at all times. Sir Owen ap Griffith, the patriarch of the family, regularly welcomes visitors and keeps them, himself, and his whole family engaged in self-improving activities. Emilia explains that “it is usual with them to have about a dozen at a time of different sexes and ages [in their home],” where they and their visitors spend time reading, studying, exercising, talking together, and engaging in charitable work in their neighborhood. Emilia admires this way of life: “Their pleasures are justified by reason, and sanctified by religion; they enjoy amusements without coquetry or scandal; exercise without fatigue; repose without stupidity; and with them improvements may be gained without being exposed to the seductions of vice. Can there be an happier lot? I confess my imagination can represent none to me so eligible” (91). The novel as a whole endorses subjectivity and individuality, but in this case Emilia admires an older ideal [ 122 ]

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of happiness as moderation, guided by a parent devoted to that ideal rather than to the single-minded and strict enforcement of duty. Whereas Emilia has been sheltered at home, the ap Griffiths have plenty of company around to ensure that one stays on the middle path of virtue.45 She realizes that she must emulate their example by keeping herself occupied while she is in Wales. The solitude of Emilia’s room at home is mediated—her parents are always at hand—and thus Emilia can give vent to her feelings knowing she must soon regain control. In Wales, her unmediated solitude requires that she regulate her own emotions and conduct through activity. To ward off the dangers of strong emotions while she is alone, she plans her days carefully and allows herself no leisure for contemplation. She acknowledges that “Were I disposed to act the part of a despairing love-sick girl, I am placed in the most favorable spot imaginable,” but she fights that tendency—and anticipates the Burkean sublime—by climbing a mountain or walking to a waterfall “whose roaring confounds all one’s senses” (102). She explains to Charlotte that she spends her days reading—taking notes while she reads as “the best method of fixing [her] attention and preventing [her] thoughts from straying to a less proper subject”—sketching, playing the Welsh harp, and learning the Welsh language. “My chief view in [learning Welsh],” she tells her friend, “was to keep my mind busy. No fine gentleman or lady ever took more pains to exclude thought” (103). Emilia’s example confirms that adherence to duty goes beyond appearances and behavior to self-policing. A young woman should avoid examining and understanding her feelings; instead, she should force them into the safe channels provided by “rational entertainments” such as those that Emilia has brought with her to Wales. “The powers of the mind are great,” she tells Charlotte; “the weakness we often charge on them is in the will; they appear weak because we do not force them to exert their strength, but deem unconquerable what we have never tried to conquer” (100). As a truly dutiful young woman, Emilia feels compelled to do more than perform dutiful actions; she must alter her own thoughts to make them conform to duty’s standards. This self-policing includes conditioning herself inwardly to accept the disappointments of her life with the same cheerful equilibrium she is trained to show to the world at all times—to accept the reward, earlier offered by her mother, of satisfaction at having been dutiful. She writes to Charlotte that although she cannot forget Mr. Leonard, his memory will not make her unhappy, because simply experiencing that sense of unhappiness would violate her duty. She compares her parents to Providence and the loss of Mr. Leonard to the loss of one of her senses: Had it pleased Providence to deprive me of sight or hearing, would it have been wise, or even justifiable, to spend my days in lamenting the misfortune, [ 123 ]

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instead of endeavouring to alleviate it? My parents are a kind of subordinate Providence to me;—it is my duty to submit to their will; and it shall be my endeavour to perform my part the most to their satisfaction, and my own ease (101).

She notes that “every other means of rational happiness is within [her] power” (101), and in a later letter locates her sense of contentment in “a perfect submission to [her] fate” (111). Emilia elevates filial duty almost to the status of a deity, echoing the language in which a devout worshipper would describe her commitment to God’s will, where unquestioning submission, rather than understanding or agreement, is the goal. In both cases a sense of constant supervision reinforces the subject’s commitment: God watches the devotee; Emilia’s friends and family watch her—or, when alone, she watches herself, regulating her actions but also consciously suppressing her emotions so that “rational enjoyment” replaces lovesick pining. Emilia can take herself out of the public sphere, but she can’t take the public sphere out of herself. She is so accustomed to surveillance that when alone she reflexively monitors and disciplines herself. Emilia’s self-imposed panopticon is the key to the novel’s broad critique of filial duty as emotionally stifling and unjust to the women asked to practice it. While Charlotte’s criticisms are openly stated in her arguments for freedom of expression, Emilia’s reported experiences serve as another form of criticism. Charlotte describes that seeing Emilia “gay without levity, beautiful without the impertinences of vanity . . . accomplished without affectation, mild, modest, and gentle, appeared to me something supernatural” (11). Emilia clearly is too good to be true, yet her sense of duty drives her to persist in trying to be better. Those attempts at selfimprovement succeed only in making her unhappy and forcing her separation from her family. No heroine can be as good as Emilia must be to accept her situation with the cheerful good grace duty requires—ultimately, not even Emilia herself. When Mr. Leonard appears unexpectedly at her lodging in Wales, her equanimity is so disturbed that she faints: “Surprised out of all command over myself, I started up, overset the table, threw down my harp, and immediately the sudden agitation of my spirits overcoming my senses, fell upon this heap of ruins” (125). An evening spent in conversation with Mr. Leonard (chaperoned, of course) produces similar results; Emilia cannot sleep. Her reflections lead her from “delightful recollection of every word Mr. Leonard had uttered, and the still more enchanting things his eyes had spoken” to “reflexion on the sacrifice I must the next day make to duty. . . . This cruel transition cost me floods of tears,” she writes to Charlotte, describing [ 124 ]

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her feelings as “violent and various agitations” (127). A few hours’ sleep restores her usual self-discipline and the next day, she arises feeling “tolerably prepared” to “prefer duty to inclination” (127). But she is noticeably pale and, “the cause being too evident, I was extremely disconcerted at giving such a proof of my weakness” (129). Though trained from birth to sublimate her feelings, and recognized by her friends and family as a paragon of feminine virtue, ultimately her extreme self-discipline fails. When it does, her friends’ reactions direct the novel’s audience to sympathize with her rather than condemn her. Scott’s handling of the story, embedding social critique in fairy-tale romantic sweetness, moves the audience to turn its critical eye on Emilia’s circumstances, not on the heroine herself. Emilia and Charlotte’s correspondence simultaneously provides an outlet for and validates the dissatisfaction, sadness, and disappointment that they cannot express elsewhere. Emilia attests to the function of her letters when she confirms to Charlotte that “my griefs seem lightened by pouring them forth to you; sensible that you will share the burden, the load that oppresses me grows less heavy by communication” (70). Charlotte, likewise, tells Emilia, “You cannot prevent my heart from sharing every thing that befalls you” (83). That friendship multiplies joys and divides sorrows is proverbial; nonetheless, the epistolary nature of this friendship is as important to the novel as the friendship itself. After Emilia’s departure for Wales, she writes to Charlotte, “To the invention of posts alone it will be owing that I shall still feel myself an inhabitant of this world; without it I should not be a more forlorn stranger were I transported to the moon” (88). Paradoxically, a genteel young woman’s life can be a lonely one despite its frequent lack of privacy. The performance of duty necessarily isolates a woman still further. By writing to each other, Emilia and Charlotte can commiserate, compare notes, and examine emotions that they must otherwise repress. Shari Benstock identifies the importance of letters in women’s lives; although her analysis focuses on love letters from women to men, it applies equally well to the “intensely gynocentric”46 fictional correspondence between Emilia and Charlotte: Separated from male enterprise and worldly activity, women established links with others through correspondence; they represented themselves through the written word and substituted the act of writing for the action of living, finding in the blank page the occasion to create an ideal version of themselves. . . . Letters constituted an attempt to create an image of self— they were the effect of such an effort.47

By channeling her heroines’ strongest feelings into their letters, Scott gives them, in Benstock’s words, “freedom from the claims of reality.”48 Emilia’s and Charlotte’s descriptions of their lives remind the reader why such freedom is necessary by [ 125 ]

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describing the repression under which these women live in the name of filial duty. The ideal selves that they create in their letters are selves allowed to express their emotions and criticize the restrictions that govern their lives. While Benstock suggests that “[in] the act of reading the reader invades a private world, violates a sacred trust,” The Test of Filial Duty implies a different relationship.49 Rather than an invader, the reader becomes a collaborator. Charlotte’s pithy comments and Emilia’s pathetic descriptions invite the reader to become emotionally invested in their plights. James How suggests that personal letters simultaneously create and inhabit an “epistolary space”: “‘public’ spaces within which supposedly ‘private’ writings travel—at once imaginary and real: imaginary, because you can’t really inhabit them . . . real, because they were policed by a government ever more keen to monitor the letters that passed along the national postal routes.”50 How suggests that after the creation of the national post, letter writers were acutely aware of the possibility that officials might open and read their letters. That possibility would extend society’s panoptical scrutiny of conduct into the written realm. In an epistolary novel, however, a sympathetic audience takes the place of a censorious government. Thus the two heroines expose their most private feelings in a most public medium.51 But only when writing to Charlotte—and, by extension, to the novel’s audience—does Emilia find relief from the relentless scrutiny to which she is otherwise subjected. Ironically, she escapes the panopticon of duty precisely when she is most scrutinized—that is, when the novel’s audience is reading. Foucault explains that in Bentham’s panopticon, the subject is observed by the authorities but invisible to his or her fellow subjects.52 Emilia’s daily life finds her isolated under this constant, centralized observation either by her parents or by her own conscience. But the epistolary structure of the novel places its audience in the position of fellow subjects who can imaginatively “see” Emilia and Charlotte as well as the authorities who observe them, thereby placing that audience in a position of empathy. How identifies a similar phenomenon at the end of Clarissa, when “Clarissa has reached a position from which she has a certain control over her readership—enough sympathetic readers to be able almost to ignore those readers who are not sympathetic.”53 Thus Emilia’s and Charlotte’s letters, like Clarissa’s, become an alternate, more permissive medium in which young women can express themselves freely, as they can do nowhere else—despite the presence of a much larger group of observers. As Kelly notes, “Much of Scott’s fiction had been concerned with the perils of and obstacles to female desire, for women themselves.”54 In The Test of Filial Duty, women desire marital choice, but more important, they desire the freedom to express their emotions without violating social norms. At a time when questions about mari[ 126 ]

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tal roles and individual subjectivity had reached into the law and religion as well as literature, Scott accepts marriage as a necessity—as it was for her and her sister—but condemns the overly strict practice of filial duty that accompanies the traditional marital relationship, and the parents who demand such a high standard. The dutiful characters in the novel ultimately receive ample rewards; nevertheless, even the nearly perfect Emilia admits that self-sacrifices “are apt to be painful, and we seldom voluntarily seek to acquire them” (13). Scott shows, through her heroines’ letters, that filial duty means sacrificing not only marital choice, but also freedom of expression. Thus the novel criticizes the strictures of filial duty and argues for women’s participation in the cultural movement toward individuality and subjectivity.

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6 ELIZA HAYWOOD The Limits of Feminine Agency

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S A P R O F E S S I O N A L W R I T E R , Eliza Haywood (1693?– 1756) endorsed the social strictures that made marriage both dangerous and, for most genteel women, necessary. But much as Montagu and Chapone did in their correspondences, she also criticized women’s powerlessness vis-à-vis that important and risky institution. In the four works I will examine in this chapter—The Female Spectator (1744–46), The Wife (1756), The Husband (1756), and The Young Lady (1756)—Haywood tacitly condemns the contradiction that women face in their interactions with society: the moral codes on which women rely to protect their reputations are the same ones that limit their agency. Women are thus forced to participate in their own oppression. In interpolated tales and letters in these four works, Haywood expands her conception of the limits of female power and criticizes the burden that society’s expectations place on women. The personae that she creates move from acknowledging women’s powerlessness to suggesting remedies for that condition such as education for single women and, for wives, canny manipulation of their relationships with their husbands. Through the personae of the Female Spectator, whom she would revisit in later publications, Haywood argues that women must preserve their reputations by adhering to society’s standards for courtship and marriage, but their careful preservation of virtue will not ensure their happiness. The happiness found in a companionate marriage based on friendship is possible only if women receive more access to formal education or, at least, serious reading. Companionate marriage also requires those who possess social power—parents and husbands—to consider their daughters’ and wives’ interests as equal to their own. To advance her critique, Haywood uses interpolated tales and letters from correspondents (possibly real as well as fictional), adapting the prurient appeal that [ 129 ]

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she established in her amatory fiction from the 1720s and turning that prurience to a moralizing purpose.1 Kathleen Lubey suggests that “Haywood uses eroticism for pedagogic ends, demanding that readers detoxify their visceral response to ‘warm’ description by remaining mentally attentive to the instructive warnings contained therein.”2 Although Haywood may “demand” such a reaction, she obviously cannot guarantee it. Converting tempting tales into cautionary ones allows the prospect of double enjoyment for the reader. The reader can enjoy both the vicarious thrill of an erotic transgression and the moral superiority of not having succumbed to such a transgression in reality. In her didactic writings, Haywood uses the amatory style of her interpolated material both to catalyze what Lubey calls “states of extreme aesthetic engagement” that enhance learning and to create shared, albeit hypothetical, points of reference between reader and narrator, much as a private correspondent would refer to a mutual acquaintance in a letter.3 The fact that Haywood’s referents are often fictional, and in any case chosen to order—as is typical in eighteenth-century periodicals—gives her the rhetorical advantage of presenting precisely the evidence that she needs to make her moral arguments persuasive. Haywood has been the subject of increasing study since the 1980s, with critics often focusing on her reputation as “Mrs. Novel” and the dichotomy, perhaps overstated, between her earlier amatory works and later didactic ones. Scholars continue to attribute and analyze her works and fill in holes in her biography, and questions thought to have been answered are often second-guessed. Thus anyone writing about Haywood in the early twenty-first century must accept certain biographical and attributive assumptions. While making my assumptions explicit, I wish to emphasize the continuities rather than the dichotomies in Haywood’s work as it relates to marriage. As a feminist writing for the public, Haywood had to reconcile the erotic elements developed in her amatory fiction with the moralistic expectations of a genteel and at least nominally conservative audience. A fully developed amatory fiction within a slender frame of authorial moralizing in a novel thus becomes, in a conduct manual or periodical, a hypothetical sketch of a situation accompanied by an indepth didactic explanation from an authorial persona. The change is not one of means but one of proportion, allowing Haywood to capitalize on both name recognition and evolving public tastes to extend her success as a professional writer. Haywood could thus benefit from her generic flexibility and from hybrid personal/professional relationships that relied on the kind of equality and collaboration that she promoted, albeit more obliquely, to her readers. Little is known with certainty about Eliza Fowler Haywood’s life. Few of her personal documents have survived, and official records of her life are sketchy. As a result, Kathryn King argues, scholars have chosen to “create a life in the absence of [ 130 ]

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concrete details, a disreputable one if possible.”4 Previous accounts have portrayed her as a real-life version of one of her own heroines, a scandalous mother of two illegitimate children, and more recently as a “heroic unwed mother,” but Haywood seems to have been an early example of a now-familiar type: the independent career woman.5 When she left her parents’ home she began an acting career and, apparently, married.6 Both the identity of her husband and the fate of her marriage remain unknown. Whether Haywood was estranged from her husband or was widowed, by 1730 they were no longer living together. In a letter to an unnamed potential patron she describes the circumstances that led her to become a professional writer: “An unfortunate marriage has reduc’d me to the melancholly necessity of depending on my Pen for the support of myself and two children, the eldest of whom is no more than 7 years of age.”7 While Christine Blouch finds a “preponderance of evidence” suggesting that both of those children were illegitimate, King questions whether Haywood had children at all.8 In any case, having failed to find the success that she had hoped for as an actress, Haywood turned to writing and published the first part of Love in Excess in 1719, launching a prolific and lucrative career as a writer of amatory fiction. She would later return to acting but would be known principally as a writer. After her second attempt to find success as an actress, Haywood once again began to concentrate on writing and was “fully re-engaged in her writing career” by the 1740s.9 That career was apparently successful, contrary to the commonplace assumption that Haywood usually lived in penury. King has investigated the 1744 sale of the contents of Haywood’s home and pamphlet shop in Covent Garden and demonstrated that Haywood kept “a genteel residence” furnished with “fairly expensive items . . . not what one would expect to find in the possession of a woman afflicted with chronic pecuniary distress.”10 Haywood apparently had romantic relationships with two other men, the authors Richard Savage and William Hatchett. Patrick Spedding suggests that Haywood and Hatchett “lived together for most of their lives as a de facto couple” with the evidence suggesting that they were business partners at least as much as romantic ones. Hatchett apparently delivered pamphlets for Haywood, assisted her in translating The Sopha (but Haywood was paid more), and collaborated with her in adapting The Opera of Operas.11 The coexistence of a personal with a professional partnership suggests that Haywood had firsthand experience of the kind of companionate relationship for which she would advocate in her didactic writing. Thus, as a financially successful businesswoman in a stable if unconventional relationship, Haywood was well equipped to shift the generic focus of her writing. In the 1740s and 1750s, Haywood re-branded herself, so to speak, as a didactic writer. Haywood had perhaps made this move in part to suit the market, which by mid-century [ 131 ]

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had moved away from the scandalous tales popularized by Aphra Behn, Delariviere Manley, and Haywood herself.12 However, she doubtless knew that sex—or the suggestion of it—sold: amatory elements animate her advice literature and form an important part of both its appeal and, according to Haywood, its effectiveness. As Lubey has demonstrated, Haywood believed that readers were more likely to learn moral lessons from fictional events if those events could provoke prurient interest, or even outright arousal. Haywood herself explains in her preface to Lasselia, or the Self-Abandoned (1725) that the “too great Warmth, which may perhaps, appear in some particular Pages” is necessary to make a reader understand “how probable it is that he is falling into those Inadvertencies which the examples I relate wou’d caution him to avoid.” The “Expression,” she argues, must be “invigorated in some measure proportionate to the Subject.” 13 However, to succeed as a didactic writer Haywood also had to make herself both credible and attractive as a moral authority. Blouch suggests that from her earlier to her later career, “the author had not undergone a conversion in opinion so much as in style.”14 Haywood’s use of personae enabled that conversion. As a former actress and professional author who may have lived with a man out of wedlock and may have had illegitimate children, Haywood did not follow in her life the conventional rules and expectations that she endorsed in her writing. Her lifestyle in the 1740s seems to have been at least superficially middle-class and elegant, but superficial gentility, of course, was not enough. Juliette Merritt observes that Haywood’s credibility depended on “a trope of particular importance to [the eighteenth] century—the potential for an individual’s reform, a reform defined by the acceptance of current social norms, gender roles, and values.”15 Conventional wisdom suggested that such a reform was not usually available to women—who, once “ruined,” were ruined forever. But Haywood accomplishes the transformation by assuming multiple discrete personae of wealthy, genteel women. Eliding the boundary between herself and, for example, the “Female Spectator,” Haywood instead draws her readers’ attention to the boundaries between the Female Spectator and her fictional collaborators.16 In the first book of the eponymous periodical, the Female Spectator presents herself as a former coquette from a social sphere in which “Dress, Equipage, and Flattery” were her main concerns and all her time was spent in “a Hurry of promiscuous Diversions.”17 With this description Haywood places the Female Spectator among the upper class, suggesting that both author and persona are qualified to address the upper-class social issues that were the chief concerns of conduct literature. When she depicts this persona as having given up the coquette’s shallow pleasures, Haywood identifies the Female Spectator as a moral authority: like Montagu, the Female Spectator knows firsthand the pleasures and pains of “the World” that she has rejected. As Merritt suggests, “The coquette’s single-minded pursuit of her own objectification is [ 132 ]

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what makes her a suitable figure to fulfill Haywood’s vision of female knowledge, a vision that promotes a realistic and uncompromising position on women’s assigned place in the social order.”18 To this morally grounded characterization Haywood adds the intellectual qualifications of “a Genius tolerably extensive, and an Education more liberal than is ordinarily allowed to Persons of my Sex.”19 Haywood thus presents the Female Spectator as both ethically and intellectually credible. The Female Spectator’s fictional coauthors have moral and social qualifications similar to those of the Female Spectator herself, so that a group of exemplary women constantly confirms the moral authority of the periodical’s advice. In addition, the four coauthors span the traditional stages or roles of a woman’s life, so that they collectively encompass the breadth of female experience. Haywood describes one of the women, Mira, as descended from a Family to which Wit seems hereditary, married to a Gentleman every way worthy of so excellent a Wife, and with whom she lives in so perfect a Harmony . . . having nothing to ruffle the Composure of her Soul, or disturb those sparkling Ideas she receiv’d from Nature and Education.20

Another collaborator, Euphrosine, is a young single woman, “charming as an Angel, but endued with so many Accomplishments, that to those who know her truly, her Beauty is the least distinguish’d part of her.”21 The third, a “Widow of Quality,” is “far from having the least Austerity in her Behaviour” and serves as a trusted confidante to all her acquaintances.22 Placing herself above reproach allows Haywood to reproach others and to criticize society as a whole. In this respect her approach is similar to that of Montagu or Chapone, but a fictional persona can, like a fictional correspondent, be made to order, so to speak. All of the personae are perfected versions of the roles—reformed coquette, single woman, wife, widow—that they represent. Paradoxically, their excellence both promotes readers’ trust in them and reminds readers of the demanding nature of women’s roles: could such perfect women possibly be real? Leaving that question unanswered, Haywood invites her readers to participate in the individual reform that characterizes the Female Spectator and thereby join her on a higher moral plane. Haywood thus gives her readers reasons to accept her authority, as conveyed by her authorial personae, on subjects of society and morality. Although Haywood initially distinguishes the four personae from one another, the group’s members rarely differ in their opinions. Rather, Haywood’s addition of the three invented coauthors lends authority to her advice by presenting it as the product of group consultations rather than as one person’s opinion. Promoting morality is a job too big for one person—especially for one woman. Betty Schellenberg similarly [ 133 ]

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notes that the fiction of joint authorship, along with the inclusion of correspondence from readers, adds to The Female Spectator’s authoritative weight: From the fiction of a club as a source of the essays, to the encouragement of reader participation . . . to the treatment of topics such as gossip, a conversational group is demonstrated to be the most authentic source of subject matter, the most authoritative voice in which to convey it, and the fullest illustration of its complex truth.23

But The Female Spectator is not Haywood’s first use of a “conversational circle.” Although Haywood used a similar device in The Tea-Table (1725–1726), in The Female Spectator the coauthors speak, as it were, with one voice: “They are to be consider’d only as several Members of one Body, of which I am the mouth,” explains the Female Spectator in Book 1.24 Haywood perhaps destabilizes moral authority by placing it in a woman, but the “conversational circle” formed by the four personae serves to confirm by majority rule the authority that the Female Spectator claims.25 As “the first periodical written by a woman for woman readers,” The Female Spectator deals extensively with marriage, the chief concern of upper-class women’s lives.26 The Female Spectator announces this focus in a highly formal tone, calling marriage “a Subject, which never can be too much attended to, and the too great Neglect of which is the Source of almost all the Evils we either feel, or are witness of in private Life.” Ideally, marriage is “the Fountain-Head of all the Comforts we can enjoy” and it “prevents those numberless Irregularities and Confusions, that would else overthrow all Order, and destroy Society.”27 With this ceremonial language, Haywood elevates marriage from a women’s issue to a social issue, one whose success or failure can either maintain or topple the social order. When people fail to take marriage seriously, “Dirges, rather than Epithalamiums, should be sung . . . and their Friends pity, not congratulate their lot.”28 Women, the Female Spectator suggests, are right to be concerned about marriage, because it determines not only the course of their lives but also the progress of society as a whole. By implication, then, women must achieve happiness in marriage if society is to flourish. Having warned her audience in a tone appropriate to the high seriousness that she wants to create for her subject, Haywood inserts a half-dozen tales of both men and women bitterly disappointed by having made the wrong marriages. Unhappy marriages, the Female Spectator suggests, are multiplying among the upper classes. Whether this was historically the case is arguable if not unknowable; either way, Haywood is capitalizing on a sense of crisis in marital and family stability. As Bannet explains, [ 134 ]

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What struck eighteenth-century observers, by contrast, was the general lack of stability in conjugal or family relationships. . . . Eighteenth-century writers say that desertions were frequent, polygamy and bastardy rampant, and “licentiousness” the rule rather than the exception. They flesh out these general observations with particular instances, or in the case of women writers addressing a primarily female readership, with “examples of such events as there is a possibility may happen to herself or to those persons for whom she has the most tender concern.”29

More specifically, the crisis was seen as particularly acute among the genteel classes; Tague identifies a “growing cultural anxiety about the relationships among money, fashion, and women” in the first half of the eighteenth century. This anxiety caused mercenary marriages to be seen as “the convergence of a series of related threats to the social order.”30 Haywood’s Female Spectator notes that “there are now no less than Twenty-three Treaties of Marriage either concluded, or on the Carpet, between Persons of Condition, of which scarce the odd Three afford the least Prospect of Felicity.”31 The specificity of the statistics intrigues the reader—who are the unfortunate twenty-three?—and lends credible gravity to the Female Spectator’s argument: she knows, in detail, whereof she speaks. She repeatedly emphasizes the need to choose the right husband, arguing for companionacy based on similarity of character: A Simpathy of Humours is therefore no less to be consulted, than a Sympathy of Inclination, and indeed I think more so; for I have known several married People, who have come together, without any thing of what we call the Passion of Love, who by happening to think the same Way, have afterwards become extremely dear to each other.32

This statement suggests that Haywood endorses the traditional view that love will grow after marriage, but in fact she rejects the prospect of marriage without that “Sympathy of Inclination” (i.e., mutual attraction), even if the match be a parentally approved union between people of suitable age and circumstances. Although Haywood invites the reader’s interest with the amatory elements in The Female Spectator, the moral message is evident: turbulent passions should remain where Haywood places them, in the fictional realm of her interpolated tales. Haywood suggests that feelings based on reason and cultivated by choice are the only trustworthy feelings and therefore the only ones that should form the basis for marriage. More broadly, she is responding to a cultural movement that simultaneously valorized sentiment and, particularly for women, cautioned against it. Although the latter half of the eighteenth century saw the rise of the culture of sensibility [ 135 ]

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exemplified by such works as Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling and examined in Scott’s The Test of Filial Duty, Haywood cautions women against responding thoughtlessly to strong feelings in themselves or in others. In doing so, she emphasizes the primacy of reason in human decision-making. According to a tradition that stretched back at least to the medieval period, love was “something unalterable and for which one [could not] be held accountable,” as Niklas Luhmann explains.33 Yet according to Locke, “conjugal society” is “a voluntary compact between man and woman.”34 The ability to enter into such a compact requires the presence of both freedom—the ability to conduct one’s self and order one’s property according to one’s own choice—and reason, “a law of nature . . . which obliges every one.”35 Reason, Locke says, is necessary when approaching a situation whose outcome is unknown: The greatest part of our knowledge depends upon deductions and intermediate ideas: and in those cases where we are fain to substitute assent instead of knowledge, and take propositions for true, without being certain they are so, we have need to find out, examine, and compare the grounds of their probability. In both these cases, the faculty which finds out the means, and rightly applies them, to discover certainty in the one, and probability in the other, is that which we call reason.36

Passion, Haywood argues, is no exception to this law of nature. In fact, Locke’s definition of reason confirms its applicability to the decision to marry: a woman to be married according to the traditional marriage system must “substitute assent instead of knowledge.” However, assent is not a valid replacement for knowledge. Only by using reason to examine her choice can a woman have some assurance of happiness. When she advocates a rational basis for emotion, Haywood, like Chapone, argues that Enlightenment philosophy supports marital equality because it emphasizes the universal human capacity for reason. Haywood offers one instance of this lesson in Book VII, on the topic of “Ingratitude.” The Female Spectator responds to a letter from “the Sorrowful Amintor,” who asks her to convict his would-be lover, Arpasia, of ingratitude. Arpasia has failed to return his sentiments and has refused to marry him, even after her father has approved his suit. Amintor’s letter is full of sensual details that allow the reader vicariously to experience his obsessive courtship—a modern reader might call it “stalking”—of her. He describes Arpasia in passionate but familiar hyperbole: her “killing Eyes . . . matchless Mouth” and “fine turn’d Shape would singly charm the ravish’d Gazer,” but the “sparkling Dignity” that accompanies her every motion defies description.37 Rejected by Arpasia and discouraged by her father, Amintor follows her around town: “All Day I skulk in Corners like a Thief, and shun the Light,” he [ 136 ]

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explains, “and at Night stand Centinel opposite her Chamber-Window, blest to see her Shadow through the Curtains while undressing for bed.”38 Having enjoyed participating by proxy in Amintor’s transgressions through Haywood’s voyeuristic depiction of them, readers can then follow the Female Spectator’s lead in recognizing that Amintor is behaving incorrectly. Haywood guides readers toward a morally correct interpretation of the tale, as the Female Spectator’s “little Club” explains that Arpasia cannot be considered ungrateful: There is no accounting for Antipathies in Nature, nor is the strongest Reason sufficient to surmount them:—In vain his Love and Constancy have a Claim to her Regard:—In vain her Father’s Assent would authorize that Regard:—In vain a parity of Age, of Circumstances, of Birth, concur to render a Marriage between them suitable; if that secret Impulse that rules the Heart be wanting, all other Considerations are of no force to attach.39

Here, Haywood argues forcefully for choice in marriage by walking the reader through an example of the “deductions and intermediate ideas” that Locke describes. While she is not alone in taking this position, she is in a minority, pushing back against conservative writers’ desire to “reinstate the traditional importance of marriage and domestic life” in the face of cultural and economic change in England.40 As Tague explains, the contract theory promulgated by Locke led to a more liberal view of marital choice. This liberal view in turn provoked a backlash in favor of marriages based on duty, with obedience to one’s husband seen as proof of love.41 “Can any Word be more grateful to your Ears, than Obedience to the Man you Love, when the consequence of that Obedience is the Adoration of your selves?” asked John Essex in The Young Ladies Conduct (1722).42 Haywood, however, makes choice a precondition for duty and obedience: “the strongest Reason” cannot overcome the absence of an attraction because that absence breaks the chain of reasoning that would otherwise lead Arpasia to choose Amintor. The two could not—regardless of the period’s conservative ideas about the primacy of duty—make a marriage successful. Haywood circumvents the controversy about the meaning of marriage by suggesting that choice does not obviate the need for duty, but instead makes duty possible. Acknowledging the importance of marriage to society’s long-term success, she nevertheless insists on the woman’s freedom to choose. Every other circumstance may be perfect, but if Arpasia does not choose Amintor because she is not attracted to him, the other circumstances are moot. Reason can help affection to grow but it cannot overcome dislike. Only love can lead to happy marriage, and that love should be founded on friendship and mutual esteem, as the Female Spectator explains: “A Passion inspired by that Sympathy I have mention’d founded on Reason and [ 137 ]

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recompensed by Kindness, can never alter, and a Person who declares himself a Lover, should first ask himself the Question, and be well assured he can be always so.”43 Passion that endures, which in Haywood’s view is the only kind that should lead to marriage, is based on reason, not on a tumult of feelings that might have no lasting basis at all. In The Female Spectator, the “amatory aesthetic” identified by Lubey serves unambiguously to reinforce the moral message: readers may enjoy identifying imaginatively with Arpasia or parapornographically with Amintor but the “little Club” always leads them back onto the moral high ground—in this case, recognizing that reason and friendship are the correct bases for a successful marriage. Haywood uses the dramatic language and the transgressive situations of amatory fiction not only to promote companionacy, but also to frame lessons about proper conduct for young women in courtship situations and the powerlessness those young women face. Arpasia’s role is largely passive, but her success arises from her faultless conduct. She must behave correctly in order to count on society’s protection; thus, her passivity is appropriate. As King notes, “Docility and submission are . . . a cover for survivalist cunning, rooted in self-interest and fundamentally strategic.”44 Thus, Arpasia is modest yet cheerful in her behavior, dresses suitably, and appears only occasionally at public amusements, always with an appropriate chaperone. She immediately rejects Amintor’s addresses rather than encouraging them for the sake of having an admirer, then withdraws further from the public eye to avoid any suggestion that she is misleading Amintor. Arpasia acquits herself well and properly on every occasion, as does her father, who, hinting at the Female Spectator’s disapproval of forced marriages, supports his daughter’s decision. But despite Arpasia’s perfect behavior, beauty, and charm, the Female Spectator is silent on her eventual marital fate. By scrupulously protecting her virtue, Arpasia avoids a bad match with the emotionally volatile Amintor, but we are left to wonder whether she achieves a happy companionate marriage. Haywood broaches the subject of marriage by emphasizing its importance to society, then stresses the importance to the individual of marital choice. When she leaves Arpasia’s story, as it were, unfinished, she reminds readers of the competing pressures attending the marital decision. Those pressures are likely to leave women unhappy, whether single or married: avoiding marriage to Amintor might only mean delaying, not avoiding, a bad match. Haywood criticizes the social mores that the Female Spectator advocates by pointing out the limits of what those mores can achieve: a woman’s perfect behavior earns her the right to survive, but not necessarily the reward of happiness. With her modest and compliant behavior, Arpasia wins her father’s support. With her rationality, she earns the approbation of the Female Spectator. Arpasia recognizes the Female Spectator’s lesson: no one can find happiness in a marriage where [ 138 ]

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only one partner feels affection. Amintor, on the other hand, is carried away by an unsuitable passion, the depiction of his irrational behavior serving as an additional warning to young women that their perfect conduct cannot entirely protect them from a lovesick man. He falls into a fever after Arpasia’s father discourages him from pursuing his daughter. Upon his recovery (“if a man may be said to be [recovered], who is continually wasting with inward Pinings”), Amintor begins following Arpasia, seeing her for only a few seconds at a time as she climbs into a coach or arrives at church. His brief glimpses of her become “the sole Pleasure [he] can taste.”45 The Female Spectator rejects his request for her vindication of him and places the blame for his misery on his “Obstinacy of Nature,” the opposite of the rational kindness she promotes to her readers as a moral virtue.46 Haywood chooses to show rather than to tell, using the dramatic story of Arpasia and Amintor simultaneously to cultivate her readers’ receptivity and to create object lessons about correct behavior. She foregrounds the high standard applied to women but leaves Arpasia’s marital fate undecided, thereby obliquely questioning society’s values. The tale serves her larger purpose of promoting companionacy but also gives positive and negative examples for readers to follow. Like Montagu, Haywood draws attention to the limits of female power; but unlike Montagu, she advocates reliance on society, a choice of emphasis that may illustrate a difference between private and overtly public writing. However, Haywood’s advocacy is limited. According to her, a rational and virtuous young woman can count on society only to protect her from harm, not actively to advance her happiness. That young woman must behave faultlessly—as Arpasia did—in order to expect such protection.47 A perfect young woman who has followed all the rules can be assured only that she will not be miserable. Happiness in marriage remains uncertain. With Arpasia’s father’s support of her right to choose a husband, the Female Spectator hints at her strong dislike of forced marriages. In Book VII, she specifically condemns parents who deprive their children of choice: Nor can I call it Ingratitude between married Persons, where one of them, by the arbitrary Power of Parents, shall be compell’d to give a Hand without a Heart, and is afterwards unable to subdue the fix’d Aversion, so far as to return the Affection of the other with any Degree of Tenderness.48

These marriages, she suggests, are doubly immoral, because they pervert both the marital relationship and the parent-child relationship, forcing women to sacrifice happiness in favor of duty. Haywood repeatedly uses stories and letters to emphasize the pathetic aspect of arranged marriage and its effect on women in particular. Book XX presents one such example, a letter from “Monyma,” whose [ 139 ]

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father refused to give her a portion so that she could marry the man she loved. As Monyma writes, she is just days away from being forced to marry another man or be thrown out of her father’s house: My Heart shudders while I am writing this, at the dreadful Remembrance of what [my father] has said to me on this Occasion; and at the Impossibility there seems of my any way avoiding doing what will render me not only wretched to a Degree beyond what any Words can represent, but equally wicked by becoming perfidious and ungrateful to the dear and worthy Object of my first vows. . . . My Wedding Cloaths are making, (wou’d to God it were my winding Sheet) and I must, in a few Days, be forced into a Bridal Bed by far more dreadful to me than the Grave.49

Through Monyma, Haywood alludes to what Alexander Pettit calls a “pornographic place” when she mentions the “Bridal Bed.” Pettit explains that “Haywood’s method in these works is to derive maximum erotic charge from the pornographic place while emphasizing its moral taintedness.”50 Relying again on the prurient appeal familiar from her earlier works, Haywood leads readers to imagine, if only for a moment, the threat of a socially sanctioned rape, and thus to sympathize with her powerless heroine and to agree with her argument in favor of marital choice. As is the case in the story of Arpasia, Monyma is a moral paragon victimized by others’ greed—in this case, her father’s: a familiar image that would find its bestknown expression in Clarissa. Monyma has behaved correctly throughout the episode, seeking her father’s approval to marry the man she loves, agreeing to marry the man her father chose for her, then recognizing the dishonesty of breaking a promise of true love in favor of a false marriage vow.51 However, her family has not rewarded her correct behavior. Monyma’s impassioned and tragic tone is calculated both to entertain and to move readers, effects enhanced by the letter’s postscript: “Next Thursday is the Day appointed for my Doom, if it be possible for me to survive till then:—Think of me with Compassion, ’tis all can now be done for me.”52 With this final note Haywood capitalizes on the dramatic immediacy the epistolary form offers; as Samuel Richardson famously did, she seems to be “writing to the moment,” giving Monyma’s letter a sense of verisimilitude that further elicits the reader’s sympathy by emphasizing her powerlessness. As in the tale of Arpasia and Amintor, Haywood draws her readers in with an affecting story, then directs them to interpret it correctly: “Unaccountable is it, as well as unnatural, that Parents, who in general are fond of their Children while they are very young, can afterwards resolve to make them for ever miserable, only to gratify some sordid Interest of their own.” Noting that Monyma’s father “carry’d his [ 140 ]

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avarice to a much higher than [sic] one shall ordinarily hear of,” the Female Spectator condemns avarice in general, calling it a “Detestable Propensity” that leads people to ruin by overwhelming their common sense.53 Extremes of greed, like extremes of love, destroy reason and lead to unhappiness. By lamenting the prevalence of mercenary marriages, the Female Spectator is repeating a common complaint of the period. However, Monyma’s story relocates the blame for such a match, typically assigned to the married couple. For example, Defoe in Conjugal Lewdness (1727) directly accuses the young women and men who marry for financial gain: “Ask the Ladies why they marry, they tell you ’tis for a good Settlement; tho’ they had their own Fortunes to settle on themselves before. Ask the Men why they marry, it is for the Money.”54 But as long as dutiful daughters consider marriage to be, in Allestree’s words, “an act rather of their obedience than of their choice,” they can hardly be blamed.55 Defoe also elides the fact that under the system of strict settlements, a woman could not settle her fortune on herself. Monyma’s powerlessness suggests that the women who enter into such marriages should not be considered at fault in a decision over which they had little control. Though the Female Spectator’s moral message is definitive, her advice to Monyma is contingent, again suggesting a critique of women’s limited power to act. The Female Spectator laments that Monyma’s letter would be published too late to affect its writer’s situation. Still, she offers a solution, presenting it as agreed upon by all of the periodical’s fictitious contributors: Otherwise there is no one Member of our Club, not even Euphrosine herself, who is the most perfect Pattern of an implicit Obedience I ever knew, but is of Opinion, that Monyma, circumstanced as she was, and under a former Engagement, might have refused entering into a second without incurring any just Censure from the World.56

Using the authority of the “conversational circle,” she introduces the advice as proceeding from the group. This distinction gives Haywood a bit of extra rhetorical clout to differ from “some over discreet Persons” who, the Female Spectator imagines, would insist that duty and necessity required Monyma to act as she did.57 The “Club” suggests that Monyma would have performed her filial duty by refusing to marry without her father’s approval. By also refusing the unwanted marriage, she would have given “a shining Testimony of Love and Constancy”58 to her first suitor. Frustratingly, though, a young woman deprived of power by social strictures must still rely on those strictures to justify her actions and create a basis for agency. Even then, the best reward she can expect for her perfect behavior is to be either alone and single or unhappily married. After suggesting that Monyma had justification for refusing her [ 141 ]

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father’s choice, the Female Spectator reminds her readers that “when the indissoluble Union of Marriage is once formed . . . it is the Business and the Duty of each, thus joined, to render themselves, and Partner for Life, as easy as possible.” If she is forced to marry, Monyma must “endeavour a Forgetfulness” of her sad circumstances and make the best of her lot as a wife.59 As she would do in The Wife, Haywood requires women’s behavior to be above reproach while suggesting her own critical awareness that meeting such a high standard is impossible. The section of Book XX devoted to Monyma’s marriage ends on an anticlimactic and indefinite note that confirms Haywood’s criticism of the social structures that she reluctantly endorses: “And this is all we have it in our Power to offer on her Account.”60 This implied ending at the altar demonstrates the similarity between conduct literature and comedy, both invested in marriage as an instrument of social and moral stability. But Haywood’s endorsement of the reconciliatory powers of marriage seems guarded at best. Even with the aid of her collaborators, the Female Spectator cannot end the episode in a confident tone of moral certainty. She alludes to the inadequacy of the advice just conveyed, or at least the impossibility of happiness in circumstances like Monyma’s. Women can call friends, family, society, and morality to their aid, but they remain subordinate. From that position they may protect their virtue and their reputations, but they will not be able to find contentment. If the Female Spectator lacks confidence in women’s ability to marry happily, she is confident in the usefulness of education to help women choose better husbands and to make them better wives. In this respect, Haywood presents the Female Spectator as a reformer, not as a moralist endorsing conventional views. Ricardo MiguelAlfonso argues that “there is no revolutionary attitude” in the Female Spectator’s call for women’s education because “the transition from simpleminded to cultured lady does not change—rather, it reinforces—her condition.”61 But an educated woman is better able to seize and use the power that society gives her, limited though that power may be. This perspective may not be “revolutionary,” but it is realistic: Haywood recognizes the importance of marriage to women and finds ways for them to take some control over that crucial decision. The Female Spectator presents herself as an example: better educated than most women are, she explains that if women seem flighty, it is only due to “the Vivacity of our Ideas,—the Quickness of our Apprehensions”—a compliment to her female readers that invites them to endorse her proposals on this topic. Serious reading in subjects such as philosophy, mathematics, geography, and history would serve to channel and direct the mind and give “a due Weight” to otherwise giddy, untrained thoughts.62 Such education, in turn, would make women more able to manage their lives. The example of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu indirectly suggests the validity of Haywood’s advice. An educated woman who advised her [ 142 ]

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daughter to hide her learning as if it were a physical handicap, Montagu nevertheless used her rhetorical skill and intellectual power—what we would today call “critical thinking skills”—both to seize control of her life and to criticize the social structures that would have kept her from doing so. Haywood justifies her claims about education in two ways, both of which serve to anticipate her readers’ potential objections. First, she points out that for unmarried girls, education will preserve, not remove, “that modest Timidity, which all our Sex are born with,” by giving girls something to concentrate on other than their own vanity.63 “A Girl, who accustoms herself betimes to talk of Love and Lovers, will become an easy Prey to the first Offer.—It is therefore the Business of those who have charge of them, to keep their Minds employed on other Things.”64 An educated girl gains perspective and good judgment from her reading, qualities that will help her marry wisely. Haywood concludes her argument on this topic with a rhetorical flourish of self-sacrifice that also registers her recognition of her critical tone: I foresee the little Relish some of my Readers, not only of the younger Sort, but of those Parents who are misled by a false Tenderness, will have for these Admonitions: A Consciousness, however, of having done what ought to be the Business of every public Writer, will console me under all the severe Things that may happen to be said of me.65

Writing as the Female Spectator, a self-made moral authority and an educated woman who has seen and rejected the immorality of society’s upper echelons, she hints that parents should follow her example and be willing to sacrifice their children’s immediate pleasure for more lasting benefits. Second, she addresses women who have already married, reminding her reader that a wife should be more than a household manager: “She is . . . the Repository of [her husband’s] dearest Secrets, the Moderator of his fiercer Passions, the Softner of his most anxious Cares, and the constantly chearful and entertaining Companion of his more unbended Moments.” To be suited for this type of relationship a woman must possess numerous admirable qualities: a consummate Prudence, a perfect Eveness of Temper, and unshaken Fortitude, a gentle affable Behaviour, and a sprightly Wit:—The Foundation of these Virtues must be indeed in Nature, but Nature may be perverted by ill Customs, or, if not so, still want many Embellishments from Education.66

Although her vision of a companionate relationship is relatively conservative, Haywood depicts companionate marriage in appealing and even aspirational terms, suggesting that education fosters companionacy. With this suggestion Haywood [ 143 ]

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anticipates the objections of readers who would argue that wives need only enough education to make them good household managers. Education will give women the aptitudes they need to cultivate a companionate relationship and thereby correct the imbalance of power present in a traditional marriage. As a continuation of the marital advice contained in The Female Spectator, The Wife (1756) concerns itself entirely with the proper role and behavior for a wife and the correct responses to a variety of marital challenges, from suspected infidelity to a husband’s “little passions and petulancies” to living with one’s in-laws. Identified on its title page as “By Mira, One of the Authors of The Female Spectator and Epistles for Ladies,” The Wife capitalizes on the name recognition afforded by recycling one of Haywood’s authorial personae, but The Wife’s tone and rhetoric differ significantly from those of the other works also attributed to “Mira.”67 The generic shift from periodical to conduct book necessitates a tonal shift to more straightforward didacticism. While a periodical offers a dialogue, albeit perhaps fictionalized, with readers in which specific problems are discussed and solved, a work such as The Wife positions itself in a broader relationship to social expectations. Both the authorial persona and the ficititious examples emphasize a single moral perspective in contrast to The Female Spectator’s conversational approach. The Wife, then, is perhaps even more exacting in its standards than The Female Spectator, asking wives to perform their traditional roles to the utmost in order to achieve happiness. However, The Wife is more uniformly sympathetic, showing empathy for wives’ struggles and thereby registering criticism of the limitations that create those struggles. As “Mira,” Haywood’s voice throughout The Wife is that of an uncompromising conventional moralist, but one who understands the challenges that women face: Mira is an eighteenth-century dispenser of tough love whose exemplary tales inspire women to believe in her demanding advice precisely because she recognizes how demanding it is. In The Wife, Mira’s instructions to wives in any difficult situation are roughly the same: the way to succeed—that is, to make one’s husband contented, faithful, and proud—is to perform the wifely role to its utmost by remaining cheerful and obliging even in difficult circumstances, so that dissatisfied or straying husbands will ultimately be won over by their wives’ shining virtue. To encourage readers, she uses interpolated anecdotes as proof of her method’s success, so that readers’ vicarious experiences are of marital happiness, social approbation, and diplomatic power-sharing with their husbands. The section devoted to “Advice and Perswasion” offers an empathetic endorsement of marital equality. Mira explains that a wife has “an undoubted claim” to know about her husband’s decisions and to advise him about them. However, this “privilege . . . should always be taken with the utmost caution and discretion, and never exerted, [ 144 ]

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or too strenuously enforced, even in cases of the most important and extraordinary nature.”68 The statement contains an obvious contradiction: how can an “undoubted claim” also be a “privilege”? Both the contradiction and the advice have Christian antecedents. In the marriage vow, the husband and wife are made one flesh, but wives are urged to submit to their husbands. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer includes this prayer as part of the marriage service: O GOD, who by thy mighty power hast made all things of nothing; who also (after other things set in order) didst appoint, that out of man (created after thine own image and similitude) woman should take her beginning; and, knitting them together, didst teach that it should never be lawful to put asunder those whom thou by Matrimony hadst made one.69

The marriage service also refers to the New Testament’s exhortations “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” and “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.”70 Haywood tells wives that women’s advice to their husbands must “come disguis’d under the softer and more humble appearance of perswasion,”71 echoing Peter’s direction to women married to non-believers: “If any [men] obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.”72 Women’s moral excellence can thus become a form of suasive power. Although Mira holds wives to this Biblical standard, she incorporates a criticism of conventional marital roles: men are “vain of their boasted learning, and withal so jealous of that power which law and custom invests them with in marriage.” In fact, some are “so foolishly tenacious and obstinate in this point” that they act against their own common sense rather than take their wives’ advice.73 With statements like these Haywood offers her readers a sense of relief from the stringent advice that The Wife generally offers, thereby implicitly taking issue with the standards from which it proceeds. Haywood uses affirmative examples throughout The Wife to illustrate the effectiveness of her advice. Reading the examples gives the reader a foretaste of the happiness to be gained by following Mira’s recommendations; thus, the anecdotes shore up the reader’s confidence. One woman earns the approbation of all her friends when, after mentioning that her husband’s stock-market windfall resulted from her advice instead of his idea, she had the presence of mind to pretend it was a happy coincidence and exclaim to her husband, “I have the honour, at least, of being of the same opinion with you.”74 Another woman, married to a man with “a miserable want of understanding,” manages his business affairs for him in perfect secrecy. She writes letters for him, which he then copies; she keeps him from contact with associates [ 145 ]

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so that she can tell him, privately, how to handle decisions.75 When her influence is suspected, she denies it, giving her husband the credit for her good sense and understanding, earning his love and gratitude. Although Mira acknowledges the indignity, for women, of marriage to intellectual inferiors, she suggests that her readers make sacrifices in order to become ideal wives. She motivates them toward those sacrifices with the prospect of covert power: the women in these episodes are participating and succeeding in the masculine spheres of business and finance, even if they must disguise their involvement.76 The difference in emphasis between the challenging precepts and the affirming examples implies an additional concern that Mira does not overtly acknowledge. The positive examples that Haywood presents throughout The Wife encourage readers by offering the promise of public approval resulting from a wife’s private behavior. While conduct-book authors employ this technique negatively, reminding wives that their misbehavior hurts their husbands’ reputations,77 Haywood acknowledges the prospect of social reward as well as punishment. She overtly calls attention only to the emotional benefits of uxorial excellence, but her interpolations suggest that society is always watching and judging—to wives’ detriment or to their credit. The wife who secretly manages her husband’s affairs cannot “avoid receiving those praises which she would never confess she had any pretence to merit.”78 Another wife who carefully saves up her money to buy her husband a gift wins not only his love but also the admiration and envy of his friends when they find out about her good management and generosity.79 Similarly, a wife who can obliquely let her husband know that she is aware of his infidelity, and do it with a smile on her face, receives her husband’s sincere contrition and impresses his friends with her “wit and good humor.”80 However, a wife’s conduct can generate social censure as well, especially if she publicly moves outside the traditional confines of her role. According to Haywood a woman may separate from an immoral husband; this opinion alone sets her apart from contemporaries who preached perseverance at all costs.81 But a separated wife must continue to behave with extreme modesty, live a retired life with a suitable chaperone, never speak ill of her husband, and continue to “do whatever is in her power for his relief and consolation.”82 By following these instructions she will protect her reputation from slights that would naturally fall more heavily on her than on her husband, since “the world is apt to absolve the husband of such a woman for whatever fault he may have been guilty of, and lay the blame of their separation entirely upon her.”83 Although Haywood presents readers with visions of private companionate happiness as the reward for wifely virtue, she also reminds them of the value of reputation even as she condemns society’s overemphasis on it—an argument that she revisits in The Husband. [ 146 ]

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The Wife ends by alerting readers to a forthcoming book of advice for husbands and hints that this latter book will counterbalance The Wife’s demands on women: “If any [wives] shall think my admonitions too strongly enforced, they will have their full revenge when they read the Duties I have enjoin’d a Husband.”84 The Husband, published in 1756, is subtitled “In Answer to the Wife” and does not credit “Mira” as its author, but its introduction acknowledges the common source of the two works: “I have already in a little treatise set forth, according to the best of my judgment, the manner in which a wife should regulate her conduct, so as to shew marriage in that amiable light it ought to appear.”85 Spedding posits that Haywood wrote The Wife and The Husband at the same time and that “they were issued separately for marketing reasons only,” suggesting a dialogic relationship between the two works.86 The Husband addresses many of the same topics as The Wife—servants, gambling, drinking, and dress, among others—but from a far different rhetorical position. In The Wife, Haywood addresses wives with firm conviction and encouraging empathy: as in The Female Spectator, she both guardedly endorses and selectively criticizes social mores. In The Husband she applies a tone of warning and admonition to her putative male audience. She presents companionacy based on friendship as the ideal foundation for a happy marriage: “I do not pretend to say the happiness of a married state depends entirely on the conduct of the husband, but on a coalition of mind, a perfect concurrence and purity of sentiment in both parties.”87 While she never calls husbands’ traditional authority into question, she suggests it is theirs to keep or lose depending on their behavior toward their wives: If a husband will give himself the pains to consider seriously that his honour and reputation are entirely in the keeping of his wife, and must be establish’d or ruin’d by her conduct;—that his fortune, in a great measure, depends upon her prudence and œconomy;—and his own peace and that of his family, on her chearfulness and affability, he will not think that even greater condescensions than those I have mention’d would be too much to keep her in good-humour.88

This argument, which is the cornerstone of The Husband, inverts the usual significance of the “separate spheres,” again making the wife the public face of the couple as Haywood does, in a different tone, in The Wife. The reasoning makes sense: a wife spends her husband’s money, plans his meals and social gatherings, and makes him look foolish if she is angry, nagging, or unfaithful. Susan Paterson Glover notes Haywood’s recognition in her fiction of “women’s increasingly untenable position as both subject and object.”89 This contradictory position becomes advantageous for women when men are forced to recognize the extent of women’s influence. Haywood draws [ 147 ]

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her ostensible male readership toward this conclusion with social truisms that support—and, as such, justify—her unorthodox conclusions. She argues that although the wife is held to a more stringent standard of reputation and behavior, the husband as the recognized head of the household suffers for her shortcomings in a public way that she does not suffer for his. By presenting the argument in these terms, Haywood avoids directly questioning the husband’s role but suggests that he has a responsibility beyond displaying his power at will. She criticizes arbitrarily authoritarian husbands, suggesting that their bullying reflects overcompensation for their shortcomings. The Husband contains many affirmative recommendations and examples for husbands; but most of the interpolated anecdotes, in contrast to those in The Wife, are cautionary tales. This distinction demonstrates the rhetorical differences between The Wife and The Husband: To other women, Haywood offers encouraging stories that enhance the appeal of her otherwise challenging advice. To men, whom she identified in The Wife as unwilling to accept advice from a woman, she offers negative examples, illustrating what happens to men who take their authority too seriously.90 One authoritarian husband quarrels with his wife after having “taken it into his head, one morning, to dislike the placing of his bed, and told his wife he would have it remov’d to the other side of the room.” The wife sees that the change would be inconvenient and sends away the upholsterer whom her husband had ordered to dismantle and move the bed. Her husband insists she had no right to contradict his instructions: “I should have been the best judge . . . when I had seen the alteration made; but if there were a thousand inconveniencies you knew it was my will it should be so;—and sure I ought to be master of my own house.” Disagreements succeed upon disagreements, all “on the subject of that superiority so stiffly asserted by the one, and so resolutely denied by the other,” until the wife leaves her husband for “the embraces of a lover” in Paris.91 The anecdote ends there, having drawn the subaltern power of a woman out to its most extreme and admonitory conclusion. Husbands are left to imagine for themselves the lonely humiliation of cuckolddom and to realize that their behavior could provoke their wives to such a step. Taken together, The Wife and The Husband raise interesting, if not easily answerable, questions about readership. As commercial works, they do not exclude any potential reader; this commercial inclusiveness allows Haywood’s didactic writing to cross generic and ideological lines as it emphasizes a woman’s need for power and equality in marriage. The Husband fulfills its author’s promise, given at the end of The Wife, of “full revenge” for those who thought The Wife was too stringent. The Husband then begins with a reference to its predecessor, the “little treatise” on wifely conduct. This cultivated cross-referentiality suggests that Haywood expected both wives and [ 148 ]

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husbands to read both books.92 Like other women writing about marriage, Haywood shapes her message to her primary audience, a complicated task in this case. As Pettit notes, the contrast between the two documents does not suggest an attitudinal change as much as a rhetorical adjustment, specifically with respect to audience. . . . Given her implication that a tendency toward absolutism inheres in men it is no wonder that Haywood declined to transfer her rhetoric of patience from The Wife to The Husband.93

Instead, she answers absolutism with absolutism. The more strident tone of The Husband would please wives who happened to peer into it by creating a sense that they were not the only ones held to a difficult standard, while The Wife’s overtly traditionalist approach would placate husbands who might open the “little treatise” to see the advice their wives were receiving. Haywood’s final periodical, The Young Lady, lasted only seven numbers, the first appearing 6 January 1756, and the last on 17 February 1756, just eight days before Haywood’s death.94 Only one issue of The Young Lady concerns marriage. With its commonsensical, cranky tone, number III suggests both its author’s maturity and her disaffection with the subject that had been the cornerstone of her didactic writing. The persona chosen to represent the writer of The Young Lady allows for Haywood’s real-life situation as well: Spedding notes “the unconscious intrusion of an older woman’s perspective” into the “Euphrosine” of The Young Lady.95 The accomplished young charmer of The Female Spectator reappears here as a mature woman, driven into an intellectual life first by severe smallpox scarring, then by her parents’ favoritism toward her sister, which left Euphrosine to “mope away [her] time alone.” In turning to books for learning and companionship she has made a virtue of necessity as the Female Spectator did: In fine, I betook myself to reading, and what I at first look’d upon as the most cruel treatment, I have since experienced to be the greatest blessing of my life, as it has kept me free from the follies and impertinencies of the age,—made me despise the ridiculous pursuits with which so many of my sex are infatuated, and given me a relish for more exalted pleasures,—contemplation and reflection.96

By resurrecting the persona of Euphrosine and creating this detailed personal history for her, Haywood takes advantage of the name recognition created by The Female Spectator, creates sympathy for an authorial voice that might be a little more difficult to admire, and prepares the reader for what will follow: a feminine curmudgeonliness that is also a logical development from her earlier personae. At this stage [ 149 ]

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in her career—prolific and successful, but no longer young, and in poor health—this attitude is understandable. The Young Lady number III opens with a letter from “Amelia,” eighteen years old, forbidden by her uncle to marry the man she loves and unable to marry without his consent because of the Hardwicke Act, which, among other provisions, required parental permission for those under twenty-one to marry.97 Euphrosine’s sympathy is perfunctory; she acknowledges herself “extremely affected” by the letter but points out that Amelia is likely only one of “ten thousand of his majesty’s subjects who labour under the same unhappy situation.”98 Her advice is conventional, advising Amelia to respect the law and the social codes that bind her, in the process reminding readers that women must be above reproach at all times. The tone of that advice is suitably pragmatic, issuing from a persona who values “contemplation and reflection” over “infatuation”: Severe as the late marriage-act has been accounted, it binds us not for ever,—the shackles it hangs upon our hearts will of themselves fall off in time,—dear one and twenty will at last arrive, and we shall then be at liberty to pursue our wishes. Nothing can be truly call’d a calamity to which we can see an end.99

She further advises Amelia that her lover should go into the country, or overseas, if he cannot avoid the temptation to challenge his rival to a duel. Haywood persuades Amelia to accept the recommended separation by creating the pleasant image of a daily, heartfelt, and, best of all, private correspondence. The lovers can write to one another, she suggests, and in exchanging letters may “enjoy a more undisturb’d felicity than any they can expect to find amidst the snares, plots, and artifices that may be put in practice by those whose interest it is to divide their loves.”100 Such a secret correspondence is both ostensibly virtuous—in comparison with an elopement—and, according to strict etiquette, forbidden between a man and woman not yet engaged. In presenting this image to her readers, Haywood thus creates a scene in which virtue is its own reward but carries with it, paradoxically, a transgressive thrill. The advice is crafted to appeal to those who, like “Amintor” in The Female Spectator, might allow their passion to overwhelm their reason because they lack the one thing Euphrosine can provide: the perspective and the cunning gained in maturity. Euphrosine’s pragmatism again suggests the importance of reason as the best basis on which to build a marriage: women need to exert their reason to make the most of their subordinate role. Euphrosine counsels Amelia above all not to agree to a clandestine marriage (which the Hardwicke Act was at least nominally designed to prevent). Despite the [ 150 ]

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persona’s moralizing tone in general—The Young Lady, like Haywood’s other didactic works, contains numerous references to Christian morality and virtue—Haywood chooses a concrete, pragmatic argument, describing the legal rather than the spiritual consequences of such an action: “There is at this time a clergyman of the church of England under sentence of transportation for an offence of this nature, [and] I should be sorry to see another of that sacred robe dragg’d like a common felon to the bar of a court of judicature.”101 This emphasis, though perhaps unexpected, is a shrewd rhetorical move in itself. To an impulsive eighteen-year-old under stress, or to another of the “ten thousand” who may be in the same circumstances, the legal consequences might be a more meaningful argument than the religious ones; furthermore, the reference to current events enhances the topicality and realism of the exchange. Like the other writers examined in this study, Haywood attempts to suit the needs and desires of her audience through her careful rhetorical control of her message. Amatory fiction fell out of style, but Haywood made amatory elements a cornerstone of her didactic writing, using romance and intrigue to engage readers who could then congratulate themselves on reading a self-improving periodical or conduct book. By creating several authorial personae, she claimed familiarity with higher social strata, thereby giving credence to her more conservative views even when they were at odds with her own lifestyle: the husband’s role as head of household, the necessity of parental approval for courtship and marriage, the wife’s responsibility to remain “the angel in the house” even under difficult circumstances. At the same time, she criticizes the limits of traditional social roles, showing that while they may save women from harm they do not help them to happiness. Marriage remains, for women, both a socioeconomic necessity and a tremendous risk. The greatest chance for happiness in marriage lies in companionacy, as Haywood perhaps learned through her relationship with Hatchett. Friendship and similarity of opinions enhanced by education become means to help women make better marriage choices and create companionate relationships, thereby equalizing the balance of power between husbands and wives.

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AFTERWORD From Clarissa Harlowe to Elizabeth Bennet

T

H E C H A L L E N G E O F generalizing about human motivations is particularly acute in the case of marriage, an institution that forces together the often incompatible issues of emotion, sexuality, finance, family, and class. As a result, the conclusions reached here are necessarily incomplete and complicated, and it is precisely their incompleteness and complication that I have wished to emphasize. Constrained by moral and familial standards that negated their agency, and typically required to marry for economic security, genteel women saw passion as dangerous and perceived marital choice as illusory—if they were aware of the prospect at all. The ideal of emotional attachment to a freely chosen spouse was another among many sources of pressure brought to bear on an upper-class marriage. The writings studied here suggest the extent to which my subjects could use rhetorical power as a substitute for the power to act. Writing allowed them to present themselves as attractive mates, ideal wives, and rational, egalitarian friends in order to make livable, if not always happy, marriages. In view of both the significance of marriage and the power of writing, it is no surprise that my subjects who read Clarissa found its heroine’s plight so moving and believable. While my study has not focused on Clarissa, I have referred to the novel several times. Historical hindsight thus suggests the novel’s relevance as a touchstone for understanding the difficulty and complexity of eighteenth-century marriage. While twenty-first-century readers are often skeptical of the bulk, intricacy, and melodrama of Richardson’s novel, an eighteenth-century audience would have seen those qualities as plausible given the subject matter: marriage had the potential, at least, for novelistic complications, and the obstacles facing Clarissa were familiar ones to any young woman urged to comply with her “friends” and to eschew even innocent [ 153 ]

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attachments. Thus I would suggest that Dorothy Osborne’s letters prefigure the epistolary intimacy and immediacy that Richardson would later exploit. Hester Chapone, of course, directly responded to Clarissa in Letters on Filial Obedience, and Scott’s The Test of Filial Duty broadly overlaps Clarissa’s form and content. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mary Delany recorded their sympathetic reactions to the novel in their respective correspondences. Delany, for example, wrote to her sister that “to call Clarissa fool, argues a weak judgment in the criticizer.”1 As writers, readers, and wives, these women were participating in a complex cultural movement that questioned the nature of the spousal relationship and the value of marital choice. Their writings reflect the anxiety created when, as Terry Eagleton describes, “individual sensibility . . . is tragically at odds with a grimly impersonal power structure.”2 But they also demonstrate the extent to which a woman could influence that power structure by turning its expectations and restrictions to her own ends. My later subjects’ various relationships to Clarissa suggest that Richardson’s understanding of “the matrimonial trap” was both accurate and prescient. According to the moral code of the time, Clarissa was a paragon; as such, she should have been able to reap the rewards of happiness in marriage, either through a companionate match or in the higher satisfaction of fulfilling her duty. Clarissa, Richardson argued, received her reward in eternity. But both the fiction and the reality, as my subjects’ writings demonstrate, were much more complicated. Despite Richardson’s commentaries insisting on his novel’s conservative message, Clarissa’s resonance with its contemporary audience suggests that it could be interpreted as interrogating, rather than affirming, the period’s contradictory moral and marital standards. Nancy Armstrong has persuasively explained the role of courtship-focused novels in shaping a new popular understanding of “what was female,” emphasizing that “of the female alone did [the novel] presume to say that neither birth nor the accoutrements of title and status accurately represented the individual; only the more subtle nuances of behavior indicated what one was really worth.”3 The writings examined here reflect a similar emphasis on behavior and perception. In order to define marriage according to their needs and desires, these women rhetorically reinterpreted their own actions in order to align them with their society’s values. Armstrong’s study is the best known of a considerable body of scholarship on the social function of the courtship novel. Rather than focusing on fiction, I have attempted to demonstrate that the novel was only one part of a larger conversation about the meaning of marriage. Writers of and for the genteel class were attempting to stabilize the social and individual value of marriage while the morals and standards that had traditionally justified it were shifting. That conversation took place so consistently in the press, in the theatre, and in personal correspondence [ 154 ]

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as well as in fiction that by the time Jane Austen’s famous “It is a truth universally acknowledged” first appeared in print in 1813, readers had already had plenty of practice interpreting tales of courtship and marriage and making morally based judgments about others’ marriages.4 Yet Pride and Prejudice, as I suggested in the introduction, celebrates as achievable and valorizes as desirable the kind of companionate relationship for which my subjects had to struggle, argue, and compromise. Austen presents a softened view of the familial, economic, and emotional influences that had prompted much stricter moralizing rhetoric within her lifetime. Though still constrained by their lack of wealth, the Bennet sisters all have the advantage of marital choice. The inattentive but ultimately right-minded Mr. Bennet respects his daughters’ choices and values their happiness: the sort of “dear papa” that Chapone tried to coax out of Samuel Richardson through her letters to the novelist. While it still condemns outright fortune-hunting, Pride and Prejudice suggests that a woman’s motivations in choosing a prudential marriage, such as Charlotte Lucas’s to Mr. Collins, are understandable and deserving of readers’ compassion as long as that marriage is, in fact, freely chosen. A misguided marriage resulting from amoral behavior on both sides (Lydia and Wickham) is horrifying, although perhaps more worthy of pity than condemnation. On the other hand, Austen’s most sympathetic characters, Elizabeth and Jane, are rewarded for their rational morality and independent-mindedness by being allowed to choose marriages that are both romantically desirable and financially advantageous. Meanwhile, the blatant social climbers are punished for their retrograde attitudes: Caroline Bingley, a snob whose main attraction as a prospective bride is her fortune of £20,000; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the ancien régime bastion obsessed with policing the boundaries of her class; and, less directly, Mrs. Bennet, simultaneously emptyheaded and marriage-obsessed. From this perspective, Pride and Prejudice begins to look like a gentle but thorough critique of the eighteenth-century marriage system. The pitfalls of that system—lovelessness, fortune-hunting, and amorality—have not disappeared. But this example suggests, however tentatively, that reading audiences were willing to valorize choice and companionacy in marriage and to find the triumph of those qualities believable in a way that they might not have done just over a half-century earlier. The feminization of the novel, combined with the Enlightenment emphasis on reason and the value placed on individual feelings by the cult of sensibility, created conditions under which Elizabeth Bennet, a progressive heroine, could receive a very conservative reward: marriage to a man of her choice who just happens to have a sprawling estate and £10,000 a year. Pride and Prejudice thus accomplishes in fiction what Montagu and Delany, for example, attempted in reality with much less certain success. [ 155 ]

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Elizabeth Bennet could triumph and prosper in the pages of a novel, but the circumstances for real women remained much more complicated. Female literary and intellectual figures of the later eighteenth century continued both to broaden the definition of what was possible in marriage and to encounter criticism for their marriage choices. As Mary Delany’s experience suggests, second marriage or marriage late in life may have allowed women more autonomy than they could have expected as younger brides, but such circumstances did not erase families’ objections to unsuitable matches or women’s deeply inculcated desire to please their families. As is well known, Hester Thrale (1741–1821) alienated her friends and family by marrying an Italian singer, Gabriel Mario Piozzi, in 1784. Her first marriage, in 1763 to Henry Thrale, was a matter of “duty and not desire,” as her biographer James Clifford explains. The marriage brought her a large inheritance and the approval of her mother, but seemingly not the vaunted moral satisfaction of having done her duty.5 Henry Thrale’s death in 1781 freed his widow to sell his business and re-establish her position as a genteel lady with a secure income free of a direct connection to commerce. Like Delany, the vidual Thrale received and rejected numerous suitors, seeing no need to remarry. Clifford quotes her assertion that “to marry for Love would therefore be rational in me, who want no Advancement of Birth or Fortune.”6 Yet her marriage to Piozzi tested the bounds of rationality as her more conventional contemporaries defined it. According to Clifford, “she found the opposition too strong to be overcome,” with her daughters fearing damage to their own marriage prospects if their mother were to marry a Catholic foreigner of no fortune or social standing.7 Moreover, “the revulsion in the minds of her relatives and friends was due in even greater degree to the fact that throughout she had seemed to be the pursuer.”8 A wealthy widow over forty was supposed to be just as immune to emotional attachment as a proper maiden of twenty, and even less susceptible to the kind of dangerous passion that would lead to bad decision-making. The match with Piozzi, however, “secured her own happiness” and invigorated her creativity as a writer, while her projects while in Europe with her new husband “[suggested] answers to the question of how femininity is constructed when divorced from domesticity.”9 Margaret Anne Doody suggests that Hester Lynch Piozzi had “acquired a lover, companion, and supporter [and] shaken off the trammels of English gentility.”10 Although she continued to be at odds with family and friends after her remarriage, Piozzi profited from her hardwon freedom: she wrote and published prolifically, and slowly was reconciled with her daughters and members of her former social circle. Hester Lynch Piozzi’s friend Frances Burney (1752–1840) likewise defied family opposition to marry Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard D’Arblay in 1793, when she was forty-one years old. Burney, extremely dutiful and attached to her famous father, had [ 156 ]

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earlier subjected herself to five miserable years as deputy keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte (a position arranged for her in part by Mary Delany) after being disappointed in her hopes of marriage to George Owen Cambridge, a clergyman. Burney’s biographer Doody seems to reproach her subject for self-deception in her epistolary reactions to both the Cambridge affair and the court appointment, but Burney’s cultivated passivity and resignation, performed in her writing, are solidly in keeping with the role of the virtuous woman. As it became clear that George Cambridge was not going to propose, Burney wrote to her sister Susanna, “I thank Heaven with my whole Heart that this is an affair in which I have been merely passive, however deeply concerned. What abundant reproach should I make myself for my own folly, & might the World make me for my own vanity, had I brought it on myself!”11 Doody interprets Burney as “insisting, as she is to do again and again, upon her innocence of all views, designs, or even desires.”12 The references to “[deep] concern” and to “the World,” however, suggest that Burney’s greater concern was for proper self-presentation. Like my subjects in the earlier part of the century, Burney recognizes the power of the personal letter to effect both emotional release and self-representation. The rigors of her court attendance nearly destroyed her health, leading Burney to flout the expectations of “the World” and ask her father’s and the Queen’s permission for release from her post. A court position was considered so desirable that her acquaintances were surprised at her decision.13 But a comment from Burney suggests her desperation: “My conduct . . . all consisted in not pretending, when I found myself sinking, to be swimming.”14 Although Burney was practiced at stoically doing her duty, she could not sustain the effort. One successful act against convention perhaps made the next seem easier. Doody explains that Burney and D’Arblay first became acquainted as friends and language teachers, correcting each other’s English and French, respectively: “Both were masters; the relationship started out as an equal friendship, lightened by the comedy of acknowledged mistakes and sweetened by mutual admiration.”15 The nature of this early acquaintance echoes the correspondence of Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, building an egalitarian relationship by helping each other and consulting each other. Despite having advised her friend Hester Thrale against marrying Gabriel Piozzi nearly a decade earlier, Burney married a man whom “the World” viewed in much the same light in which it had viewed Piozzi. Sarah Scott wrote to Elizabeth Montagu that Miss Burney’s marriage seems one of the most romantic I ever heard of, a Man who has neither fortune in present or expectancy, no means of livelihood, nor scarcely a Country which he can call his, wanted a much richer Wife than Miss Burney, who has scarcely an independence for herself.16 [ 157 ]

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The marriage was a case of the “living in a cottage on love” that Montagu and Delany had decried, but the couple was “extremely happy,” and D’Arblay was so supportive of his wife’s writing career that he acted as amanuensis for her highly successful novel Camilla (1796).17 The redefinition of marriage continued in fiction as well as in fact, as exemplified in Sarah Fielding’s novel David Simple. Harriet Guest argues that in the eponymous novel, David Simple holds a position “very close to that of the fashionable woman” and that by the end of Volume the Last his moral value depends on his “capacity for sentiment” and for sincerity, qualities assigned to the feminine.18 Perhaps reacting to the period’s sense of crisis in marriage,19 David Simple offers the possibility of marriage as not only an egalitarian, friendship-based relationship, but also a position from which to improve society as a whole. Although David Simple ends, as comedies traditionally do, with a marriage, the novel announces its focus in its subtitle: the protagonist is looking for “A Real Friend.” The protagonist defines friendship as “so perfect a union of Minds, that each should consider himself but as a Part of one entire Being.”20 David Simple’s bride Camilla and their friend Cynthia, who is marrying Camilla’s brother Valentine, identify their respective spouses as “the only Men they could really like or esteem.”21 The end of the novel finds the two couples living together, following David’s insistence that “what Fortune was amongst them might be shared in common,” and practicing the “Tenderness and Benevolence, which alone can give any real Pleasure.”22 Egalitarian companionacy obviates the then-proverbial notion that reformed rakes make the best husbands. The conventional spousal relationship thus becomes a heterosexual version of the “feminized economy” that Gary Kelly identifies in Scott’s Millenium Hall.23 The marriages in David Simple, which are based on friendship, allow charity and mutual improvement to overcome the destructive, irrational force of passion. The novel thereby posits a relationship between two people as a potential site on which wider social improvement can be founded. Henry Fielding’s Amelia (1751) diverges from other novels that are nominally focused on marriage in that it affirms a marriage that is already stable and successful rather than on the difficulties of achieving such a union in the first place. The early chapters rehearse the usual problems of courtship as Captain Booth pursues Amelia Harris, but the novel takes place after their marriage, focusing on the “various Accidents which befell a very worthy Couple” and that couple’s efforts to recover from their difficulties.24 The Booths’ relationship is a problematic but provocative one for the study of companionacy; as Linda Bree notes in her introduction, “Booth may seem to be the dominant figure, but Amelia’s position is more complex and her role less negative or passive than it at first appears.”25 Booth is constantly in trouble; as the novel opens, he is in debtor’s prison, telling the story of his courtship of Amelia to [ 158 ]

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Miss Mathews, who would become his mistress. He is also impulsive, deaf to nuance, and jealous, suspecting all his friends of designs on his wife’s virtue.26 Often, Amelia’s reward for devotion to her husband is poverty, uncertainty, or insult. Yet the openness and regularity of their communication make their marriage successful. Using the traditionally submissive role of the wife as a starting point, Amelia, like the women in this study, insists on both her virtue and her rationality. When Booth is outraged at Amelia’s acceptance of a masquerade ticket from the Noble Lord, she refuses to accept his contention that “it is not of you, but of him that I was jealous.” She connects her moral rectitude directly to her intellectual capacity: Is not this to confess, at least, that you have some doubt of my Understanding? Do you then really imagine me so weak as to be cheated of my Virtue? . . . No, Mr. Booth, believe me a Woman must be a Fool indeed, who can have in earnest such an Excuse for her Actions.27

The next day it becomes clear that Booth’s jealousy may have endangered his professional advancement, and he immediately accepts Amelia’s recommendation that she go to the masquerade “no matter how little while I stay there” in order to avoid giving offense.28 Her common sense combined with the couple’s habit of regular and honest conversation offsets Booth’s impulsivity while still allowing him to appear as the dominant partner. Amelia thus constitutes a novelized example of Eliza Haywood’s advice in The Wife, endorsing marital equality while requiring a rigorous feminine virtue. Amelia and Captain Booth are so constantly beset with difficulties that they seem to have no choice but to turn to one another for support. In this respect the novel seems even more melodramatic than Clarissa. Nevertheless, it shares with that novel and with the writings studied here a “desire to weave social commentary into a serious analysis of personal relations,” as George Haggerty explains.29 Fielding also follows Richardson when he notes that “Histories of this Kind . . . may properly be called Models of Human Life.”30 As with Clarissa, readers are encouraged to view the novel not as fiction but as reportage with a moralizing bent. Ultimately, Haggerty argues, Fielding “places marriage at the center of his scheme for the ‘Welfare of Society’ because he sees in the trust that develops between two people a basis for the social contract.”31 Amelia can thus be said both to share in and to attempt assuaging the period’s marriage anxiety. Amelia and Booth successfully defend their marriage against society’s threats: parental opposition, adultery, financial difficulty, and the moral pitfalls of city life. The companionate nature of their relationship does not, however, prevent Amelia from suffering for her husband’s bad decisions or obviate the need for her to subordinate herself to him even when she perceives a reality that he does not. Here we can find echoes of Fielding’s cousin Montagu’s challenging and contentious marriage. The Booths, however, turn [ 159 ]

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toward each other when in difficulty, rather than away from each other as the Montagus did. Readers are thus encouraged to see the close confidences and shared projects of this fictional marriage as touchstones of virtue in opposition to the moral shortcomings of “the World.” Christina Lupton has convincingly argued that “the Booths’ marriage is both an ideal and a reality, and these two things are never made answerable to each other as forms of compromise.”32 After all, as Fielding warns readers at the beginning of Amelia, “no human Institution is capable of consummate Perfection.”33 In this respect, the Booths’ marriage might be seen as a fictionalized version of the unions that Dorothy Osborne or Mary Delany projected for themselves: by relying on each other as friends and rational companions, a husband and wife achieve a moral superiority that becomes a sustaining and stabilizing force.34 These examples, both biographical and fictional, suggest the ways in which writers continued to expand the definition of marriage throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. The dominance of Enlightenment empiricism, with its interest in individual experiences, allowed companionate marriage to achieve credibility. Concern for emotional fulfillment in marriage was rising, while duty and tradition no longer were de facto sufficient motivations for a match. At the same time, property laws restricting women’s economic power still held sway, and families still used marriage as a means of building wealth and influence for future generations. The contradictions between these two trends are obvious. Numerous works of art, literature, journalism, and law, from Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode to Richardson’s Clarissa to the passage of the Hardwicke Act, suggest—and attempt to resolve—the period’s anxieties about marriage. As Tague notes, the moment when many contemporaries perceived an overwhelming trend toward mercenary marriages is the same one in which many modern historians have seen the rise of the loving, egalitarian family. Yet attempts to create a grand narrative of romantic love remain problematic.35 My research suggests that such attempts have been unsuccessful for good reasons. The women studied here are suspicious of romantic love. Dorothy Osborne, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hester Chapone, Mary Delany, Sarah Scott, and Eliza Haywood instead regard friendship and a similarity of character as the keys to happiness in marriage. Therefore, in trying to make a love story the overarching narrative of eighteenth-century marriage, scholars frame the argument in the wrong terms. Reducing marriage to a choice between love and money elides women’s concerns about what companionacy was and whether it was achievable. These women’s writings do show that companionacy—defined as friendship—and marital choice increasingly were accepted in the period: Chapone strongly advocates choice in her correspondence with Richardson, and Haywood emphasizes the need for a “perfect concurrence and purity of sentiment” between spouses.36 Nevertheless, for upper-class women, [ 160 ]

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or those like Eliza Haywood with an interest in upper-class mores, companionacy represented an additional source of pressure, another goal to be achieved from within a restrictive social system, rather than a straightforward panacea for gender inequality. The experiences of Frances Burney and Hester Lynch Piozzi hint that when a companionate relationship was, with difficulty, achieved, it made possible a powerful degree of interdependence and collaboration between spouses. Yet Burney’s and Piozzi’s marriages must be regarded as exceptional. Each of the women studied here gives voice to two interrelated truths: marriage was, for upper-class women of the eighteenth century, virtually compulsory; and, as with any action taken by compulsion, marriage was a source of apprehension. Therefore, although none of the women I consider could afford, literally or figuratively, to dismiss marriage, all of them approach the subject skeptically. Marriage is “serious and hazardous”;37 it is “surrounded with precipices . . . [and] perhaps, after all, better miss’d than found”;38 and the wrong marriage is “perjury before the altar of God.”39 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mary Delany, who each lived long enough to see their granddaughters approach marriageable age, questioned the necessity of those young women’s entrance into such a dangerous institution. Greater latitude in choosing a partner would only partially offset the emotional risk accompanying a seemingly inevitable “change of condition.” The additional freedom of choice did not necessarily reduce, and arguably increased, the impact that choice would have on the rest of a woman’s life. Social restrictions on expression and behavior limited women’s ability to take advantage of marital choice or to register criticisms about the marriage system. Delany is a case in point: as a widow, she had the social freedom to choose her second husband, although her first was chosen for her and her obedient acceptance commanded by her uncle. She criticized her first marriage retrospectively, from the secure perspective afforded by remarriage and the passage of decades. However, Delany, as well as the others, criticized marriage all the same. In their personal and published writing, they limit and compartmentalize their critiques and practice careful rhetorical control in order to present themselves as rational women of virtue. Scott presents her novelized critique of filial duty as a condemnation of clandestine marriage. Haywood creates a series of authorial personas and endows them with experience, virtue, and judgment in order to lend authoritative weight to her advice. Chapone surrounds her logically rigorous and well-supported arguments for marital choice with cheerful self-abasement and frothy flattery directed at her correspondent. Montagu, who had been the toast of the Kit-Cat Club at age eight, reassures her solitary and hardworking future husband that she hates the “noise and hurry” of the fashionable world.40 Osborne uses the challenge of a clandestine courtship as a joint project with her future husband, making their hypothetical future a [ 161 ]

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testing ground for the nature of their marital relationship. Delany carefully shapes the story of her unhappy first marriage, emphasizing some events and eliding others, to evoke sympathy from the reader of her autobiographical letters. With these efforts at image-making, the women invite their readers to accept them as virtuous, in turn making it easier to accept their messages as reasonable. Positioning themselves as traditional and nonthreatening, yet rational, my subjects focus on general policy statements about marriage rather than on personal anecdotes drawn from individual experience. They suggest that friendship is the only correct emotion on which to base a long-term relationship; as Delany notes, “People may fancy themselves in love . . . but I never yet heard of anybody’s carrying friendship on by mere imagination.”41 Because friendship is honest, and is motivated by neither greed nor lust, it is a better basis for marriage than either passionate love or financial gain. By endorsing companionacy in these terms, these women tacitly argue for equality between husbands and wives: a friendship is a relationship of equals. Although they support the Biblical ideal of wifely subordination, they stress the wife’s role as a “help meet,” a suitable helper for her husband, and suggest that the role of “help meet” makes the wife equal, or nearly equal, to the husband. Haywood points out in The Wife that a woman has “an undoubted claim” to know about and to advise on her husband’s affairs, although a wife’s advice must always come in the form of persuasion.42 Chapone cites secular sources, noting that “since the natural liberty Mr. Locke speaks of arising from reason, it can never be proved that women have not a right to it.”43 By making appeals based on reason, morality, and established authorities, these women represent themselves and their arguments as more reasonable than revolutionary. Each of them imagines an ideal of marriage much like that described by Montagu: marriage to a man who “thought that the truest wisdome which most conduced to our happynesse, and that it was not below a man of sense to take satisfaction in the conversation of a reasonable woman.”44 But each of them casts this image as an ideal to be promoted, argued for, and celebrated where it is found, not as a pervasive reality already accepted by society. This image of marriage as friendship suggests that these women wanted to be appreciated as partners and equals in their husbands’ lives. The counter-pressures created by parents, financial circumstances, and social restrictions made that kind of companionate partnership an exception rather than a rule. Close readings of these women’s writing on the subject of marriage demonstrate the importance of extending this type of analysis. By examining in detail writings by women, we might complete and further clarify an eighteenth-century definition of companionacy and identify the factors that either helped or hindered companionacy’s rise. Women, who had the most to gain by these changes in the marriage system, must continue to be the focus of such studies. [ 162 ]

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NOTES

Introduction. Eighteenth-Century Marriage in Crisis? 1. Delany used the phrase in a letter to her sister. The tone of the letter is light, but Delany repeats elsewhere her skepticism about marriage in much more serious terms. Mary Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 4 January 1733, in The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, ed. Augusta Waddington Hall, Lady Llanover (London: Richard Bentley, 1862), 1:391. Further citations from Delany’s correspondence are drawn from this edition unless otherwise noted. 2. Quoted in Emily J. Climenson, Elizabeth Montagu: The Queen of the Blue-Stockings: Her Correspondence from 1720 to 1761 (London: John Murray, 1906), 1:113. 3. Amanda Vickery notes that “‘the polite’ and ‘the genteel’ are the only terms consistently used by the women studied here to convey their social prestige.” Vickery focuses on women from families of “moderate social eminence”—lesser gentry and professionals. The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 12. 4. Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 35. 5. Lady Mary Pierrepont (later Wortley Montagu) to Edward Wortley Montagu, 14 November 1710, in The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1:64. Further citations from Montagu’s correspondence are drawn from this edition. 6. Jane West, Letters to a Young Lady in Which the Duties and Characters of Women Are Considered (London, 1806), 2:334. 7. Lady Mary Pierrepont to Edward Wortley Montagu, c. 26 October 1710, 1:61. See chapter 2. 8. Mary Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 16 March 1751, 3:25. 9. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 278. Stone suggests that “more advanced parents” had been allowing girls veto power since the mid-seventeenth century, but also cites the Marquis of Halifax’s remark in 1688 that “young women are seldom permitted to make their own choice.” 10. Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter, 41. 11. Ruth Perry, Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748– 1818 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2. 12. Sarah Scott’s The Test of Filial Duty examines these questions while exploring the emotionally damaging effects of young women’s strict devotion to their parents. See chapter 5. [ 163 ]

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13. Eve Tavor Bannet, The Domestic Revolution: Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 93. 14. Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter, 41. 15. Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 392. 16. Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 272. 17. Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Academic Press, 1978), 97. 18. Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family, 98. 19. Jane Austen, Emma (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), 5. For a fuller exploration of the ways in which marriage was simultaneously sentimentalized and commercialized, see Perry, Novel Relations, chapter 5. 20. Bannet, The Domestic Revolution, 106. 21. Bannet, The Domestic Revolution, 106. 22. Ingrid Tague, Women of Quality: Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690–1760 (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2002), 36. 23. Tague, Women of Quality, 37. 24. H. J. Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System: English Landownership 1650–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 2. 25. Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System, 2. 26. Charlotte famously marries the ridiculous Mr. Collins and carves out an enjoyable life based mostly on avoiding her husband. In this respect, she is not unlike Bluestocking women such as Sarah Scott who, though married, led a largely independent life. See chapter 5. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), 85. 27. Tague, Women of Quality, 40. 28. Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 15 or 16 January 1653, Dorothy Osborne: Letters to Sir William Temple, 1652–54: Observations on Love, Literature, Politics, and Religion, ed. Kenneth Parker (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 63. Further references to the Osborne-Temple correspondence are drawn from this edition. 29. Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, ed. Patricia Springborg (New York: Broadview Press, 2002), 102. 30. Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 278. 31. Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family, 97. 32. Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family, 112. 33. Eve Tavor Bannet, Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence, 1688–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 168. 34. Sarah Scott, The Test of Filial Duty, in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 6:81. 35. Elizabeth Robinson to the Duchess of Portland, 25 January 1740, in The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, ed. Matthew Montagu (1809; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1974), 1:82–83. 36. Montagu to Lady Bute, 27 May 1749, 2:430. 37. Mary Delany to Catherine Collingswood, Lady Throckmorton, 5 December 1740, 2:133. 38. Cicero, Laelius de Amicitia, in Cicero: De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione, trans. William Armistead Falconer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 131. [ 164 ]

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39. See, for example, Cicero’s warnings about recent political upheavals that would have been impossible without the support of the principal actors’ “associates” (153). The translator notes that the “good men” whom Cicero urges to be careful about their friendships “were the members of the aristocratic party” (155). 40. Cicero, Laelius de Amicitia, 157–59. 41. Michel de Montaigne, On Friendship, trans. M. A. Screech (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 4. 42. The Female Spectator tells a frustrated young man that if his would-be lover does not reciprocate his feelings, inducements of fortune and parental consent “are of no force to attach.” See chapter 6. Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood II (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), 2:238. 43. Montaigne, On Friendship, 6–7. John Lyly’s Euphues similarly excludes women from friendship by suggesting that women are fickle, superficial, and dishonest. Rejected in turn by the same woman, Euphues and his friend Philautus patch up their friendship and Euphues addresses to his friend a vitriolic letter about women’s dishonest natures. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England, ed. Leah Scragg (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003), 94–95. 44. Montaigne, On Friendship, 13. 45. Montagu to Wortley, 16 August 1712, 1:161 and 1 July 1747, 2:386. 46. Vickery notes that in the eighteenth century, “urban ennui found expression in a self-conscious cult of rural retreat” rooted in “the Roman ideal of intellectual leisure” and “the rediscovery of Horace” (The Gentleman’s Daughter, 282–83). 47. Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, Epistolary Bodies: Gender and Genre in the Eighteenth-Century Republic of Letters (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 6. 48. Clare Brant, Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 5. 49. Ruth Perry, Women, Letters, and the Novel (New York: AMS Press, 1980), 68. 50. Perry, Women, Letters, and the Novel , 69. 51. Osborne, for example, argued that letters should not be “studdyed, as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a Charme” (Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 24 or 25 September 1653, 139). See chapter 1. 52. Perry, Women, Letters, and the Novel, 69. 53. Osborne provides a case in point with her comments on Margaret Cavendish: “[First] let mee aske you if you have seen a book of Poems newly come out, made by my Lady New Castle for God sake if you meet with it send it mee, they say tis ten times more Extravagant than her dresse. Sure the poore woman is a litle distracted she could never bee soe rediculous else as to venture at writeing book’s and in verse too, If I should not sleep this fortnight I should not come to that” (Osborne to Temple, 14 April 1653, 89). 54. Bannet, Empire of Letters, xvii. 55. Cynthia Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994), 3. See chapter 2. 56. The public/private status of a letter did not always serve its writer. As Paul Baines and Pat Rogers explain, Curll’s unauthorized 1726 publication of Pope’s letters to Henry Cromwell showed the poet to be “brash, coltish, bawdy, pedantic, smug, trifling, pretentious, and vain,” an unflattering set of attributes that “threatened Pope’s frail hold on his identity, which he had always attempted to control with such rigour.” Edmund Curll, Bookseller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 173. 57. Bannet, Empire of Letters, ix. [ 165 ]

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58. Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 137. 59. Brant, Eighteenth-Century Letters, 2. 60. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Gossip (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 69. 61. Spacks, Gossip, 69. 62. Carolyn Steedman calls letters “the repository for emotions usually enclosed by convention.” Sarah Scott exploits this use of letters in The Test of Filial Duty (1769). See chapter 5. Carolyn Steedman, “A Woman Writing a Letter,” in Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600–1945, ed. Rebecca Earle (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999), 70. 63. Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter, 11. 64. Osborne to Temple, 30 April or 1 May 1653, 92. 65. The Book of Common Prayer (Oxford, 1698), n.p.

C h a p te r 1 . I n t i m a c y, I d e n t i t y, a n d M a r i t a l C h o i ce : T h e O s b o r n e -Te m p l e C o r r e s p o n d e n c e 1. Carolyn Steedman, “A Woman Writing a Letter,” in Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600–1945, ed. Rebecca Earle (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999), 117. 2. Jane Dunn, Read My Heart: A Love Story in England’s Age of Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 5. 3. Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 11 or 12 February 1654, in Dorothy Osborne: Letters to Sir William Temple, 1652–54: Observations on Love, Literature, Politics, and Religion (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 179. Further references to the Osborne-Temple correspondence are drawn from this edition unless otherwise noted. 4. Kenneth Parker, introduction to Dorothy Osborne: Letters to Sir William Temple, 1652–54: Observations on Love, Literature, Politics, and Religion (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 43. Parker explains that Sarah Rose Longe, a distant relative by marriage of the Temples, did much of the work toward the edition that bore Parry’s name, but “the operation of patriarchy in particular, and of late nineteenthcentury ‘gentility’ in general, prevented her from being credited” (42). 5. Carrie Hintz, An Audience of One: Dorothy Osborne’s Letters to Sir William Temple, 1652–1654 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 4. 6. Hintz, An Audience of One, 16. 7. Parker, introduction to Letters to Sir William Temple, 1. 8. Martha, Lady Giffard, The Life and Character of Sir William Temple, Bart (London, 1728), quoted in Parker, introduction to Letters to Sir William Temple, 1. 9. Osborne to Temple, 11 or 12 February 1654, 177. 10. Osborne to Temple, 3 or 4 September 1653, 132. 11. Parker, introduction to Letters to Sir William Temple, 45. 12. Osborne to Temple, 24 or 25 September 1653, 139. Ruth Perry points out that letter manuals and, later, prefaces to epistolary fiction praised a straightforward writing style similar to a person’s manner of speaking. See Women, Letters, and the Novel (New York: AMS Press, 1980), 75. 13. See Osborne to Temple, 17 or 18 March 1653, 80 and 29 March 1653, 85–86. [ 166 ]

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14. Osborne to Temple, 21 or 22 May 1653, 99. 15. Osborne to Temple, 30 April or 1 May 1653, 92. 16. Osborne to Temple, 11 or 12 February 1654, 177. 17. Osborne to Temple, 2 or 3 July 1653, 111–12. 18. Sheila Ottway suggests that Osborne’s letters are “illustrative of the state of transition that characterized prose fiction in England in the second half of the seventeenth century,” arguing that the letters “continue the tradition of amorous epistolary discourse established in classical antiquity”—a tradition that would, of course, lead to the development of the epistolary novel some decades later. “Dorothy Osborne’s Love Letters: Novelistic Glimmerings and the Ovidian Self,” Prose Studies 19, no. 2 (August 1996), 151, 155. 19. Osborne to Temple, 15 or 16 January 1653, 63–64. 20. Lawrence Stone explains that “once it was doubted that affection could and would naturally develop after marriage, decision-making power had to be transferred to the future spouses themselves, and more and more of them in the eighteenth century began to put the prospects of emotional satisfaction before the ambition for increased income or status.” Osborne’s experience, however, suggests that neither the transfer of decision-making power nor the shift in priorities was as tidy as Stone implies. The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 324. 21. Osborne to Temple, 15 or 16 January 1653, 63. 22. Ingrid Tague, “Love, Honor, and Obedience: Fashionable Women and the Discourse of Marriage in the Early Eighteenth Century,” The Journal of British Studies 40, no. 1 (January 2001), 81. Tague suggests that even women in arranged, “prudential” marriages used a vocabulary of devotion for a variety of purposes: “humorous self-deprecation . . . [demonstrating] their own moral authority but even, paradoxically, [defying] their husbands.” 23. Osborne to Temple, 15 or 16 January 1653, 63. 24. Caleb Grantham, The Godly Man’s Choice: Or a Direction How Single Godly Persons, Who Intend Marriage, May Make Choice of a Fit and Meet Yoak-Fellow (London, 1644), 72–73. Grantham’s book was published posthumously by Henry Scudder, whose The Christians Daily Walke was still being reprinted as late as 1776. The emphasis on divine duty as the ideal basis for marriage was a staple of conduct and devotional literature for over a century; Richard Allestree would make a similar point in The Ladies’ Calling (Oxford, 1673; reprinted numerous times through 1787): “Marriage is Gods Ordinance, and should be considered as such, not made a stale to any unworthy design.” Allestree calls “Vertu and Piety” the only sound bases for marriage (2:21–22). 25. Osborne to Temple, 2 or 3 July 1653, 112. 26. Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 141. 27. Eliza Haywood would later dramatize this idea in Fantomina, suggesting that women cannot achieve satisfaction in relationships without transgressing the boundaries of their social roles. 28. Osborne to Temple, 22 January 1653, 66. 29. See chapter 5. 30. Osborne was particularly frustrated by her brothers’ insistence that she marry, telling Temple that “they weary themselv’s and mee too, to very little purpose” by constantly presenting her with suitors and criticizing her intentions (9 or 10 July 1653, 114). 31. Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentlewoman Drawne Out to the Full Body (London, 1631), 40. 32. Osborne to Temple, 3 July 1653, 111. [ 167 ]

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33. Osborne to Temple, 11 or 12 February 1654, 177. 34. Osborne to Temple, 4 or 5 February 1654, 174. 35. Osborne to Temple, 4 or 5 February 1654, 174. All translations in this chapter are mine, unless otherwise noted. 36. Osborne to Temple, undated, 153; 24 December 1653, 162–63; and 11 or 12 February 1654, 179. 37. Ottway, “Dorothy Osborne’s Love Letters,” 150–51. 38. Parker, introduction to Dorothy Osborne: Letters to Sir William Temple, 23. 39. Clare Brant, Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 93. 40. The conduct literature of the period broadly supported Osborne’s suspicion of passion. In 1717, Giles Jacob would describe passion as “a Madness pro tempore,” noting that “to subdue Passion is a Conquest owing to true Sense and right Reason, and is attended with Satisfaction and Profit, but unruly Passion is destructive to Interest, and the greatest Author of present and future Misery.” Giles Jacob, Essays, Relating to the Conduct of Life (London, 1717), 66, 69. 41. Osborne to Temple, 15 or 16 October 1653, 147. 42. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 85. 43. Jeremy Taylor, of whose works Osborne was a student and admirer, specifies that friendship is possible for women as well as for men in A Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship (London, 1657), 86. 44. Osborne to Temple, 2 or 3 July 1653, 111. 45. Osborne to Temple, 18 or 19 February 1654, 182. 46. The anticlimactic ending to the story of “Monyma” in The Female Spectator emphasizes the risky, yet inevitable, nature of marriage for women. See chapter 6. 47. Osborne to Temple, 11 or 12 February 1654, 177. 48. Osborne to Temple, 1 or 2 October 1653, 141. 49. Osborne to Temple, 3 or 4 September 1653, 132. 50. Scott observes that young women, driven by duty and closely supervised by their parents, soon begin to censure themselves for expressing any feelings at all beyond a sense of duty. Her heroine Emilia Leonard is praised for having learned to “repress every undue emotion in her heart.” Sarah Scott, The Test of Filial Duty, in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 6:9. See chapter 5. 51. Osborne to Temple, 23 or 24 July 1653, 117–18. 52. See introduction. 53. Taylor, The Measures and Offices of Friendship, 88. 54. Osborne to Temple, 8–10 December 1653. 55. Osborne to Temple, 8–10 December 1653. 56. Carrie Anne Hintz, “Desire and Renunciation: The Letters of Dorothy Osborne.” Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1998, 44–46. Quoted in Parker, introduction to Letters to Sir William Temple, 22. 57. Jeremy Taylor, The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living (London, 1650), 129. 58. Osborne to Temple, 29 March 1653, 85. 59. Citing Fleetwood, Ruth Perry similarly suggests that devotion to parents was described as analogous to one’s attachment to a spouse: “Thus the moralist relied on the power of consanguineal ties to inculcate [ 168 ]

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the new obligations of the conjugal.” Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 32. 60. Osborne to Temple, 2 or 3 July 1653, 112. 61. Osborne to Temple, 3 July 1653, 111. 62. Taylor, The Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship, 5. See Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth Century England: Household, Kinship, and Patronage (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For an exploration of the Enlightenment’s conception of friendship as encompassing, paradoxically, both equality and mastery, see Peter Fenves, “Politics of Friendship, Once Again,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32, no. 2 (Winter 1998/1999), 133–55. 63. “He is not my friend till I have chosen him, or loved him” (Taylor, The Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship, 29). 64. Taylor goes on to explain that “it is certain, the action that is but indifferent and without reward, if done only upon our own choice, is an action of duty and of religion, and rewardable by the grace and favour of God, if done in obedience to the command of our superiors.” Allestree argues similarly in The Ladies’ Calling that “a Will duly submissive to lawful Superiors, is not only an amiable thing in the eies of others, but exceedingly happy to onesself; ’tis the parant of peace, and order both public and private.” Richard Allestree, The Ladies’ Calling (Oxford, 1673), 2:39. Although Taylor is speaking of obedience to superiors, Osborne unites these ideas with his ideas about friendship, which call for equality (Taylor, Holy Living, 188). 65. Osborne to Temple, 4 or 5 March 1654, 184. 66. Taylor, Holy Living, 203. 67. The Book of Common Prayer (Oxford, 1698), n.p. 68. Quoted in George Elliott Howard’s A History of Matrimonial Institutions: Chiefly in England and the United States with an Introductory Analysis of the Literature and the Theories of Primitive Marriage and the Family (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1904), 1:419. Osborne feared the exposure that a civil marriage would bring and hoped to be married under the Church of England service: “The truth is I could not indure to bee Mrs. Bride in a publick wedding to bee made the happiest person on Earth” (Osborne to Temple, 15 June 1654, 202). 69. Ottway identifies influences from French romances and Ovid’s Heroides in Osborne’s letters as she places them in “the tradition of amorous epistolary discourse established in classical antiquity.” That tradition, Ottway suggests, would eventually be folded into the epistolary novel (“Dorothy Osborne’s Love Letters,” 149–59). 70. Osborne to Temple, 2 or 3 July 1653, 112 and 12 or 13 March 1653, 78. Allestree, somewhat surprisingly, offers a similar conception of friendship in marriage, calling a wife “a kind of second Conscience” to her husband and suggesting that she should “in a mild and gentle manner . . . admonish him of his faults” (The Ladies’ Calling, 2:31). 71. Osborne to Temple, 22 or 23 October 1653, 151. 72. Stone describes the lack of privacy typical in genteel homes of the period: not only the constant presence of servants, but also the design and construction of homes, created conditions that ensured that residents were rarely alone. Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 211–13. 73. Osborne to Temple, 30 April or 1 May 1653, 92. 74. Osborne to Temple, 18 or 19 June 1653, 108. 75. Hintz, An Audience of One, 87. 76. Parker, introduction to Dorothy Osborne: Letters to Sir William Temple, 45. [ 169 ]

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77. Parker, introduction to Letters to Sir William Temple, 6–7. 78. Parker, introduction to Letters to Sir William Temple, 7. Though Osborne would claim that her brother never spoke of Temple disrespectfully, Henry Osborne apparently said to her during an argument that “Religion or honnour were things [Temple] did not consider att all, and that hee was confident [Temple] would take any Engagement, serve in any employment or doe any thing to advance [himself ]” (Osborne to Temple, 11 or 12 February 1654, 177). 79. Ottway points out that “taken as a whole, Osborne’s love letters curiously anticipate the epistolary novel par excellence, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa” (“Dorothy Osborne’s Love Letters,” 152). 80. Osborne to Temple, 12 or 13 March 1653, 78. 81. Osborne to Temple, 21 or 22 May 1653, 99. 82. H. J. Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System: English Landownership, 1650–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 146. 83. Osborne to Temple, 18 March 1654, 191. 84. Osborne to Temple, 21 or 22 May 1653, 99. 85. Note to Osborne to Temple, 21 or 22 May 1653, 246. 86. Osborne to Temple, 12 or 13 March 1653, 78. 87. Osborne to Temple, 25 or 26 June 1653, 110. 88. Osborne to Temple, 21 or 22 May 1653, 99. 89. Osborne to Temple, 30 or 31 July 1653, 119. 90. Osborne to Temple, 18 or 19 June 1653, 107. 91. Osborne to Temple, 27 or 28 August 1653, 130. 92. Osborne to Temple, 25 or 26 June 1653, 110. 93. Osborne to Temple, 28 or 29 May 1653, 102. 94. Osborne to Temple, 16 September 1654, 213–14. 95. Osborne to Temple, 12 or 13 March 1653, 78. 96. Roy Porter explains that impecunious gentry in the period began to marry their sons to the daughters of well-to-do businessmen: “It was the alliance of a gentleman’s son with a merchant’s daughter, the landed embracing the loaded, that was mariage à la mode.” English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 52. 97. Osborne to Temple, 8 or 9 January 1653, 61. 98. Osborne to Temple, 21 or 22 January 1654, 170. 99. Mary Astell, for example, contrasts the man who “Marries himself to a Fortune only” and therefore “must expect no other satisfaction than that can bring him” with those who “marry for Love as they call it” and “find time enough to repent their rash Folly.” Some Reflections upon Marriage, in Political Writings, ed. Patricia Springborg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 38. 100. Osborne to Temple, 11 or 12 February 1654, 177. 101. Elizabeth Robinson to the Duchess of Portland, 25 January 1740, in The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, ed. Matthew Montagu (1809; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1974), 1:82–83. 102. To Osborne, blatantly mercenary or social-climbing marriages were equally inexcusable in men and in women. She tells Temple that her cousin Sir Thomas Osborne’s decision to marry an earl’s daughter principally because she was an earl’s daughter was “the prittiest fancy and had the least of sence out of any I had heard on” (1 or 2 October 1653, 141). 103. Osborne to Temple, 16 September 1654, 213. [ 170 ]

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104. In The Test of Filial Duty, Sarah Scott suggests that marrying for any reason other than fulfillment of one’s duty was seen as suspect. See chapter 5. 105. Osborne to Temple, 16 or 17 July 1653, 115. 106. Osborne to Temple, 10 or 11 September 1653, 134. 107. Osborne to Temple, 25 or 26 June 1653, 109. 108. Brathwaite, The English Gentlewoman, 54. 109. Osborne to Temple, 14 January 1654, 167.

Chapter 2. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: The Power of Self-Fashioning 1. Lady Mary Pierrepont (later Wortley Montagu) to Edward Wortley Montagu, 9 April 1711, in The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1:186. To minimize confusion, I will refer to Lady Mary as “Montagu” and to Edward Wortley Montagu as “Wortley.” Further references to Montagu’s correspondence are drawn from this edition. 2. Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 2. 3. Grundy, Lady Mary, 12–13. 4. Robert Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 51. Montagu’s “Town Eclogue” titled “Saturday. The Small-Pox. Flavia” dramatizes a beautiful woman’s reaction to the disfigurement caused by the disease. 5. Grundy, Lady Mary, 13. 6. Henry Fielding, Montagu’s second cousin, clearly saw her as such, capitalizing on her court connections to advance his literary career. See Martin C. Battestin and Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (London: Routledge, 1989), 56–57. 7. Clare Brant, Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 93. 8. Sarah Scott similarly elides the personal in favor of the programmatic in The Test of Filial Duty, as I will argue in chapter 5. 9. Cynthia Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994), 3. Lowenthal notes that Montagu’s letters “circulated ‘publicly’ among her acquaintances.” 10. Montagu to Alexander Pope, September 1718, 1:446. 11. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Gossip (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 69. 12. Kathryn Shevelow, Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical (London: Routledge, 1989), 90. Shevelow examines the eighteenth-century periodical, with its interpolated letters, as a vehicle for defining and disseminating a normative image of the feminine. 13. Montagu to Frances (Pierrepont) Erskine, Countess of Mar, June 1726, 2:66. 14. Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter, 2. 15. Allestree argues, “There is so strict a Union between a Man and his Wife, that the Law counts them one Person, and consequently they can have no divided Interest, so that the misbehavior of the Woman reflects ignominiously on the Man.” The Ladies Calling (Oxford: 1673), 2:35. 16. Montagu to Philippa Mundy, 6 February 1712, 1:116. [ 171 ]

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17. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 83. 18. Grundy, Lady Mary, 40. 19. Grundy, Lady Mary, 34. 20. Brant suggests that this function is typical of courtship letters: “Letters enabled men to enjoy women’s conversation in writing . . . without actually being in their company. . . . Conversely, women could ‘talk’ with men in ways that allowed them the transformative power of politeness; the price was physical separation” (Eighteenth-Century Letters, 43–44). 21. Montagu to Wortley, 28 March 1710, 1:24. 22. Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter, 38. 23. Montagu to Wortley, 28 March 1710, 1:25. 24. Montagu to Wortley, 28 March 1710, 1:25. 25. Dorothy Osborne, for example, told her future husband that no woman could love a man unless she knew that he loved her; nor would a woman ever admit to such an attachment. See chapter 1. 26. Grundy, Lady Mary, 41. 27. Halsband, The Life, 13. Habakkuk’s Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System explains the workings and the prevalence of the “strict settlement” to which Wortley did not wish to be subject. 28. Montagu to Wortley, 20 August 1710, 1:53–54. 29. Kristin Waters, “Sources of Political Authority: John Locke and Mary Astell: Introduction” in Women and Men Political Theorists: Enlightened Conversations (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000). 30. Sarah Apetrei’s “‘Call No Man Master Upon Earth’: Mary Astell’s Tory Feminism and an Unknown Correspondence” explores further “the paradoxical correlation between Tory values and radical thinking about gender” as characterized by Mary Astell. Apetrei notes that “despite her exploitation of the parallels between them, Astell understood the doctrines of passive obedience and wifely subjection very differently.” Montagu perhaps held a similarly bifurcated view and performs a similar exploitation in her letter to Wortley. Eighteenth-Century Studies 41, no. 4 (2008), 507–23. 31. Montagu to Wortley, 27 February 1711, 1:86. 32. Grundy, Lady Mary, 40–41. 33. Grundy, Lady Mary, 40. 34. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, introduction to The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality (New York: Methuen, 1987), 10. 35. Montagu to Wortley, 20 August 1710, 1:53. 36. Montagu to Wortley, c. 26 October 1710, 1:61. 37. Montagu to Wortley, 6 August 1712, 1:141–42. 38. Montagu to Wortley, 11 August 1712, 1:151. 39. Eve Tavor Bannet, Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence, 1688–1820 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 169. Bannet refers to Crowder’s Complete Letter-Writer (1755), which borrowed from—but significantly rewrote—letters by Montagu and Eliza Haywood to create model letters extolling the virtues of an idealized married life. 40. Montagu to Wortley, 22 February 1711, 1:82. 41. Montagu to Wortley, 7 March 1711, 1:88 and 24 March 1711, 1:95. 42. Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 283. [ 172 ]

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43. Montagu to Wortley, 28 March 1710, 1:24. 44. Mona Scheuermann, Her Bread to Earn: Women, Money, and Society from Defoe to Austen (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 243. 45. Montagu to Wortley, 17 July 1712, 1:129. 46. Montagu to Wortley, 6 August 1712, 1:141. 47. Montagu to Wortley, 12 August 1712, 1:153, and 6 August 1712, 1:141. 48. Halsband, The Life, 23. 49. Montagu to Wortley, 16 August 1712, 1:161. 50. Armstrong and Tennenhouse, The Ideology of Conduct, 12. 51. Montagu to Wortley, 16 August 1712, 1:161. 52. Montagu to Wortley, 15 August 1712, 1:159. 53. Her best-known correspondent, Alexander Pope, remakes his image in his letters to her much as she does in her correspondence, but to very different ends. See Cynthia Wall, “Editing Desire: Pope’s Correspondence with (and without) Lady Mary,” Philological Quarterly 71, no. 2 (1992): 221–37. 54. Halsband, note to Montagu to Philippa Mundy, c. 4 May 1711, 1:107. 55. Montagu to Philippa Mundy, 25 September 1711, 1:109. 56. Montagu refers to the proverbial punishment for old maids, which appears in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing (II.i) and The Taming of the Shrew (II.i). 57. Montagu to Philippa Mundy, April 1712, 1:122–23. Grundy confirms that Montagu’s “Paradise” is someone other than Wortley; see Lady Mary 45–47. 58. Montagu to Philippa Mundy, April 1712, 1:121. 59. Montagu to Wortley, 11 June 1712, 1:123. 60. Montagu to Philippa Mundy, August 1712, 1:150. 61. Grundy, Lady Mary, 58. 62. Montagu to Philippa Mundy, 10 January 1713, 1:177–78. 63. In 1761, Montagu wrote to her son that she and Wortley had lived on less than £800 the year he was born (3 March 1761, 3:257). 64. Montagu to Philippa Mundy, 10 January 1713, 1:178. 65. Montagu to Philippa Mundy, 10 January 1713, 1:178. 66. Dorothy Osborne remarked similarly to Sir William Temple that “tis a sad thing when all on’s happinesse is only that the world dos not know you are miserable” (8 or 9 October 1653, 145). 67. Grundy, Lady Mary, 60. 68. Montagu to Wortley, 22 October 1712, 168–69. 69. Montagu to Wortley, 11 December 1714, 1:240. 70. Wortley to Montagu, 9 December 1714, 1:240. 71. Wortley perhaps encouraged this stance. In June 1713, Montagu wrote to him “I shall passe the whole Evening in my chamber, alone, without any busynesse but thinking of you, in a Manner you would call Affectation, if I should repeat it to you. That Refflection brings me back to remember I should not write my thoughts to you. You will accuse me of Deceit when I am opening my Heart to you, and the Plainesse of expressing it will appear Artificial” (22 June 1713, 1:181). 72. Montagu to Wortley, 25 April 1710, 1:30.

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73. Montagu to Wortley, c. 26 October 1710, 1:61. Brant suggests that “the man who shares intellectual pleasures with a woman and who incorporates feminine sensibility is not emasculated . . . but doubly sexual. Mutual intellectual pleasure need not smother amorous dalliance” (Eighteenth-Century Letters, 120). Although Montagu downplays sexuality in favor of an emphasis on reason, it is perhaps worth noting the common eighteenth-century use of the word “conversation” to indicate a sexual relationship. 74. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the definition “A companion who is a help, or who renders help; an assistant, coadjutor, partner, consort. Chiefly applied to a wife or husband.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “helpmate,” accessed 18 May 2010, http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy .maconstate.edu/. 75. Grundy, Lady Mary, 391–93. 76. Spacks describes Montagu’s feelings for Algarotti as “a hopeless and devastating passion” interrupting a lifetime of strict emotional discipline, a discipline to which Montagu returned after Algarotti sidestepped her advances (Imagining a Self, 85). 77. Montagu to Wortley, 3 December 1752, 3:19. 78. Halsband, note to Montagu to Lady Oxford, 3 June 1746, 2:371. 79. Montagu to Wortley, 9 April 1747, 2:384. 80. Montagu to Wortley, 1 July 1747, 2:386. 81. Montagu to Henrietta Fermor, Countess of Pomfret, November 1738, 2:127. 82. Montagu to Henrietta Fermor, Countess of Pomfret, November 1738, 2:127–28. 83. Halsband, The Life, 176. 84. Halsband, The Life, 122. 85. See Kevin J. Gardner, “The Aesthetics of Intimacy: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Readers,” Papers on Language and Literature 34, no. 2 (Spring 1998), 113–33. 86. Spacks, Gossip, 68. 87. Montagu to Lady Mar, May 1725, 2:52. 88. Montagu to Lady Mar, 31 October 1723. 89. Wortley also contributed to the public discussion of marriage. His notes condemning settlements as detrimental to marriage provided the bases for Tatler numbers 199 (18 July 1710) and 223 (12 September 1710). 90. Donald F. Bond notes that Addison’s friend Thomas Tickell knew of Montagu’s authorship of the essay and that Halsband accepts this attribution. Note to Spectator no. 573 (28 July 1714), in The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) 4:556. 91. Joseph Addison, Spectator no. 561 (30 June 1714), 4:515. 92. Addison, Spectator no. 561, 4:515. 93. Marlene LeGates, “The Cult of Womanhood in Eighteenth-Century Thought,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 10, no. 1 (Autumn 1976), 26. Wycherley’s Widow Blackacre in The Plain Dealer (1676) is perhaps the best-known version of this stereotype. 94. Addison, Spectator no. 561, 4:516. 95. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Spectator no. 573 (28 July 1714), 4:561. 96. Montagu, Spectator no. 573, 4:556–57. 97. Montagu, Spectator no. 573, 4:560. 98. Montagu, Spectator no. 573, 4:561.

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99. Waitfort’s name also echoes that of Congreve’s Lady Wishfort, but Lady Wishfort’s characterization more closely resembles Montagu’s middle-aged persona: one who “publishes her detestation of mankind, and full of the vigor of fifty-five, declares for a friend and ratafia.” William Congreve, The Way of the World, in British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan, ed. Nettleton, Case, and Stone (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 313. 100. Montagu, Spectator no. 573, 4:557. 101. Montagu, Spectator no. 573, 4:557. 102. Montagu, Spectator no. 573, 4:561. 103. According to Grundy, Montagu’s authorship of the essay remained secret until the twentieth century (Lady Mary, 72). 104. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Nonsense of Common-Sense, ed. Robert Halsband (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 1947), 27 December 1737, 5–6. 105. Montagu, The Nonsense of Common-Sense, 24 January 1738, 26. 106. As chapter 6 will demonstrate, Eliza Haywood’s last periodical, The Young Lady, makes similar use of Haywood’s advancing age and more rigorous tone. 107. Montagu to Lady Bute, 27 May 1749 (2:430), 19 June 1751 (2:484), 1 July 1747 (2:386). 108. Montagu to Lady Bute, 28 January 1753, 3:24. 109. Despite their own matrimonial history, the Wortley Montagus were reluctant to approve their daughter’s choice of John Stuart, third Earl of Bute as a husband, seemingly for economical and geographic reasons. See Grundy, Lady Mary, 325–27. 110. Montagu to Lady Bute, 15 April 1755, 3:83.

Chapter 3. Hester Chapone as a Living Clarissa in Letters on Filial Obedience and A Matrimonial Creed 1. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 78. 2. Elizabeth Eger characterizes the group of intellectual women that were most prominent between 1750 and 1812 as “both symbol and allegory and as an actual historical phenomenon.” Bluestockings: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), 28. 3. Rhoda Zuk, introduction to Hester Chapone in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 3:181. 4. Harriet Guest, Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750–1810 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 75. 5. Gordon Schochet, “The Significant Sounds of Silence: The Absence of Women from the Political Thought of Sir Robert Filmer and John Locke (or ‘Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?’)” in Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, ed. Hilda L. Smith (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 223. 6. Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (New York: Broadview Press, 2002), 102. 7. In The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England, Vickery identifies “the genteel” as women of “moderate social eminence . . . combined with an emphasis on outward behavior,” noting

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that “‘the polite’ and ‘the genteel’ are the only terms consistently used by the women studied here to convey their social prestige” (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 13. 8. Leslie Richardson, “Leaving Her Father’s House: Astell, Locke, and Clarissa’s Body Politic,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 34 (2005): 155. 9. Rhoda Zuk, introduction to Hester Chapone in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 3:183, 185. 10. Zuk, introduction to Hester Chapone, 3:186. 11. Zuk, introduction to Hester Chapone, 3:181. 12. Zuk, introduction to Hester Chapone, 3:184. 13. Zuk, introduction to Hester Chapone, 3:181. 14. Zuk, introduction to Hester Chapone, 3:188. 15. Spacks suggests that women who self-identify as daughters do so because they recognize that fathers are more likely to reward emotional investment. Richardson and Chapone, of course, were not actually father and daughter, but her emotional investment in him, which she deliberately amplifies, becomes central to the success of her argument. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 77–78. 16. Hester Mulso Chapone, The Works of Mrs. Chapone (Boston, 1809), 2:26. 17. The preface to Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, for example, explains his hope that “the Letters may serve for Rules to Think and Act by, as well as Forms to Write after.” Samuel Richardson, Letters Written to and for Particular Friends on the Most Important Occasions, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Samuel Richardson I: Early Works (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 324. 18. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa: Prefaces, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript (Los Angeles: The Augustan Reprint Society, 1964), 5. 19. Rhoda Zuk, introductory note to Letters on Filial Obedience in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 3:203. 20. Quoted in T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, Samuel Richardson: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 239. 21. Sarah Fielding, Remarks on Clarissa (Los Angeles: The Augustan Reprint Society, 1985), 35. 22. Gary Kelly, introductory note to The Test of Filial Duty in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 6:xvi. See chapter 5. 23. Richardson, Prefaces, 1. 24. Clarissa receives the curse, “that you may meet your punishment, both here and hereafter, by means of the very wretch in whom you have chosen to place your wicked confidence” secondhand in a letter from her sister, and says that it is “a blow from which [her heart] never will recover.” Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 508–9. 25. Richardson, Clarissa, 87. 26. Richardson, Clarissa, 98. 27. Richardson, Clarissa, 112. 28. Richardson, Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, 395. 29. Samuel Richardson, A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflections, Contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison (1755; reprint, London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998), 118. [ 176 ]

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30. Richardson, A Collection, 171. 31. Richardson, A Collection, ix. 32. Leslie Richardson develops this idea and ties it to Mary Astell’s early feminism and John Locke’s “possessive individualism” in “Leaving Her Father’s House,” 151–71. 33. Richardson, A Collection, 92. 34. Richardson, Clarissa, 37. 35. Hester Chapone to Samuel Richardson, 12 October 1750, Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 3:205. Subsequent references to Chapone’s letters to Richardson are drawn from this book. 36. Chapone to Richardson, 12 October 1750, 206. 37. Chapone to Richardson, 12 October 1750, 206. 38. Chapone to Richardson, 12 October 1750, 206. 39. Chapone to Richardson, 12 October 1750, 206. 40. Shirley Van Marter examines the ways in which Richardson changed Clarissa’s characterization based on the Chapone correspondence in “Richardson’s Debt to Hester Mulso concerning the Curse in Clarissa,” Papers on Language and Literature 14 (1978), 22–31. 41. Chapone to Richardson, 12 October 1750, 207. 42. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 212. 43. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 212. 44. John Locke, “The Second Treatise of Civil Government” in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 330. 45. Locke, “The Second Treatise of Civil Government,” 331. 46. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 211. 47. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 211. 48. Richardson’s young female eidolons in Letters Written to Particular Friends, for example, constantly demonstrate that they understand what is expected of them, referring to marriage as a commitment they cannot make without advice from more mature, wiser, usually male sources. See, for instance, his “Instructions to Young Orphan Ladies,” 430–36. 49. Samuel Richardson, The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson I: Early Works (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 47. Eaves and Kimpel note that Richardson “used Locke’s theories on education as a basis for Pamela’s comments on that subject, and had obviously read them carefully and critically.” T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, Samuel Richardson: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 571. John Dussinger goes further, cataloguing Richardson’s borrowings from Locke, Richard Allestree, and his own The Infidel Convicted in The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum and other works in “Fabrications from Samuel Richardson’s Press,” Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America 100, no. 2 (2006), 264. 50. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 213. 51. In contrast, Locke does identify marriage as a type of contract, calling it “a voluntary Compact between Man and Woman” and specifying that a man has only as much power over his wife as “natural Right, or their Contract” allows (“Second Treatise,” 337, 339). 52. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 209. 53. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 215. 54. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 212. [ 177 ]

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55. Richard Allestree, The Ladies’ Calling (Oxford, 1673), 2:20. 56. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 215. Sarah Scott’s heroine Charlotte Arlington expresses similar sentiments when she explains that “to marry one towards whom I feel a total indifference, appears to me very dreadful. ” (The Test of Filial Duty, in Bluestocking Feminism, 19). 57. Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 224. 58. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 220. 59. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 215. 60. Chapone notes that “after having as you desired perused the matrimonial office, and weighed to the best of my abilities the force of the words,” she does not think she will be able to substantially alter her assertion (10 November 1750, 219). 61. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 220. 62. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 220. 63. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 217–18. 64. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 227. 65. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 228. Although Fleetwood places wives absolutely under the power of their husbands, he defines duty, as does Chapone, as the exponent of love and gratitude. See Leslie Richardson, “Leaving Her Father’s House,” 152, 160. Richardson borrowed from Allestree (via John Leake’s The Scholar’s Manual) in The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum as he did from Locke, as Dussinger notes in “Fabrications from Samuel Richardson’s Press,” 263. Hall, on the other hand, states that “the Apostle supposeth it in the parents power either to keep his daughter a virgin or to dispose of her in marriage: she is not her owne, either to hold, or give; but must be altogether ordered by the superiour will of a parent.” Joseph Hall, Resolutions and Decisions of Divers Practicall Cases of Conscience (London, 1649), 382. 66. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 228. 67. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 231–32. 68. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 241. 69. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 240. 70. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 237. 71. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 245. 72. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 236. 73. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 245. 74. Mary Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, in Political Writings, ed. Patricia Springborg (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 33–34. 75. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 247. 76. Chapone to Richardson, 3 January 1751, 237. 77. Quoted in Tom Keymer, Richardson’s Clarissa and the Eighteenth-Century Reader (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 103. 78. Keymer, Richardson’s Clarissa, 103. 79. Mary Vermillion, “Clarissa and the Marriage Act,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 9, no. 4 (1997), 395–412. 80. Zuk, introductory note to A Matrimonial Creed in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 3:249. [ 178 ]

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81. Hester Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 3:251. 82. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 251. 83. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 251. 84. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 255. 85. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 252. 86. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 252–53. 87. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 253. 88. Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, 10. 89. Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth Century England: Household, Kinship, and Patronage (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 192, 264. Tadmor traces the language of friendship to Jeremy Taylor, Dorothy Osborne’s spiritual mentor. See chapter 1. 90. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 253. 91. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 254. 92. Chapone, A Matrimonial Creed, 254. 93. See Jeremy Taylor, The Rules and Exercises of Holy Living (London, 1650), 129.

C h a p te r 4 . “ P e r f e c t F r i e n d s h i p ” : M a r y D e l a ny, C o m p a n i o n a c y, a n d C o n t ro l 1. Mary Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, in The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, ed. Augusta Waddington Hall, Lady Llanover (London: Richard Bentley, 1862), 1:24. Subsequent references to Delany’s correspondence are drawn from this edition unless otherwise noted. 2. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:296. 3. “Mrs. Delany and Her Circle,” Sir John Soane’s Museum, accessed 30 July 2012, http://www.soane .org/exhibitions/mrs_delany_and_her_circle. 4. See Alain Kerhervé, Mary Delany: Une Épistolière Anglaise du XVIIIe Siècle, for a detailed account of the Delany letters’ textual history and current locations (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004). 5. Augusta Waddington Hall, Lady Llanover, introduction to The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, 1:6. 6. OED Online, s.v. “autobiography, n.,” http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/13379?redirectedFrom=autob iography, accessed 1 September 2011. 7. Delany also recognized the potential for public interest in a private correspondence and the nuances of presenting such a correspondence to an audience. In 1730 she wrote to her sister Ann Granville (later Dewes) that she was happy to know that Ann had an edition of de Sevigné’s letters, but “I am afraid they will lose a great deal of their spirit by being translated. You will find they never were intended to be published, by the little odd circumstances often mentioned; but they are so tender that they delight me, and in the French have a great deal of wit.” 7 February 1730, 1:236. 8. Janice Farrar Thaddeus, “Mary Delany, Model to the Age,” in History, Gender, and Eighteenth-Century Literature, ed. Beth Fowkes Tobin (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994), 124. 9. Llanover, introduction to The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, 1:viii. [ 179 ]

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10. Llanover, note to Mary Pendarves to Ann Granville, 25 December 1729, 1:232. 11. Delany to the Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:30. 12. Delany to Ann Granville, 25 December 1729, 1:233. 13. Delany to the Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:241. Baltimore married Mary Janssen shortly after Delany rejected him; see Delany, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, 1:243–50. 14. Llanover, introduction to The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, 1:234, 243. 15. Delany to the Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:130–33. 16. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 85. See chapter 1. 17. The Duchess’s father was Lord Lansdown’s political ally Robert Harley, second Earl of Oxford. 18. Delany’s sympathetic reactions to Clarissa similarly argue for the continued currency of the companionate marriage debate into the latter half of the century. Reading the novel in 1750, she calls herself “greatly affected” by it and asserts that “To call Clarissa fool, argues a weak judgment in the criticizer” (2:561, 603). 19. R. Brimley Johnson, introduction to Mrs. Delany at Court and among the Wits, Being the Record of a Great Lady of Genius in the Art of Living (London: Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd., 1925), xi. 20. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:7. 21. Johnson, Mrs. Delany, 3. Delany continued throughout her life to pursue court positions for herself and for family members. She was never successful on her own account, but remained closely connected to the royal family and the nobility until her death. See Clarissa Campbell Orr, “Mrs. Delany and the Court,” in Mrs. Delany and her Circle (London: Yale University Press, 2009), 43. 22. George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, The Lady’s New-Year’s Gift, or, Advice to a Daughter (London, 1688), 25. 23. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:20. 24. Johnson, Mrs. Delany, 19. 25. Johnson, Mrs. Delany, 125. 26. Delany to Miss Sparrow, 13 November 1774, 5:57. 27. Locke characterizes adult children’s duty to their parents as “love and gratitude,” not obedience, but emphasizes that it persists throughout the parents’ lives. See chapter 3. 28. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:23. 29. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:24. 30. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:26. 31. Richard Allestree, The Ladies’ Calling (Oxford, 1673), 2:58. 32. Allestree, The Ladies’ Calling, 1:39. 33. Richardson’s Letters Written to and for Particular Friends offers a precedent source for this scenario in which a father insists that his daughter accept a proposal from an older man and assumes that she must be “prepossess’d” if she refuses. Samuel Richardson, Letters Written to and for Particular Friends on the Most Important Occasions, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Samuel Richardson I: Early Works (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 427. 34. Johnson, Mrs. Delany, 11. 35. Halifax, The Lady’s New-Year’s Gift, 61. See chapter 5. [ 180 ]

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36. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:27. 37. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:24. 38. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:29. 39. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:28. 40. Note to Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:25. 41. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:29. 42. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:29. 43. Allestree explains that “the Apostle commands subjection and fidelity, even to Heathen Husbands” and encourages women to accept with equanimity and patience their husbands’ adultery, drunkenness, and jealousy (The Ladies’ Calling, 2:41). 44. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:31. 45. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:29. 46. In this respect, Delany anticipates Eliza Haywood, who would argue in The Husband that a husband’s “honour and reputation are entirely in the keeping of his wife.” The Husband, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 3:170. See chapter 6. 47. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:55. 48. Thaddeus, “Mary Delany,” 122–23. 49. Thaddeus, “Mary Delany,” 118. 50. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:28. 51. Johnson, Mrs. Delany, 27. Thaddeus specifies that throughout Delany’s life, “a few hundreds a year seems to have been her usual condition, but she did not live beyond her means” (“Mary Delany,” 131). 52. Note to Lord Lansdown to Mary Delany, 19 January 1725, 1:116. 53. “This was mentioned by Mrs. Delany to the editor’s mother,” Lady Llanover explains (Note to Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:107). 54. Johnson, introduction to Mrs. Delany, xxxiv. 55. Note to Lord Lansdown to Mary Delany, 5 April 1725, 1:115. Lansdown tellingly uses the word “reparation” to characterize what he expects his niece to receive from Pendarves in exchange “for all the friends you have left” (Lansdown to Mary Delany, 1 May 1718, 1:41). 56. See chapter 5. 57. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:112. Delany suggests that Monck must have appeared “insignificant” to Lady Stanley as well. 58. Delany to Ann Granville, 11 November 1727, 1:145. 59. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 5 December 1728, 1:182–83. 60. Ingrid Tague, “Love, Honor, and Obedience: Fashionable Women and the Discourse of Marriage in the Early Eighteenth Century,” The Journal of British Studies 40, no. 1 (January 2001): 76. 61. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 19 January 1728, 1:155. 62. Delany to Mary Dewes, 23 April 1767, 4:105. 63. Delany, like Montagu, was making use of her class’s appreciation for such values. See chapter 2 as well as Vickery’s The Gentleman’s Daughter and Armstrong and Tennenhouse, The Ideology of Conduct. 64. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 12 April 1734, 1:455. 65. Thaddeus, “Mary Delany,” 134. 66. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 26 September 1731, 1:292. [ 181 ]

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67. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 19 March 1728, 1:164–65. 68. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 1 April 1729, 1:204. 69. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 4 January 1733, 1: 391. 70. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 12 April 1734, 1:456. 71. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, May 1736, 1:557. Delany was not alone in her skepticism about remarriage. Samuel Richardson devoted four letters to the subject in Letters Written to and for Particular Friends. “I am always against second marriages,” writes Richardson (471). Whereas Delany emphasizes her prospective powerlessness as a second wife and stepmother, Richardson attacks the possibility that a second wife will show favoritism toward her own children and attempt to enrich herself at the expense of her husband and his family (464–74). 72. “Although she does not address the problem directly in her correspondence, she sometimes betrays a certain envy when she sees her sister surrounded by her children” (Alain Kerhervé, Mary Delany, 438, my translation). 73. Mary Delany to Catherine Collingswood, Lady Throckmorton, 5 December 1740, 2:133. 74. Mary Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 16 February 1734, 1:428. 75. Toby Barnard, “Delany, Patrick (1685/6–1768),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, January 2008, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7443, accessed 30 August 2011. 76. Delany to Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland, 1740, 1:296. 77. Quoted in George Paston [Emily Morse Symonds], Mrs. Delany (London: Grant Richards, 1900), 73. 78. Thaddeus, “Mary Delany,” 116–17. 79. Thaddeus, “Mary Delany,” 117. Ruth Perry points to Delany as evidence that attitudes toward second marriage were more permissive at mid-century than in later decades. Describing Hester Thrale’s remarriage, she suggests that “opposition to the second marriage of a respectable woman had hardly existed when Mrs. Mary Pendarves Delany chose to remarry forty years earlier, but the climate had changed. The libidinous desire of older women was becoming less socially tolerable; it confused property relations, including the property a woman had in herself.” Ruth Perry, Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 253. See afterword. 80. Johnson, Mrs. Delany, 123–24. 81. Patrick Delany to Mary Delany, 23 April 1743, 2:210. Dr. Delany’s proposal closely echoes the philosophy described in his sermon on “Duties of the Married State,” first published in the following year. He argues that “an equality is necessary to the establishment of an intire affection and friendship in life” and that “the idea of an intire and perfect friendship is no-where to be met with but in the married state.” Patrick Delany, Twenty Sermons upon Social Duties and Their Opposite Vices (London, 1750), 32, 35. 82. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 21 February 1744, 2:265. 83. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 21 February 1744, 3:115. 84. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 25 November 1727, 1:148. 85. Johnson, Mrs. Delany, 124. 86. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 4 November 1752, 3:168. 87. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 11 February 1744, 2:263. 88. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 15 December 1759, 3:579. 89. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 2 December 1752, 3:179. [ 182 ]

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90. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 28 July 1750, 2:575. 91. Delany to Mary Dewes, 23 April 1767, 4:104–5. 92. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 31 March 1759, 3:544. 93. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 26 December 1755, 3:394. 94. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 16 March 1751, 3:25. 95. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 14 April 1759, 3:547. See Genesis 2:18. The Oxford English Dictionary gives “equal” and “even with” as well as “fitting, becoming, proper” as definitions for “meet,” with citations dating to the fifteenth century. OED Online, s.v. “meet, adj.,” http://www.oed.com/ view/Entry/115844?rskey=4pJxOG&result=3&isAdvanced=false, accessed August 04, 2011. 96. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 16 November 1751, 3:57. 97. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 17 January 1732, 1:333. 98. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 19 January 1728, 1:155.

Chapter 5. Duty and Sentiment in Sarah Scott’s T h e Te s t o f F i l i a l D u t y 1. Gary Kelly, introduction to A Description of Millenium Hall, by Sarah Scott (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1995), 24. 2. Harriet Guest, Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750–1810 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 44. 3. Gary Kelly, introduction to A Description of Millenium Hall, by Sarah Scott (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1995), 24. 4. Betty Rizzo, introduction to The History of Sir George Ellison, by Sarah Scott (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996), xxx. 5. Betty Rizzo, introduction to The History of Sir George Ellison, xx. 6. Elizabeth Robinson to the Duchess of Portland, 25 January 1740, in The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, ed. Matthew Montagu (1809; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1974), 1:82–83. 7. Bridget Hill, “The Course of the Marriage of Elizabeth Montagu: An Ambitious and Talented Woman without Means,” in Journal of Family History 26:3 (2001), 5. 8. Kelly, introduction to Sarah Scott in Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738– 1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 6:xiii. 9. Rizzo, introduction to The History of Sir George Ellison, xv. Rizzo calls the separation “an extreme and almost a unique response to marital incompatibility, and a response in which she [Scott] must have been fully complicit, even instrumental” (xv). 10. Susan Staves explains the “set of special rules to maximize the probabilities that married women’s separate property would provide secure maintenance for the women and children upon whom it was settled and to minimize the possibilities that women could take property intended for maintenance and use it as capital.” In other words, the system of strict settlements was manipulated so that women were provided for in widowhood but barred from property ownership or from using their pin money toward investments. Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 134–35. 11. Kelly, introduction to A Description of Millenium Hall, 17. 12. Rizzo, introduction to The History of Sir George Ellison, xvi. [ 183 ]

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13. Quoted in Kelly, introduction to Sarah Scott in Bluestocking Feminism, 6:xiv. 14. Rizzo, introduction to The History of Sir George Ellison, xvi. 15. Gary Kelly, “Bluestocking Feminism,” in Women, Writing, and the Public Sphere, 1700–1830, ed. Elizabeth Eger et al (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 173. 16. Harriet Guest, Small Change, 41. 17. Kelly, introduction to The Test of Filial Duty, by Sarah Scott, Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 6:xii. 18. Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 61. 19. While Jeremy Bentham originally described the panopticon as a prison that creates a sense of permanent visibility, Michel Foucault, as is well known, adapted the term to describe a state of mind. 20. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 201. Many critics have applied Foucault’s theory of the panopticon to literature; John Bender develops that application in Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in EighteenthCentury England. Bender argues that the realist novel and the penitentiary developed in parallel, motivated by a common philosophical understanding of the self and of narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 21. Spacks, Imagining a Self, 61. 22. Kelly, introduction to The Test of Filial Duty, 6:xiv. 23. Caroline Gonda, Reading Daughters’ Fictions 1709–1834: Novels and Society from Manley to Edgeworth (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 109. Kelly, introduction to The Test of Filial Duty, 6:xiii. 24. Although critics have shown that Pamela and Clarissa present highly ambiguous pictures of filial duty, Richardson himself insisted on more conservative readings, as his published commentaries on his novels demonstrate. 25. Richard Allestree, The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1658), 291. 26. Richardson claimed that his correspondence with Hester Chapone influenced the Hardwicke Act; see chapter 3. Leah Leneman reviews the state of marriage law in England and Scotland before 1753 and describes the specific case that gave rise to the act in “The Scottish Case That Led to Hardwicke’s Marriage Act,” Law and History Review 17, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 161–69, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/744190. For a broader—and more condemnatory—view of the Hardwicke Act and its consequences, see Eve Tavor Bannet, “The Marriage Act of 1753: ‘A Most Cruel Law for the Fair Sex,’” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30, no. 3 (Spring 1997), 233–54. 27. Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1765), 1:441. 28. Scott, preface, The Test of Filial Duty, Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999) 6:5–6. Further references to The Test of Filial Duty will be given parenthetically in the text. 29. Richard Allestree, The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1658), 288; The Ladies’ Calling (Oxford, 1673), 2:15. 30. Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:442. 31. Mary Astell, Some Reflections on Marriage with Additions. The Fourth Edition (New York: Source Book Press, 1970), 35. 32. Samuel Richardson, Letters Written to and for Particular Friends on the Most Important Occasions, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Samuel Richardson I: Early Works (Cambridge, [ 184 ]

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UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 352. Bannet notes that this conservative approach to courtship is typical of the period’s letter-manuals: in such works, “Courtship is practical, earnest, and absolutely no fun.” Eve Tavor Bannet, Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence, 1688–1820 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 168. 33. Richardson, Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, 354. 34. Samuel Richardson, A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflections, Contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison (1755; reprint, London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998), 92. 35. Eve Tavor Bannet, The Domestic Revolution: Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 93. 36. As we have seen, Montagu’s decision to break those taboos led to a lasting breach with her family. See chapter 2. 37. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 37. 38. Mary Astell writes that “Affliction, the sincerest Friend, the frankest Monitor, the best Instructor, and indeed the only useful School that Women are ever put to, rouses [a woman’s] understanding, opens her Eyes, fixes her Attention, and diffuses such a Light, such a Joy into her Mind, as not only Informs her better, but Entertains her more than ever her Ruel did tho, crouded by the men of Wit.” Despite this enthusiastic paean to the value of suffering, Astell acknowledges that most women cannot be expected to profit from it in this way (Some Reflections on Marriage, 40). 39. Kelly, introduction to The Test of Filial Duty, 6:xii. 40. Osborne remarks to her future husband, “I finde I want Courage to marry where I doe not like,” pointing out that she would always be at a disadvantage in an affectionless marriage. Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 15 or 16 January 1653, in Dorothy Osborne: Letters to Sir William Temple, 1652–54: Observations on Love, Literature, Politics, and Religion, ed. Kenneth Parker (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 63. See chapter 1. 41. See Letter VIII, in which Charlotte asks, “What will you say if I tell you, that I should make a bad return to the tenderness my parents have always shewn me, should I marry a man that would not make me happy? Their sole view is my happiness; and were that not to be the consequence, they would be cruelly disappointed” (34). 42. Clare Brant argues that eighteenth-century didactic writers tended to conceive of women in terms of their roles and with the understanding that they would fulfill multiple roles over a lifetime: “Just as the daughter was to be wife and mother, so the mother was often still daughter and wife. This multiidentity collapsed differences between women, replacing subjectivities with roles.” Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 73. Mrs. Leonard, in fact, runs afoul of her husband when she momentarily allows her subjectivity to surmount her role. 43. Emilia echoes Congreve’s Millamant in The Way of the World (1700), who pithily describes the extent of a woman’s influence during courtship: “One’s cruelty is one’s power, and when one parts with one’s cruelty, one parts with one’s power.” The Way of the World II.i, in British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan, ed. George H. Nettleton, Arthur E. Case, and George Winchester Stone Jr (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 322. Before agreeing to “dwindle into a wife,” Millamant bargains with her suitor Mirabell to be assured of retaining her “dear liberty,” her “faithful solitude,” and her “darling contemplation” after marriage (IV.i, 335). 44. See Letter XX, in which Emilia explains, “It is very true that I do suffer extremely, when I give pain to those who are rendered sensible of it only by their partiality to me; to grieve those who wish to please me, seems an ungrateful and unnatural return; but to sacrifice my happiness would not be the means of confirming theirs” (81). [ 185 ]

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45. Charlotte criticizes Emilia’s sheltered upbringing in Letter XI: “I have often thought (being like most rash people, apt to judge of an action by it’s success) that Mrs. Leonard was judicious in not suffering you to keep company with any girls near your own age (except where relationship, as in my case, rendered it unavoidable, for I am prudence itself, you know) nor to read, that now universal study, novels; but I find the consequence of this caution is, keeping a girl mightily in the dark” (52). 46. Kelly, introduction to The Test of Filial Duty, 6:xii. 47. Shari Benstock, “From Letters to Literature: La Carte Postale in the Epistolary Genre,” Genre 18 (Fall 1985): 260. 48. Benstock, “From Letters to Literature,” 260. 49. Benstock, “From Letters to Literature,” 266. 50. James How, Epistolary Spaces: English Letter Writing from the Foundation of the Post Office to Richardson’s Clarissa (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2003), 5. 51. Habermas describes this paradoxical relation between a private writer and a public reader: “Subjectivity, as the innermost core of the private, was always already oriented to an audience. The opposite of the intimateness whose vehicle was the written word was indiscretion and not publicity as such.” Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 49. Emilia and Charlotte need not fear the indiscretion of their readers; thus, The Test of Filial Duty can promote female subjectivity to a sympathetic audience. 52. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 200. 53. How, Epistolary Spaces, 178. 54. Kelly, introduction to The Test of Filial Duty, 6:xx.

Chapter 6. Eliza Haywood: The Limits of Feminine Agency 1. Kathryn King observes that “critics generally assume that Haywood composed all or most of these materials herself . . . but the question of their authenticity is one that should, in my view, remain open.” Preface to The Female Spectator, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood II (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), 2:viii. 2. Kathleen Lubey, “Eliza Haywood’s Amatory Aesthetic,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39, no. 3 (2006), 310. 3. Lubey, “Eliza Haywood’s Amatory Aesthetic,” 312. 4. Kathryn R. King, “Eliza Haywood, Savage Love, and Biographical Uncertainty,” The Review of English Studies 59, no. 242 (2007), 722. 5. King, “Eliza Haywood,” 722. 6. Christine Blouch, introduction to Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 1:xxv. 7. Quoted in Blouch, introduction to Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I, 1:xxiv. Haywood apparently wrote this letter between 1728 and 1730. 8. Blouch, introduction to Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I, 1:xxxix. Kathryn King points out that “there is no independent corroboration of the existence of these children, never mind their bastardy,” noting that Haywood could have been “fudging the facts” in the letter to her would-be patron (“Eliza Haywood,” 724 n. 6). 9. Blouch, introduction to Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I, 1:lxiii. [ 186 ]

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10. Kathryn R. King, “Eliza Haywood at the Sign of Fame in Covent Garden (1742–1744),” Notes and Queries 57, no. 1 (2010), 85. 11. Spedding quotes eighteenth-century biographer David Erskine Baker’s assertion that Haywood and Hatchett lived together “upon terms of friendship.” A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2004), 15. 12. Alexander Pettit confirms that “Behn and Manley were declining in popularity by 1739, and Haywood’s days as an amatory novelist and scandal chronicler were behind her.” Introduction to The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Samuel Richardson I: Early Works (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), lviii. 13. Quoted in Lubey, “Eliza Haywood’s Amatory Aesthetic,” 309–10. 14. Blouch, introduction to Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I, 1:lxii–lxiv. 15. Juliette Merritt, Beyond Spectacle: Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectators (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 5. 16. The distinction between author and persona is an important one. King reminds readers that “throughout the century, the persona invented for a particular periodical was a crucial element in that periodical’s literary and popular success” and that we should not collapse the distinction between Haywood and the Female Spectator: “That instrumental fiction could get so mixed up with biographical fact is astonishing” (Preface to The Female Spectator, 2:x). 17. Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood II (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), 2:18. 18. Juliette Merritt, “Reforming the Coquet? Eliza Haywood’s Vision of a Female Epistemology,” in Fair Philosopher: Eliza Haywood and The Female Spectator, eds. Donald J. Newman and Lynn Marie Wright (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2006), 179. 19. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:18. 20. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:18–19. 21. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:19. 22. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:19. 23. Betty A. Schellenberg, The Conversational Circle (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 17. 24. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:19. 25. Catherine Ingrassia further explores this phenomenon, suggesting that the Female Spectator and her coterie create a community that encourages reflection and self-awareness in an audience adjusting to a broadening definition of literacy. “Eliza Haywood, Periodicals, and the Function of Orality,” in Fair Philosopher: Eliza Haywood and the Female Spectator, eds. Donald J. Newman and Lynn Marie Wright (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2006), 150–51. 26. Kathryn R. King, introduction to The Female Spectator, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood II (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001), 2:2. Haywood’s works often stake out an intended audience in their titles: in addition to the works examined here, A Present for a Servant-Maid (1743) and Epistles for the Ladies (1749) are obvious examples. But Haywood’s commercial success suggests, if tentatively, an actual reading audience for her works beyond that which she identified on her title pages. 27. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:54–55. 28. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:55. 29. Eve Tavor Bannet, The Domestic Revolution: Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 99.

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30. Ingrid Tague, “Love, Honor, and Obedience: Fashionable Women and the Discourse of Marriage in the Early Eighteenth Century,” The Journal of British Studies 40, no. 1 (January 2001), 80. 31. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:60. 32. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:64. 33. Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy, trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 26. Luhmann treats love as “a symbolic code” rather than as a “feeling”; as such, both its definition and its expression change over time (8–9). 34. John Locke, “The Second Treatise of Civil Government” in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 159. 35. Locke, “The Second Treatise,” 122–23. 36. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Kitchener, ON: Batoche Books, 2001), 558. For Haywood’s treatment of the Lockean concept of consent, see Jonathan Brody Kramnick, “Locke, Haywood, and Consent” in ELH 72, no. 2 (Summer 2005), 453–70. 37. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:234. 38. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:236. 39. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:238. Barbara Benedict identifies a similar episode in Aaron Hill’s The British Apollo (1708–11) in which a lovesick man’s pretensions to reciprocity from his beloved are humorously skewered by the periodical’s author. Benedict notes that “this reply mocks an issue that sentimental periodicals take seriously.” Framing Feeling: Sentiment and Style in English Prose Fiction 1745–1800 (New York: AMS Press, 1994), 22. 40. Tague, “Love, Honor, and Obedience,” 79. 41. Tague, “Love, Honor, and Obedience,” 85. 42. John Essex, The Young Ladies Conduct (London, 1722), 70–71. 43. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:259. 44. King, introduction to The Female Spectator, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood II, 2:10–11. 45. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:237. 46. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:240. 47. Haywood presents an exception to this rule in the exchange between “Theano” and “Elismonda” in Love-Letters on All Occasions, published in 1730. After granting Theano “the last favour,” Elismonda endures some complications and insecurities, but the sequence of letters nevertheless ends with Elismonda and Theano poised to enjoy a happy companionate relationship (in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I, 1:150–73). 48. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:259–60. 49. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:271–72. 50. Alexander Pettit, “Adventures in Pornographic Places: Eliza Haywood’s Tea-Table and the Decentering of Moral Argument,” Papers on Language and Literature 38, no. 3 (Summer 2002), 244–45. 51. Like Scott and Chapone, Haywood alludes to the moral bind in which women find themselves when they must break their duty either to their parents or to their husbands. 52. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:272. 53. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:272–73. 54. Daniel Defoe, Conjugal Lewdness (1727; reprint, Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1967), 27–28. 55. Richard Allestree, The Ladies’ Calling (Oxford, 1673), 2:20. [ 188 ]

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56. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:274. 57. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:274. 58. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:274. 59. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:275. 60. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:275. 61. Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso, “Social Conservatism, Aesthetic Education, and the Essay Genre in Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectator,” in Fair Philosopher: Eliza Haywood and The Female Spectator, eds. Donald J. Newman and Lynn Marie Wright (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2006), 77. 62. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:360. 63. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:379. 64. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:379. 65. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 3:388. 66. Haywood, The Female Spectator, 2:360. 67. In the decade since the last installment of The Female Spectator had been published, Haywood wrote and published nine works, suffered approximately a seven-month illness, and was arrested in connection with her publication of a pro-Stuart pamphlet. See Spedding, A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood. 68. Haywood, The Wife, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 3:57. 69. The Book of Common Prayer (Oxford, 1698), n.p. 70. Ephesians 5:22 (AV) and Colossians 3:18 (AV). 71. Haywood, The Wife, 3:57. 72. 1 Peter 3:1–2 (AV). 73. Haywood, The Wife, 3:57. 74. Haywood, The Wife, 3:59. 75. Haywood, The Wife, 3:60. 76. Haywood’s own involvement in business and finance was, of course, much deeper than that of her putative audience in the case of her relationship with Hatchett. See Spedding, A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood. 77. See, for example, Allestree’s reminder that “the misbehavior of the woman reflects ignominiously on the man” (The Ladies’ Calling, 2:35). 78. Haywood, The Wife, 3:61. 79. See The Wife, 3:43–48. 80. See The Wife, 3:129–32. 81. The Marquis of Halifax, for example, says that “the causes of Separation are now so very course [sic], that few are confident enough to buy their Liberty at the price of having Modesty so exposed . . . the Answer is, in short, That the Institution of Marriage is too sacred to admit of a Liberty of Objection to it.” George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, The Lady’s New-Year’s Gift, or, Advice to a Daughter (London, 1688), 30–31. 82. Haywood, The Wife, 3:135–37. 83. Haywood, The Wife, 3:138. 84. Haywood, The Wife, 3:138. 85. Haywood, The Wife, 3:148. 86. Spedding, A Bibliography, 604. [ 189 ]

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87. Haywood, The Husband, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 3:170. 88. Haywood, The Husband, 3:165. 89. Susan Paterson Glover, Engendering Legitimacy: Law, Property, and Early Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2006), 155. 90. Haywood, The Wife, 3:57. 91. Haywood, The Husband, 3:151–52. 92. However, Spedding notes that while The Wife had “a respectable sale” and was reprinted in London and Dublin within a year of its first appearance, The Husband sold badly, with only a single edition in London and Dublin respectively (A Bibliography, 595, 605). 93. Alexander Pettit, introduction to The Husband, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 3:140. 94. Alexander Pettit, introduction to The Young Lady, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 3:271. 95. Spedding, A Bibliography, 602. 96. Haywood, The Young Lady, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 3:276. 97. See introduction and chapter 3 for additional discussion of the Hardwicke Act. 98. Haywood, The Young Lady, 3:286. 99. Haywood, The Young Lady, 3:286. 100. Haywood, The Young Lady, 3:286. 101. Haywood, The Young Lady, 3:288.

Afterword: From Clarissa Harlowe to Elizabeth Bennet 1. Delany to Ann Granville Dewes, 30 June 1750, in The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, ed. Augusta Waddington Hall, Lady Llanover (London, 1862), 2:561. 2. Terry Eagleton, The Rape of Clarissa (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 16. 3. Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 4, 5. 4. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: W. W. Norton & Company), 3. 5. James L. Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale), 2nd ed (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 45. Margaret Doody, in her introduction, suggests that Clifford “does not sufficiently emphasize the misery in this union” and specifies that Hester Thrale was “appalled by what had happened to her,” not least because she saw herself as a gentlewoman and her husband was irredeemably a tradesman (xxii). 6. Quoted in Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi, 209. 7. Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi, 216. 8. Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi, 223. 9. Michael J. Franklin, “Piozzi , Hester Lynch (1741–1821),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press), accessed 25 September 2011, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22309. [ 190 ]

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10. Doody, introduction to Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale), by James L. Clifford, 2nd ed., xxxv. 11. Quoted in Margaret Anne Doody, Frances Burney: The Life in the Works (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 153. 12. Doody, Frances Burney, 153. 13. Clarissa Campbell Orr has documented Mary Delany’s successive efforts to secure positions at court for herself and, later, for friends and family members. See chapter 4. 14. Quoted in Doody, Frances Burney, 198. 15. Doody, Frances Burney, 200. 16. Quoted in Doody, Frances Burney, 202. 17. Pat Rogers, “Burney, Frances (1752–1840),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press), accessed 25 September 2011, http://www .oxforddnb.com/view/article/603. 18. Harriet Guest, Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750–1810 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 35–36. 19. See Ingrid Tague, “Love, Honor, and Obedience: Fashionable Women and the Discourse of Marriage in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Journal of British Studies 40 (January 2001): 76–106. 20. Sarah Fielding, David Simple (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 26. 21. Sarah Fielding, David Simple, 302. 22. Sarah Fielding, David Simple, 302, 305. 23. Gary Kelly, introduction to A Description of Millenium Hall, by Sarah Scott (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1995), 24. 24. Henry Fielding, Amelia (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Editions, 2010), 57. 25. Linda Bree, introduction to Amelia, by Henry Fielding (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Editions, 2010), 18. 26. Booth is not entirely wrong; Amelia, renowned for her beauty, is admired by Booth’s friends and becomes an object of their advances. 27. Henry Fielding, Amelia, 270. 28. Henry Fielding, Amelia, 271. Amelia later learns that Booth’s suspicions of the Noble Lord are correct. 29. George E. Haggerty, “Fielding’s Novel of Atonement: Confessional Form in Amelia,” in EighteenthCentury Fiction 8, no. 3 (April 1996), 384. 30. Henry Fielding, Amelia, 58. 31. Haggerty, “Fielding’s Novel of Atonement,” 400. 32. Christina Lupton, “Marriage as a Literary Problem in Fielding’s Amelia,” in Henry Fielding in Our Time: Papers Presented at the Tercentenary Conference (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 301. 33. Henry Fielding, Amelia, 58. 34. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Fielding’s second cousin, was not the only reader who believed that Amelia was also a fictionalized version of Fielding’s first marriage, to Charlotte Cradock. See Montagu to Lady Bute, 23 July 1745, The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 3:66. 35. See Tague, “Love, Honor, and Obedience,” 76–106. 36. Haywood, The Husband, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 3:170. [ 191 ]

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37. Mary Delany to Catherine Collingswood, Lady Throckmorton, 5 December 1740, 2:133. 38. Montagu to Lady Bute, 15 April 1755, 3:83. 39. Hester Chapone to Samuel Richardson, 12 October 1750, Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–1785, ed. Gary Kelly (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999), 3:206. 40. Montagu to Wortley, 28 March 1710, 1:24. 41. Delany to Ann Dewes, 25 November 1727, 1:148. 42. Eliza Haywood, The Wife, in Selected Works of Eliza Haywood I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000), 3:57. 43. Chapone to Richardson, 10 November 1750, 211. 44. Montagu to Wortley, c. 26 October 1710, 1:61.

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INDEX

Addison, Joseph, 62 Allestree, Richard, 76, 78, 111, 171n15, 189n77 amatory fiction, 130, 151 Apetrei, Sarah, 172n30 Armstrong, Nancy, 154; and Leonard Tennenhouse, 49, 52 Astell, Mary, 4, 7, 68 Austen, Jane: Emma, 5; Pride and Prejudice, 6, 155, 164n26 Baines, Paul: and Pat Rogers, 165n56 Bannet, Eve Tavor, 4, 8, 134–35; on correspondence, 13, 172n39, 184n26, 184n32; on Hardwicke Act, 5, 116 Battestin, Martin C.: and Ruthe R. Battestin, 171n6 Bender, John, 184n20 Benedict, Barbara, 188n39 Benstock, Shari, 125, 126 Bible, 16, 105, 145 Blackstone, Sir William, 112, 113 Blouch, Christine, 131, 132 Bluestockings, 67, 70, 107, 109, 175n2 The Book of Common Prayer, 15, 16, 145 Brant, Clare, 12–13, 27, 42, 172n20, 174n73, 185n42 Brathwaite, Richard, 26 Bree, Linda, 158 Burney, Frances, 156–58 Chapone, Hester, 12–15, 67–84; arguments for marital choice, 74, 78; as Clarissa figure, 70–71, 73–74; correspondence with Samuel Richardson (Letters on Filial Obedience), 15, 67, 69, 77, 80; definitions of marital roles, 82–83; limits of filial duty, 74–75; A Matrimonial Creed, 15, 69, 80–84; self-fashioning, 77, 81, 83 Cicero: Laelius de Amicitia, 9–10

Clarissa, 8, 15, 126, 153–54, 176n24, 180n18 ; and parental authority, 73; depiction of women’s role, 71; seen as realistic, 70 class, 11, 49; aristocrat, 42; genteel, 2, 163n3, 175n7 companionacy, 3–4 conduct literature, 11, 17, 137, 151, 167n24, 168n40 Congreve, William, 175n99 correspondence, 12–13, 43, 110-11, 125–26; as emotional outlet, 111, 125–26, 166n62; as genre appropriate for women, 12, 19; as public or private, 12–14, 186n51; circulating, 12–13, 15, 68, 71; clandestine, 15, 20, 21, 33, 46; personal, 19; published, 13, 43, 165n56, 179n7; courtship, 117, 121; clandestine, 45, 161; letters, 172n20, 184n32; women’s autonomy in, 6, 8, 25–26, 185n43 Defoe, Daniel, 141 Delany, Mary Granville (Pendarves), 1–2, 12, 14– 16, 85–106; criticism of compulsory marriage, 104–105; criticism of others’ marriages, 15, 98, 103; early life, 90–91; letters to different recipients compared, 89; marriage to Alexander Pendarves, 92, 94–95; marriage to Patrick Delany, 16, 85, 101–103; skepticism about remarriage, 97, 100; relationship to family, 90–92; textual history of autobiography and correspondence, 86–88; widowhood, 96, 99 Donnellan, Anne, 1, 2 Doody, Margaret Anne, 156, 157, 190n5 Dussinger, John, 177n49, 178n65 Eagleton, Terry, 154 epistolary novel, 16 Eaves, T. C. Duncan: and Ben D. Kimpel, 177n49 Essex, John, 137

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I N D E X

The Female Spectator, 17; arguments for marital choice, 136–41; personas in, 132–34; promotion of education for women, 142–43 Fenves, Peter, 169n62 Fielding, Henry: Amelia, 158–60, 191n28, 191n34 Fielding, Sarah, 70; David Simple, 158 filial duty, 8, 31, 68, 72, 93; and arranged marriage, 111, 113–14; as form of emotional control, 113, 118–19, 122–23 finance, 35–36, 39, 51–52 Foucault, Michel, 110, 126, 184n19 friendship: as basis for marriage, 32, 78, 82, 103, 162; as historically defined, 9–10, 32, 165n43 Giffard, Lady Martha (Temple), 21 Glover, Susan Paterson, 147 Gonda, Caroline, 111 Goodman, Dena, 13 Gowing, Laura, 25 Grantham, Caleb, 24, 167n24 Grundy, Isobel, 41, 45, 47, 173n57, 175n103, 175n109 Guest, Harriet, 68, 107, 109, 158 Habakkuk, H. J., 5–6, 35 Habermas, Jürgen, 186n51 Haggerty, George, 159 Halifax, Marquis of (George Savile), 91, 163n9, 189n81 Hall, Augusta Waddington (Lady Llanover), 86–88 Hall, Joseph, 178n65 Halsband, Robert, 52, 59, 60, 174n90 Hardwicke Act, 5, 80, 112, 150, 184n26 Haywood, Eliza, 12, 14, 16–17, 129–51; amatory fiction, 130–31; biography, 130–32, 189n67; didactic writing, 132; marital choice, 135–36; promoting women’s education, 142–43, 149; relationships and marriage, 131; “help meet,” 16, 105, 174n74, 183n95 Hintz, Carrie, 20, 30, 35 Hogarth, William. See Marriage A La Mode How, James, 126 The Husband, 17, 147–49 Ingrassia, Catherine, 187n25 Jacob, Giles, 168n40 Kelly, Gary, 70, 107, 109–111, 119, 126 Kerhervé, Alain, 100, 179n4, 182n72 Keymer, Thomas, 80

King, Kathryn, 130–31, 138, 186n1, 186n8, 187n16 Kramnick, Jonathan Brody, 188n36 Leneman, Leah, 184n26 letters. See correspondence Locke, John, 15, 72, 74–75, 136 love, 21, 24, 46, 136, 160, 188n33; as ensuring obedience, 9; defined, 57–58; developing after marriage, 7, 24; women’s skepticism about, 9, 26–29, 57, 161 Lowenthal, Cynthia, 44, 45, 171n9 Lubey, Kathleen, 130, 132 Luhmann, Niklas, 136, 188n33 Lupton, Christina, 160 marital choice, 2–3, 22, 76, 105, 137; as promoting traditional roles, 82; restrictions on, 7, 163n9 marriage: across class boundaries, 58–59; arranged, 8; as contract, 137, 177n51; as friendship, 158; clandestine, 55, 112–14, 116–17, 150, 161. See also Hardwicke Act compulsory, 16–17, 36, 42, 76; connection to consumerism, 11, 68, 164n19; definitions of, 79, 135, 160–61; egalitarian, 9, 10, 24, 106, 158; mercenary, 8, 44, 98, 141, 169nn96, 99, 102; prudential, 15, 54–55, 104; purpose of, 1–2, 5; second, 156, 182n71, 79; sense of crisis, 4–6, 135, 154, 160; women’s veto power in, 3 Marriage A La Mode, 11 Merritt, Juliette, 132 Miguel-Alfonso, Richardo, 142 Montagu, Edward Wortley, 2, 13, 15; courtship of Lady Mary Pierrepont, 44–45; marriage negotiation with Sir Evelyn Pierrepont, 47, 51 Montagu, Elizabeth, 8, 108 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley (née Pierrepont), 2, 9, 12–13, 15–16, 41–66; and Clotworthy Skeffington, 44, 51, 55; and Francesco Algarotti, 58, 59, 174n76; as a wife, 56–57; correspondence with Edward Wortley Montagu, 45–53; correspondence with her daughter Mary Stuart, Countess of Bute, 65; correspondence with Philippa Mundy, 54–56; criticism of husbands, 63; desire to travel, 49–50; elopement, 44, 52; financial concerns, 51–52; in the Spectator, 62–64; letters, 43; The Nonsense of Common-Sense, 63–65; opinions about marriage, 44, 58–61, 65; self-fashioning, 15, 42; separation from Edward Wortley Montagu, 58 Montaigne, Michel de: On Friendship, 10

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I N D E X

novel, 4, 16, 154–55, 167n18, 184n20 obedience, 30–33, 169n64 ; passive, 48, 172n30 Orr, Clarissa Campbell, 180n21, 191n13 Osborne (later Temple), Dorothy, 6, 12–14, 19–40; conflicting views of love, 21, 26–29; definition of friendship, 32; need to marry, 36; relationship to family, 14, 31, 34–35, 36–38; suitors, 23, 37, 38–39; textual history of correspondence, 20–21 Ottway, Sheila, 27, 167n18, 169n69, 170n79 parents: consent to marriage, 112; relationships with daughters, 118–120, 178n65, 185n41, 185n44; roles of, 118, 120; spouses chosen by, 139–40 Parker, Kenneth, 20, 21–22, 27, 30, 166n4 panopticon, 110, 124, 184nn19–20 passion, 29, 36, 78, 136, 168n40 Pendarves, Alexander, 16; courtship of Mary Granville, 92–94; death, 96–97 periodical, 17, 132; personas in, 132–34, 141, 149, 177n48, 187n16 Perry, Ruth, 3–4, 12, 164n19, 166n12, 168n59, 182n79 Pettit, Alexander, 140, 149, 187n12 Pierrepont, Lady Mary, 2. See also Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Pope, Alexander, 13 Porter, Roy, 170n96 prepossession, 8, 93, 180n33 privacy, 34, 169n72 property, women’s, 2 reason, 106, 174n73 rhetoric, 53–54, 69, 81, 96, 147–49; as form of power, 1, 42 Richardson, Leslie, 68, 177n32, 178n65 Richardson, Samuel, 13–15; correspondence with Hester Mulso, 67, 69, 77, 80; influence on Hardwicke Act, 80; Letters Written To and For Particular Friends, 113, 176n17. See also Clarissa Rizzo, Betty, 108, 109, 183n9 Rogers, Pat, 165n56 Schellenberg, Betty, 133–34 Scheuermann, Mona, 51 Schochet, Gordon, 68 Scott, Sarah, 12, 14, 16, 70, 107–27; biography, 108–109; criticism of filial duty, 110–11;

depiction of panopticon, 110; epistolarity, 110, 111, 125; marital choice, 112; The History of Sir George Ellison, 109; Millenium Hall, 107–109; use of sentimental style, 107, 119, 125–126. See also The Test of Filial Duty self-fashioning, 42 sensibility. See sentiment sentiment, 107, 119, 125, 135–36 settlements, 2, 6, 38, 47, 51, 183n10 Shevelow, Kathryn, 43, 171n12 Spacks, Patricia Meyer, 110–111, 174n76, 176n15; on correspondence, 43, 60; on passion, 27, 90; Spedding, Patrick, 131, 147, 149, 187n11, 189nn67, 76, 190n92 Staves, Susan, 2, 76, 183n10 Steedman, Carolyn, 166n62 Stone, Lawrence, 3, 4, 7, 163n9, 167n20, 169n72 Tadmor, Naomi, 32, 82, 179n89 Tague, Ingrid, 6, 24, 98, 135, 137, 160, 167n22 Taylor, Jeremy, 29–30, 32, 83 Temple, Sir William, 13, 14, 19–40 Thaddeus, Janice Farrar, 87 The Test of Filial Duty, 8, 16, 70, 107–27; as critique of clandestine marriage, 112, 114, 126; as critique of filial duty, 115, 117, 120–22, 124; accepting compulsory marriage, 109, 127; depicting “rational entertainments,” 122–23; promoting emotional freedom for women, 111, 122, 125; promoting marital choice, 116 Thrale, Hester, 156 Trumbach, Randolph, 4, 7–8 Vermillion, Mary, 80 Vickery, Amanda, 3–4, 14, 50, 163n3, 165n46, 175n7 Wall, Cynthia, 173n53 Waters, Kristin, 48 West, Jane, 2 The Wife, 17, 144–47 wives, 57–58, 82–83, 143–46 women: as writers, 12, 43, 131–32, 165n53; education of, 142–43; social roles of, 3–4, 8, 11, 106, 138 “the World,” 11, 50, 79 The Young Lady, 17; commentary on Hardwicke Act, 150–51; persona in, 149 Zuk, Rhoda, 69, 70, 80

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laura E. Thomason is an associate professor of English at Middle Georgia State College in Macon, Georgia.

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