The Unsex'd Females
Encyclopedia
The Unsex'd Females, a Poem (1798), by Richard Polwhele
, is a polemical intervention into the public debates over the role of women at the end of the 18th century. The poem is primarily concerned with what Polwhele characterizes as the encroachment of radical French political and philosophical ideas into British society, particularly those associated with the Enlightenment
. These subjects come together, for Polwhele, in the revolutionary figure of Mary Wollstonecraft
.
The poem is of interest to those interested in the history of women, as well as revolutionary politics, for several reasons: it demonstrates the continued viability of the tradition of misogynist literature; it is an example of the British backlash against the ideals of the French Revolution
; it is representative of the strategic conflation of women writers with revolutionary ideals during this period; and it helps illuminate the obstacles faced by women writers at the end of the 18th century.
and Katherine Philips
, more than a century earlier, is instructive here as these two writers were virtually symbolic of the choices available to women writers in the 18th century: Behn's reputation as "shady and amorous" continued well into the 20th century, whereas Philips — known as "The Matchless Orinda" — was considered an exemplar of proper femininity. Polwhele is hardly original is his opposition of "proper" and "improper" women writers and his criticism of Wollstonecraft is focused on her troubled and unconventional life as described in the frank biography by William Godwin
as much as on her writing.
The Unsex'd Female is complicated, however, by the tumultuous political situation at the time of its publication. The American Revolution
had occurred only two decades earlier, the events of the French Revolution
were even more recent, and the Haitian Revolution
, the most successful of the African slave rebellions in the Western Hemisphere, was in process. Ideas about enfranchisement, liberty, and equality were widespread. To Polwhele and others who shared his perspective, these ideas were perceived as attacks on religion, the monarchy, and the government. Women's advocacy of access to education was confused with the most outrageous actions ascribed to the revolutionaries: free love, irreligion, and violent upheaval. Some commenters went so far as to blame the French Revolution on "a notorious dereliction of female principle" and "the dissipated and indelicate behaviour and loose morals" of French women. Many of those who had initially supported the French Revolution turned away from the excesses of the Terror
, and Britain was gripped by a strong backlash against any ideas that seemed in the least revolutionary. Janet Todd writes that "Britain, once priding itself on being the most politically enlightened and liberal state in Europe, came to define itself in increasingly conservative, patriotic, and anti-French terms." "Gallic" and "French" came to mean, in the popular imagination, "revolutionary," so when Polwhele writes of "Gallic freaks" (l. 21) he is not merely describing fashions in clothing. Those Britons who sympathized with the French Revolution were known as "Jacobins
." Those who opposed it were "Anti-Jacobins." The Antijacobin, or Weekly Examiner (1797–1798), the Anti-Jacobin Review
, and the British Critic
(1793–1843), were among the conservative journals that grew up during this highly polarized period. Polwhele, a conservative
member of the Anglican clergy, was himself a contributor to the Anti-Jacobin Review. According to Eleanor Ty, although feminist thought had existed for decades, the women of the 1790s seemed "particularly threatening to the anti-Jacobins
" because of "the outspoken claiming of their 'rights' shortly after and coinciding with the events in France that culminated in the Revolution."
(See also A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.)
' "blistering attack" on the democratisation of culture in his Pursuits of Literature (1798). Mathias deplored "unsex'd female writers [who] now instruct, or confuse, us and themselves, in the labyrinth of politics, or turn us wild with Gallic frenzy."
The Unsex'd Females was originally published anonymously in London in 1798 by Cadell and Davies in a standalone, one volume edition. The American edition of 1800 also included A Sketch of the Private and Public Character of P. Pindar, an attack on the anti-monarchical satiric poet John Wolcott (1738–1819), a pairing publisher William Cobbett
apparently saw as "a marketable combination" for a presumably Tory readership.
The Unsex'd Females was "well known" among the responses to Wollstonecraft and her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
. One reviewer comments this "ingenious poem" with its "playful sallies of sarcastic wit" against "our modern ladies," though others found it "a tedious, lifeless piece of writing." Critical responses largely fell along clear-cut political lines. Mathias, whose Pursuits of Literature had been so inspirational to Polwhele, was himself somewhat tepid in his enthusiasm for the work.
s. There are a quantity of footnotes, to the degree that they outweigh the poem, word for word, by a considerable margin. In these footnotes Polwhele elaborates on various points which might get lost in verse and underscores the primacy of his polemical purpose. In structure the poem is straightforward: Polwhele compares two groups of writers, the "unsex'd females" of the title — "unsex'd" meaning un-feminine or un-womanly — and a second group of exemplary women writers. He also makes some more general points about feminine decorum in the earlier part of the poem.
The poem betrays a particular animus for Mary Wollstonecraft
and, by extension, others Polwhele considered to be of her radical, pro-French camp: writers Anna Laetitia Barbauld
, Mary Robinson
, Charlotte Turner Smith
, Helen Maria Williams
, Ann Yearsley
, Mary Hays
and Ann Jebb
, and artists Angelica Kauffmann
and Emma Crewe
. Strangely, perhaps, only Hays, Jebb and Smith shared political sympathies with Wollstonecraft, and Smith, by 1798, had turned her back on her previous ideas. The others, though, in different ways, all fell afoul of restrictive ideas of female (and class) decorum. Yearsley, for example, a labouring-class poet who had a dispute with her patron, Hannah More
, is accused of longing "to rustle, like her sex, in silk" (l.102). According to one editor, "one can only conclude that Polwhele attacks these women not for what they are, but for what they are not: they are unsexed, unfeminine, either because they are immodest, or unsentimental, or insubordinate. Women must do more than simply avoid setting a bad example: they must provide a positive model of chaste, sentimental, subordinate femininity." Of this transgressive group, Polwhele invites the reader:
His remarks on Wollstonecraft, "whom no decorum checks" (l.63), stray from the literary and political into the personal; he invokes her complicated personal history and, of her death in childbirth, comments in a note: "I cannot but think, that the Hand of Providence is visible, in her life, her death… As she was given up to her 'heart's lusts,' and let 'to follow her own imaginations, that the fallacy of her doctrines and the effects of an irreligious conduct, might be manifested to the world; and as she died a death that strongly marked the distinction of the sexes, by pointing out the destiny of women, and the diseases to which they are liable" (29–30).
After a catalogue of the various evils of the age, the poem ends on a positive note when it turns to a group of writers, many of them Bluestockings, who reverse the dangerous literary, philosophical and political trends outlined in the earlier sections. The approved writers, in contrast to the "witlings" (l.9) previously described, are lauded for their facility in combining morality and feminine decorum with literary publication, and comprise a number of Polwhele's acquaintance: Elizabeth Montagu
is praised for her ability to "refine a letter'd age" (l.188) and Elizabeth Carter
for hers to "with a milder air, diffuse / The moral precepts of the Grecian Muse" (ll.189–90). Frances Burney is praised for her ability to "mix with sparkling humour chaste / Delicious feelings and the purest taste" (ll.195–96). "And listening girls perceive a charm unknown / In grave advice, as utter'd by [Hester] CHAPONE
" (ll.191–192). Anna Seward
, Hester Thrale Piozzi
, Ann Radcliffe
, artist Diana Beauclerk, and, most centrally, Hannah More
, who is set up as a sort of "anti-Wollstonecraft," complete the list of proper women writers:
In The Unsex'd Females, Polwhele initially seems to divide women writers according to their sexual reputations, but a closer examination reveals that he positions them largely symbolically. Why, for example, would Emma Crewe
be in Wollstonecraft's group while Diana Beauclerk is in More's, particularly as the two knew each other and worked together? Beauclerk, in fact, had her own scandalous history: divorced by her husband for adultery, revealed to have had a child by her lover while still married, she was hardly a "proper lady." She was, however, a well-connected, well-established member of the aristocracy who painted charming, decorative pieces. Hannah More herself, while hardly a revolutionary, held a number of ideas uncannily similar to those of Wollstonecraft, ideas about the importance of female education, for example. Polwhele's polemical structure is not concerned with these nuances, however, and he positions these writers strictly according to his overarching scheme.
Polwhele had a variety of targets. In addition to literary and artistic improprieties, he deplored the popular female pastime of amateur botany
. While this may seem a strange preoccupation to a contemporary reader, Polwhele was in fact intervening in an ongoing, and quite heated debate about the propriety of girls and women learning about the reproduction of plants, a debate that arose in part after Erasmus Darwin
published an English translation of the work of Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus
, as well as his own poem, "The Loves of the Plants" (1790):
To Polwhele this is practically pornography and he graphically depicts the repercussions should women and girls be allowed to practise botany:
Perhaps ironically, these lines in particular were singled out by the anti-Jacobin British Critic, apparently unaware of the authorship of the poem, as being in "bad taste."
According to Ann B. Shteir, "Polwhele's objections [to women practicing botany] combine critiques of female scientific practices with critiques of other 'Gallic' and 'revolutionary' practices, such as acknowledging sexuality and teaching children about sex." In a note, Polwhele writes that "Botany has lately become a fashionable amusement with the ladies. But how the study of the sexual system of plants can accord with female modesty, I am not able to comprehend… I have, several times, seen boys and girls botanizing together" (8). His concerns about propriety dovetail neatly with what Robin Jarvis describes as the "intellectual backlash provoked by the French Revolution" whereby "by the mid-1790s scientific opinions were no longer ideologically neutral."
Polwhele is concerned with the moral ramifications of the intellectual activities of girls and women, most centrally writing. He does not, however, restrain his comments to academic pursuits; he inveighs, for example, against French fashions in dress and draws a clear line from French style to French philosophy:
There is a long-standing tradition of satirising the more extreme aspects of fashion, and women's fashion in particular. The less restrictive fashion of this period came in for considerable caricature. Polwhele, with his anti-French, nationalistic tone, contributes to a sub-set of such satires, a sub-set which expresses unease with feminism in terms of the "controversy concerning female fashions."
Richard Polwhele
Richard Polwhele was a Cornish clergyman, poet and topographer.-Biography:Born at Truro, Cornwall, Polwhele met literary luminaries Catharine Macaulay and Hannah More at an early age. He was educated at Truro Grammar School, where he precociously published The Fate of Llewellyn...
, is a polemical intervention into the public debates over the role of women at the end of the 18th century. The poem is primarily concerned with what Polwhele characterizes as the encroachment of radical French political and philosophical ideas into British society, particularly those associated with the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. These subjects come together, for Polwhele, in the revolutionary figure of Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
.
The poem is of interest to those interested in the history of women, as well as revolutionary politics, for several reasons: it demonstrates the continued viability of the tradition of misogynist literature; it is an example of the British backlash against the ideals of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
; it is representative of the strategic conflation of women writers with revolutionary ideals during this period; and it helps illuminate the obstacles faced by women writers at the end of the 18th century.
Historical context
Responding to women authors according to presumptions about their sexuality has a long history; a comparison between the critical reputations of Aphra BehnAphra Behn
Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers. Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature.-Early life:...
and Katherine Philips
Katherine Philips
Katherine Philips was an Anglo-Welsh poet.-Biography:Katherine Philips was the first Englishwoman to enjoy widespread public acclaim as a poet during her lifetime. Born in London, she was daughter of John Fowler, a Presbyterian, and a merchant of Bucklersbury, London. Philips is said to have read...
, more than a century earlier, is instructive here as these two writers were virtually symbolic of the choices available to women writers in the 18th century: Behn's reputation as "shady and amorous" continued well into the 20th century, whereas Philips — known as "The Matchless Orinda" — was considered an exemplar of proper femininity. Polwhele is hardly original is his opposition of "proper" and "improper" women writers and his criticism of Wollstonecraft is focused on her troubled and unconventional life as described in the frank biography by William Godwin
William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...
as much as on her writing.
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
had occurred only two decades earlier, the events of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
were even more recent, and the Haitian Revolution
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
, the most successful of the African slave rebellions in the Western Hemisphere, was in process. Ideas about enfranchisement, liberty, and equality were widespread. To Polwhele and others who shared his perspective, these ideas were perceived as attacks on religion, the monarchy, and the government. Women's advocacy of access to education was confused with the most outrageous actions ascribed to the revolutionaries: free love, irreligion, and violent upheaval. Some commenters went so far as to blame the French Revolution on "a notorious dereliction of female principle" and "the dissipated and indelicate behaviour and loose morals" of French women. Many of those who had initially supported the French Revolution turned away from the excesses of the Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...
, and Britain was gripped by a strong backlash against any ideas that seemed in the least revolutionary. Janet Todd writes that "Britain, once priding itself on being the most politically enlightened and liberal state in Europe, came to define itself in increasingly conservative, patriotic, and anti-French terms." "Gallic" and "French" came to mean, in the popular imagination, "revolutionary," so when Polwhele writes of "Gallic freaks" (l. 21) he is not merely describing fashions in clothing. Those Britons who sympathized with the French Revolution were known as "Jacobins
Jacobin (politics)
A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...
." Those who opposed it were "Anti-Jacobins." The Antijacobin, or Weekly Examiner (1797–1798), the Anti-Jacobin Review
Anti-Jacobin Review
The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, or, Monthly Political and Literary Censor , a conservative British political periodical, was founded by John Gifford [pseud. of John Richards Green] after the demise of William Gifford's The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner...
, and the British Critic
British Critic
The British Critic: A New Review was a quarterly publication, established in 1793 as a conservative and high church review journal riding the tide of British reaction against the French Revolution.-High church review:...
(1793–1843), were among the conservative journals that grew up during this highly polarized period. Polwhele, a conservative
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
member of the Anglican clergy, was himself a contributor to the Anti-Jacobin Review. According to Eleanor Ty, although feminist thought had existed for decades, the women of the 1790s seemed "particularly threatening to the anti-Jacobins
Jacobin (politics)
A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...
" because of "the outspoken claiming of their 'rights' shortly after and coinciding with the events in France that culminated in the Revolution."
(See also A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.)
Publication history and reception
As indicated in the subtitle, "Addressed to the author of the Pursuits of Literature," Polwhele was inspired to write his poem after reading satirist Thomas MathiasThomas James Mathias
Thomas James Mathias, FRS was a British satirist and scholar.Mathias was educated in Kingston upon Thames and Trinity College, Cambridge...
' "blistering attack" on the democratisation of culture in his Pursuits of Literature (1798). Mathias deplored "unsex'd female writers [who] now instruct, or confuse, us and themselves, in the labyrinth of politics, or turn us wild with Gallic frenzy."
The Unsex'd Females was originally published anonymously in London in 1798 by Cadell and Davies in a standalone, one volume edition. The American edition of 1800 also included A Sketch of the Private and Public Character of P. Pindar, an attack on the anti-monarchical satiric poet John Wolcott (1738–1819), a pairing publisher William Cobbett
William Cobbett
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...
apparently saw as "a marketable combination" for a presumably Tory readership.
The Unsex'd Females was "well known" among the responses to Wollstonecraft and her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
. One reviewer comments this "ingenious poem" with its "playful sallies of sarcastic wit" against "our modern ladies," though others found it "a tedious, lifeless piece of writing." Critical responses largely fell along clear-cut political lines. Mathias, whose Pursuits of Literature had been so inspirational to Polwhele, was himself somewhat tepid in his enthusiasm for the work.
Structure and themes
The poem itself consists of 206 lines of heroic coupletHeroic couplet
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines. The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in...
s. There are a quantity of footnotes, to the degree that they outweigh the poem, word for word, by a considerable margin. In these footnotes Polwhele elaborates on various points which might get lost in verse and underscores the primacy of his polemical purpose. In structure the poem is straightforward: Polwhele compares two groups of writers, the "unsex'd females" of the title — "unsex'd" meaning un-feminine or un-womanly — and a second group of exemplary women writers. He also makes some more general points about feminine decorum in the earlier part of the poem.
Unsex'd females
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
and, by extension, others Polwhele considered to be of her radical, pro-French camp: writers Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and children's author.A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare...
, Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson (poet)
Mary Robinson was an English poet and novelist. During her lifetime she is known as 'the English Sappho'...
, Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility....
, Helen Maria Williams
Helen Maria Williams
Helen Maria Williams was a British novelist, poet, and translator of French-language works. A religious dissenter, she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution; she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror, but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her...
, Ann Yearsley
Ann Yearsley
Ann Yearsley née Cromartie was an English poet and writer.Born in Bristol to John and Anne Cromartie , Ann married John Yearsley, a yeoman, in 1774. A decade later the family were rescued from destitution by the charity of Hannah More and others. More organized subscriptions for Yearsley to...
, Mary Hays
Mary Hays
Mary Hays was an English novelist and feminist.- Early years :Mary Hays was born in Southwark, London on Oct. 13, 1759. Almost nothing is known of her first 17 years. In 1779 she fell in love with John Eccles who lived on Gainsford Street, where she also lived. Their parents opposed the match but...
and Ann Jebb
Ann Jebb
Ann Jebb , political reformer and radical writer, was born at Ripton-Kings, Huntingdonshire, to Lady Dorothy Sherard and the Revd James Torkington. She grew up in Huntingdonshire and was probably educated at home. She married religious and political reformer John Jebb in 1764 and fully shared his...
, and artists Angelica Kauffmann
Angelica Kauffmann
Maria Anna Angelika/Angelica Katharina Kauffman was a Swiss-Austrian Neoclassical painter. Kauffman is the preferred spelling of her name; it is the form she herself used most in signing her correspondence, documents and paintings.- Early years :She was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland,...
and Emma Crewe
Emma Crewe
Emma Crewe was a "gifted amateur artist" who, along with Diana Beauclerk and Elizabeth Templetown , contributed designs in "Romantic style" to Josiah Wedgewood for reproduction in his studio in Rome...
. Strangely, perhaps, only Hays, Jebb and Smith shared political sympathies with Wollstonecraft, and Smith, by 1798, had turned her back on her previous ideas. The others, though, in different ways, all fell afoul of restrictive ideas of female (and class) decorum. Yearsley, for example, a labouring-class poet who had a dispute with her patron, Hannah More
Hannah More
Hannah More was an English religious writer, and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical...
, is accused of longing "to rustle, like her sex, in silk" (l.102). According to one editor, "one can only conclude that Polwhele attacks these women not for what they are, but for what they are not: they are unsexed, unfeminine, either because they are immodest, or unsentimental, or insubordinate. Women must do more than simply avoid setting a bad example: they must provide a positive model of chaste, sentimental, subordinate femininity." Of this transgressive group, Polwhele invites the reader:
Survey with me, what ne'er our fathers saw,
A female band despising NATURE's law,
As "proud defiance" flashes from their arms,
And vengeance smothers all their softer charms. (ll.11–14)
His remarks on Wollstonecraft, "whom no decorum checks" (l.63), stray from the literary and political into the personal; he invokes her complicated personal history and, of her death in childbirth, comments in a note: "I cannot but think, that the Hand of Providence is visible, in her life, her death… As she was given up to her 'heart's lusts,' and let 'to follow her own imaginations, that the fallacy of her doctrines and the effects of an irreligious conduct, might be manifested to the world; and as she died a death that strongly marked the distinction of the sexes, by pointing out the destiny of women, and the diseases to which they are liable" (29–30).
Proper ladies
Elizabeth Montagu
Elizabeth Montagu was a British social reformer, patron of the arts, salonist, literary critic, and writer who helped organize and lead the bluestocking society...
is praised for her ability to "refine a letter'd age" (l.188) and Elizabeth Carter
Elizabeth Carter
Elizabeth Carter was an English poet, classicist, writer and translator, and a member of the Bluestocking Circle.-Biography:...
for hers to "with a milder air, diffuse / The moral precepts of the Grecian Muse" (ll.189–90). Frances Burney is praised for her ability to "mix with sparkling humour chaste / Delicious feelings and the purest taste" (ll.195–96). "And listening girls perceive a charm unknown / In grave advice, as utter'd by [Hester] CHAPONE
Hester Chapone
Hester Chapone , writer of conduct books for women, was born on 27 October 1727 at Twywell, Northamptonshire,The daughter of Thomas Mulso , a gentleman farmer, and his wife , a daughter of Colonel Thomas, Hester wrote a romance at the age of nine, 'The Loves of Amoret and Melissa', which earned...
" (ll.191–192). Anna Seward
Anna Seward
Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield.-Life:Seward was the elder daughter of Thomas Seward , prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author...
, Hester Thrale Piozzi
Hester Thrale
Hester Lynch Thrale was a British diarist, author, and patron of the arts. Her diaries and correspondence are an important source of information about Samuel Johnson and 18th-century life.-Biography:Thrale was born at Bodvel Hall, Caernarvonshire, Wales...
, Ann Radcliffe
Ann Radcliffe
Anne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...
, artist Diana Beauclerk, and, most centrally, Hannah More
Hannah More
Hannah More was an English religious writer, and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical...
, who is set up as a sort of "anti-Wollstonecraft," complete the list of proper women writers:
… round their MORE the sisters sigh'd!
Soft on each tongue repentant murmurs died;
And sweetly scatter'd (as they glanc'd away)
Their conscious "blushes spoke a brighter day." (ll.203–206)
In The Unsex'd Females, Polwhele initially seems to divide women writers according to their sexual reputations, but a closer examination reveals that he positions them largely symbolically. Why, for example, would Emma Crewe
Emma Crewe
Emma Crewe was a "gifted amateur artist" who, along with Diana Beauclerk and Elizabeth Templetown , contributed designs in "Romantic style" to Josiah Wedgewood for reproduction in his studio in Rome...
be in Wollstonecraft's group while Diana Beauclerk is in More's, particularly as the two knew each other and worked together? Beauclerk, in fact, had her own scandalous history: divorced by her husband for adultery, revealed to have had a child by her lover while still married, she was hardly a "proper lady." She was, however, a well-connected, well-established member of the aristocracy who painted charming, decorative pieces. Hannah More herself, while hardly a revolutionary, held a number of ideas uncannily similar to those of Wollstonecraft, ideas about the importance of female education, for example. Polwhele's polemical structure is not concerned with these nuances, however, and he positions these writers strictly according to his overarching scheme.
Botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
. While this may seem a strange preoccupation to a contemporary reader, Polwhele was in fact intervening in an ongoing, and quite heated debate about the propriety of girls and women learning about the reproduction of plants, a debate that arose in part after Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
published an English translation of the work of Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus
Carolus Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus , also known after his ennoblement as , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology...
, as well as his own poem, "The Loves of the Plants" (1790):
With secret sighs the Virgin Lily droops,
And jealous Cowslips hang their tawny cups.
How the young Rose in beauty's damask pride
Drinks the warm blushes of his bashful bride;
With honey'd lips enamour'd Woodbines meet,
Clasp with fond arms, and mix their kisses sweet. (ll.15–20)
To Polwhele this is practically pornography and he graphically depicts the repercussions should women and girls be allowed to practise botany:
With bliss botanic as their bosoms heave,
Still pluck forbidden fruit, with mother Eve,
For puberty in signing florets pant,
Or point the prostitution of a plant;
Dissect its organ of unhallow'd lust,
And fondly gaze the titillating dust. (ll.29–34)
Perhaps ironically, these lines in particular were singled out by the anti-Jacobin British Critic, apparently unaware of the authorship of the poem, as being in "bad taste."
According to Ann B. Shteir, "Polwhele's objections [to women practicing botany] combine critiques of female scientific practices with critiques of other 'Gallic' and 'revolutionary' practices, such as acknowledging sexuality and teaching children about sex." In a note, Polwhele writes that "Botany has lately become a fashionable amusement with the ladies. But how the study of the sexual system of plants can accord with female modesty, I am not able to comprehend… I have, several times, seen boys and girls botanizing together" (8). His concerns about propriety dovetail neatly with what Robin Jarvis describes as the "intellectual backlash provoked by the French Revolution" whereby "by the mid-1790s scientific opinions were no longer ideologically neutral."
French fashions
With equal ease, in body or in mind,
To Gallic freaks or Gallic faith resign'd,
The crane-like neck, as Fashion bids, lay bare,
Or frizzle, bold in front, their borrow'd hair;
Scarce by a gossamery film carest,
Sport, in full view, the meretricious breast. (ll.20–24)
There is a long-standing tradition of satirising the more extreme aspects of fashion, and women's fashion in particular. The less restrictive fashion of this period came in for considerable caricature. Polwhele, with his anti-French, nationalistic tone, contributes to a sub-set of such satires, a sub-set which expresses unease with feminism in terms of the "controversy concerning female fashions."
Legacy
During his lifetime Polwhele was seen as a minor figure, though prolific, and after his death he was little read. The contemporary reader may find some of Polwhele's preoccupations, particularly botany and fashion, amusing. The Unsex'd Females, however, was a salvo in a propaganda war that the participants took extremely seriously. After the revolution in literary criticism in the 1970s and 1980s when it was successfully argued that works could not solely be judged on their literary merit, poems such as Polwhele's were resurrected. They have subsequently shed considerable light on the cultural moments during which they were written. The Unsex'd Females remains of considerable interest today as a vibrant example of the politically charged culture of the revolutionary period in Britain.External links
- Erasmus Darwin, "The Botanic Garden. Part II. Containing the Loves of the Plants. a Poem. With Philosophical Notes." (Etext, Project Gutenberg)
- Richard Polwhele, The Unsex'd Females: A Poem, Addressed to the Author of the Pursuits of Literature. London: Printed for Cadell and Davies, in the Strand. 1798. (Etext, UofVirginia)
- Preposterous Headdresses and Feathered Ladies: Hair, Wigs, Barbers, and Hairdressers. An Exhibit at the Lewis Walpole Library, May 8-October 29, 2003.
- Anna Seward, "Sonnet to the Rev. Richard Polwhele" (written before 1799; reprinted 1810)