Concepts of femininity

Concepts of Femininity in the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu An Essay by Birgitt Flohr Comments on femininity do not only constitute a significant part of Lady Mary Montagu’s letters but also contribute to her popularity among female scholars.

With her passion for knowledge and her insistence on women’s right to acquire knowledge she appears to be a patron of female scholarship and – because of that – an early heroine of feminism. The female reader feels tempted to revive the plan of the inhabitants of “her” Italian village to “set up . . . [her] Statue in the most conspicuous Place”1 as an acknowledgment of the battle she fought for her biological and spiritual granddaughters and the book in her hand would suit this purpose extremely well. The totality of Lady Mary’s comments on femininity reveals, however, that her voice for the cause of feminism, even for the cause of female scholarship, is ambiguous and that she would refuse to be regarded as a heroic fighter for the rights of the female sex just as much as she refused to be the future saint of her village.

As Felicity A. Nussbaum points out, one reason for this is the fact that Lady Mary, like everybody else, was “bound up in cultural definitions of gender”2 and these definitions contradicted her “subversive thoughts and acts”3 not only from the outside but also inside her own mind. Even more potential for conflict and contradiction is produced by the cultural definitions of gender themselves.

Nussbaum notes that “eighteenth-century women were labeled lustful, vain, and inconstant; yet they were also judged capable of ‘overcoming’ the ‘natural’ tendencies of their sex to display the ‘manly Soul’.”4 The same contradicting images can be found in Lady Mary’s letters.

All in all four concepts of femininity emerge: One of them is the lustful, vain, foolish and malicious woman Nussbaum mentions. Then there is her counterpart, the “angelic woman”, who is virtuous and selfless and therefore lives in order to serve the needs and desires of the persons around her. In contrast to her the learnt woman follows her own passion for knowledge, is interested in public affairs and in an active pursuit of her own life. In addition to this Lady Mary constructs 1

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Selected Letters, ed. Isobel Grundy, (Penguin: London, 1997), p. 356, in the following text this edition will be quoted as L with pagenumbers in parenthesis 2 Felicity A. Nussbaum, ‘Eighteenth-Century Women’s Autobiographical Commonplaces’, in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings edited by Shari Benstock, (Routledge: London, 1988), p. 154 3 Felicity A. Nussbaum, p. 154 4 Felicity A. Nussbaum, p. 154

1

the “benign” sister of the lustful Westeuropean female in the sensual Oriental woman.

I want to start my examination with the “angelic woman” who is an ubiquitous voice in Lady Mary’s comments on feminity and probably the one that is the most stifling for her “subversive thoughts and acts” and most disappointing for the modern female reader.

First of all, it is important to note that Lady Mary’s “angelic woman” is not the “angel in the house”. Cynthia Lowenthal explains, that the aristocratic woman had to display herself in public according to a concept of “virtuous visibility” in order to prove and maintain her own and her family’s class difference.5 The idea that women’s “virtue was defined primarily through their willingness to disappear into . . . domestic invisibility” was a bourgois concept6 and as such not of the same importance to an aristotratic woman like Lady Mary. But although she did not have to disappear into domestic invisibility and was, instead, very much a public figure who, more than once and even when travelling alone, “set out . . . with a strong escorte of Hussars” (L 321) Lady Mary feels obliged to create an air of invisibility around her personal needs and desires. One expression of this intended personal invisibility are her numerous assurances that not her own feelings determine her behaviour but the feelings of other people. Accordingly she writes to her future husband “I should never forgive my selfe if I contributed any way to make you uneasy” and declares “I have no more fear for my selfe . . .

I am in pain for your danger.” (L 70) In fact, her whole life is supposed to be absorbed by the life of another person, namely by the life of her husband. She is therefore sure that “the wisest thing I can do is to do whatever you please.” (L 87) and expresses her conviction that I shall be easy in any place where your Affairs or your Pleasure makes it necessary for me to be, and upon no Occasion will ever shew an Inclination contrary to yours. You need be in no pain about me, farther than consulting your own Mind what will please you best, and you may securely depend on its pleasing me.” (L 110) When she has to choose a house for the family to settle down she complains that “I do not know what to do, because I know not which you will like best.” (L 111) And when Wortley accuses her of giving him adcice with her own interest in mind she “solemnly protest[s]” and assures that “I have sent you my thoughts . . . without any thought of any particular advatange to my selfe”, in fact, “without any consideration but that of your figure and Reputation, which is a thousand times dearer to me than Splendor, Money etc.” (L 124) The same pattern is repeated in Lady Mary’s relationship with Algarotti to whom she writes “I chuse 5

Cynthia Lowenthal, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter, (University of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 1994), p. 116 6 Cynthia Lowenthal, p. 118

2

Venice as that which suited you the most. You know the least of your desires would have led me to decide even on Japan.” (L 262) Later she begs him “Do me the favour of letting me know Your Intentions. I have left Venice and am ready to go where you wish. I await your orders to regulate my life.” (L 272) When accused of selfish behaviour by a female friend she declares “I know that neither my pleasures, my passions, nor my interests, have ever disposed of me.” (L 264) Her reason for staying in Venice instead of meeting this friend is that “it would be disobliging to my friends here to run away . . . though ’tis a real violence to my inclination” (L 265).

Since other letters reveal that Lady Mary stayed in Venice because of her attraction to Algarotti it becomes obvious that the voice of the selfless woman is – at least in this instance – a rhetoric one. This, however, does not mean that she merely played this role without believing in it. It is, on the contrary, quite probable, that she was convinced of the “desinteredness” she so often professed while at the same time creating outlets for her needs and wants. This kind of behaviour is widely recognized as typically female and eighteenth-century men probably took it as a proof of female inconsistancy. The reason for this so called inconsistancy is apparent: To live like an “angelic woman” in constant self-denial is impossible, and unachievable standards that are nonetheless felt to be binding necessarily create strange ways of behaviour and strange rhetorics that come close to hypocrisy. Lady Mary, for example, manages to express her selflessness and her self at the same time when she writes “I do not trouble you with my Headaches and my Spleen” (L 103) or “I say nothing of the uneasyness I am under” (L 181).

The self-denial of the virtuous woman does not only express itself in her determination to live her life according to the wishes of others but also in repeated declarations of the unimportance of her own self. Lady Mary observes this rule when she writes “I say nothing of my selfe, as a subject not worth speaking about. I am in every light so insignificant that I am often tir’d of being” (L 298) And when she does speak about herself she hastens to excuse her behaviour: “I slide, insensibly, into talking of my selfe, th I allwaies resolve against it. I will re¡leiv¿e you from so dull a subject” (L 401). Again, expressions like this can be understood as merely rhetorical, but Lady Mary’s indignation after reading Sir Charles Grandison indicates that she also believes in what she is saying. She complains that she [Harriet] follows the Maxim of Clarissa, of declaring all she thinks to all the people she sees, without reflecting that in this Moral state of Imperfection Fig leaves are as necessary for our Minds as our Bodies, and ’tis as indecent to shew all we think as all we have. (L 422)

Although Lady Mary certainly uses “Fig leaves” for her mind she is, at the same time, very outsspoken about herself, her plans and her thoughts. I want to argue that the obvious contradictions in her behaviour are not due to deliberate 3

hypocrisy and deceit but to a mixture of feminine voices that are part of her cultural environment and part of her concepts of femininity, one of which is the “angelic woman”. Another voice which seems to be the most original and subversive one is that of the assertive woman who is aware of herself and wants to live her life according to her own principles. Like the voice of the selfless woman this one also emerges in the early letters between Lady Mary and Wortley when she speaks again and again of her vision of their future life in Italy. Despite all her declarations that she will be happy whenever and wherever Wortley will be happy she points out that “for our mutual good, ’tis necessary for us to consider the method the most likely to hinder either of us from repenting” (L 73, emphasis mine). “If such a thing [as going to Italy] is possible, this will secure our everlasting Happynesse” she promisses him. She does not forget to remind Wortley that going to Italy was originally his plan and not hers and carefully embeds her own vision of future happiness in assurances that ultimately his will counts when she writes but she also threatens that “I foresee I may break with you on this point” (L 85). With a similar mixture of confidence and meekness Lady Mary advices her husband how to achieve political power by closing her letters with a confirmation that he understands more about these things than she does. However, when nothing seems to come about she writes impatiently “Tis a surprize to me that you cannot make sure of some burrough . . . You should understand these things better than me.” (L 125, emphasis mine) The same mixture of reluctance and assertion, that is the same mixture of the voice of the “angelic woman” who knows her place and the assertive woman who wants to expand her space, can be found in Lady Mary’s letter to Gilbert Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury. The subject of this letter is her complaint that “my Sex is usually forbid studys of this Nature”, i.e. learning Latin. Lady Mary points out that the female sex, instead of being damaged by serious learning, will benefit from it. Although she acknowledges that her sex has “Natural Deffects” she also argues that these “defects” are enlarged by an environment that assumes “Folly . . . so much our proper Sphere, we are sooner pardon’d any excesses of that, than the least pretensions to reading or good Sense.” (L 29) By giving the wrong kind of books – if any – to young girls and women their minds are weakened and effeminated, and by teaching them “to place all our Art in adorning our Outward Forms” (L 30), the folly of the female sex and the impression that they do not possess reason at all is increased beyond any “natural” state. Lady Mary clearly proposes that the foolish woman is at least as much a product of education as she is a product of nature. At the same time she assures the bishop that she only wants to argue for a better education for women and for nothing else: I do not doubt God and Nature has thrown us into an Inferior Rank.

We are the lower part of the Creation; we owe Obedience and Submission to the Superior Sex; and any Woman who suffers her Vanity and folly to deny this, Rebells against the Law of the Creator and the indisputable Order of Nature. (L 30) 4

This “Law of the Creator” does not, however, include a “Carelesse Education” (L 30) and this is what Lady Mary hopes to change, not only in her letter to the bishop of Salisbury but also much later in her letters to her daughter concerning the education of her granddaughter.

In these letters she argues again that knowledge does not damage women but improves them. In Lady Mary’s opinion not knowledge but “Ignorance is as much the Fountain of Vice as Idleness, and indeed generally produces it.” (L 342) She admits that so called “learned Women” in England may seem ridiculous but “those Women are ridiculous, not because they have Learning but because they have it not.” (L 381) They are vain enough to believe that they are authorities in their field of interest because their minds are not trained enough to comprehend that “it is impossible to be far advanced in it without being more humble’d by a conviction of Human ignorance than elated by Learning.” (L 381) Seen in this light, knowledge does not threaten the existence of the “angelic” woman but may even promote it. Lady Mary also notes that the attitude towards the “learned Woman” is not a God given fact but depends on the culture the woman lives in. In Italy, for example, “the character of a learned Woman is far from being ridiculous . . . the greatest Familiys being proud of having produc’d female Writers, and a Milanese Lady being now professor of Mathematics in the University of Bologna.”

(L 392) There is therefore no objective reason why her granddaughter should not be allowed to read and to learn as much as she wishes. In fact, the only objections Lady Mary can discover against it are, literally, manmade. She suspects that men – with no right whatsoever – regard themselves as the priests of knowledge and believe that the “learned Education for Daughters . . . [is] as great a prophanation as the Clergy would do if the Laity should presume to exercise the function of the priesthood.” (L 382) Apart from this “the unjust custom prevails of debarring our Sex from the advantages of Learning” because the Men fancying the improvement of our understanding would only furnish us with more art to deceive them, which is directly contrary to the Truth. Fools are allwaies enterprizing, not seeing the Difficulties of Deceit or the ill Consequences of Detection.” (L 385) Again, knowledge does not make women worse but actually improves their morals.

Another, more amusing, reason that might make it important for men to deny women a proper education is the fact that young women are easier to deceive regarding the poetical abilites of their admirers when they are not able to detect that a poem is stolen from a famous author and not written by the young man himself. Knowledge, therefore, does not only improve women, it also protects them. Even more important than all this: it occupies women in a satisfactory way. Lady Mary argues that the average education of the aristocratic girl intends to prepare her for a life as a “fine Lady” and a “good wife”. Not every girl, however, will have the opportunity to be married to a suitable husband and should also be prepared to be “Happy in a Virgin state.” (L 381) In this “Virgin 5

state” she will spend her life in privacy and retirement (L 343) and will be in need of an interest that keeps her occupied. In Lady Mary’s opinion the ideal employment of a retired woman’s time is learning. It “will not only make her contend but happy” (L 379) and its greatest advantage is that it can never be used up. Instead, learning will “furnish” the retired woman “with materials to pass away chearfully a longer Life than is allotted to mortals.” (L 380) In order to ensure that she can make use of as much material as possible the young girl should “be permitted to learn the [classical] Languages”. (L 379) In fact, as Lady Mary wittily argues, her female position does not speak against but very much for these studies: I have heard it lamented that Boys lose so many years in meer learning of words. This is no Objection to a Girl, whose time is not so precious.

She cannot advance her selfe in any proffession, and has therefore more hours to spare; (L 379) In this line of her argument, learning and knowledge are taken out of the male sphere and turned into a harmless amusement for those who do not have more important things to pursue. The “angelic” woman who happens to find no husband and therefore no other life to support does not have to feel guilty about her little hobby. Learning becomes a virtue rather than a vice since “the use of knowledge in our Sex (beside the amusement of Solitude) is to moderate the passions and learn to be contended with a small expence” (L 380). No one can feel offended by this noble end and everybody can be convinced that Lady Mary does not threaten to invade the public domain of men: “I do not complain of men for having engross’d the Government. In excluding us from all degrees of power, they preserve us from many Fatigues, many Dangers, and perhaps many Crimes.”

She is therefore “very well satisfy’d with the state of Subjection we are plac’d in.” (L 393) She is only interested in Learning because it is in itself “necessary to the Happiness of Women” and others should share this interest because it also necessary to improve their behaviour since “ignorance is the common foundation of their Errors, both in Morals and Conduct.” (L 408) Lady Mary, however, cannot completely believe in this point of view. She knows that knowledge and learning is not really less but rather “preferable to that Fame which Men have engross’d to themselves”. (L 380) And although she cannot bring herself to admit that the “Virgin state”, i.e. the retired state in which the woman can pursue her own interests at least privately, is “happier” she decides that it is “undoubtedly safer than any Marriage.” (L 381) Her reluctance appears to be caused by a fear to offend against the rules of modest female behaviour. One of these rules says that women should arrange their lives according to the interests of others. In her life in Italy, however, Lady Mary “so many years indulged . . . [her] natural inclinations to solitude and reading” (L 491) that she feels obliged to balance the impression of selfishness with assurances that “I have never been so little mistrisse of my own Time and Action as since I have liv’d alone” (L 406).

6

One could even speculate that her obvious attraction to the idea that “Liberty is . . . chimerical, and has no real existence in this Life” (L 406) stems not only from the experience that the female life is organized by others but also from an urge to refuse responsibility for the choices she made in order to escape accusations of selfishness and inappropriate activity. A similar consideration seems to cause her advice that her granddaughter should “conceal whatever Learning she attains, with as much solicitude as she would hide crookedness or lameness.” (L 380) To make it public is immodest and indecent.

Lady Mary herself offends against this rule often enough. Especially in letters to men she likes to show rather than to conceal her knowledge, and this is not her only deviation from the behaviour of the modest woman. Cynthia Lowenthal observes that in her life in Italy she “situates herself in the role of the . . . squire”7 thereby choosing to act out a rather male function. And although her fame among her neighbours, according to her own account, is embedded in the female domain of custards, pies, and butter making (L 341) the management of their introduction and her obvious pride that “all things have hitherto prosper’d under my care” (L 333), in the complete absence of any male who could tell her what to do, indicate that she actually did invade the male sphere and enjoyed it. A similar expansion of her behaviour into the sphere of male patterns can be observed in Lady Mary’s relationship with Algarotti. Her travel across Europe in order to be close to him has a male quality and she herself hints at this fact when she writes to Algarotti “I depart tomorrow with the resolution of a man” (L 246) Moreover, she not only compares herself with Don Quixotte while calling Algarotti his, that is her, Dulcinea (L 249) but also compares him to the Virgin Mary and sees herself as her, that is his, admirer. (L 227) Later, when she is disappointed of the way Algarotti treats her, she takes up another male persona by claiming that her dissection of his soul is comparable to Newton’s dissection of light. (L 286) It is important to note that one intention of her use of male characters could be the hope to disappear behind a mask in any instance of unconventional behaviour.

The fig leave, the mask of a domino, the veil of a nun or of an oriental woman are all important symbols of freedom for Lady Mary precisely because they conceal and take the woman out of the public space in the same moment as she enters it. They allow the woman to “walk the streets” (L 256) because they ensure that she never leaves the private sphere. The woman cannot loose her face bcause no face can be seen, or as Lady Mary describes it: “This perpetual masquerade gives them [oriental women] entire liberty of following their inclinations without danger of discovery.”8 The possibility of following ones inclinations without at least a fig leave is almost impossible for her to conceive.

What Lady Mary hopes to be obvious, however, is the fact that she resembles 7

Cynthia Lowenthal, p. 188 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters edited by Malcolm Jack, (Virago: London, 1994), p. 71, in the following text this edition will be quoted as EL with pagenumbers in parenthesis 8

7

– in absolutely no way – the lustful, vain and foolish woman whose image her culture also paints. The safest antidote against this danger is the personification of the “angelic” woman, and this might be one of the reason why this role is so important for Lady Mary. Unlike the “angelic” or the learned and active woman the vain and ridiculous woman is not a voice in her text but a danger against which the other voices are constantly used. I have already observed that Lady Mary acknowledges the folly and the vanity of the female sex even as a “natural defect”. At the same time she takes great pains to distinguish herself from this description by pointing out that she is either more virtuous or less ignorant and therefore more reasonable, and in the ideal case reason supports virtue and vice versa. In her early letters to Wortley Lady Mary assures him that “I have no Notion of spending money so foolishly” (L 39), i.e. so foolishly as the average woman. She also detests town life “from the same reasons most women would be pleas’d with it” (L 43-44) and has “not the usual Pride of . . . [her] Sex.” (L 53) To a female friend Lady Mary writes that “my Freindship is more sincere than the Generality of our Sex” (L 59) and advices her that “contrary to the Generality of my Sex, I am of Opinion that both good and ill Husbands are their Wive’s making, for as Folly is the root of all matrimonial Quarrels, that distemper runs highest on the Woman’s side.” (L 115) Again and again Lady Mary declares that she is “perhaps the only Woman in the world” (L 123) who behaves in a virtuous and reasonable way, thereby testifying to the power of the misogynous image of the vain and foolish woman. Woman are malicious, money wasters and think of almost nothing but sex. To her sister she writes ’Tis a strange thing that Women can’t converse with a Lawyer, a parson, nor a man midwife without putting them all to the same use, as if one could not sign a deed, say one’s prayers, or take physic without doing you know what after it. This Instinct is so odd, I am sometimes apt to think we were made to no other end.” (L 204) and in a letter to her daughter she observes that she was unlike those girls that declare if they had been born of the male kind they should have been great Rakes, which is owning that they have strong Inclinations to wh–ing and drinking, and want only Opportunity and impunity to exert them vigorously. (L 423) Embedded in a cultural environment that creates the contradicting images of the angelic and of the lustful woman Lady Mary seems to be unable to decide whether the average woman is virtuous and her foolish counterpart just “detrimental to our whole sex” (L 240) or whether her whole sex deserves – with a few exceptions – the reputation that “we are unfit to manage either liberty or money.” (L 240) The more surprising are Lady Mary’s impressed and admiring descriptions of the sensual woman of the Orient. In her depiction of the Turkish bath she celebrates 8

not only their beauty but also their erotic appeal, at the same time stressing that “there was not the least wanton smile or immodest Gesture amongst ’em.” (L 148) Even when she talks about the Turkish woman’s habit to meet “gallants” under the disguise of her veil she does not use this information to condemn her immoral behaviour but as a proof that “they have more liberty than we have” (EL 71) And what is even more important: Lady Mary does not disapprove of this liberty. Srinivas Aravamudan suggests that this is the case because Lady Mary perceives Oriental women not as members of her own cultural setting, but as members of an “ambiguous state of nature”, in fact, a “prelapsarian” state.9 Lady Mary’s descriptions contain, indeed, numerous allusions to this state. She writes that the women in the Turkish bath “Walk’d and mov’d with the same majestic Grace which Milton describes of our General Mother” (L 148), notably before the fall. She finds that life in the Orient still resembles the descriptions of Homer (L 152-53) and observes about an Oriental garden that it is “a place where Truth for once furnishes all the Ideas of Pastoral” (L 151). This construction makes it relatively easy for Lady Mary to perceive the sensual Oriental woman without disapproving of her. However, this concept is just as problematic as all the others mentioned since a prelapsarian Eve would have no need for a veil which is, after all, nothing but an extended fig leave. This problem might be one of the reasons why Lady Mary introduces inocculation against smallpox in England but not oriental customs of behaviour. She knows that the prelapsarian Eve cannot really be separated from the sinful woman who has a knowledge of good and evil. Unlike the “angelic” woman, who is supposed to exist beyond the human condition, the prelapsarian Eve exists before it and is always close to bite into the apple.

Whichever way she turns, Lady Mary is surrounded by contradicting concepts of womanhood and it is not surprising but only natural that her own comments on feminity reflect these contradictions. Instead of attempting to level them out it is important to acknowledge them. The fact that a courageous and independent woman like Lady Mary was so much influenced by them does not belittle her achievements but testifies to the power of concepts like the “angelic” woman and the lustful and foolish female. Lady Mary’s not completely satisfactory way out is retirement and privacy. What she loves most is the “public” freedom she enjoys behind a concealing mask. If we still want to set up her statue it would, therefore, do her the most justice to show and conceal her, book in hand, under a veil, however disappointing and unsatisfatory this might be for modern

9

Srivinas Aravamudan, ‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the Hamman: Masquerade, Womanliness, and Levantinization’, EHL, Vol. 62 (1995), 69-104, (p. 86)

9

Bibliography Aravamudan, Srinivas. ‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the Hamman: Masquerade, Womanliness, and Levantinization’, ELH, Vol. 62 (1995) 69-104.

Benstock, Shari (ed.). The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Wemen’s Autobiographical Writings. Routledge: London, 1988.

Lowenthal, Cynthia. Lady Mary Wortly Montagu and the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter. University of Georgia Press: Athens and London, 1994.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Selected Letters, edited by Isobel Grundy. Penguin Books: London, New York, Ringwood, Toronto, Auckland, 1997.

———. The Turkish Embassy Letters, edited by Malcolm Jack. Virago Press: London, 1994.

Sherman, Sandra. ‘Instructing the Empire of Beauty: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Politics of Female Rationality’, South Atlantic Review, Vol. 60 (1995) 1-26.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in EighteenthCentury England. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, and London, 1976.

———. Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1995.

10