CONSTRUCTING FEMININITY

If male physicians led the reimagining of women's bodies as objects of science in the nineteenth century, other professional men joined in with the reimagining of women's social role and identity.

In the union of the sexes each alike contributes to the common end, but in different ways. From this diversity springs the first difference that may be observed between man and woman in their moral relations. The man should be strong and active; the woman should be weak and passive; the one must have both the power and the will; it is enough that the other should offer little resistance. When this principle is admitted, it follows that woman should be made for man's delight. If man in his turn ought to be pleasing in her eyes, the necessity is less urgent, his virtue is in his strength, he pleases because he is strong.⁴⁶

This observation acutely summed up the widespread belief in the direct connection between sexual difference and social function. It is Rousseau — writer, philosopher, educator and not least eccentric — who, in his two widely read novels, Julie, ou La Nouvelle Helolse (1761) and Emile (1762), is widely credited with popularising the ideologies of domesticity, romantic motherhood and what is now described as separate spheres. But it was not until the early nineteenth century that the elaboration and multiplication of discourses on gender roles and especially womanhood became a sacrosanct element of European culture.

What has become known as the ideology of separate spheres, incorporat­ing the separation of male and female roles, the division between public and private and the formulation of domestic ideology, was almost certainly a creation of the industrialising societies of western Europe and not the creation of one man — Rousseau. Undoubtedly many of the strands which go to make up this set of ideas have a long pedigree. Sexual difference and social role had been conflated at least since the sixteenth century with Luther's pronouncement that Women ought to stay at home; the way they were created indicates this, for they have broad hips and a wide fundament to sit upon, keep house and bear and raise children.'⁴⁷ The ideal housewife of the seventeenth century, ‘of chaste thought, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent, witty, pleasant, constant in friendship... wise in dis­course, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but not bitter or talkative', bears close comparison with the paeans to the idealised wife and mother of two centuries later who exhibited ‘industry, humility, neatness, gentleness, benevolence, and piety'.⁴⁸ Thus, it is widely accepted that dis­courses on femininity have continually been formulated and reformulated, but historians are generally agreed that the early nineteenth century sees the maturation of a set of beliefs on woman's role and a heightening of their importance. A series of enmeshing ideas came together at this time to produce a stereotype of a certain type of woman who was pious and chaste, respectable and reserved, a good wife and mother, a woman whose appropriately feminine qualities were equally important in the home and the ‘public sphere'. A composite image of this women was produced in the Scottish Free Church Magagine in 1844. The ideal woman was:

benevolent from natural sensibility, active from constitutional inclination, amiable from temper... Zeal and activity are, in their own places, excellent and essential qualities; but Christian women require to be very cautious, lest, even in the midst of praiseworthy exertions, they sacrifice those meek and lowly tempers which are so calculated to adorn and promote the cause they love and advocate.

This powerful set of discourses on femininity was all-pervasive, emanating from the clergyman’s sermon, the governess’ lesson, the pages of women’s magazines, even the mouths of working men. Femininity was as much about character and the way a woman presented herself as it was about her actions. Women were exhorted not to display an ‘unhappy disposition’ such as that continually on the countenance of Ann Williams, a fictional character whose story was presented to readers of one British religious journal in 1854, The Day Star, under the title ‘Little Faults’. Ann, although priding herself on being a ‘notable and saving housekeeper’ was ‘pale and thin, her face fur­rowed with deep lines, and her brow as usual gloomy’. Her sullenness was contrasted with the good temper of a visitor whose countenance reflected the ‘genuine warmth of her true and loving heart’. Ann’s little fault was her temper. It was not sufficient to be industrious, neat and respectable; Ann was rebuked for her disposition which ‘destroys the happiness of your family; your husband confesses he has no peace at home; he cannot read or talk in comfort where there is constant scolding and strife; and your little ones have not half the spirit of other children... part of a mother’s duty is to practice forbearance.’⁵⁰ Such injunctions seem bleak for a nineteenth-century woman, providing her with little more than a template for pleasing vacuity and the proper duties of motherhood. But there were others offering women an alternative, more active femininity incorporating the pursuit of education and the life of the mind as well as a woman’s ‘natural’ duties to the home and family.

Amidst the plethora of novels, periodicals and pamphlets produced at the end of the eighteenth century there were many, not infrequently authored by women, that offered a more assertive and individualistic feminine ideal.

What Mary Wollstonecraft wrote was remarkable for 1792. She was offended by Rousseau's novel Emile and in particular the character of Sophie who acts as the foil for his hero. Sophie's role is contingent upon that of her husband; she does not possess an independent spirit or will, her very existence is dependent upon the public man, Emile, and his needs. This kind of femininity — weak to a man's strength, educated to please rather than for self-development or the social good, a femininity which valued beauty over duty — was of no benefit to women or to men or the social good according to Wollstonecraft. At the heart of the Vindication is the woman as autonom­ous and rational being; the woman capable of determining her own future, capable of using reason, and able to control her emotions.

It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses... And made by this amiable weakness entirely dependent, excepting what they gain by illicit sway, on man, not only for protection, but advice, is it surprising that, neglecting the duties that reason alone points out, and shrinking from trials calculated to strengthen their minds, they only exert them­selves to give their defects a graceful covering, which may serve to heighten their charms in the eye of the voluptuary, though it sink them below the scale of moral excellence.⁵¹

The key to transforming women from this infantile and demeaning state into autonomous beings was education, but not the kind of education advocated by Rousseau. Sophie was taught how to please a man, how ‘to win his respect and love, to train him in childhood, to tend him in manhood, to counsel and console, to make his life pleasant and happy'.⁵² Mary Wollstonecraft's vision of an education for girls, in contrast, encom­passed the same elements as boys' education; indeed she believed the sexes should be taught together and that girls should be given the same freedoms as boys. She was ‘fully persuaded that we should hear of none of these infantine airs, if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise, and not con­fined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed, and their powers of digestion are destroyed.'⁵³ This habit of restraint was debilitating for girls' minds and bodies. ‘The pure animal spirits, which make both mind and body shoot out, and unfold the tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour, and vented in vain wishes or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and spoil the temper.'⁵⁴ Wollstonecraft was contemptuous of Rousseau's reasons for rejecting equal education.

Rousseau's vision of womanhood clashed with that of Wollstonecraft. The moral, home-loving and husband-obliging wife of Emile was mocked by Mary. For her woman had a responsibility to raise herself from a supine and ignorant state. This sense of duty extended to carrying out her role as mother and educator. The moral, virtuous woman was she who endeavoured to reach her potential in any sphere she chose, whether it be marriage and motherhood or employment in a trade or in commerce.

For most middle-class women, for this was the group for whom the feminine ideal espoused by both Rousseau and Wollstonecraft was most relevant, these two apparently contradictory messages were in fact com­plementary. By the early decades of the nineteenth century the ignorant, indolent woman at the centre of Wollstonecraft's critique was a rare creature. The headstone of Mrs C.M. Jones in a church in rural England epitomises the ways in which women were able to combine both the virtues of feminin­ity espoused by Rousseau and the more independent and accomplished womanliness favoured by Mary Wollstonecraft. Mrs Jones was the wife of the local minister and master of the town's grammar school. She died in 1775 at the age of just 46, and was ‘blest with a Pious and distinguished Education, the goodness of her Mind and the Accomplishments of Her Understanding were eminently conspicuous. Nothing was more Engaging than Her Manners, Her Heart was the Temple of Patience, all Virtues lie Buried in her Tomb.'⁵⁶ From these few words we can conjure up a picture of Mrs Jones as a virtuous woman who displayed all the appropriate charac­teristics of femininity at this time — she was polite and modest but at the same time she was educated, a woman who certainly never needed to use cunning wiles and false modesty in the company of men. She was also, though, a godly woman and, in the nineteenth century, female piety became the road to virtue.