Felicity A. Nussbaum-The Brink of All We Hate - English Satires On Women, 1660-1750-University Press of Kentucky (1984)
Felicity A. Nussbaum-The Brink of All We Hate - English Satires On Women, 1660-1750-University Press of Kentucky (1984)
Felicity A. Nussbaum-The Brink of All We Hate - English Satires On Women, 1660-1750-University Press of Kentucky (1984)
Felicity A. Nussbaum
Acknowledgments vn
I. Introduction 1
II. Rhyming Women Dead:
Restoration Satires on Women 8
III. The Better Women:
The Amazon Myth and Hudibras 43
IV. "That Lost Thing, Love": Women
and Impotence in Rochester's Poetry 57
V. Rara Avis in Terris:
Translations of Juvenal's Sixth Satire 77
VI. "The Sex's Flight":
Women and Time in Swift's Poetry 94
VII. Enemies and Enviers:
Minor Eighteenth-Century Satires 117
VIII. "The Glory, Jest, and Riddle of the
Town": Women in Pope's Poetry 137
Index 186
Ladies, like variegated Tulips, show;
'Tis to their Changes that their charms they owe;
Their happy Spots the nice admirer take,
Fine by defect, and delicately weak.
'Twas thus Calypso once each heart alarm'd,
Aw'd without Virtue, without Beauty charm'd;
Her Tongue bewitch'd as odly as her Eyes,
Less Wit than Mimic, more a Wit than wise:
Strange graces still, and stranger flights she had,
Was just not ugly, and was just not mad;
Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create,
As when she touch'd the brink of all we hate.
-Pope, "Epistle to a Lady"
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The idea that the male provides movement while the female
provides matter, and that the male and female represent the
active and passive opposing principles is an Aristotelian argu-
ment for female inferiority, a theory derived in part from
Pythagorus. 54 In effect, Fige argues against the Aristotelian
notion that the female state is a natural deformity, and that
women have less soul than men.
Men define women according to their needs, Fige suggests.
Men's wives are chaste, and the husbands are the adulterers.
When their wives then understandably demand a divorce,
how convenient for men to condemn the women and accuse
them of their own faults. In fact, Fige heretically contends,
Rhyming Women Dead 33
many women would prefer to live single rather than live with
an unfaithful husband or to cohabit without marriage vows:
The narrator claims she hates herself and the rest of her sex
as much as she despises men, the object of her attack. It
36 The Brink of All We Hate
hunt. Thus women usurped the authority men once had over
their lives, and the function of the male sex was denigrated to
an annual sexual servicing.
Amazon societies appear prominently in John Fletcher's
The Sea- Voyage (1622), Thomas D'Urfey's A Common-
wealth of Women (1685), William Cartwright's The Lady
Errant (1635-38), the anonymous Female Rebellion (c.
1659), Joseph Weston's The Amazon Queen (1667), and
Edward Howard's The Women's Conquest (1671) and The
Six Days Adventure (1671). 5 These seventeenth-century
plays were not intended to argue for women's right to rule.
In the preface to Six Days Adventure, Edward Howard
writes, "Perhaps it is more the authority of usage and
manners, than the law of nature, which does generally in-
capacitate the Rule of women, there being not seldome to
be found as great abilities in them (allowing for the disad-
vantage they have in not being suitably educated to letters,)
as are to be observed in men of greatest comprehensions
... their characters in this Play being rather made use of to
confirm the judgement and practice of the world in rendring
them more properly the weaker Sex, than to authorize their
government. " 6
The seventeenth-century plays revolving around Amazons
frequently create a myth of the masculine woman succumb-
ing to her romantic and sexual desire; her commitment to a
band of women or to a political philosophy of self-suffi-
ciency is short-lived. The Amazon community dissolves when
love overcomes the women's passion for independence. Their
desire to rule pales when juxtaposed to the desire for mascu-
line admiration. Thomas Heywood in Gunaikeion (1624)
claims that after the lengthy history of the Amazons' vic-
tories, they were finally conquered by Alexander the Great,
who enthralled Thalestris [Minithra] , queen of the Amazons,
and she bore his child. 7
In Thomas D'Urfey's A Commonwealth of Women, the
prologue draws a parallel between women's forgetfulness of
their domestic duties and learning: "For Wit oft draws the
Wife to leave her Spouse, f To take a small refreshing at our
46 The Brink of All We Hate
conclusion expresses the moral for this play, and for most
Restoration plays featuring Amazonian societies: "And
Women hence from us this pattern take, f Love, and obedi-
ence, your best conquests make." Even Amazons have no
weapons against love.
Addison provides a similar resolution of the Amazon myth
in the Spectator No. 434, 18 July 1712. There the annual
communion between the two sexes becomes the happy occa-
sion for a congenial gathering. The government of women
and the neighboring government of men form a mutual
protective league against common enemies. Here is part of
Addison's version of the education of the females in the
Amazon community:
requesting the aid of the male sex restores the more "natu-
ral" situation of the sexes' attempting to please each other
and resolving to live in harmony.
In a still later version, Samuel Johnson as The Idler in No.
87 (December 17 59) contends that Amazonian activities
would prove unappealing to English ladies, but should they
wish to dominate men, their own civil wars would undermine
their authority. And the Idler dryly concludes with the
familiar expectation that women will succumb to love. The
old maids "will not easily combine in any plot; and if they
should ever agree to retire and fortify themselves in castles or
in mountains, the sentinel [the women] will betray the
passes in spite, and the garrison will capitulate upon easy
terms, if the besiegers [the men] have handsome sword-
knots, and are well-supplied with fringe and lace. " 11
Samuel Butler employs the Amazonian myth in his satire
Hudibras (Part I published in 1663, Part II in 1674, and Part
III in 1678) and, in fact, provides a prototype of the Ama-
zonian woman in Trulla, who appears throughout the
eighteenth century in literature and art, including Hogarth's
series of engravings of Hudibras. In a short satire entitled
"Women," Butler unflinchingly assaults women's foibles and
invents a phrase that is constantly repeated in eighteenth-
century satires against the sex-that women, following Aris-
totle's argument, have no souls at all:
The entire Heroical Epistle assaults the sex and asserts mascu-
line supremacy, though Hudibras finally denies, of course,
that his words have specific application to the Widow. The
satire unveils the antifeminist logic of such men as Hudibras,
Ralph, and Sidrophel, and the reader begins to believe that
they deserve to be ruled, fooled, and even tortured by the
tyrannical beings, women. In contrast to the greedy and
beastly male sex, women use the art and wit men lack to gain
power, while men cower in fear. The rule of women, while
not to be desired, seems to be more acceptable than the rule
of a Hudibras, Ralph, or Sidrophel. 20
The generally accepted Puritan view was that women are
not equipped to exercise political authority, but there are
occasional God-ordained exceptions. Though the genuine
views of Calvin and "the Geneva group" were quite complex,
the Anglicans believed that they argued against government
by women without exception, and the Calvinists were often
labeled antifeminists. The antifeminist aspects of Puritans in
popular lore must have led Butler to allow those implications
to be at play in the antifeminist sentiments voiced by Presby-
terian Hudibras and Independent Ralph.
The Widow demonstrates the enormous power of women
in a variety of ways, but female power exists because men fail
to grasp the intricacies of romance conventions. Butler grants
women power, but he mocks the conditions under which that
power is established and perpetuated. The shrew and Trulla
are, after all, whores who understand more about power than
54 The Brink of All We Hate
comic they are, who and what is to blame for the impotency,
and the kind of curse on the offending organ.
The only action in Rochester's "The Imperfect Enjoy-
ment" takes place in lines 1-18. "Both equally inspired with
eager fire," the pair initially share in the foreplay. The
woman actively urges consummation, she charms him, and
the lover seeks to control his sexual response with his
"thoughts":
The separation from the self is very complex, for the request
is for disease or illness to ravage the penis. Love now becomes
the culprit. 16 Love created the erection, caused the pre-
mature ejaculation, and perpetuated the impotence. Once
again Rochester mocks the lost ideal of love. Love creates
rapture; it also creates destructive despair.
Two other recent readings of the poem deserve attention.
Carole Fabricant argues that no clear reason for the lover's
impotence emerges, and thus impotence seems "funda-
mentally inexplicable and uncontrollable, an inevitable fact
of life liable to appear at any moment without warning and
without particular reason. " 17 Her reading of the poem then is
apocalyptic and tragic, a ''vision of impotence and decay."
Yet it seems more likely that the exaggeration of the curse,
while consistent with tradition, adds comic elements to the
lover's self-destruction, though the world of the imperfect
enjoyment is not that uncertain. Rochester cites the touch of
the lady, the lover's rage and shame, and love itself as sources
for sexual failure. Nor can I agree when Reba Wilcoxon says
that the lover "acknowledges an obligation beyond the mere
satisfaction of self and an obligation to the needs and desires
of another. " 18 Certainly the mistress is not cursed or de-
graded with other whorish members of her sex, but the
lover's overwhelming preoccupation is with his own lack of
ability to perform, not with relieving his mistress's frustra-
tion. Remembered only in the final line, "The wronged
Corinna" becomes merely the spoils of battle to be thrown to
"That Lost Tht"ng, Love" 69
My lady, she
Complained our love was coarse, our poetry
Unfit for modest ears, small whores and players
Were of our harebrained youth the only cares,
Who were too wild for any virtuous league,
Too rotten to consummate the intrigue.
Falkland she praised, and Suckling's easy pen,
And seemed to taste their former parts again.
Mine host drinks to the best in Christendom,
And decently my lady quits the room. [ll. 101-10]
Male wits are also chided for their affinity for whores. It is,
however, not a characteristic of their sex that the wits are
thought to be fools.
In addition to being a memento mori of lost ideals, Arte-
misia is very much a woman of this world who exercises the
skill to articulate the failings of "this lewd town. " 21 As the
narrator, Artemisia loosely unifies her letter, a tale within a
tale, with the theme of perceptions misguided and set askew.
Everyone in London shares the state of fools to some extent,
"the perfect joy of being well deceived." Love, once an ideal,
is now distorted in the unnatural worlds of trade, power,
politics, and fashion. Women, fools, and fops deceive others,
but mostly they deceive themselves. There is constant refer-
ence to senses deceived: women are "deaf to nature's rule,
or love's advice,/ Forsake the pleasure to pursue the vice."
Accurate perception, "clear knowledge," comes from rea-
son's "glaring light," and women perversely avoid it at all
costs. The country bumpkin falls in love with Corinna's
appearance, deceptive as it is, only to have her poison him.
The fine lady mistreats her sycophantic husband in a per-
version of conjugal love. Grotesque in her frantic haste, she
74 The Br£nk of All We Hate
amples and chose the satiric form to vent his spleen. Simi-
larly, in a generalization about affected wives, Gifford
parallels Dryden concerning women's control over their
husbands: "Women no mercy to a lover show I Who once
declares his passion; though they glow I With equal fires, no
warm return they deign, I But triumph in his spoils,-but
mock his pain" (II. 317-20).
Gifford worries considerably about those wives who
divorce multiple husbands, however, and concludes that
Juvenal must not be taken literally: "The exclamation of
Juvenal is merely a bitter sarcasm on the wives of his time,
who were so lost to every sense of the ancient honour, as to
be ready to perpetuate their want of chastity on their tomb-
stones!" (p. 189 n.351). If there is any doubt that Gifford
could be implicating Englishwomen, he again clarifies in a
footnote that Roman women, not English, attempted to be
fencers, fighters, and gladiators, and that they are so removed
from early nineteenth-century England as to require histori-
cal verification. Whatever epithets attacking the sex as a
whole Gifford includes, he disavows with clarifying foot-
notes.
Gifford, then, is no less obscene than Dryden or Juvenal,
though he is always quick to differentiate the present from
Juvenal's Roman past. Reviewers took him much to task for
his vulgar and indecent language, as well as the inelegance of
many a poetic line. 14 But the criticism levied against him did
not accuse him of attempting to degrade, or even to refer to,
the contemporary Englishwoman. Gifford apparently suc-
ceeded in conveying the impression that he was translating an
artifact, and his weak Alexandrine angered the critics as
much as his offensive language. The Crz"tical Review wrote,
"Our modest translator veils one indelicate word by this lone,
lame, unauthorized, and filthy Alexandrine"; and in his 1806
translation, Gifford revised the offending lines from "At
break of day I Thou to the levee go'st, and, on the way, I
Wadst through the plashy scene of thy chaste moiety's play"
to "You pass, aroused at dawn, you court to pay, I The
loathsome scene of their licentious play." 15 Thus Gifford's
translation relishes Juvenal's coarse and vulgar wit, and even
Rara Avis in Terrz·s 91
her life is wasted in bed and the other half "will have been
consumed in eating, drinking, dressing, visiting, conversa-
tion, reading, and hearing Plays and Romances, at Opera's,
Assemblies, Balls, and Diversions. " 4 She squanders her days
in useless self-absorbed activity, never accounting for her
time or turning toward others. Miranda, on the other ex-
treme, lives in pious harmony and exquisite symmetry. God
rewards good women with sainthood in eternity if they con-
duct their lives on earth with respect for time. But most
women in Swift's poetry are Flavia-like in allowing them-
selves to be buffeted by time rather than seeking to redeem it.
Antifeminist Thomas Brown similarly pairs the characters
of virtuous women with their less modest counterparts in
A Legacy for the Ladies (1705), and women's misuse of time
is a constant theme. He writes of women who waste their
lives gaming,
the other, and diminishing to the Top, like the Ladies new
Dress for thier [sic] Heads, which was the mode among the
Roman Dames, and is exactly describ'd by ]uvenal in his
6th Satyr." 9 The author of The Art of Knowing Women: or,
the Female Sex Dissected (1730) quotes Dryden's translation
of Juvenal and adds, "Nothing can be more judicious, than
JUVENAL'S Ideas, when he introduces us to a Lady at her
TOILET, attended by her Chamber-Maid, in the greatest
Confusion for want of Time to dress her self. " 10 Similar
passages appear in almost every antifeminist poem and
pamphlet in the last thirty years of the seventeenth century.
Another example, Whipping Tom: or, A Rod for a Proud
Lady, chastises women for tempting men's basest instincts
since "our nice and mincing Dames in England, spend their
whole Lives for the most part in the Study and Care of
decking, painting, and beautifying themselves, with such
gaudy Habits, as if they intended to make the Tempter of
Eve, fall in Love with 'em." 11
The dressing-room scene from Juvenal evokes all that men
found most frightening about the changing Restoration
woman. It unites the three most frequent charges against the
sex-pride, lust, and inconstancy. The dressing-room scenes
warn men to penetrate the disguises of women in order to
protect themselves. Since the boudoir is the site of woman's
preparation for attacking and destroying men, to penetrate
it is to disarm the woman. The dressing room, however, is
also morbidly fascinating, and the boudoir becomes a living
metaphor for a woman's mystery. A woman standing before
her dressing table is engaged in exploring her sexual and
psychic independence as she creates a separate, private, and
self-glorified identity. A man's surreptitious entrance into the
forbidden territory subverts her independence in the name of
destroying vice.
The dressing-room poem culminates in Swift's satiric
poems on women, particularly "A Lady's Dressing Room"
(1730) and "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed"
(1734). Swift is indebted to the unrelenting tone of Juvenal's
Sixth Satire and its seventeenth-century interpretations. Like
J uvenal he proposes to destroy the erotic potential of a
106 The Brink of All We Hate
them. They need not rise above their sex in order to attain
the goals-they need only concentrate their energy and atten-
tion, in spite of undeniable obstacles, on becoming reason-
able creatures.
VII
Enemies and Enviers:
Minor Eighteenth-Century
Satires
The man who lives with a woman never goes through all
his day in cheerfulness. . . . Just when a man most
wishes to enjoy himself at home, through the dispensa-
tion of a god or the kindness of a man, she finds a way
of finding fault with him and lifts her crest for battle.
Yes, where there is a woman, men cannot even give
hearty entertainment to a guest who has come to the
house; and the very woman who seems most respectable
is the one who turns out guilty of the worst atrocity .
. . . Yes, this is the greatest plague Zeus has made, and
he has bound us to them with a fetter that cannot be
broken. Because of this some have gone to Hades
fighting for a woman .... 8
which the world bestows fame. Here too the moral digres-
sions overwhelm the characters. They stress woman's affec-
tation, the relationship between beauty and virtue, the
importance of living in the present, the difficulties of achiev-
ing success in a perverted age, and the perils of gaming.
When the poet lectures on the ways in which money is
insufficient for happiness, he seems to be carried away with
the didacticism, and he calls himself up short to return to
blame:
her to the spirits of her dead sisters and to the spleen which
rules "the Sex to Fifty from Fifteen, I Parents of Vapors and
of Female Wit, I Who give th'Hysterz"c or Poetic Fit" (iv.58-
60). Belinda ignores the perfectly sensible advice of Clarissa
to yield to custom and necessity, and to rise above her sisters
by displaying equanimity and maturity rather than the mere
appearance of "graceful Ease, and Sweetness void of Pride"
she had earlier put on at her dressing table. Apparently Pope
urges us to forgive Clarissa's bringing about the rape so that
she can unfold the moral, to forgive her because she offers
Belinda the opportunity to develop true honor. The only way
Belinda can survive our contempt for her hysteria is through
the grace of the poet, who seems to succeed-by appealing to
her vanity-where Clarissa had failed. The poet, unlike
Clarissa, does not demand that she shift morals, only that she
cease to demand restoration of the lock:
herself, or others, from her birth I Finds all her life one war-
fare upon earth" (11. 117-18). "From loveless youth to
unrespected age" her social relationships are violently self-
centered, and self-love turned inward disproportionately in-
flates self-importance to mock-heroic proportions. The
women trap themselves in solipsism, and their evil envelops
the larger society as each seeks greater power and pleasure.
Even the apparently decent women-Cloe, who "when she
sees her Friend in deep despair, I Observes how much a
Chintz exceeds Mohair" (11. 169-70), or Atossa, "Sick of her-
self thro' very selfishness!" (1. 14o)-are potentially more
destructive to a stable society because they may deceptively
appear to be conciliators.
One measure of the immorality of the fearsome ladies of
the portraits is their commitment to false wit. Arcadia's
countess in her affected seriousness shows extravagant
foolishness. Rufa, reading Locke, is a study in disproportion
which recalls Steele's Spectator (No. 242) in which "Abra-
ham Thrifty," complaining that his learned nieces argue snow
is black and fire is not hot, pleads for regulation of female
literature and definition of "the difference between a Gentle-
man that should make Cheesecakes, and raise Paste, and a
Lady that reads Lock, and understands the Mathematicks." 33
Narcissa, "now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, I
Now drinking citron with his Grace and Chartres" (11. 63-64),
derives in part from Steele's Ladz'es' L£brary (1714), where on
the same shelf we find Mary de la Riviere Manley's scandal-
ous New Atalantz's next to Steele's Chr£stz'an Hero, and La
Ferte's A Dz'scourse or ExpHcatz'ons of the Grounds of
Dancz'ng next to Taylor's The Rule and Exercz'ses of Holy
L£v£ng. 34 Even Narcissa's attempt to pursue religious study is
morally suspect, since she violently alternates between re-
ligion and atheism.
Calypso's dangerous cunning produces uneasiness since her
bewitching tongue proves her "less Wit than Mimic, more a
Wit than wise" (1. 48). Philomede, seated as "Sin in state,"
openly flaunts her wit. Her head, like her womb, issues im-
moral fecundity and moral emptiness, both indicative of her
inability to fulfill woman's role:
"The Glory, Jest, and Riddle" 153
She quickly falls from her pinnacle and punctures her learned
public persona when she "stoops at once, I And makes her
hearty meal upon a Dunce" (11. 85-86). Philomede pontifi-
cates while Flavia rages and whirls into impotence caused by
"A Spark too fickle, or a Spouse too kind" (1. 94). A wit
whose "sense" prevents her praying, Flavia exhibits virtue
which, in its excess, turns to vice:
Because of Atossa and the rest of the foolish sex, Pope asso-
ciates woman's wit with scandal.
Martha Blount's capacity "to raise the Thought" turns wit
to advantage, however, and the poem is Pope's testimony to
her ability to inspire true wit, unlike the rest of her sex.
Martha Blount's lengthy portrait establishes her as an ideal
for her sex, a norm against which we measure the highly
entertaining but woefully deficient women. Her qualities are
those which were praised universally, and it is not surprising
that Swift extolls the same qualities in Stella. As Ronald
Paulson has noted, in the birthday poems Stella, like Martha
Blount, is physically mutable but permanently virtuous. 36 As
the ideal woman venerated in the concluding portrait, Martha
Blount functions in a multiple role within the context of the
poem. After initiating the poem with her comment critical of
the sex, she invites the narrator's extended diatribe. Through-
out the poem she serves as a representative of the female
audience which is to be convinced of the unmitigated im-
morality of the sex, and she is ultimately engaged on the side
of the male speaker. Further, her portrait, "in exception to
all gen'ral rules" (1. 275), turns the negative implications of
recurring themes-especially inconstancy, self-love, and wit-
into a positive and unparalleled model. Martha Blount is not
the middle way but the unusual woman who has rid herself
of the ruling passions, power and pleasure, which plague the
whole sex. Having defied women's natural inconsistencies and
contrarieties, she emerges Semper Eadem. 37
The concluding portrait supports Miss Blount's self-
abnegation, praises her sense and good humor, and offers
enduring fame to her as a reward for virtue. Yet even in
praise there is a kind of tenuousness, a suggestion that only
one thin layer beneath, the ideal woman may resemble the
rest of her sex. The compliment which recalls the frequent
references to the blazing light of the ill-humored women be-
gins with high tribute to Miss Blount:
fear, but not the object of hate. The greater interest in the
social causes for women's supposed inferiority, as demon-
strated, for example, by the translation and reprinting of the
Sophia pamphlets, suggests a greater tendency to believe that
women are capable of reform if they are approached with
reasoned arguments for that reform. Though a woman is still
held accountable for marital infidelity in the mid-eighteenth
century, the reasons for her loose morals or adultery are of
greater interest and concern in evaluating her errors. 6 A
woman understood is less a tyrant or whore or goddess than a
real being, and such beings do not lend themselves as easily to
vitriolic satiric treatment.
It is a delicate matter to create a female character whose
temptations will not inspire others to fall and whose fallen
nature will repel rather than attract followers. When John
Cleland, author of Fanny Hill, read Laetitia Pilkington's
scandalous Memoirs in 1749, he told the publisher that it
possessed "a great deal of nature, which is enough to recom-
mend it; but the one reflexion and a very Just and favourable
one to the sex in general has occurred to me on the perusal,
to wit, that this woman would have, in all probability, made
an irreproachable wife, had she not been married to such a
villain, as her whole history shows her husband to have been:
and indeed to do that sex Justice, most of their errors are
originally owing to our treatment of them: they would be [to
us?] what they ought to be, if we [would be?] to them what
we ought to be."7
The antifeminist satiric impulse is still expressed in the later
eighteenth century in comic stereotypes such as Smollett's
spinster Tabitha Bramble, Sheridan's Lydia Languish and
Mrs. Malaprop, Sterne's "my mother," and Fanny Burney's
Bluestocking, Mrs. Selwyn. But Samuel Johnson, in spite of
his famous saying regarding women, preachers, and dogs,
creates an intelligent woman in Rasselas's sister Nekayah, and
he urges the learned astronomer to "fly to business or to
Pekuah" to seek female counsel in order to conquer the
excesses of the imagination. As the emphasis shifts to the
newer version of the fiction, satiric attacks begin to dissolve
into a chivalrous protection of women from men's violent
Conclusion 163
CHAPTER I
I. "A Satyr on Charles II," in The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of
Rochester, ed. David Vieth (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), p. 70, 11. 14-15.
2. Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, 1712-50, Written by Herself, ed. Iris Barry
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1928), pp. 53, 103. The verbal assault on Pilkington is
said in good humor and introduces a jest which compliments Pilkington to her
husband. Swift, Pilkington notes, "always prefaced a compliment with an
affront,"
3. Katharine M. Rogers, in The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of
Misogyny in Literature (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1966), has traced the
history of misogyny from Eve to the twentieth century. In general I agree with
the conclusion she draws in her chapter on the Restoration and eighteenth
century-that in the period "there is a gradual softening of the prevalent attitude
to women, combined with an increasing tendency toward polite disparagement"
(p. 187).
4. For example, Robert C. Elliott, The Literary Persona (Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1981); Alvin B. Kernan, The Plot of Satire (New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 1965); and Maynard Mack, "The Muse of Satire," Yale Review 41 (1951):
80-92.
5. The question of whether neoclassical antifeminist satires, especially those
of Pope and Swift, are "projections of male anxiety and ambivalence about
sexuality and control" or a literary activity influenced by the linguistic ,and
cultural codes available at a certain historical moment is debated by Susan Gubar
in "The Female Monster in Augustan Satire," Signs 3 (Winter 1977): 380-94, and
in a subsequent exchange with Ellen Pollak, Signs 3 (Spring 1978): 728-33. I
suggest that antifeminist satires can be alternately and simultaneously reflec-
tions of the historical situation and of male projections, though the emphasis in
this book is on the satirist's rhetorical stance and the creation of a fiction of
satire, rather than on the individual neurosis of the satirist.
6. Michael Seidel, The Satiric Inheritance: Rabelais to Sterne (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press, 1979), p. 12.
7. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond
Notes to pages 5-11 169
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1: 68. All subsequent citations are to this
edition.
8. Ballard Ms. 43, f. 17, Bodleian Library, Oxford. On 7 March 1735/36
Elstob apologizes to George Ballard: "Yet I do not think my self proficient
enough in these Arts, to become a teacher of them." I am grateful for permission
to cite this manuscript.
9. John Bennett, Strictures on Female Education Chiefly As It Relates to the
Culture of the Heart (London, 1795;rpt., Manchester: Source Book Press, 1971),
p. 88.
10. George Lillo, The London Merchant, ed. William H. McBurney, Regents
Restoration Drama Series (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 64.
CHAPTER II
1. De Ngalite des deux sexes was republished in 1676, 1679, 1690, and 1691.
For a useful note on Franryois Poulain de Ia Barre (1647-1723), with liberal
dtations from the essays, consult Michael A. Seidel, "Poulain De La Barre's The
Woman As Good As the Man," Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974): 499-
508.
2. Earl Miner, The Restoration Mode from Milton to Dryden (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press, 1974), p. 389. See also Miner's "In Satire's Falling City," in
The Satirist's Art, ed. H. James Jensen and Malvin R. Zirker, Jr. (Bloomington:
Indiana Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 3-27.
3. Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 637-45.
4. Gregory King, Natural and Politicall Observation and Conclusions upon the
State and Condition of England (London, 1696). For general studies, see Roger
Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 31-59; and Barbara Schnorrenberg and Jean E. Hunter,
"The Eighteenth-Century Englishwoman," in The Women of England from
Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present: Interpretive Bibliographical Essays, ed.
Barbara Kanner (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1979).
5. Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at School: A Study of Education
through Twelve Centuries (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1929), p. 235; Myra
Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760 (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1920), pp. 27-45.
6. Ed. Paula L. Barbour, Augustan Reprint Society, no. 202 (Los Angeles:
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1980), pp. 3-4.
7. In "Richard Steele and the Status of Women," Studies in Philology 26
(1929): 326, Rae Blanchard accurately labels Fenelon, along with Richard Brath·
waite, Gervase Markham, Richard Allestree, and Lord Halifax, as conservatives
who believe woman is inferior by nature, custom, and biblical law.
8. An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex in which are inserted the characters
of A Pedant, A Squire, A Beau, A Vertuoso, A Poetaster, A City-critick. &c. In a
Letter to a Lady By a Lady was published in 1696 (2nd ed. 1696; 3rd, 1697; 4th,
1791 ). Though it has generally been attributed to Mary Astell, Myra Reynolds
cites the author as Mrs. Drake, wife of James Drake, while Rae Blanchard notes
170 Notes to pages 11-17
probably on the authority of the DNB, though Love Given O're was written in
1680 and published in 1683. The reason for the pasted-over date is obscure. If a
seventeenth-century book was suppressed by authorities, publishers of subsequent
editions sometimes provided false dating in order to elude authorities seeking
retribution. Thus they claimed to be selling remnants of the first edition, and
simultaneously deluded purchasers into thinking they owned the rare first edition.
See also F oxon, Libertine Literature, p. viii. Perhaps the obscenity combined with
the explicit attacks on London actresses made printers hesitant to accept responsi-
bility for the first edition of the satire. Upham also notes that Love Given O're
has often been erroneously attributed to Tom Brown (British Museum Catalogue).
Since the satire was published with Satire Against Wooing (1703), the title page
bore Gould's name. See Satires on Women, ed. Felicity A. Nussbaum, Augustan
Reprint Society, no. 180 (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial ·Library,
1976).
47. David E. Baker, Isaac Reed, and Stephen Jones, Biographia Dramatica:
Or, A Companion to the Playhouse (1812; rpt. N.Y.: AMS Press, 1966), 1: 293;
2: 325-26; 3: 212. The sole biographical and critical study of Robert Gould re-
mains Eugene H. Sloane's Robert Gould, Seventeenth-Century Satirist (Phila-
delphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1940). See also Howard Weinbrot, "Robert
Gould: Some Borrowings from Dryden," English Language Notes 3 (1965):
36-40.
48. The Play-House, A Satyr is reprinted in Montague Summers, The Restora-
tion Theatre (London: Kegan Paul, Tranch, Trubner, 1934), App. I, pp. 297-321.
49. See Sloane, Robert Gould, pp. 7-47, for more detailed biographical in-
formation.
50. This dedication to The Sketch (1698/99) is cited in Sloane, Robert
Gould, p. 33.
51. All quotations from Love Given O're, The Female Advocate, and The
Folly of Love are from ARS Reprint, no. 180. Other satires cited, including
Sylvia's Revenge, A Scourge for Ill Wives, The Lost Maidenhead, The Restor'd
Maidenhead, A Satyr Against Wooing, Female Fireships, and The Pleasures of
Love are in the collection of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
52. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in The Madwoman in the Attic (New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), p. 27, demonstrate that the fear of "incon-
stancy" in the Victorian period represented man's fear of woman's "stubborn
autonomy and unknowable subjectivity, meaning the ineradicable selfishness that
underlies even her angelic renunciation of self."
53. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 2: 472-73, lists
Sarah Egerton, nee Fige, born c. 1672, as the author of The Female Advocate
and Poems on Several Occasions, together with a pastoral (1703) reissued in 1706.
Jeslyn Medoff's "New Light on Sarah Fyge (Field, Egerton)," Tulsa Studies in
Women's Literature 1 (1982): 155-75, gives full biographical detail.
54. Caroline Whitbeck, "Theories of Sex Difference," in Women and Philoso-
phy, ed. Carol C. Gould and Marz W. Martofsky (New York: Putnam, 1976),
pp. 54-80.
55. In the advertisement to The Poetess, Gould assumes or affects that
Notes to pages 34-50 173
Sylvia's Revenge was written by a woman who is singly guilty of more vices than
the rest of her sex combined.
56. John Dunton, in The Nightwalker, for example, reported that London
whores were as thick as boats on the Thames. See Dudley W.R. Bahlman, The
Moral Revolution of 1688 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, I957).
CHAPTER .III
I. Epicoene, U. See Jean E. Gagen, The New Woman: Her Emergence in
English Drama, 1600-1730 (New York: Twayne, I954), p. 25, for this quotation
and for other examples of Amazonian women in seventeenth-century drama.
2. Poulain de Ia Barre, The Woman As Good As the Man, trans. A.L. (London,
I677), pp. I45, I49-65. Princess Amelia Sophia, George II's daughter, was touted
for her masculine apparel when hunting, and one of Samuel Richardson's Familiar
Letters on the Most Important Occasions in Common Life ( I7 4I ), XC, pp. I24-
26, cautions against the hermaphroditic dress of a riding outfit because "In this
one Instance we do not prefer our own Likeness, and the less you resemble us,
the more you are sure to charm: For a masculine Woman is a Character as little
creditable as becoming."
3. Of Amazons throughout history, Nina Auerbach, in Communities of
Women (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, I978), p. 4, writes, "Not only do they
lack womanly biology; they lack the womanly skills that transform nature into
sustenance."
4. "A Dissertation on the Amazons. From the History of the Amazons,
written in French by the Abbe de Guyon," Gentleman's Magazine II (April
I 74I): 202-08. Apparently only the first paragraph was Johnson's work.
5. Gagen, New Woman, chapter 11.
6. Edward Howard, Six Days Adventure (London, 167I).
7. Thomas Heywood, Gunaikeion: or, Nine Bookes of Various History Con-
cerninge Women (London, 1624), p. 222;reprinted in 1657.
8. Thomas D'Urfey, A Commonwealth of Women (London, I685), Act III.
9. Edward Howard, The Women's Conquest (London, 1671), Act V.
IO. Spectator, IV: 24-26.
11. The Idler and the Adventurer in The Yale Editions of the Works of
Samuel Johnson, ed. WJ. Bate, J.M. Bullitt, and L.F. Powell (New Haven: Yale
Univ. Press, I963), 2: 272.
I2. Samuel Butler, Satires and Miscellaneous Poetry and Prose, ed. Rene
Lamar (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, I928), pp. 220-21.
I3. Samuel Butler, Prose Observations, ed. Hugh De Quehen (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, I979), pp. 44, 74, 82, I65, I7I, I96, 268-70.
14. Ibid., p. 174.
15. See James E. Phillips, Jr., "The Background of Spenser's Attitude toward
Women Rulers," Huntington Library Quarterly 5 (I941): 5·32.
I6. Earl Miner, The Restoration Mode from Milton to Dryden (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press, I974), p. 188. Miner stresses, however, that Butler's
posture is feminist.
174 Notes to pages 50-64
17. Samuel Butler, Hudibras, ed. John Wilders (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
1967), I.ii.367-68, 398.
18. George Wasserman, in "Hudibras and Male Chauvinism," Studies in
English Literature, 1500-1900 16 (1976): 353, confines the importance of female
power in the poem to Parts II and III. It is true that "the satiric strategy of Part I
attacks a rational pride by elevating animals over men" but it also elevates women
over men, as in the case of Trulla. See also Wasserman's Samuel "Hudibras" Butler
(Boston: G.K. Hall, 1976), pp. 54-102.
19. Natalie Zemon Davis, "Women on Top: Symbolic Sexual Inversion and
Political Disorder in Early Modem Europe," in The Reversible World: Symbolic
Inversion in Art and Society, ed. Barbara Babcock (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,
1978), pp. 147-90. Traditionally anthropologists have defined sex reversal as
clarifying and reaffirming sexual hierarchies without changing them, but Davis
(p. 1 70) argues that the Skimmington procession is "an expression of the struggle
over change, that is, over the location of power and property within the family
and without."
20. Davis, "Women on Top," p. 163, appropriately cites the motif of Phyllis
riding Aristotle as the comic prototype of the woman as social critic. Disorderly
women reveal the truth: "This is what happens when women are given the upper
hand; and yet in some sense the men deserve it."
21. Earl Miner has called it the "most sustained argument for feminism to
appear in English poetry to that time." Restoration Mode, p. 190.
22. Prose Observations, p. 4.
CHAPTER IV
1. The Rochester-Savile Letters, 1671-1680, ed. John Harold Wilson (Colum-
bus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1941), Letter III, p. 33.
2. Carole Fabricant, "Rochester's World of Inperfect Enjoyment," journal of
English and Germanic Philology 73 (1974): 348.
3. John E. Sitter, in "Rochester's Reader and the Problem of Satiric
Audience," Papers on Language and Literature 12 (1976): 287, has argued in
another context that Rochester's language "is subversive and aggressive, and that
his poems mount an assault upon the reader and his attitudes toward language."
4. Rochester, Complete Poems, p. 81. (See chapter 1, note 1.) All subsequent
references to Rochester's poems are to this edition.
5. See, for example, Dustin Griffin, Satires Against Man: The Poems of
Rochester (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1973), pp. 124-25.
6. Griffin, in ibid., pp. 25-35, discusses "St. James's Park" in regard to
pastoral and Cavalier models.
7. Miner, Restoration Mode, p. 375.
8. This is probably a commonplace. It also appears in the second Prologue to
Sodom: The Quintessence of Debauchery, uncertainly attributed to Rochester;
introduction by Albert Ellis (North Hollywood, Cal.: Brandon House Books,
1966), p. 56.
9. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, ed. Geoffrey
Notes to pages 64-77 175
Tillotson, Twickenham Edition, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1962),
2: 147, 154.
10. Dr. - - , The Second Volume of Miscellaneous Works (London, 1705).
11. Anne Righter, "John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester," Proceedings of the
British Academy 53 (1967): 52.
12. See especially Richard E. Quaintance, "French Sources of the Restora·
tion 'Imperfect Enjoyment' Poem," Philological Quarterly 42 (1963): 190·99.
13. Ibid., p. 191.
14. Griffin, Satires Against Man, p. 95.
15. Here I disagree with Griffin who argues that the "'eager desires' have been
shown (in 11. 1·18) to be shared by body and mind alike; shame and rage may
prevent the lover's 'recovery' but have nothing to do with the initial problem,
caused as it is by an over-active body." Satires Against Man, p. 97.
16. It is worth noting that Rochester does not emphasize the excess of love in
the way that Aphra Behn had done in "The Disappointment." See Quaintance,
"French Sources," pp. 198-99.
17. Fabricant, "Rochester's World," p. 350.
18. Reba Wilcoxon, "Pornography, Obscenity, and Rochester's 'The Imper·
feet Enjoyment,"' Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 15 (1975): 389.
19. Verse satires with similar themes include Robert Gould's The Poetess
(1688) and its revised version A Satyrical Epistle to the Author of Sylvia's Re-
venge (1691 ), as well as standard memento mori lines, e.g., "The fairest Face
that ever Nature made, I A little Sickness soon will make it fade, I 'Tis nought but
Worms and Dust in Masquerade," a triplet appearing in Captain Alexander Rad-
cliff's A Satyr Against Love, and Women (London, 1682).
20. For the association of the "scribbling itch" with promiscuity, see, for
example, Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760 (New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1920), pp. 372-419.
21. Howard Weinbrot has remarked on the perversion of God's law in the
poem in "The Swelling Volume: The Apocalyptic Satire of Rochester's Letter
from Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country," Studies in the Literary
Imagination 5 (1972): 24. "Spiritual love surrenders to secular love, God's design
to woman's," he writes, and the lady's tale is a "parody of divine purpose."
Nature seems to be of as much concern as the divine to Artemisia or Rochester,
however.
22. John Harold Wilson, The Court Wits of the Restoration: An Introduction
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1948), pp. 131-32.
23. Anne Righter has suggested that Artemisia is a sympathetic character who
in turn evidences understanding of the fine lady's misuse of her intelligence and
Corinna's lack of self-knowledge. "John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,'' pp. 4 7-69.
24. Griffin, Satires Against Man, p. 133.
CHAPTERV
I. For Dryden's translation, see Poems 1693-1696, pp. 145-203, 11. 5-7. (See
chapter 2, note 22, above.) AU subsequent references are to this edition.
176 Notes to pages 78-84
Holyday's version was begun before Stapylton's appeared, though it was not pub-
lished until 1673.
11. Henry Fielding, "Juvenal's Sixth Satire Modernized in Burlesque Verse,"
Miscellanies, The Works of Henry Fielding, ed. Henry Knight Miller (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1972) 1: 84-117; Edward Burnaby Greene, The Satires of
Juvenal paraphrastically imitated and adapted to the Times. With a Preface
(London, 1763); The Adulteress (London, 1773).
12. Edward Owen, The Satires of Juvenal, translated into English verse; with
a Correct Copy of the Original Latin on the opposite Page; cleared of all the most
exceptional Passages, and illustrated with marginal Notes from the Commentators
(London, 1785 ). All subsequent references to "A Looking-Glass for the Ladies"
are to this text.
13. William Gifford, The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into
English Verse (London, 1802), pp. 159-233.
14. Critical Review, no. 36, 2nd ser. (September, October, and November
1802).
15. William Gifford, The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated Into
English Verse, 2nd ed. (London, 1806). R.B. Clark, in William Gifford: Tory
Satirist, Critic, Editor (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1931), gives a general
description of the Gifford translations of Juvenal and Persius, as well as some
critical responses.
16. The Satires of Juvenal translated and illustrated by F. Hodgson (London,
1807).
17. Dresses of that sort, Supple comments, are "Rara avis in Terris, nigroque
simillima Cygno. That is, Madam, as much as to say, A rare Bird upon the Earth,
and very like a black Swan." Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Found-
ling, introduction by Martin C. Battestin, ed. Fredson C. Bowers (Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1975), 1, bk. 4, Ch. 10.
CHAPTER VI
1. All citations of Swift's poems are from The Poems of Jonathan Swift, ed.
Harold Williams, 2nd ed., rev., 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958).
"Strephon and Chloe" appears in 2: 584-93.
2. Denis Donoghue, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 191, 198.
3. William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, Adapted to the
State and Condition of All Orders of Christians (London, 1728), p. 93.
4. Ibid., p. 90.
5. Thomas Brown, A Legacy for the Ladies, or Characters of the Women of
the Age, with a Comical View of London and Westminster: Or, the Merry Quack
(London, 1705 ), p. 59.
6. Irish Tracts, 1720-1723, and Sermons, in Herbert Davis, ed., Prose Works
of Jonathan Swift (Oxford: Blackwell, 1948), 9: 89.
7. Rochester, Complete Poems, p. 47.
178 Notes to pages 104-108
CHAPTER Vll
1. Lord Lyttleton, Advice to a Lady (London, 17 31 ).
2. Female Chastity, Truth and Sanctity: A Satire (London, 1735); Swift's
180 Notes to pages 118-127
Vision: or, the Women's Hue and Cry Against Alexander Pope, for the Loss of
their Characters (Dublin, 1757).
3. Spectator, ll: 320-21.
4. Rae Blanchard, "Richard Steele and the Status of Women," Studies in
Philology 36 (1929): 325-55. It is worth noting with Blanchard that "irrational
and selfish women portrayed by Steele far outnumber those whose conduct
is motivated by reason; the ideal woman-the Lady Sharlots, Eucratias and
Indianas-exemplify the aspect of his 'anti-rationalism' which expressed itself, in
this particular as in others, in a concept of sentimental virtue."
5. Spectator, IV: 18.
6. I have drawn from the attractive edition of the poetic fragment by Hugh
Lloyd-Jones, Females of the Species: Semonides on Women (London: Noyes
Press, 1975).
7. Walsh, Dialogue Concerning Women, p. 20.
8. Females of the Species, p. 54.
9. Other minor satires of limited interest are The Female Rake, Female
Faction (1729), Advice to the Ladies (1730), and Flowers of Parnassus (1735).
10. The Creation of Women: A Poem (Dublin, 1725), p. 14.
11. Thomas Parnell, Hesiod: or, The Rise of Woman, The Works in Verse and
Prose of Dr. Thomas Parnell Late Arch-Deacon of Clogher, enlarged with vari-
ations and poems not before published (Glasgow, 1755), p. 9.
12. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Essays and Poems and "Simplicity, a
Comedy," ed. Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1977), p. 210. All subsequent references to the poem are to this edition, The
poem is puzzling in part because Lady Mary attacks Swift's misogyny in an eight-
page pamphlet, The Dean's Provocation for Writing the Lady's Dressing Room
(1734). For other rejoinders to Swift, see Robert Halsband, '"The Lady's
Dressing Room' Explicated by a Contemporary," in The Augustan Milieu, ed.
H.K. Miller, Eric Rothstein, and G.S. Rousseau (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970),
pp. 225-31.
13. Spence, MS. Eg. 2234, f. 248, cited in Robert Halsband, The Life of
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 85.
14. Essays and Poems, p. 133.
15. Robert Halsband, "'Condemned to Petticoats': Lady Mary Wortley
Montague as Feminist and Writer," in The Dress of Words: Essays on Restoration
and Eighteenth-Century Literature in Honor of Richmond P. Bond, ed. Robert B.
White, Jr. (Manhattan: Univ. of Kansas Press, 1978), pp. 35-52, follows a similar
argument for Lady Mary's feminism, though he does not mention the contra-
dictory evidence of the Boileau translation.
16. Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965-67), 1: 68.
17. Ibid., pp. 90, 91, 99, 101, 143.
18. Ibid., p. 45.
19. To Lady Bute, 6 March 1753, ibid., 3: 27.
20. The text of Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux is in his Oeuvres Completes 28,
Bibliotheque de La Pli!iade (Bruges: Sainte-Catherine, 1966), voL 2.
21. [Autobiographical romance: fragment] in Essays and Poems, p. 79.
Notes to pages 129-141 181
22. Essays and Poems, pp. 230-32. The poem is printed also in Isobel Grundy's
discussion, "Ovid and Eighteenth-Century Divorce: An Unpublished Poem by
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu," Review of English Studies, n.s. 23 (1972): 417-28.
23. The Nonsense of Common-Sense, No. VI (Tuesday, 17 January 1738), in
Essays and Poems, p. 134. The essay was reprinted as "An Apology for the
Ladies," London Magazine, January 1738.
24. Edward Young, Love of Fame, the Universal Passion in Seven Charac-
teristical Satires in Poetical Works of Edward Young (1833;rpt. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1970). All subsequent references to the poem are to this
edition.
25. The fullest discussion of the poem is in Howard Weinbrot's The Formal
Strain: Studies in Augustan Imitation and Satire (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1969), pp. 113-28.
26. Weinbrot comments on the inefficacy of using a dash as a representation
of a general ideal. In either case, as a generalized norm or a particular famous
person, the device thwarts the power of the satire. See Weinbrot, Formal Strain,
pp. 106-07.
27. Weinbrot notes that "Young is incapable of grasping either the presence
of tragedy in his own poem, or the destructive power of the facile portrait of
Caroline's goodness." Formal Strain, p. 125.
28. Marlene Le Gates, "The Cult of Womanhood in Eighteenth-Century
Thought," Eighteenth-Century Studies 10 (1976): 21-39, finds that the emphasis
shifts to an ideal virtuous woman attacked by an aggressive male. Women are still
perceived as inherently dangerous and disorderly, but their taming becomes a
tribute to the power of reason to shape human nature.
29. Montagu, Essays and Poems, p. 131.
CHAPTER VITI
l. See, for example, The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems, ed. Geoffrey
Tillotson, Twickenham Edition, 3rd. ed., vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press,
1962). All subsequent references to The Rape of the Lock are to this edition. See
also Arthur Hoffman, "Spenser and The Rape of the Lock," Philological Quarterly
49 (1970): 530-46;James L. Jackson, "Pope's The Rape of the Lock Considered
as a Five-Act Epic," PMLA 64 (1950): 1283-87; Pat Rogers, "Faery Lore and
The Rape of the Lock," Review of English Studies, n.s. 25 (1974): 25-38; and
Aubrey Williams, "The 'Fall' of China and The Rape of the Lock," Philological
Quarterly 41 (1962): 412-25.
2. The Rape of the Lock, 2: 142.
3. A Satyr Upon Old Maids (London, 1713), p. 12.
4. Walsh, Dialogue Concerning Women, p. 79.
5. Bruys,Art of Knowing Women, pp. ii, iv.
6. Elkin, Augustan Defence of Satire, p. 135 ff., gives numerous examples of
eighteenth-century satirists who claimed to avoid references to specific indi-
viduals.
7. Rape of the Lock, 2: 180, iii.l58.
8. For other references to lapdogs in "The Rape of the Lock," see i.15-16;
182 Notes to pages 141-147
ii.110; iv. 7 5; and iv.120. Ronald Paulson, Popular and Polite Art in the Age of
Hogarth and Fielding (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1979), p.
54, notes the lapdog's appearance as the lover's surrogate in "Titian's Venus of
Urbina in the Uffizi, Watteau's Lady at Her Toilet in the Wallace Collection, and
Fragonard's Le Guinblute showing the dog hoisted in air between the lady's out·
spread legs."
9. Cleanth Brooks, "The Case of Miss Arabella Fermor" in The Well Wrought
Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1947), pp.
95-96.
10. Ralph Cohen, "Transformation in The Rape of the Lock," Eighteenth-
Century Studies 2 (1969): 205-24.
11. Hugo Reichard, "The Love Affair in Pope's Rape of the Lock," PMLA
69 (1954): 888.
12. See Alexander Pope, Minor Poems, ed. Norman Ault, completed by John
Butt (London: Methuen, 1964), 6: 63.
13. Brooks, "Case of Miss Arabella Fermor," p. 87. For an example of a
reading which takes issue with Brooks, see Sheila Delaney, "Sex and Politics in
Pope's Rape of the Lock," English Studies in Canada I (1975): 46-61.
14. The quotation from Jean de La Bruyere is from "Les Caracteres des
Femmes," Les Caracteres de Theophraste traduits du grec avec Les Caracteres ou
les Moeurs de ce siecle (Paris: Garnier, 1962), no. 53, p. 145.
15. Epistles to Several Persons (Moral Essays), ed. F.W. Bateson, Twickenham
Edition (London: Methuen, 1950), III.ii.46-74. All references to "Epistle to a
Lady" are to this edition. Rufa, Sappho, Calypso, Narcissa, the Queen, and as-
sorted couplets derive from earlier compositions. See Epistles to Several Persons,
III.ii.ix-lvii; and Frank Brady, "The History and Structure of Pope's To A Lady,"
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 9 (1969): 439-62, for discussion of
textual problems relating to the poem.
16. See Irvin Ehrenpreis's important essay, "The Cistern and the Fountain:
Art and Reality in Pope and Gray," in Studies in Criticism and Aesthetics, 1660-
1800: Essays in Honor of Samuel Holt Monk, ed. Howard Anderson and JohnS.
Shea (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1967), pp. 156-7 5.
17. Patricia Meyer Spacks, An Argument of Images: The Poetry of Alexander
Pope (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971), p. 158.
18. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Dramatic Works, ed. Cecil Price (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973), I: 338.
19. Woman Not Inferior to Man or A Short and Modest Vindication of the
Natural Right of the Fair Sex to a Perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem
with the Men (London, 1739), p. 21. Sophia also published a response to Man
Superior to Woman, or a Vindication of Man's Natural Right of Sovereign Author-
ity Over the Woman, In Answer to Sophia, by a Gentleman [K.] (London, 1739),
in 1740 entitled Woman's Superior Excellence Over Man.
20. Lady Mary Chudleigh, Essays Upon Several Subjects in Prose and Verse
(London, 1710),p. 173.
21. Brown, Legacy for the Ladies, pp. 2-4.
22. Spectator, 2: 9-10.
Notes to pages 148-154 183
38. The light imagery in the passage includes lines revised from Pope's 1722
poem to Judith Cowper. Pope substitutes "orb" for "sun," "when" for "while,"
etc., but most significant is the change from "in virgin majesty" to "in virgin
Modesty." Majestic queenliness would have suggested that Martha Blount might
long to be queen for life.
39. Minor Poems, p. 62.
40. Man Superior to Woman, p. 73.
41. William Ayre, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Alexander Pope
(London, 1745 ), 2: 52-53, cited in Epistles to Several Persons, III.ii.68.
42. Owen Ruffhead, Life of Pope (London, 1769), p. 285.
43. Spacks, Argument of Images, p. 167.
44. Jean Hagstrum in Sex and Sensibility, pp. 141-42, emphasizes Blount's
virginal qualities, her separation from the corporeal, as Pope portrays her.
CHAPTER IX
1. Lillian Bloom and Edward Bloom, ''The Satiric Mode of Feeling: A
Theory of Intention," Criticism 11 (1969): 117. See also their Satire's Persuasive
Voice (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979); and Peter Elkin, Augustan Defence of
Satire.
2. See especially Jean Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility, to whom I am indebted
for his discussion of angelisme.
3. Thomas Lockwood, Post-Augustan Satire: Charles Churchill and Satirical
Poetry, 1750-1800 (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1979); W.B. Carnochan,
"Satire, Sublimity, and Sentiment: Theory and Practice in Post-Augustan Satire,"
PMLA 85 (1970): 260-67.
4. Peter Hughes, "Reconstructing Literary History: Implications for the
Eighteenth Century," New Literary History 8 (1977): 269.
5. Marlene LeGates argues that traditional misogyny was "replaced" by the
image of the "chaste maiden and obedient wife" in "The Cult of Womanhood in
Eighteenth-Century Thought," Eighteenth-Century Studies 10 (1977): 21-39.
6. For a fine discussion of the legal status of the fallen woman, see Susan
Staves, "British Seduced Maidens," Eighteenth-Century Studies 14 (1980): 109-
34.
7. Bod. Ms. Add. d. 89.f.29, cited in William H. Epstein, fohn Cleland:
Images of a Life (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1974), p. 98.
8. The Female Congress (1779), p. vii, a lengthy poem in the collection of the
Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, was probably written by
William Preston and is loosely based on Juvenal's Sixth Satire.
9. Richard Polwhele, The Unsex'd Females, A Poem, Addressed to the Author
of the Pursuits of Literature (1798), in Gina Luria, ed., The Feminist Controversy
in England, 1788-1810 (New York: Garland, 1974), p. 9.
10. Female Virtues: A Poem (London, 1787) and The Female Aegis, or the
Duties of Women from Childhood to Old Age, in Luria, Feminist Controversy.
11. See Jean Hunter, "'The Ladies Magazine' and the History of the
Eighteenth-Century Englishwoman," in Newsletters to Newspapers: Eighteenth-
Notes to pages 164-166 185
Bredvold, Louis, 16, 170n.26 Creation, 20, 24, 27, 40, 49; in
Broderson, G.L., 176 n.9 Semonides, 3, 121-24; in Ames,
Brooks, Cleanth, 141,142, 182n.9, 25, 41; in Hesiod, 124; in Montagu,
182 n.13 125
Brooks, Harold, 21, 171 n.38 Creation of Women, The, 124, 180
Brown, Thomas, 148, 172 n.46, 177 n.10
n.5, 182 n.21, 183 n.25; Legacy for Crewe, Mrs., 145
the Ladies, 9 7, 14 7 Curll, Edmund, 14
Bruys, Franc;ois, 178 n.10, 181 n.5,
183 n.24; The Art of Knowing Dapier, William: Dryades, 138
Women, 105, 139, 148 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 174 n.19 and
Bunyan,John, 132 n.20
Burnet, Gilbert, 11, 126 death, 27, 30, 102, 103,108
Burney, Fanny, 162,164 Defoe, Daniel, 170 n.9; Essay on
Butler, Samuel, 1, 3, 53, 55, 56, 159, Projects, 11
173 n.12 and n.13, 174n.16 and Delaney, Sheila, 182 n.13
n.17;Hudibras, 3, 41,48-56, 57; dildoes, 29, 71
"Women," 48, 49; "Thoughts Upon disease, venereal, 29, 101, 102
Various Subjects," 55 divorce: Milton's opinions on, 12
Dobree, Bonamy, 21,107, 178n.15
Calvin, John, 53 Donoghue, Denis, 96, 177 n. 2
Carnochan, W.B., 80, 17 6 n. 7, 184 n. 3 Dorset, Earl of. See Sackville, Charles
Caroline, Queen, 135, 156 Dryden,John, 1,85,87,89,90,91,
Carter, Elizabeth, 164 93,138, 159,170n.22,175n.1,
Cartwright, William: The Lady Errant, 176n.4, 17Sn.S;Discourse Con-
45 cerning ... Satire, 15; as feminist,
Cavaliers: and women's education, 9 78; preface to Walsh, 78-79; trans-
Cavendish, Lady. See Holies, Lady lation fromJuvenal, 78-84, 92; as
Henrietta Cavendish antifeminist, 88; translation from
Chapone, Hester, 164 Ovid, 95
Chapone, Sarah, 149 Dunton, John, 173 n.56
Charke, Charlotte, 149 D'Urfey, Thomas, 132, 173n.8;A
Charles I, 14 Commonwealth of Women, 45-46
Charles II, 1
Chorier, Nicolas: Satyra Sotadica, 14 education, female, 9-11, 139
Chudleigh, Lady Mary, 146, 182 n. 20 Egerton, Sarah, nee Fige. See Fige,
Gibber, Theophilus, 86 Sarah
Clark, Alice, 12, 170 n.11 Ehrenpreis, Irvin, 178n.15, 182n.16
Clark, R.B., 177 n.15 Elkin, Peter, 170 n.23, 181 n.6
Cleland, John: Fanny Hill, 162 Elliott, Robert C., 3, 16, 17, 168 n.4,
Clifford, James, 1 78 n.15 170n.27,171n.31
Clive, Kitty, 86 Elstob, Elizabeth, 5, 169 n.S
Cohen, Ralph, 141, 182n.10 Epictetus, 126
Collier, Jeremy, 16 Epstein, William, 184 n. 7
Comedy, Old, 17 Evangelicalism, 164
coquette, 75, 77,139;in Rochester, Eve,13, 31, 64, 130,171n.37, 179
58-59; inJuvenal, 92; in Swift, n.l8; as prototype, 15, 27, 135;
101, 102, 103; in Young, 131; in satires on, 20; women as descend-
Pope, 137, 140 ants of, 24, 28, 32, 37; pregnancy
Cowley, Abraham: Davideis, 138 of, 25, 108; as thief, 26
Cowper, Judith, 184 n.38 Evelyn, Mary, 104;Mundus Muliebris,
Crawford, Charlotte, 183 n.31 107,140
188 The Brink of All We Hate
Fabricant, Carole, 58, 68, 174 n. 2, Gould, Robert, 3, 21, 26, 33, 61, 108,
175 n.l7 164, 172n.46 and n.55, 175 n.19,
Fall, the, 20, 25, 32, 54, 64, 108. See 178 n.16; Love Given O're, 20, 25,
also Eve 26-31, 34, 38, 140; "A Funeral
Farquhar, George: Sir Harry Wildair, Ecologue," 26;Innocence
140 Distress'd, 26; "To the Memory
Fell, Margaret, 13, 170n.l3 of Mr. Oldham," 26;Poems, 26;
Female Aegis, The, 16, 184 n.l 0 The Rival Sisters, 26;A Satyr
Female Chastity, 118-19 Against the Playhouse, 26;
Female Congress; or the Temple of "Mirana," 27; A Consolatory
Cotytto, The, 163 Epistle (Scourge for Ill Wives),
Female Mentor, The, 149,150,183 36, 37, 38; The Poetess, 36-37;
n.29 Female Fireships, 40;A Satyrical
Female Rebellion, The, 45 Epistle to the Author of Sylvia's
Female Restoration, 8. See also Revenge, 73
Sophia pamphlets Graves, Richard: The Heroines: or,
Female Virtues, 164, 184n.IO ModemMemoirs, 149
Fenelon, Franc;ois de Salignac, 11; Great Birth of Man, The, 20, 25,
Traite de l'education, 10 171 n.44
Fielding, Henry, I 77 n.ll and n.l 7; Green, Andrew, 1 71 n.46
translation of Juvenal, 85, 86; Greene, Donald, 179 n.21
Tom jones, 92 Greene, Edward Burnaby, 86, 177 n.11
Fige, Sarah, 3, 172 n.53; The Female Gregory, Dr. John, 165
Advocate, 30-34 Griffin,Dustin,67, 74, 174n.5,175
Fischer, John Irwin, 179 n. 22 n.14 and n.24
Flavia, 96-97, 147 Grundy, Isobel, 125, 181 n.22
Fletcher,John: The Sea- Voyage, 45 Gubar, Susan, 172 n.52, 179 n.l8
Floyd, Mrs. Biddy, 94 Guyon, Abbe de: Histoire des
Fordyce, Dr. James, 150, 165, 183 Amazones, 44
n.30; Sermons to Young Women,
149 Habbakkuk,JJ., 170n.l2
Fox, George, 13 Hagstrum,Jean,l79n.23, 184n.2
Foxon,David, 15,170n.19, and n.4
172n.46 Halifax, Lord, 169 n. 7
Frye, Northrop, 16, 170 n.25 Halsband, Robert, 180 n.12 and
Furies, 49 n.15
Fyge, Sarah. See Fige, Sarah Harley, Lord, 95
HaTVey, Lord, 86
Gagen,JeanE.,l73n.1 andn.5 Hays, Mary, 91, 163, 164
Gardiner, Dorothy, 169 n. 5 Heinsius, 15
Garrick, David, 86 Hesiod, 3, 121, 123, 124
Garth, Sir Samuel: Dispensary, 138 Heywood, Thomas: Gunaikeion,
Germain, Lady Elizabeth, 133 45,173n.7
Gifford, William, 78, 171 n.10, 177 Hickes, George, 11; Instructions for
n.l3 and n.l5; translation of the Education of a Daughter, 10
J uvenal, 17, 88-91 ; Epistle to Peter Highet, Gilbert, 176 n.6
Pindar, 88 Hill, Christopher, 170n.15
Gilbert, Sandra, 172 n.52 Hodgson, Francis, 78; translation of
goddess, 50, 112, 162. See also Juvenal, 91-92
woman, as ideal Hoffman, Arthur, 181 n.1
Gouge, William: Of Domesticall Hogarth, William, 48
Duties, 13 Holies, Lady Henrietta Cavendish, 95,
Gould, Hannah, 26 96
Index 189
Righter, Anne, 64, 175 n.11 and scatology, 80, 85, 98, 99, 112, 114,
n.23 137
Robinson, Mary, 91, 163 Schake!, Peter, 178 n.l7
Rochester,John Wilmot, Earl of, 1, 2, Schnorrenberg, Barbara, 169n.4, 185
3,21,26,58,59,67,68, 73-77 n.l3
passim, 159, 168n.l, 174n.4and Schurmaann, Anna a, 10
n.8, 175 n.l6, 177 n. 7; "A Satyr Sedley, Sir Charles, 21, 79
Against Reason and Mankind," 1; Seidel, Michael, 4, 168 n. 6
"Fair Chloris," 57, 61-65; "A Semiramis, 54
Letter from Artemisia to Chloe," Semonides, 3, 131, 171 n.32; Crea·
57, 71-75; "Timon," 57, 69-71; tion according to, 121-24
"Upon Leaving His Mistress," 58; Septizonium, 104
"On Mrs. Willis," 59; "On the Shadwell, Thomas, 16
Women About Town," 59, 102; Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 145, 162,
"The Imperfect Enjoyment," 60- 182n.l8
61, 65-69; "A Ramble in St. Sheridan, Thomas: "A New Simile for
James's Park," 60-61, 65; "The the Ladies," 9 7
Discovery," 65; "A Song," 75 Shirley,James: The Maid's Revenge,
Rogers, Katharine M., 108, 168n.3, 26
178 n.l7 Sitter, John E., 174n.3
Rogers, Pat, 181 n.l Skimrnington, 51-52, 1 74 n.l9
romance, 52, 108, 158, 160, 166; Sloane, Eugene H., 172n.47 and n.50
conventions of, 41, 51, 53, 56, 58, Smith, Charlotte, 163
59; and pornography, 49; and Smollett, Tobias, 162, 183 n. 28
feminism, 52 Solomon, Harry Miller, 1 78 n.l5
Rousseau, J ean.J acques, 165 Songs, Phallic, 18
Rudd, Niall, 1 76 n. 6 Sophia pamphlets, 8, 146, 157, 162,
Ruffhead, Owen, 157, 184n.42 182 n.l9
Spacks,PatriciaMeyer, 144,157,182
Sackville, Charles, Lord Buckhurst and n.l7, 184n.43
Earl of Dorset, 21 Spectator, The, 3, 5, 47, 120,121,
Satan, 64 122,124,141,152, 173n.l0, 180
satire, antifeminist, 2, 69, 75, 13 7; n.3 and n.5, 182n.22, 183n.33
moral purpose of, 1, 6, 15, 16, 17, Stapylton, Sir Robert, 78, 83, 89, 176
118,123,127,130,133,134,157, n.8 and n.9
160, 163; conventions of, 2, 3, 4, Staves, Susan, 184 n. 6
23,24,27,64,92, 107,137,144, Steele, Richard: The Ladies Library,
161; myth of, 3, 17, 19, 20, 55, 57, 10, 152; The Spectator, 121, 122,
123,131,135, 159,160,167; 152, 168n. 7; The Christian Hero,
norm in, 4, 15, 163; as curse, 16, 152
18,20,23,24,30,35,60,65, 75, Stella. See Johnson, Esther
83; adversary in, 24, 27, 30, 40, Sterne, Lawrence, 162
154; hell in, 24, 27; catalogue in, Stone, Lawrence, 9, 12, 169n.3, 170
24, 27, 40, 130, 131, 147,150, n.lO
153; against writing, 36-37, 75; Swift, Jonathan, 1, 2, 3, 28, 35, 92,
comic, 62, 65, 106, 119, 130, 167; 94,95, 100,102-06,108-10,113,
victim of, 71, 139, 158, 161; on 119, 120, 131, 154, 156, 148, 160,
marriage, 80, 85,119,127, 129; 165, 168n. 2 andn5, 170n.24,
disclaimer in, 118, 138; in fiction, 17ln.29, 178n.l3, 179n.l8, 183
162 n.27 and n.37; The Examiner, 16;
Satyr Upon Old Maids, 138,141,181 ATaleofaTub, 17;"TheJournal
n.3 of a Modern Lady," 37, 99; "A
Savile, Henry, 58 Beautiful Young Nymph Going to
192 The Brink of All We llate