human
, delivers himself of the sentiment that
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An assertion, therefore, of the faculty of Reason in woman, and a denial of that much-professed sexual character upon which eighteenth century society was almost exclusively founded, and which Steele held to be the main cause of contemporary female inferiority. He complained (_Tatler_ No. 61) that the fact that the eighteenth century woman valued herself only on her beauty, caused her to be regarded by men on no other consideration as
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from a purely sexual point of view; it being his opinion that the rule for pleasing long (which, with a want of logic in matters of sex characteristic of his time, he held to be woman's chief consideration) was
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, whereas
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in his picture of Lady Lizard and her daughters reading Fontenelle's
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while
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His treatment of the question is throughout tinged with sarcasm.
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If the female tongue will be in motion , he says, after complaining of their _copia verborum_,
human
, written in 1696. Her personality and ideas remind us strongly of Mlle de Gournay, who lived nearly a century earlier. The conviction that all contact with the world and its wickedness would infallibly end in moral ruin had made Mary Astell the warm advocate of education in a nunnery, far from the madding crowd, where women might be brought up to lives of Christian virtue. The very fact, however, that she was not a worldly woman, made her overlook the circumstance that her scheme, however promising in theory, could never hope to stand the test of practice. It was to be expected that the first practical hint for an educational establishment for women--a hint which, however, was not more regarded than Mary Astell's had been--would come from one whose close contact with the outside world enabled him to do something more than brood over schemes that were incapable of realisation. Mary Astell in her religious zeal had entirely forgotten to take into account the innate proclivities of the female character. Daniel Defoe knew how to reconcile the demands of life and of womanhood with those of a moral educational establishment, and he suggested a scheme which was certainly more capable of being put into practice than Mary Astell's. But even he was firmly convinced that his proposal would meet with almost universal disapprobation and therefore recommended it to the consideration of a later generation. Defoe was a man of great inventiveness and sound common sense, and many undeniable improvements were suggested in his
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(1702). He had certainly heard of, and very probably read (although he misquotes the title) Mrs. Astell's
human
, and it redounds to his credit that he is one of the very few contemporaries of that eccentric lady to do justice to her motives in seriously considering her ideal of a nunnery, instead of making it the object of obscene insinuations like those of which Dr. Swift was guilty in the pages of the _Tatler_. His estimate of the possibilities of women was very considerably in advance of his time, and places him among the most advanced of woman's male advocates. Unlike the essayists, his tone is serious throughout, and the proposal well worth considering, although even Defoe has so far become tainted with the prevailing opinion regarding women as to assume certain sexual propensities which he fears will be in the way of their moral improvement.
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I doubt a method proposed by an ingenious lady in a little book called _Advice to the Ladies_
human
he says.
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For, saving my respect for the sex, _the levity which is perhaps a little peculiar to them_, at least in their youth, will not bear the restraint, and I am satisfied nothing but the height of bigotry can keep a nunnery.