Breaking Up of the Bluestocking Club: 1815 Rowlandson Return
The effective view in society was that men could attain to the
heights intellectually and aesthetically. Women were inherrently
weaker and were inherently lesser in their abilities intellectually
as well as aesthetically. Thus the proper place for a woman was in
the home, helping her husband and children. The legal rights of women
were effectively non-existent. A woman was like a child (legally),
requiring a husband's supervision. Indeed, a definition of the word
"husband": management and conservation. Many women in Jane Austen's
time focused their attention upon cosmetics, fashion (very "French"
or superficial), with the object of marrying a wealthy man. Men
weren't much more advanced: consider these wives (no wonder the men
absented themselves to their Black mistresses in the British West
Indies)!
In the print above, Elizabeth Carter properly criticized Catherine
Macauley:
Many Bluestockings looked far ahead of thier society, but not all of
them. Hannah More's viewpoint was very Conservative: heavily influenced
by religious dogma. Effectively, Hannah More wanted women to be
"respectable" (according to her political and religious views). Women
were to accept their naturally inferior selves. Women could help reclaim
impoverished people that were criminals, mentally ill, alcoholics. One
major way to reform would be for children to attend Sunday schools (perhaps
2 hours per week), to learn to read (mostly religious lectures, or
religious tracts), and write.
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