Beth Curtis

Eng 205 My Canon: Restoration, Romantic, and Victorian

December 10, 2019
Due: Friday, December 13, 2019 @ 9:00 am
Can You Hear Me Now? A Woman’s Reflection on Gender and Societal Relations Throughout
the Ages
During the span of The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, The Romantic Period, and The
Victorian Age woman have been a moving force in ending abolitionism, calling out struggles and
inequities between classes, and having the mind, the ability, the courage and the freedom to
let their voices be beard, heck, make their voices be heard with regard to preset and gender
roles.
The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century
Mary Astell (1666-1731) was a woman of reason who expressed her views on the inequality of
partnership in marriage “wrote anonymously “by a Lover of Sex” (pg. 2420). In From A Preface,
in Answer to Some Objections to Reflections upon Marriage, Astell writes “As to those women
who find themselves born for slavery and are so sensible of their own meanness as to conclude
it impossible to attain to anything excellent, since they are or ought to be best acquainted with
their own strength and genius, she’s a fool who would attempt their deliverance or
improvement. No, let hem enjoy the great honor and felicity of their tame, submissive, and
depending temper! Let the men applaud and let them glory in this wonderful humility! Let
them receive the flatteries and grimaces of the other sex, live unenvied by their own, and be as
much beloved as one woman can afford to love another! Let them enjoy the glory of treading in
the footsteps of their predecessors, and of having the prudence to avoid that audacious
attempt of soaring beyond their sphere! Let them housewife or play, dress, and be pretty
entertaining company … Let them not by any means aspire at being women of understanding,
because no man can endure a woman of superior sense or would treat a reasonable woman
civilly, but that her thinks he stands on higher ground and hat she is so wise as to make
exceptions in his favor and to take measures by his directions” (pg. 3021-3022).
Aphra Behn (1640?-1689) was a female bold playwright, “a warm and witty poet of love” and a
writer of prose fiction (2308). In her poem, The Disappointment (pg.2310-2313), Behn writes
about an unsuccessful near sexual encounter between a maid and a shepherd leaving the maid
sexually frustrated and the shepherd embarrassed and impotent. “Then Cloris her fair hand
withdrew, / Finding that god of her desires / Disarmed of all his awful fires, / And cold as
flowers bathed in morning dew. / Who can the nymph's confusion guess? /The blood forsook
the hinder place, / And strewed with blushes all her face, /Which both disdain and shame
expressed: /And from Lysander's arms she fled, / Leaving him fainting on the gloomy bed” (pg.
2311).
Eliza Haywood (1693?-1756) was an actress and professional writer. In her piece, Fantomina;
or, Love in a Maze (1751), Haywood looks into social classes, gender roles and relations. The
main character is a woman in Fantomina, and she is of the upper class that takes on the
personas: Fantomina, a lower-class woman of pleasures, Celia, a lower-class house maid, Mrs.
Bloomer, an upper-class widow, and finally, Incognita, a mysteriously masked upper-class
woman. “Cleverly switching roles, she gratifies her own desire by exploiting her lover’s fickle
passions” (pg. 2739). In her role as Fantomina “She depended on the Strength of her Virtue, to
bear her fate thro' Trials more dangerous than she apprehended this to be, and never having
been addressed by him as Lady, — was resolved to receive his Devoirs as a Town-Mistress,
imagining a world of Satisfaction to herself in engaging him in the Character of such a one, and
in observing the Surprise he would be in to find himself refused by a Woman, who he supposed
granted her Favors without Exception. – Strange and unaccountable were the Whimsies she
was possessed of, – wild and incoherent her Desires, – unfixed and undetermined her
Resolutions, but in that of seeing Beauplaisir in the Manner she had lately done” (2742). 
The Romantic Period
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was a translator and feminist writer. In her book, A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Ch4. Observations on the State of Degradation to Which
Woman is Reduced by Various Causes (pg. 211-239), Wollstonecraft eloquently sums up her
thoughts on women, education and her relationship with men. “Yet, if love be the supreme
good, let women be only educated to inspire it, and let every charm be polished to intoxicate
the senses; but, if they be moral beings, let them have a chance to become intelligent; and let
love to man be only a part of that glowing flame of universal love, which, after encircling
humanity, mounts in grateful incense to God” (pg. 239).
Mary Robinson (1757?-1800) was an actress, manager, writer, mother, wife (for some time), an
educational manager, and a royal mistress in her lifetime. In The Poor Singing Dame (1800),
Robinson addresses poverty and wealth and happiness and frustration. Mary represents the
happy lower-class singing dame and The Lord represents the frustrated upper-class The Lord
sends Mary to prison in jealousy of her happiness outwardly displayed through song. “Thus she
lived, ever patient and ever contented, / Till envy the lord of the castle possess'd, / For he hated
that poverty should be so cheerful, /    While care could the fav'rites of fortune molest; / He
sent his bold yeomen with threats to prevent her, / And still would she carol her sweet
roundelay; / At last, an old steward relentless he sent her– / Who bore her, all trembling, to
prison away!” (pg. 82). The Lord does not have the last say or live his final days in wealthy
giddiness. He is haunted by screeching owls wherever he goes and finally dies a slow, decaying
death. “Wherever he wander'd they followed him crying; / At dawnlight, at eve, still they
haunted his way! / When the moon shone across the wide common they hooted, / Nor quitted
his path till the blazing of day. / His bones began wasting, his flesh was decaying, / And he hung
his proud head, and he perish'd with shame; / And the tomb of rich marble, no soft tear
displaying, / O'ershadows the grave of the poor singing dame!” (pg. 82). The female, lower-class
female at that, triumphs over the upper-class male in life and in death.
Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) was the only daughter of five children. After her mother died
in 1778, Dorothy lived with various family members, until 1795, when she went to live with her
brother William. Dorothy was a writer in her own right however, put her brothers literary and
household needs before her own. In her Grasmere Journals (1802), Wordsworth’s September
24th and following, entry reflects her devout love of her brother on his wedding day to Mary
Hutchinson. “William had parted from me upstairs. I gave him the wedding ring – with how
deep a blessing! I took it from my forefinger where I had worn it the whole of the night before –
he slipped it again onto my finger and blessed me fervently. When they were absent my dear
little Sara prepared the breakfast. I kept myself as quiet as I could, but when I saw the two men
running up the walk, coming to tell us it was over, I could stand it no longer and through myself
on the bed where I lay in stillness, neither hearing or seeing any thing, till Sara came upstairs to
me & said “they are coming.” This forced me from the bed where I lay & I moved I knew not
how straight forward, faster than my strength could carry me till I met my beloved William &
fell upon his bosom. He & John Hutchinson led me to the house & there I stayed to welcome
my dear Mary” (pg. 414).
The Victorian Age
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was a wife, mother, and writer of short stories, novels, and
biographies (pg. 1259-1260). In her novel Ruth (1853), Gaskell writes about a fallen woman and
her relationships with the male gender. Ruth is an orphaned dressmaker who falls for the vices
of a rich man and runs away, in secret and in love, with him. She is left by this man and found
by a minister and his sister and taken into their home. Ruth there gives birth to an illegitimate
son, who loves her, hates her, and then loves her, again. Ruth is employed by a gentleman who
trusts her with his children but discards her when he learns the truth. Ruth eventually finds
employment as a nurse and ends up nursing the father of her child back to health while she
then falls sick and dies. “Gaskell took on this challenge with a coolness that still impresses
today, writing in a letter to a friend the year the novel came out, “I think I must be an improper
woman without knowing it; I do so manage to shock people”.
Annie Besant (1847-1933) was a woman who left her husband and her church to become a
feminist and social cause writer. Through her article The “White Slavery” of London Match
Workers (1888) and several others, Besant spurred “a public boycott and a strike of fourteen
hundred match workers” (pg. 1603). “But who cares for the fate of these white wage slaves?
Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because underfed, oppressed
because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die or go on the streets,
provided only that the Bryant and May shareholders get their 23 per cent, and Mr. Theodore
Bryant can erect statues and buy parks? Oh if we had but a people’s Dante, to make a special
circle in the Inferno for those who live on the misery, and suck wealth out of the starvation of
helpless girls. Failing a poet to hold up their conduct to the execration of posterity, enshrined in
deathless verse, let us strive to touch their consciences, i.e. their pockets, and let us at least
avoid being “partakers of their sins,” by abstaining from using their commodities” (pg. 1605).
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was a daughter and sister and a fiancé three times. Rosetti called
off her engagement to James Collinson, Charles Cayley and John Brett. Rossetti found peace
and inspiration in her poetry and in her religion. In her poem “No, Thank You, John” (1862),
Rosetti refuses a proposal of marriage from her friend John and tries to offer him solace that
“Meg or Moll would take / Pity upon you, if you'd ask,” “I’d rather answer “No” to fifty Johns /
Than answer “Yes” to you,” “Let us strike hands as hearty friends; / No more, no less: and
friendship’s good,” and “In open treaty. Rise above / Quibbles and shuffling off and on: / Here’s
friendship for you if you like; but love, - / No, thank you, John” (pg. 1509).

References: 

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the
Eighteenth Century. 9th ed. Vol. C. New York, New York: Norton & Co., 2012.

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period. 9th
ed. Vol. D. New York, New York: Norton & Co., 2012.

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age. 9th ed.
Vol. E. New York, New York: Norton & Co., 2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_(novel)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/338807.Ruth