Xiaodong Lei

Matrikel: 5574872
VL: Women’s Writing III: The Romantics (Part III)
Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Ingrid Hotz-Davies

A satirical exposé of the flaws of sentimental femininity:

A brief study of An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting

In an SNL sketch A Ladies Guide to Party Planning1 (aired Nov. 11, 2009), actress January
Jones starred in an old-fashioned cinematic piece supposedly set in the Unites States at the
beginning of the 1950s in which she gave quite a few pieces of advice to ladies instructing
them on how to throw a cocktail party with a lady-like manner. The party planning starts in
the morning when the husband leaves for work and “tells you you’re throwing one” (in the
evening, obviously), and the lady should then hand the husband the newspaper while
avoiding looking at it because “it may give you ideas”. When the party starts in the evening, a
lady should learn how to address the guests properly according to their social status (which
includes addressing a divorced woman with her attorney’s name) and wake up the children to
showcase them to the guest, then the children “will be put back until the next party”. Along
with smiling and nodding to the husbands sex jokes amid obvious actions of infidelity, the
lady should not visit the “powder room” in the company of her guests, and is only free to
relieve herself of her natural needs in the woods when the guests have left and the house is
cleaned. Moreover, it is underlined that if the hostess should happen to suffer from diarrhea,
she is expected to renounce her place in human society and live as an animal deep in the
woods.

This sketch, though far from being popular, can be seen as a perfect screen redemption of the
book I’ll discuss in this paper: An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting written by Jane
Collier. As far as I venture to imagine, she would have been very content to see the real spirit
of her book put to practice by her 21st century American counterpart satirists. The sketch

1
Available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI_c1F994gs
covers several of the main topics discussed in the book: status of women, the role women are
expected to play in a household, the education of children, and most importantly, the code of
conduct for women. Though unlike the submissive lady figure represented in the sketch, the
image Collier paints of a worthy woman subverts the conventional idea of exemplar
femininity; but the two satirical masterpieces share the same spirit of exposing society’s
misunderstanding and unrealistic imagination on femininity.

In this essay, I’ll argue that the value of this work lies in the issues about femininity it seeks
to address. I’ll venture to examine how does Jane Collier, as a female writer in Britain of the
18th century, exposes the logical inconsistencies in her contemporaries’ stereotypes of
sentimental femininity making use of the traditionally masculine genre of satire. I’ll explore
how and to what extent does she conform to or try to subvert the conventional perceptions
regarding women’s domesticity, irrationality and moral superiority and why her writing is
significant in 18th century Britain.

I “Remember always to do unto everyone, what you would least wish to have done
unto yourself”: instructions on becoming a nuisance

In the book, Jane Collier, making use of the already conventional didactic tone of conduct
manuals such as The Ladies Calling, which will be mentioned later in this essay, lectures her
readers on the art of nagging and torturing people surrounding them. Collier’s idea on the
essence of torturing is evident: her belief is that any form of tormenting is by definition the
exertion of power conducted by the superior to the inferior. However, when dealing with
people holding different places on the power hierarchies, the method should be different, and
accordingly she divided the book into two parts, each addressing a different spectrum of
torturing. The first part is dedicated to who possess “an exterior power from visible
authority” (Collier 13), which includes masters over their servants, parents over their
children, husbands over their wives, and many others, while the second part aims to educate
those who may not be granted a higher status by birth, but “have an interior power, arising
from the affection of the person on whom they are to work” (Collier 13), such as wives to
their husbands, and the relationship among friends/siblings. Actual strategies of torment
differ from each category to the other, but they all share a common dogma, that is to exert
emotional manipulation with “refined strokes” so as to create the greatest possible discomfort
or ordeal within the psychological realm of the subject without damaging the tormentor’s
reputation as a benevolent and loving figure.

Though she emphasizes many time in the book that her male readers should as well take clues
from the volume and dedicates one entire chapter to husbands, the book is undeniably written
primarily for a female readership. At the beginning of the first chapter of the first part, Collier
clearly states that:

“As the intercourse between a master and his man is not so frequent as
between a lady and her maid, I shall not direct myself to the former, but only
give rules to the latter; and where those rules are practicable for the master, I
hope he will be so kind as to convert them to his own use.” (Collier 14)

It is thus important to acknowledge the book’s status as a satire written by woman and for
woman to make better sense of the issues Collier attempts to deal with.

The formular of torment is shared by the two occasions: the tormentor should inflict
emotional nuisance his/her subject with delicate but precise measures to maximize the effect
and maintain the reputation. The way in which to inflict such suffering is the exertion of
authority and control – here the path diverge: to those who employ a lower authority, the
exertion is more direct; while to those who rank higher on the hierarchy, various methods can
be implemented to force the subject into wielding his/her power to give in voluntarily to the
feminine control.

i) Exerting the feminine authority

Torturing those who are not deemed as more authoritative is relatively easier. However, the
author reiterates many times throughout the book the guideline of avoiding too vulgar or
direct methods as implemented by Roman tyrants and people in “low life” (Collier 7). The
scope is not only to avoid the possible impact on the social stances of the mistress/master, but
also to create even stronger emotional blows, which, according to Collier, is the most
effective and most rewarding method:
 “The practice of tormenting the body is not now, indeed, much allowed,
except in some particular countries, where slavery and ignorance subsist: but
let us not, my dear countrymen, regret the loss of that trifling branch of our
power, since we are at full liberty to exercise ourselves in that much higher
pleasure, the tormenting the mind.” (Collier 7)

As far as the aforementioned subject is concerned, the successful infliction of the tormenting
lies in two essential characteristics of the ideal “subject”: docility in nature, and an inferior
position on a power hierarchy, be it the constitutionalized inequal relationship between
master and servant, host and “humble companion”, parents and children, or factual inferiority
created by an unexpected situation such as host to a friend in need, or even the voluntary loss
and renounce of power as has caused by the affection of the subject in the tormentor, as
among siblings or friends. The manner in which the tormentor should act is similar: She
should start with a “pretended fondness” so as to create a one-way emotional bond in the
subject, making the tormentor source of fondness and pleasure when the subject is in her
company. Then, she should proceed with a sudden change of temper to become inconsistent
and irrational: the author gives an example by giving specific directions on how to handle a
visit to a friend in a “showery day”:

“If you go to visit a friend, in a showery day, when the weather is quite
uncertain, you may order your footman to come for you at such an hour, and
bid him come without2 the coach, for you would walk home. If the weather
should prove fair, you must for that day lose your diversion: but if it rains,
then your sport begins. Should your footman (thinking it impossible for you
to choose walking in the wet and dirt), contrary to your orders, bring you the
coach, you may rate him extremely for not observing your orders. …
[S]hould the footman, fearful of disobeying your commands, come to you in
this wet evening, without the coach; then may you lament your hard fate, in

2
All italics in quotations from An Essay appear so in the original text.
 having nothing but fools about you, that could not distinguish in common
occurrences.” (Collier 16)

When dealing with siblings or friends, giving orders or scolding won’t be applicable, but the
mistress can make herself a nuisance in other ways, such as overlooking the helps given by a
friend while requesting the most ardent gratitude possible when the mistress makes a small
favor, and playing with the delicate psychological status of girlfriends: for example, when she
is expecting the lover.

As the connection between the subject and the tormentor is established, the later is free to
explore some other “strokes” to further stir the emotional stability of the former. She is
encouraged to accuse her sister or humble companions with defects they don’t possess in
front of a company, the bigger the group the better the effect. A “true adept” of the art should
study closely the temper and character of her subjects to better manipulate her strokes to
destroy them completely.

As is stated in previous paragraphs, the author underlines that she has the “highest regard” for
the reputation of her pupils, she thus recommends that such tormenting procedures be
conducted under the mask of good will and frankness. The mistress may accuse a humble
companion with nauseous breath and pretend to bring up the issue in the company of other
guests, the young girl may either refute the claim in rage or burst into tear and flee to her
room. The following step the mistress should take is to send for the girl and comfort her, but
further affirming her claim:

“I cannot imagine, my dear, what should make you cry, when I am only
kindly telling you, as a friend, of some misfortunes you cannot possibly help.
I am very far from blaming you, my love; for although, I thank heaven, I am
myself free from all such shocking and disagreeable things, yet nobody pities
people with such imperfections more than I do.” (Collier 26)

When the subjects suffer from too much discomfort, they will naturally be tempted to flee the
sufferings they are put under. For servants and friends, it may be more likely, but for humble
companions and children there’s no such possibility. Thus, in other to keep the fruitful work
from ending, the mistress should use different measures to keep the first two categories of
subject in the household, for example advertising to the servants the visit of an important
figure, and send for comfort and gift after blasting them to restore the affection.

Looking back at the guidelines offered in these sections, examining the well-rounded plan for
torturing put forward by the author, we can see the image of an upper middle-class lady as the
irrational inconsistent manager of the household: her leader status in domestic territory entails
inferiors subject to her control, enabling her to exert her authority in more direct manners.
However, her social stance prevents her from excessively violent approaches. In these parts,
women’s responsibility as the leadership of a household is not only addressed, but further
confirmed by the author to be natural, echoing with the dominating ideological claim of her
time which considers women to be destined to domesticity. Collier does not try to raise
disagreement but regard this fact as fertile ground for the art of tormenting.

ii) The reversal of gender hierarchy

The same attitude holds true in the directions given to wives in dealing with their husbands,
but the approach of tormenting is different, for husbands tend to occupy a dominant position
in a conjugal relationship. The author also addresses such fact:

“… a husband may exercise his marital authority so far, as to give his wife
moderate correction.” (Collier 43)

Here, the successful implementation of tormenting will require an important premise: the
husband has to either be deprived of this superiority, or he has to voluntarily renounce his
status. This can be achieved in two ways: when the wife enriches the husband by bringing a
fortune to the otherwise worse-off family (which customarily ends up becoming the fortune
of the family, thus ultimately under the administration of the husband), or that the affection of
the husband to the wife is so strong that the former is willing to wield control to his beloved
partner.
In either of the two cases, the husband still enjoys factual and costumery authority over his
mistress, accordingly the detailed measures of torment should change. The goal remains the
same: to create utmost emotional discomfort. The wife can thus make full use of her status as
woman to do as she pleases. If ever the husband appears frustrated, the wife can always
reiterate her femininity in her defense.

One method is to criticize the husband for his failure in adding to the fortune of the family
while turning down all his proposals of achieving the goal belittling them as flawed, denying
him the pleasure to fulfill his primary masculine responsibility as the bread earner of the
family. The wife should also study the habit of the husband and frustrate him in occasions
where he is the most delighted: if the husband takes delight in Shakespeare, the wife should
not pay any attention to what is happening on the stage. If the husband has the gut to demand
her attention, she can always defend herself by “exclaiming against the loquacity of all
women, who have any share of understanding or knowledge”. (Collier 56)

Another possible approach of tormented recommended is related to the feminine domesticity.

As the main realm (if not the only) of female activity is the household, the mistress is
considered to be the ultimate responsible for the pleasure in a household, she should thus act
in such a way to deny the husband any pleasure in and outside the household. She should
contradict her husband’s expectations for a wife and at the same time, when the husband
performs his duty in the public sphere, the lady should lament the husband’s departure and
exaggerate the yearn she feels for him. She should never approve any of the friend her
husband keeps and force her husband to write a letter every day he is “abroad” to keep her
updated of his wellbeing. If the husband should fail the task one time, she should send for his
information as if he has been missing for a month. When confronted with the nuisances she
creates for her husband, she can always turn to her femininity as the last resort: “‘You are all
the world to me; and why should not I be all the world to you?’” (Collier 52)

One final possibility to snatch the superiors their authority is the total compliance to the
sensitive and submissive feminine image by involving herself in some form of self-torturing.
In a time when women were deemed more vulnerable by default, few men will never
question the authenticity of these scenes, but would be terrified for not taking good care of
the more delicate being.
The agenda represented here is similar as the approach described in the former part: the
female tormentor is encouraged to take advantage of her status to inflict torments; but, here,
instead of imposing direct authority, the woman can reverse the power hierarchy by
reiterating her femininity: the gender stereotype is further complied at the expense of the
imposer of such stereotypes.

Most of the methods given by the author may seem abhorrent since they represent an
undisguised malicious humor which takes delight in other people’s suffering, but if examined
in another light, they can be seen as a profile of women’s sufferings in 18th century British
society. It can be argued that the abhorrence of the methods actually comes from the
inconsistencies in the perception of femininity and the institutionalized oppression of which
the author herself had been definitely a victim. The book thus sets out on an agenda to repute,
or at least expose the inconsistencies her contemporaries share regarding women’s image.

II The image of women

In The Ladies Calling, a canonical conduct manual written in the later half of the 17th century,
Richard Allestree lectures his (supposedly predominantly female) readership on the equal
educability of the two sexes:

“It may therefore upon this account be a necessary Charity to the Sex, to
acquaint them with their own valu3, animate them to som3 higher thoughts of
themselves; not to yield their suffrage to those injurious estimates the World
hath made of them, and from a supposed incapacity of nobler things to
neglect the pursuit of them; from which God and Nature have no more
precluded the Feminine, then the Masculine part of mankind.” (Allestree)

He later further confirms that the female sex was given certain advantages since God
“implanted in them som3 native propensions, which … do much facilitate the operations of

3
As appears in the original text
Grace upon them”. Thus, the “vicious impotence” women suffer from can but be acquired,
instead of being natural qualities pertaining to the sex by birth as many of his contemporaries
might have concluded. He identifies these negative traits as “proud, or wanton, vain, or
peevish”, and argues that god “gave the feeblest woman as large and capacious a soul as that
of the Greatest Hero”. (Allestree)

In later chapters, Allestree continues to educate women on the good qualities they should
possess, but the requirements he later proposes may seem counter-intuitive to modern eyes:
he describe husbands as women’s “lawful Superiors”, and in the same chapter assign to
women the natural defect of impetuousness: “the feminine Sex, whose passions being
naturally the more impetuous”. (Allestree)

Allestree’s perception resonates with the ideas of Rousseau, who, in the words of Janet Todd
in The Sign of Angelica, believes “in the clear demarcation of between men and women”, and
that women “[were] to be educated to solace, please and minister to men”. However, the
ground of such differentiated treatment is the diverse qualities the two genders possess:
women’s duty to obey and please men is not the result of their inferiority, they are instead “a
distinct group with different duties and needs” (Todd 117). The two genders’ different
attributes (both advantages and disadvantages included) in character result in their different
strengths and are thus appropriate to take part in different affairs.

The summary of the “good nature4” women should possess can be found in the way Allestree
organized The Ladies Calling. The book was divided into two parts, the first in 5 sections:
“Of Modesty”, “Of Meekness”, “Of Compassion”, “Of Affability” and “Of Piety”. This
image will continue to develop in the 18th century to become the sentimental femininity that
remains to be central to British literature until the end of the century.

Women of the time were believed to possess a superiority in morals which stem from the
more delicate and genteel character. As Craik describes: “Writers described women’s
notional susceptibility to emotions and feelings, especially pity and sympathy, dwelling upon

4
Quotation from Eliza Haywood in The Female Spectator (1744–6), quoted in the introduction to An Essay on
the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting written by Katharine Craik.
the tenderness of their bodies and their correspondingly sensitive minds and souls.” (Collier
xvii) Todd also discusses this double standard, pointing out that women were usually held to
higher moral standards than men were: women were expected to possess a lesser intellect
quality than her male counterparts5, they were thus not expected to exert their ration, and
were accordingly put under masculine guidance when reasoning should be implied. Due to
the greater sensibility, women were thought to be prone to exaggerated emotional
turbulences, they are thus considered less rational or stable. Betty Rizzo examines the extent
of these affirmations, attributing the ideological origin of the gothic novel to these beliefs6.
She argues that the sentimental and emotionally exaggerated gothic novels were fertile
ground for female writing, for women were considered to be non-rational and sentimental
beings inferior to the rational middle-class white heterosexual male establishment.
Accordingly, women’s assigned range of activities is restrained to the inside of the
household, while women’s education limited to enabling them to cater to the need of their
husband and make bearable company. The changes of social and economic circumstances
further drove women to retreat while creating the image of the idle middle-class wife. Cheryl
Turner, taking into consideration the studies conducted by other scholars, argues in Living by
the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century that the change was the outcome of the
changing household economic structure and the teaching of contemporary thinkers: the
thriving metropolitan industrialization procedure relieved housewives from a wide range of
domestic chores which entails production of various household items; this exemption, along
with the difficulties of financing their own business, inevitably drove women back to the
interiority of her home. Educators and philosophers of the time further encouraged women’s
retreat by promoting the importance of individual families as the cornerstone of the modern
nation underlining the importance of the education of the children, thus “encouraged the idea
that matrimony was [women’s] future career” and urged women back to the domestic sphere
as the full-time caretaker and educator. Printings of the time additionally highlighted the
women’s major responsibility for conjugal happiness, for on the premise of women’s natural
moral superiority in regard to men, women are expected to fulfill a higher level of chastity
and distance from public affairs7. This relief from economic responsibilities, along with the

5
Seen in The Sign of Angelica, 121
6
Seen in Renegotiating the Gothic
7
Living by the Pen, 41-45
increased employment of household servants, deprived the ladies of the affluent classes (to
whom the book is targeted) chances to enter the public realm: her daily activity reduced to the
management of the household and idle pleasure.

In conclusion, the image of women of the time is a sentimental, delicate and irrational being
destinated to domesticity: these are the issues Collier seeks to address in this book. In the
following paragraphs I’ll examine the different methods Collier used to expose or subvert the
stereotypical notions on femininity, focusing on the domesticity, moral superiority and
irrationality.

III A satirical rebuttal

When we re-assess the directions offered by the author in the book, they undoubtedly share
an extreme feminine and domestic characteristic. The “good pupil” of the art of tormenting is
active only in the domestic sphere, her only realm in which to exert her superiority and put to
practice the art she should master is within her own household, with instructions concerning
predominantly, if not only, domestic affairs.

Although in other chapters Collier attempted to debunk the unreasonable ideas about
femininity of her time, I’d argue that when the domestic sphere is concerned, she has but
completely conformed to the convention, agreeing to the relocation of genders’ role. She is
not in any sense promoting women’s entrance in public sphere, however, as in the rest of the
book, she puts to use the unfavorable conditions women were granted while trying to make
use of them to the fullest extent. The perfect tormentor is still only active in the domestic
setting, but she makes use of the authorities and responsibilities that her domestic role entails.
Furthermore, Collier also draws her readers’ attention to making use of the dichotomy of
public-domestic (namely masculine-feminine) domain to create new discomfort by
transgressing the border between the domestic and the public. The perfect female torturer
should be happy to remain in domestic realm but should make full use of the perks this
situation offers.

The same method is implemented in dealing with the problems about women as irrational
beings, but in dealing with the irrationality, the author doesn’t agree completely to the
convention of sentimental femininity; on the contrary, she fundamentally subverts those
expectations, offering a completely different image.

There is a clear dichotomy between the inner qualities and the image the “true adept”
demonstrates to the outside world. The persona she adopts to deal with her subject may seem
in line to the sentimental and irrational feminine portraiture: she is never consistent in her
own demands, she is never constant, she appears to be ignorant of any delicacy in social
circumstances to indict immense embarrassment to people around her. However, if we
examine inner mechanism of her tormenting, we will find that she is a fundamentally rational
being. She studies the character of her subject8 in detailed and organized way like a physician
studies the human body. She chooses her subject wisely, her every single move is well
calculated to create the biggest repercussion possible, bringing the effectiveness of her effort
to the maximum. She is also well-prepared when the outcome is too successful that the
subject undergoes too great emotional sufferings that they seek to flee from her company, and
moreover, she puts aside personal emotions, even her own wellbeing by carrying out self-
tortures when determined to inflict “delicate strokes” to selected worthy subjects, such as
those hailed by the author to be among the best of her pupils who “are capable of hanging
themselves to spite their neighbours”. (Collier 78)

The morals Collier seeks to promote can be said to possess a quasi-religious undertone: it
instructs the readers to set aside personal pleasure and wellbeing in order to contribute to the
realization of a nobler cause, only that here the ultimate end is the plaguing, instead of the
salvation, of the human kind. Here, Collier considers woman to be rational and intellectual
creatures, she implies that women are as, if not better than men do in the exertion of ration.

When it comes to the women’s moral sensitivity, the author undertakes a similar, but
different approach. Instead of to any extent complying to the instructions, she attempts to
subvert the whole notion, questioning the possibility for humankind as a whole to possess any
innate moral inclinations. Here the satire is not anymore focused on women or femininity: it
is directed to the entirety of the British society.

8
On page XX of the book, Collier traces the usage of the word “subject” to the use of surgeons’ terminology.
The reason people assign superior moral perception to women back to the shift in religious
ideas and the expansion of print culture, especially prose fiction. Allestree, in The Ladies
Calling, also agrees to the religious notion that women were given a better perception in
morality: “[god] seems to have placed [women] in more advantagious circumstances then he
has don men” (Allestree). Collier also pays attention to the requirements for feminine virtue
imposed by Christianity, she states that “… every rule I shall lay down will be exactly
opposite to the doctrine of Christianity.” (Collier 9), but she later defends herself with a satire
on the entire Christian society, accusing them of hypocrisy and inconsistency, that “For to
abuse Christ himself is not, at present, esteemed so high an offence, as to abuse one of his
followers; or, rather, one of his Abusers.” (Collier 10), undermining the basis for such
religious claims on women’s natural moral sensitivity.

In other parts of the essay, Collier also attacks the Christian belief that human is born with
good nature. She indicates that “… a love to this science is implanted in our natures” (Collier
6). In the conclusion, she once again implies that the love for becoming a nuisance, instead of
a help or comfort is the configuration of our nature. She describes it as a “growing sprig of
mischief there implanted with our birth” and will “[flourish] like a green palm tree” when we
come of age (Collier 98). Here, Collier not only denies that women are equipped with innate
positive moral inclinations, she denies also that human being as an entirety is deprived of any
morality by birth.

Looking back on these analyses, it can be argued that the scope of An Essay is an expository
one. Both the compliance and subversion of the said conventions serve the aim of showcasing
their innate logic inconsistencies. Collier offers a satirical rebuttal to the submissive docile
lady figured pictured by the feminine sensibility, posing a unique antithesis as a female
satirist in a world run by men. Although not deliberately trying to promote an alternative, she
has successfully generated doubts in the presupposedness of those claims, beating the path for
later generations of feminist idea to develop.

IV Satire of women and woman of satire

In The Art Of Tormenting: Violent Humor And The Grotesque As A Feminist Challenge To
Eighteenth-Century English Narratives, Melissa Castillo-Garsow locate the feminist progress
in An Essay not in the agenda and idea it takes on to prove and disseminate. She argues that
in the book Collier composes spot-on attacks on the absurdity of the situations she meant to
point out as ridiculous without offering alternatives, what she accomplishes in An Essay is
“[suggesting] the limitations of the approved model by repeating them in a different manner”
(Castillo-Garsow 234), but the side effect is that “this repetition also serves to uphold these
middle class values by providing no other option.” However, what is significant of her
attempt in satire is her decision to undertake the traditionally male role of a satirist and thus
subverting the gendered situation of writing, or in the words of Castillo-Garsaw, “her
decisions as a female writer in a world of male writers” (Castillo-Garsow 233).

In this context, Collier’s position as a female satirist is significant. Charles Knight identified
An Essay to be the most famous satire written by a women in 18th century Britain (Knight 7),
her achievement may not be the liberation of the female sex from prejudice and injustice, but
she has successfully exposed the inconsistencies and absurdities of holding women to a
higher/different standard than her male counterparts. Collier, like the narrator in In Praise of
Folly written by Erasmus of Rotterdam, analyses the folly in human conducts to expose the
fundamental irrationalities of human mind. The main value of An Essay is not the idea it
seeks to promote, or the subversion of traditional gender roles: it is precious in opening up
new horizons for female writers, and introduces new aspects from which the readership
should contemplate the values which seemed for granted but wouldn’t stand further
consideration. By completing a witty, well-balanced satirical work written by a woman aimed
to “spit venom” on the entire British society, Collier has successfully showcased the flaws in
the erroneous ideologies she seeks to expose.
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