I.
Woolstonecraft: 1757-1797 [20 minutes]
A.
Quotes from Vindication
on Milton—Backtracking and moving forward
1.
To account for,
and excuse the tyranny of man
2.
there is but one way appointed by Providence to lead
mankind to either virtue or happiness.
3.
Men complain,
and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not
keenly satirize our headstrong passions and groveling vices.-Behold,
I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance!
a)
BeggarÕs Opera
(1)
MACHEATH.
(a)
Man may escape
from Rope and Gun;
Nay, some have outliv'd the Doctor's Pill;
Who takes a Woman must be undone,
That Basilisk {71} is sure to kill.
The Fly that sips the Treacle {72} is lost in the Sweets,
So he that tastes Woman, Woman, Woman,
He that tastes Woman, ruin meets.
(2)
LUCY. 'Tis the Pleasure of all you fine Men to insult the Women you have ruin'd.
(a)
How cruel are
the Traitors,
Who lye and swear in jest,
To cheat unguarded Creatures,
Of Virtue, Fame, and Rest! Whoever steals a Shilling,
Through shame the Guilt conceals:
In Love the perjur'd Villain
With boasts the Theft reveals.
4.
Thus Milton describes
our first frail mother; though when he tells us that women are formed for
softness and sweet attractive grace, I cannot comprehend his meaning, unless, É
he meant to deprive us of souls, and insinuate that we were beings only
designed by sweet attractive grace, and docile blind obedience, to gratify the
senses of man when he can no longer soar on the wing of contemplation.
5.
Children, I
grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it
is but a civil term for weakness. For if it be allowed that women were destined
by Providence to acquire human virtues, and by the exercise of their
understandings, that stability of character which is the firmest ground to rest
our future hopes upon, they must be permitted to turn to the fountain of light,
and not forced to shape their course by the twinkling of a mere satellite. Milton, I grant, was of a very different opinion; for he only bends to
the indefeasible right of beauty, though it would be
difficult to render two passages which I now mean to
contrast, consistent. But into similar inconsistencies are great men often led
by their senses.
6.
Consequently,
the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the
understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart.
Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as
will render it independent.
B.
Biography
1.
Wollstonecraft's
father É was ..a violent man who would beat his wife
in drunken rages. As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of
her mother's bedroom to protect her.[3]
2.
Professional
author; supported herself
3.
During her brief career, she wrote novels,
treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book.
a)
Like the other manifestoes of the age, it argues
that birth and class are not an appropriate basis for structuring society, but
rather that equality should be expressed politically in democracy. These ideas are gradual in coming:
Utopia as fantasy, King Lear, Paradise Lost—Adam and Eve are all humanity—ÒWhen
Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentlemanÓ—Judaeo/Christian
tradition appealed to by Puritans in 17th century, adopted in
American and French revolution
5.
Association with
French philosophes; travels to France to take part in Revolution—Rousseau
a)
ÒThis
was Rousseau's opinion respecting men: I extend it to womenÓ
C.
A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792), argues
that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because
they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as
rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. Instead of
viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage,
Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same
fundamental rights as men.
D.
Wollstonecraft
as Enlightenment rationalist
1.
Rejection of
traditions and religion and state
2.
Nature and
natural rights—John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson, Thomas Paine [The
Age of Reason]--revolutionary
3.
reason and morality and equality—Houyhnhounym/Utopia
values
4.
Optimism and meliorism: idea of progress
5.
Importance of education—will
improve society because basic scientific and humane principles will be realized
a)
Woolstonecraft
created a school for young children
6.
Didactic
literature—take the place of religious texts
a)
Criticize and improve and educate
E.
Wollstonecraft as
Romantic and tragic figure
1.
had rejected the sexual component of relationships in
the Rights of Woman, Imlay
awakened her passions and her interest in sex.[25] She soon became
pregnant, and on 14 May 1794 she gave birth to her first child,
2.
In May 1795 she
attempted to commit suicide, probably with laudanum, but Imlay
saved her life
3.
After two ill-fated affairs, Émarried the
philosopher William Godwin, [a revolutionary Enlightenment
philosopher]
a)
Godwin and Wollstonecraft's unique courtship É
eventually became a passionate love affair.[37]
b)
Once Wollstonecraft became pregnant, they decided
to marry so that their child would be legitimate.
c)
Godwin É had advocated the abolition of marriage
d)
After their marriage on 29 March 1797, they moved
into two adjoining houses, Éso that they could both still retain their
independence; they often communicated by letter.[40] By all accounts, theirs was a happy and stable,
though tragically brief, relationship.[41]
4.
her placenta broke apart during the birth and became infected; puerperal (childbed) fever was a common
and often fatal occurrence in the eighteenth century.[42] After several days of agony, Wollstonecraft died of
septicaemia on 10 September. at the age of thirty-eight, ten days after giving birth to
her second daughter, Her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein
II.
Pope: Essay on
Man [25 minutes]
A.
On Pope
(1688-1744)
1.
From the age of
12, he suffered Éa form of tuberculosis that affects
the bone, which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a
severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems
including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes, and abdominal
pain.[2] He grew to a
height of only 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in)
tall. Pope was already removed from society because he was Catholic; his poor
health only alienated him further. Although he never married, he had many
female friends to whom he wrote witty letters. Allegedly, his lifelong friend,
Martha Blount, was his lover.
2.
Around 1711,
Pope made friends with Tory writers John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who together formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. The aim of the
club was to satirise ignorance and pedantry in the
form of the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus
3.
Translated Homer
into rhymed English couplets and edited the works of Shakespeare
B.
Poetic Style
1.
Perfected heroic
couplet
2.
Essence of wittiness
and elegance—clincher every two lines; proverbs and clever sayings; aphorisms
a)
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
(1)
God creates Newton; Newton creates
light—parody of Genesis
(2)
The movement of the couplet: dark to light;
double surprise; at end, illumination and Enlightenment
3.
Poetry
not to express intimate, subjective movement of emotions—erotic or
spiritual, as in Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert or later Romantics—but to
deal with science and philosophy and to educate the reader
4.
Supposedly
straightforward and direct; but often sarcastic
C.
Enlightenment
Optimism
1.
On Nature and
Newton
a)
Nature as ultimate reality; science, based on
ignorance, is the way to know it
b)
Deism: Pope believed in the existence of a God who
had created, and who presided over, a physical Universe which functioned like a
vast clockwork mechanism governed by the laws of physics discovered by Newton
and others
a)
Joseph Wright: art celebrates
science rather than Biblical or Calssical
subjects--reveals its scientific subject: the demonstration the movement
of the planets around the Sun, and an explanation of eclipses of the Sun.
b)
Power of the Philosopher/scientist.
He resembles Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), who Òpresented the universe as an
ordered harmonious system governed by simple mathematical principles.Ó PopeÕs
epitaph:
(1)
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and
all was light.
c)
Those around the Philosopher are experiencing
Enlightenment, both physical and intellectual
2.
Essay on Man
1734 popularized optimistic
philosophy throughout
England and the rest of Europe.
a)
Voltaire called it "the most beautiful, the
most useful, the most sublime didactic poem ever written in any language".
(1)
Later satirized it in Candide 1757
3.
a rationalistic effort to use philosophy in order to
"vindicate the ways of God to man" (l.16), a variation of John Milton's claim in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, that he will
"justify the ways of God to men" (1.26).
a)
If man, using his Reason, could deduce the laws of
Nature, then it seemed only a short step to apply those laws to man and
society.
b)
Locke applied Newton's recently published
principles to psychology, economics, and political theory.
c)
The movement claimed the allegiance of a majority
of thinkers during the 17th and 18th centuries, a period that Thomas Paine
called the Age of Reason.
4.
This view of the
universe as an ordered, structured place was an aspect of the Neoclassical
emphasis on order, balance and structure which also
manifested itself in the arts, including poetry.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul ...
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou cannot see.
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear: Whatever is,
is right.
(1)
The Poetry: final couplet again moving from irresolution to
total completeness—error to truth; pride to wisdom; ultimate tautology:
Whatever is—all the confusion of experience—is right—perfect
unity and wholeness
D.
Enlightenment scepticism
1.
We cant know as Milton thought he could from reading and
interpreting it in the Bible—not manÕs disobedience and ChristÕs
redemption and the fall of Satan, etc.
a)
Then
say not manÕs imperfect, Heaven in fault;
Say rather manÕs as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measured to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.
b)
Go,
wiser thou! and, in thy scale
of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
Say, here He gives too little, there too much;
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, if manÕs unhappy, GodÕs unjust;
If man alone engross not HeavenÕs high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge His justice, be the God of God.
2.
the first verse paragraph of the second book, sets the
typical 18th century ironic tone, mixing idealism with skepticism
and wistfulness
a)
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much;
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself, abus'd or disabus'd;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all,
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.
(1)
Movement of the verse here is opposite of the previous: One
truth is clearÉ; from stability and order to chaos and
incomprehension
3.
Pope, like Swift
and many of their contemporaries saw a capacity in humanity to be rational and
virtuous, the two conditions converging with one another. But seeing that capacity, and feeling it
in themselves, put into high relief the discrepancy evident in human behavior
throughout history. And they both
saw the function of literature to point out these discrepancies in the hope
that people would be educated to improve.
