Jane Austen Society of Australia

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Pride & Prejudice Study Day, 2002
What can a woman do?

Conduct book advice for young females and married ladies can be used as a starting point to consider what female characters in Pride and Prejudice actually want to achieve and how they go about it. In general, conduct books of the period emphasise that women are always dependent on men. They should be, (or seem to be, as some recommend) meek, submissive, grateful, gentle, delicate, modest, feminine, ignorant (of anything important) and virtuous. Well known conduct books were:

~ 1762 Jean Jacques Rousseau Emile

~ 1767 James Fordyce Sermons to Young Women (Mr Colllins tries to read some to the Bennet girls but is rudely interrupted by Lydia, end of Ch 14)

~ 1774 Dr John Gregory A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters

Mary Wollstonecraft saw these books as insulting to women and in 1792 wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

Some bon mots from...

Jean Jacques Rousseau

On being weak and passive: ‘they affect to be incapable of lifting the smallest burdens, and would blush to be thought robust and strong’

On mutual dependence: ‘We could subsist better without them than they without us’

On submission: ‘They must be subject all their lives to the most constant and severe restraint, which is that of decorum. It is therefore necessary to accustom them early to such confinement, that it may not afterwards cost them too dear; and to the suppression of their caprices, that they may the more readily submit to the will of others.’

On being pleasing to men: ‘girls ... are fonder of things of show and ornaments ... from whence we see their taste plainly adapted to their destination ... almost all of them learn with reluctance to read and write; but readily apply themselves to the use of their needles.’

‘I would have a young Englishwoman cultivate her agreeable talents, in order to please her future husband, with as much care and assiduity as a young Cireassian cultivates hers to fit her for the harem of an Eastern bashaw.’

On education: ‘the education of women should always be subject to men. To please us, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young and take care of us when grown up...’

James Fordyce

On being weak and passive: ... in your sex manly exercises are never graceful ... a tone and figure of the masculine kind are always forbidding ... men of sensibility desire in every woman soft features ... a form not robust and demeanour delicate and gentle ... Nature appears to have formed the (mental) faculties of your sex, for the most part, with less vigour than those of ours, observing the same distinction here as in the more delicate frame of your bodies.’

On submission to neglect: ‘1 am astonished at the folly of many women who are still reproaching their husbands for leaving them alone, for preferring this or that company to theirs, when, to speak the truth, they have themselves in a great measure to blame.

... had you behaved to them with more respectful observance ... studying their humours, overlooking their mistakes, submitting to their opinions in matters indifferent, ... giving soft answers to hasty words, complaining as seldom as possible ... your house might be the abode of domestic bliss.’

On education: ‘As a small amount of knowledge entertains in a woman, so from a woman ... a small expression of kindness delights, particularly if she has beauty!’

On being pleasing to men: ‘Never perhaps does a fine woman strike more deeply than when composed into pious recollection ... she assumes without knowing it superior dignity and new graces ... the beauties of holiness seem to radiate about her.’

Dr John Gregory

On being ignorant: ‘Be ever cautious in displaying your good sense. It will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company. But if you have any learning, keep it a profound secret especially from the men, who generally look with a jealous and malignant eye on a woman of great parts and a cultivated understanding.’

On being pleasing to men: ‘When a girl ceases to blush, she has lost the most powerful charm of beauty.

The men will complain of your reserve. They will assure you that a franker behaviour would make you more amiable. But, trust me, they are not sincere when they tell you so. 1 acknowledge that on some occasions it might render you more agreeable as companions, but it would make you less amiable as women; an important distinction, which many of your sex are unaware of.’

On reserve and modesty: ‘One of the chief beauties in a female character is that modest reserve, that retiring delicacy, which avoids the public eye ...’

On concealing one’s love: ‘Violent love cannot subsist, at least cannot be expressed, for any time together, on both sides, otherwise the certain consequence however concealed, is satiety and disgust.’

Mary Wollstonecraft on conduct book advice

‘Everything that women see or hear serves to fix impressions, call forth emotions and associate ideas that give a sexual character to the mind. False notions of beauty and delicacy stop the growth of their limbs and produce a sickly soreness rather than a delicacy ... women perceive that it is only through their address to excite emotions in men, that pleasure and power are to be obtained. Besides, the books professionally written for their instruction, which make the first impression on their minds, all inculcate the same opinions.’

‘Pleasure is the business of a woman’s life, according to the present modification of society; and while it continues to be so, little can be expected from such weak things ... Regard for reputation, independent of it being one of the natural rewards of virtue took its rise from ... the grand source of female depravity, the impossibility of regaining respectability from a return to virtue, though men preserve theirs during the indulgence of vice.’

‘... I am persuaded that in the pursuit of knowledge women would never be insulted by sensible men, and rarely by men of any description, if they did not by mock modesty remind them that they were women ... Men are not always men in the company of women, nor would women always remember they are women, if they were allowed to acquire more understanding.’

NB Wollstonecraft sees true modesty as ‘purity of mind’, rather than regulation of behaviour, and that it is achieved by cultivating the understanding.

Bertha McKenzie

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22 September 2002

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