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Announcement: Speaker Sessions, 2021-2022 Season

There will be six meetings: the first three, and the fifth, will be on Zoom, and it is hoped that we shall be using the Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, London, WC1N 1AZ, for the fourth and the sixth. We shall be allowed into the room (virtual or at the Foundling) at 12.30 pm., to give us time to sort out paperwork and technology, but sessions will run from 1.00 – 3.30 pm: please arrive a little early, whether virtually or in person, if you can. Papers should be 20-25 minutes.

Please be aware, you must be a member of the WSG to gain access to the Zoom sessions. The links are distributed through our WSG mailing list 24-hours before the event. Becoming a member means you will be able to attend the Zoom and in-person seminars for the 2021-2022 season. For more information please see our seminars page.

Saturday 25 September, 2021. (British Summer Time) Zoom.

Valerie Schutte. Anachronistic Representations of Edward Underhill

Helen Leighton-Rose. Women’s Subversion of the Scottish Church Courts 1707-1757

Matthew Reznicek. Healing The Nation: Women, Medicine, and the Romantic National Tale

Norena Shopland. Women Dressed as Men

Saturday 9 October, 2021. (British Summer Time) Zoom.

Charlotte MacKenzie. Mary Broad – the creation of a Cornish legend

Marissa C. Rhodes. Tender Trades: Wet Nursing and the Intimate Politics of Inequity in the Urban Atlantic, 1750-1815

Crystal Biggin. Editing Eighteenth-Century Letters: Anna Barbauld’s Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (1804) and Women Novel Critics

Saturday 27 November, 2021. (Greenwich Mean Time) Zoom.

Nora Crook. Mary Shelley as Nineteenth-century Female Editor

Amy Solomons. ‘A book is either the best treasure, or the greatest evil’: The Circulation and Readership of Conduct Literature in National Trust Libraries, 1680-1830.

Amy Prendergast. ‘a means of my doing better’: Eighteenth-Century Diary Writing as a Tool for Individual Improvement

Saturday 29 January, 2022. (Greenwich Mean Time) *This seminar will now take place on Zoom*

Phil Winterbottom. “By cash paid herself”: Women as clients of London’s banks from the Restoration to the 1780s

Brenda M. Hosington. Two Seventeenth-Century Women Translators of French Prose Fiction

Alannah Tomkins. “I helpt to nurse”: care work by Georgian spinsters, 1780-1820

Eliska Bujokova. Matrons, Housekeepers and Nurses: Food Provision and Power Relations in Glasgow’s Early Nineteenth c. Hospitals

Saturday 26 February, 2022. (Greenwich Mean Time) Zoom.

Brianna Robertson-Kirkland. The platonic vs the romantic relationship in the music room: Venanzio Rauzzini and Elizabeth Gooch

Yasmin Solomonescu. Women, Rhetoric, and Rhetorical Theory

Saturday 26 March, 2022. (Greenwich Mean Time) The Foundling Museum.

Sophie Johnson. History’s ‘other’ sculptors: The under-representation of historic women sculptors (1558 –1837) in the history of art

Charlotte Goodge. ‘Sedentary occupations ought chiefly to be followed by women’: The ‘Fat’ Woman and ‘Masculine’ Exercise in the Literary Culture of the ‘long’ Eighteenth Century.

Moira Goff, Independent Scholar. Evered Laguerre: a Female Professional Dancer on the London Stage

Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman. By Tabitha Kenlon. London and New York: Anthem Press. 2020. pp. 218. £80 (hardback). ISBN: 9781785273148.

Tabitha Kenlon’s ambitious, witty and well-written monograph, Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman, examines six centuries of conduct books and etiquette guides designed for women. A chronological exploration, each chapter homes in on the most popular conduct books published each century, though, as readers will discover, publishers repeatedly reprinted the same conduct books regardless of whether the advice was decades or even centuries old. As such, mothers, grandmothers, and even great-grandmothers could be reading (and expected to conform to) the same written advice over a fifty to one-hundred-year period. Kenlon states that while moral, religious, and social expectations adapted and changed over the centuries, advice given to women on how she should behave, how she should dress, and what was considered appropriate feminine behaviour remained disturbingly constant. Kenlon even makes parallels between advice as found in conduct books and modern tropes as seen and read in sitcoms, movies, plays, and novels as a deliberate reminder that female stereotypes have been deeply ingrained in Western European culture since the Middle Ages.

In the very first chapter, which examines two conduct manuals from the fourteenth century, Kenlon explains that women were expected to embody two opposing traits: a wife was to be submissive to her husband when he was present, but to also take over his duties in his absence, including managing a household, educating children, and giving orders. In Kenlon’s words, these texts ask that a woman be ‘both strong and submissive, intelligent and biddable, capable and helpless’ (p. 16).

By the sixteenth century, conduct manuals dwelled on a woman’s appearance, advising her to avoid ostentatious dress and gossip, less she be branded vain and outspoken. In the seventeenth century, women were encouraged to adopt self-reflection and to self-police their own behaviour. Silence and modesty were upheld as ideal feminine traits and those who failed to conform to the ideal were ‘scolded’ both legally and socially.

Until the eighteenth century, many writers justified their advice by referring to the Bible, and biblical stories. From the eighteenth century onwards, however, Kenlon shows that writers moved away from primarily religious justifications and instead focussed more on general morality. For centuries, girls and young women were advised to fix their attention on preparing for marriage and securing an acceptable husband. Once married, keeping her husband happy and having children was expected to sustain a woman until her dying breath. Of course, happiness is somewhat of a moving target. In previous centuries, submission and silence were the acceptable behaviours women needed to adopt, but in the eighteenth century, a husband desired a wife he could have a conversation with on different topics of interest. Of course, she could not be too outspoken or too controversial, but she should be able to converse enough that the couple developed companionship. As such, girls needed to be educated so they could engage in polite conversation. Kenlon’s description of eighteenth-century female education reminded me of the fairy tale, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. If a young woman did not receive an ample education, she was too boring. If she appeared too educated, she may become too outspoken. Striking a balance was the key.

I found Kenlon’s final chapter on self-help guides and other advice writing for women in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the most powerful but also the most disheartening. Many of these self-help guides repeat centuries-old advice: women should avoid being too loud, too brash, too outspoken, too sexy, too frigid, too put together, and too slovenly. Such advice is still very much part of present-day Western society.

Kenlon avoids discussing the LGBTQ+ perspective, even in her chapters on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I realise this may seem like a divergence for an already historically broad study, but it would be interesting to read Kenlon’s perspective on how advice writing speaks to the LGBTQ+ community. Indeed, a chapter that considers the LGBTQ+ perspective might make a nice addition if Kenlon were ever invited to produce a second edition of the book.

Overall, Conduct Books and the History of the Ideal Woman was a thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking read and a must for any student or scholar exploring gender history. This book is also available as an e-book and an audio book and, as such, is one of the first academic publications to take advantage of the audio book format. This is a much-needed development in academic book publishing, given that it makes books more accessible to a wider audience. I hope Kenlon’s determination to make the text available in multiple formats is adopted by others in future.

Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland/University of Glasgow

Send in your news!

Have you published a new book or article that members of our Women’s Studies Group (WSG) would be interested to read? Do you have information about a new call for papers, conferences, grants, jobs, seminars, or workshops that our WSG members might be interested to hear about and contribute to?

If so, please send your news to Sara Read who writes out monthly newsletter! The newsletter is sent to all WSG members at the beginning of each month and Sara is looking for content that would benefit our membership. Please email Sara your news no later than the 30th of the month or no later than the 28th/29th if it is February!). Her email is: S.L.Read@lboro.ac.uk.

Call for papers from the Women’s Studies Group: 1558-1837

The Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 is a small, informal, multidisciplinary group formed to promote women’s studies in the early modern period and the long eighteenth century. Established in the 1980s, the group has enabled those interested in women’s and gender studies to keep in touch, hear about one another’s research, meetings and publications, and meet regularly to discuss relevant topics. We organise regular meetings and an annual workshop (see membership application form) where members can meet and discuss women’s studies topics. We can also offer advice and opportunities to engage in activities that increase opportunities for publication, or enhance professional profiles in other ways. The WSG is open to men, women, and non-binary people, students, faculty, and independent scholars, all of whom are invited to join the group and give papers.

The group meets on Zoom at present, but it is hoped that we will be able to resume in-person meetings at the Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AZ, for the last two meetings of this series (January and March 2022). We will be allowed into the room at 12.30pm., to give us time to sort out paperwork and technology, but sessions will run from 1.00–3.30pm. So please arrive a little early, whether virtually or in person, if you can. Topics can be related to any aspect of women’s studies: not only women writers, but any activity of a woman or women in the period of our concern, or anything that affects or is affected by women in this period, such as the law, religion, etc. Male writers writing about women or male historical figures relevant to the condition of women in this period are also a potential topic. Papers tackling aspects of women’s studies within or alongside the wider histories of gender and sexuality are particularly welcome; so are topics from the early part of our period. We would also welcome how-to presentations for discussion: examples of suitable topics would include, but are not limited to, grant applications, setting up research networks, becoming a curator, co-authorship, using specialised data, and writing about images. Papers should be 20-25 minutes.

Dates of meetings:

Saturday September 25, 2021 (British Summer Time) – Zoom

Saturday October 9, 2021 (Greenwich Mean Time) – Zoom

Saturday November 27, 2021 (Greenwich Mean Time) – Zoom

Saturday January 29, 2022 (Greenwich Mean Time) – Possibly in-person at The Foundling

Saturday March 26, 2022 (Greenwich Mean Time) – Possibly in-person at The Foundling

Please reply to Carolyn D. Williams on cdwilliamslyle@aol.com