Category: WSG Seminars

Waiting Room opens at 5:45 p.m. for 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. (British Summer Time) Chair: Valerie Schutte

Our first seminar of the 2024–2025 season will now take place on Monday 14 October 2024. Please note the earlier start and finish time.

The seminar will take place on Zoom. 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

Our speakers are:

Marion Wynne-Davies: Isabella Whitney and London

This paper draws upon research for a longer study on how early modern women writers represented London in their literary works. It focuses specifically on Isabella Whitney and her “Her Will and Testament” that is part of A Sweet Nosegay (1573). The poem belongs to a long tradition of verse satire, however, the focus here will be on her representation of London. I am indebted to recent scholarship on the re-gendering of early modern European cites, as well as informative scholarship on Whitney herself. The paper builds upon these theories and criticisms to explore in detail her depictions of those parts of London related to shopping, in particular the spaces that provided food, clothes, medicines, wine and household items. Through a close analysis of the poem, I argue that Whitney depicts a re-gendered city that would have been recognisable to contemporary readers, especially women. Moreover, the details provided allow us to follow her map of London and to recreate it in the present day, finding more similarities than might at first be imagined.

Avantika Pokhriyal: The Sign of the Woman: Reading Spatial Negotiations in Betsy Thoughtless

Eliza Haywood was a woman of her time who was attuned to literary trends. Even beyond her canny commercialism, Haywood was deeply immersed in London’s artistic, social, and political spaces. She spent her entire career in London; effectively living and dying in the city. [1] Yet, she is hardly ever studied as a London writer. More often than not, that is a prerogative reserved of male writers from Ned Ward to Charles Dickens. Kathryn King, a modern-day biographer of Haywood, is one of the few critics who has acknowledged this aspect of Haywood’s life and writing and sees in Haywood an urban woman. [2] King nudges her readers towards “imagining Haywood’s place within both urban space and the emerging urban literary culture” (105).  Although King here is discussing Haywood’s stint as a publisher, this certainly extends to all aspects of Haywood’s multi-faceted career in London.

I argue that only did Haywood benefit from the urban development of London but also placed her heroines in this urban space. This paper will study The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751), which is largely set in London, as expressing the various aspects of women’s urban experiences. My aim is to show that Betsy Thoughtless is an example of, what Mark Hallett refers to as “narratives of urbanized mobility” (103). This means that it portrays different dimensions of what it means to move about in urban London as a woman in the eighteenth-century. These experiences range from the exhilarating and liberating to the dangerous and ruthless.

Through characters such as Betsy, Lady Mellasin, Flora, Miss Forward and Harriot, the novel explores a range of experiences of women in cities beyond the binary of the lady and the whore. These women are not so much locked in opposition with each other as on a sliding scale from where they force us to reconsider ideas about women in public spaces as seen in other contemporary representations of other urban mobility (such as Harlot’s Progress). Unlike Hogarth’s work, Betsy Thoughtless plays with the idea of the ‘fall’ of the ingénue in the city. More than once, the protagonist, Elizabeth, or Betsy as everyone calls her, comes dangerously close being ‘undone’ during her explorations in the city. But when we juxtapose these scenes with the violence Betsy later faces in domestic spaces and situations such as with Mr. Munden, her husband, or his patron, who makes improper sexual advances towards her, it begs the question if the urban is, in fact, the threat to women’s safety? Or, is the home possibly just as, or more unsafe? And while to narrator exposes Betsy vanity and impetuosity throughout the novel, she also never condemns her desire to explore the urban space around her and even goes so far as to nudge the reader to be more understanding towards the protagonist. [3] Thus, Betsy, however dangerously close she comes to it, always remains unharmed.

[1] According to Blouch, in “Eliza Haywood and the Romance of Obscurity”, Haywood lived in “New Peter Street, Westminster (now Chadwick Street)” when she passed away (544).

[2] It should be noted that King’s work is “the first full-length biographical treatment of its subject in nearly a century” (3).

[3] While in London, Betsy is a guest of Mr. Goodman, whose wife is given to urban excesses. Given this environment, the narrator argues that, “It cannot, therefore, seem strange, that Miss Betsy, to whom all these things were entirely new, should have her head turned with the promiscuous enjoyment, and the very power of reflection lost amidst the giddy whirl” (36-37)

Emily C. Cotton: Elite Women’s Agency in Marriage Negotiations, 1742-1788

This paper examines the female side of eighteenth-century elite marriage-brokering networks. I analyse how women could provide a range of services and perform a multitude of roles influencing a young woman’s marriage choice and negotiations. Sisters, female friends and relatives could serve as intermediaries, negotiators, advisors and social agents in bringing an aristocratic marriage into effect. By moving beyond the involvement of parents, it becomes clear from correspondence and diaries that both married and unmarried women felt a strong duty to concern themselves with a bride-to-be’s impending nuptials. This paper will demonstrate how many elite women participated in the social arena and managed dynastic fortunes, and as such found a way to exert power in the service of their families and friends. But such roles have gone unnoticed by historians, as the participation of such women in marriage choice and negotiations was widely accepted, and mostly welcomed by the young women in this study. A study of such participation serves to fill the gaps and flesh out the scanty references to ‘friend’ and ‘kin’ involvement in marriage brokering. The cooperation of a range of elite females, on acceptable terms, could have significant advantages for a young woman on the cusp of marriage.

For further information, please see our seminars page.  To join the WSG, please see our membership page.