Women in a Mans World in Eliza Fenwicks Secresy :: literature eliza fenwick secresy gothic fiction

Women in a Mans WorldEliza Fenwicks SecresyIn examining how women fit into the mens adult male of the late eighteenth century, I studied Eliza Fenwicks novel Secresy and its treatment of women, oddly in terms of education. What I found to be most impinging in the novel is the clash between two very contrary approaches to the education of women. One of these, the traditional view, is amply expressed by kit and caboodle such as Jean-Jaques Rousseaus Emile, which states that women have a natural tendency toward fealty and therefore education should be geared to enhance these qualities (Rousseau, pp. 370, 382, 366). Dr. John Gregorys A Fathers Legacy to His Daughters also belongs to this school of thought, stating that wit is a womans most vulnerable talent and is best kept a well-guarded secret so as not to excite the jealousy of others (Gregory, p. 15). This view, which sees women as morally and expertly inferior, is expressed in the novel in the character of Mr. Valmont, who incarcerates his orphaned niece in a remote part of his castle. He asserts that he has determined her lot in life and that her only duty is to obey him without reserve or word of honor (Fenwick, p.55). This oppressive view of education served to keep women subservient by property them in an ignorant, child-like state. By denying them access to true wisdom and the right to think, women were cut down to the position of a timid, docile slave, whose thoughts, will, passions, wishes, should have no standard of their own, unless rise, or change or die as the will of the original should require (Fenwick, 156).Opposing this view is the radical, or feminist, version of education, echoed in the working of such authors as Mary Wollstonecraft and Hester Chapone. Chapone, a member of the feminist bluestockings, writes in her Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young chick that young girls should seize every opportunity of improvement through the theater of those person s, and those books, from which you can learn true wisdom. In her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft presents the judgement that women could be on par with men if they were given an equal education. This belief is clearly expressed in the character of Sibella Valmont, Mr. Valmonts niece, who at one forecast tells her learned friend, Caroline Ashburn I feel within the vivifying principle of intellectual life.