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RETHINKING FEMALE CHASTITY AND GENTLEWOMEN'S HONOUR IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2015

SOILE YLIVUORI
SOILE YLIVUORI*
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
*
Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, Unioninkatu 38 C, PO Box 59, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finlandsoile.ylivuori@helsinki.fi
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Abstract

Honour was a gendered phenomenon for the eighteenth-century English social elite; scholars have argued that for women, honour was mainly equated with chastity. By problematizing the concept of chastity as well as chastity's relation with women's social reputation, this article questions the widely adopted view of the crucial importance of female chastity for maintaining honour and social status. A critical examination of eighteenth-century discourses of feminine propriety shows that even though chastity was presented as an internal feminine feature, it was evaluated by external signs, making it less dependent on physical continence than on public display of purity. Chastity should thus be seen as a negotiable performative identity rather than a stable state of sexual virtue. Moreover, the relation between chastity and social reputation is more complex than hitherto supposed; even a public loss of chaste reputation did not necessarily lead to the social disgrace threatened by eighteenth-century writers, but could often be compensated through other performative means. The article concludes that not only was chastity's role in the construction of female honour ambiguous, female and male honour also resembled each other more than has been assumed, since they were both based on an external spectacle of proper honourable appearance.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 71 - 97
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I am very grateful to Lawrence E. Klein, Markku Peltonen, Anu Korhonen, and Anna Koivusalo, as well as to Phil Withington and the anonymous readers of the Historical Journal, for their comments and suggestions. This article was written with the support of the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the University of Helsinki.

References

1 Spectator, no. 591, 8 Sept. 1714 (2nd edn, 8 vols., London, 1712–15), viii, pp. 198–201.

2 Spectator, no. 99, 23 June 1711, ii, pp. 95–100.

3 Anthony Fletcher, Gender, sex and subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT, 1999), pp. 104, 377, ch. 6.

4 David M. Turner, Fashioning adultery: gender, sex and civility in England, 1660–1740 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 13–15. See also, for example, Anna Clark, ‘Whores and gossips: sexual reputation in London, 1770–1825’, in Arina Angerman et al., eds., Current issues in women's history (London, 1989), pp. 231–48; Amanda Vickery, The gentleman's daughter: women's lives in Georgian England (New Haven, CT, 1998), p. 6.

5 G. J. Barker-Benfield, The culture of sensibility: sex and society in eighteenth-century Britain (Chicago, IL, 1992), pp. 127, 288–9; Ingrid Tague, Women of quality: accepting and contesting ideals of femininity in England, 1690–1760 (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 30–5. Tague notes that the demand for female chastity was, in itself, nothing new; instead, what was new was the eighteenth-century view of women as naturally or innately chaste.

6 Walker, Garthine, ‘Expanding the boundaries of female honour in early modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1996), pp. 235–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On men's honour, see Fletcher, Gender, ch. 7. According to Fletcher, a gentleman's honour was ‘the essence of his reputation in the eyes of his social equals’ (Fletcher, Gender, p. 126).

7 Gowing, Laura, ‘Women, status and the popular culture of dishonour’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1996), pp. 225–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 226.

8 Dabhoiwala, Faramerz, ‘The construction of honour, reputation and status in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1996), pp. 201–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 208. See also Pollock, Linda A., ‘Honor, gender, and reconciliation in elite culture, 1570–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007), pp. 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 21–2, passim; Michael McKeon, The origins of the English novel, 1600–1740 (Baltimore, MD, 1987), pp. 157–8; Bernard Capp, When gossips meet: women, family and neighbourhood in modern England (Oxford, 2003), p. 253; Susan Dwyer Amussen, An ordered society: gender and class in early modern England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 119–20.

9 Jenny Davidson, Hypocrisy and the politics of politeness: manners and morals from Locke to Austen (Cambridge, 2004), ch. 3, passim.

10 Erving Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life (New York, NY, 1959), pp. 1–8, 22–30.

11 See, for example, Phil Withington, Society in early modern England: the vernacular origins of some powerful ideas (Cambridge and Malden, MA, 2010), pp. 175–80; Kathryn M. Moncrief and Kathryn Read McPherson, ‘“Shall I teach you to know?”: intersections of pedagogy, performance, and gender’, in Kathryn M. Moncrief and Kathryn Read McPherson, eds., Performing pedagogy in early modern England: gender, instruction and performance (Farnham, 2011), pp. 1–20, at pp. 1–6.

12 Laura Gowing, Domestic dangers: women, words, and sex in early modern London (Oxford, 1996), p. 28.

13 Robert B. Shoemaker, Gender in English society, 1650–1850: the emergence of separate spheres? (Harlow, 1998), p. 23.

14 Jane Austen, Pride and prejudice (1813) (Harmondsworth, 1994), p. 221.

15 Barker-Benfield, Culture of sensibility, pp. 288–9; Shoemaker, Robert B., ‘The taming of the duel: masculinity, honour and ritual violence in London, 1660–1800’, Historical Journal, 45 (2002), pp. 525–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 542, passim; McKeon, English novel, pp. 153–9.

16 Robert L. Oprisko gives a detailed account of honour's cultural and social aspects in his book Honor: a phenomenology (New York, NY, 2012), pp. 3–28, 40–61.

17 McKeon, English novel, p. 156; Barker-Benfield, Culture of sensibility, p. 289; Shoemaker, ‘Taming of the duel’, p. 542. Recent research has emphasized the importance of inner virtue and restraint to early modern honour, as well (see, for example, Pollock, ‘Honor’, pp. 9–16).

18 Markku Peltonen, The duel in early modern England: civility, politeness and honour (Cambridge, 2003), p. 10.

19 Samuel Johnson, A dictionary of the English language (2nd edn, London, 1755–6).

20 ‘Be she honour-flaw'd, I have three daughters; the eldest is eleven; If this prove true, they'll pay for't’ (The winter's tale); ‘She dwells so securely on the excellency of her honour, that the folly of my soul dares not present itself: she is too bright to be looked against’ (Merry wives of Windsor) (‘Honour’ in Johnson, Dictionary). Some scholars have noted that there was a (mainly Protestant) call for men's sexual purity, as well (Barker-Benfield, Culture of sensibility, p. 176). Sexual reputation also played various roles in men's honour, depending on their social standing, age, and company (Fletcher, Gender, pp. 83–98; Capp, Gossips, pp. 253–4). However, chastity was never presented as a defining part of gentlemanly honour; most scholars agree that there was a sexual ‘double standard’ that made men's sexual digressions far less incriminating than women's (Shoemaker, Gender in English society, p. 23; Gowing, Domestic dangers, pp. 2–4), and some claim that libertinism could even enhance a gentleman's reputation (Dabhoiwala, ‘Construction’, p. 205; Markku Kekäläinen, James Boswell's urban experience in eighteenth-century London (Helsinki, 2012), pp. 23–4).

21 Spectator, no. 99, 23 June 1711, ii, pp. 95–100. For a similar analogy between chastity and courage, see, for example, The polite lady: or, a course of female education: in a series of letters, from a mother to her daughter (London, 1760), p. 200.

22 John Bennett, Letters to a young lady, on a variety of useful and interesting subjects: calculated to improve the heart, to form the manners, and enlighten the understanding (2 vols., Warrington, 1789), ii, p. 44. The quotation is from Luke 14:34.

23 According to Peltonen, the possibility of a man regaining his lost honour was a contested subject (Peltonen, Duel, p. 35). However, it was presented as doable, whereas lost chastity was perceived as lost forever in the politeness discourse.

24 ‘Chastity’, in Johnson, Dictionary.

25 Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Fictions of modesty: women and courtship in the English novel (Chicago, IL, and London, 1991), p. 8.

26 See, for example, Philip Carter, Men and the emergence of polite society, Britain 1660–1800 (Harlow, 2001), pp. 76–7.

27 Tague, Women of quality, pp. 30–5. Laura Gowing touches on the same subject, noting that before around 1700, modesty was not regularly taken as a natural part of femininity, but a learned trait (Gowing, Laura, ‘“The manner of submission”: gender and demeanour in seventeenth-century London’, Cultural and Social History, 10 (2013), pp. 25–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 28).

28 For example, Hester Chapone (1777) and Hannah More (1799) rely heavily on religion, as well as nature, as the source and justification of the code of proper feminine behaviour in their conduct books.

29 Some scholars have timed the naturalization of chastity and politeness and the emergence of an essential self to the latter half of the eighteenth century (Dror Wahrman, The making of the modern self: identity and culture in eighteenth-century England (New Haven, CT, and London, 2004), pp. 7–8, passim; Linton, Marisa, ‘Virtue rewarded? Women and the politics of virtue in eighteenth-century France. Part ii’, History of European Ideas, 26 (2000), pp. 51–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 51). As Tague argues, it is, however, obvious that this development started already at the end of seventeenth century. For example, The ladies calling refers to female chastity as ‘an instinct of nature’ (The ladies calling (1673) (8th edn, Oxford, 1705), p. 16). Moreover, there was no abrupt change towards internalization, but, instead, both the internal and external view of polite identity remained influential throughout the eighteenth century (see, for example, Peltonen, Markku, ‘Politeness and whiggism, 1688–1732’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 391–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 394–5, passim).

30 Yeazell, Fictions of modesty, pp. 5–8.

31 John Gregory, A father's legacy to his daughters (1761) (6th edn, Dublin, 1774), p. 20.

32 The ladies calling, pp. 5–7, 17.

33 The polite lady, p. 225.

34 The ladies calling, p. 16.

35 Yeazell, Fictions of modesty, p. 5; Bernard Mandeville, A modest defense of the public stews: or, an essay upon whoring: written by a layman (London, 1724), p. 49.

36 Bernard Mandeville, The fable of the bees: or, private vices, publick benefits (1715/1729), ed. F. B. Kaye (2 vols., Oxford, 1924), i, pp. 142–3; Mandeville, Public stews, p. 41. See also Barker-Benfield, Culture of sensibility, p. 128.

37 Mandeville, Public stews, p. 52.

38 The polite lady, p. 225.

39 Ibid., p. 201.

40 John Essex, The young ladies conduct: or, rules for education, under several heads (London, 1722), p. 35.

41 Laura Gowing, Common bodies: women, touch and power in seventeenth-century England (New Haven, CT, 2003), pp. 204–5.

42 Thomas Laqueur, Making sex: body and gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 3–8, 152–4, passim. Laqueur's argument is that in early modern Europe, both men and women were thought in terms of one sex, of which women were an imperfect version. Gradually, somewhere between the seventeenth and nineteenth century, one-sex view of men's and women's essential similarity was replaced by a two-sex view of their essential incommensurability and a modern model of biological divergence of the sexes.

43 Hannah More, Essays on various subjects, principally designed for young ladies (London, 1777), title page, pp. 145, 78–9, 87–8; Hannah More, Strictures on the modern system of female education (2 vols., London, 1799), i, p. 142.

44 Goffman, Presentation of self, pp. 22–30.

45 The ladies calling, pp. 5–6.

46 Ibid., p. 161.

47 John Mullan, Sentiment and sociability: the language of feeling in the eighteenth century (Oxford, 1988), pp. 74, 112–13.

48 Richard Steele, The ladies library (1714) (7th edn, 3 vols., London, 1772), i, p. 134.

49 Fanny Burney, Evelina, or the history of a young lady's entrance into the world (1778), ed. Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom (Oxford, 1982), p. 333. See also Yeazell, Fictions of modesty, pp. 133–5.

50 John Burton, Lectures on female education and manners (2 vols., Rochester, 1793), i, pp. 212–13; The polite lady, p. 165.

51 Burton, Lectures, i, p. 149.

52 For example, Syrena, the heroine of Eliza Haywood's satire Anti-Pamela, uses the feigned signs of innocence to lure men ‘with a modest Blush, downcast Eyes, and all the Tokens of an Innocent Surprize (which she before had practised in her Glass)’ (Eliza Haywood, Anti-Pamela: or, feign'd innocence detected (London, 1741), p. 110).

53 Henry Fielding, An apology for the life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (London, 1741), p. 40.

54 James Fordyce, Sermons to young women (6th edn, 2 vols., London, 1766), i, pp. 29, 31.

55 Mary Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life (London, 1787), p. 30. On women's dissimulation, see also, for example, Fordyce, Sermons, i, p. 62; Burton, Lectures, ii, pp. 148, 158–9; More, Strictures, ii, p. 47.

56 On Pamela and hypocrisy, see Davidson, Hypocrisy, ch. 4.

57 Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness: moral discourse and cultural politics in early eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 78–9, 185–94; John Locke, Some thoughts concerning education (1693), ed. John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford, 1989), p. 126.

58 Phil Withington, ‘Honestas’, in Henry S. Turner, ed., Early modern theatricality (Oxford, 2013), pp. 516–33, at p. 532.

59 Peltonen, ‘Politeness and whiggism’, pp. 402–6.

60 The polite lady, p. 229.

61 On setting and reputation, see Klein, Lawrence E., ‘Politeness and the interpretation of the British eighteenth century’, Historical Journal, 45 (2002), pp. 869–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 877, 886–9.

62 Burton, Lectures, i, p. 200. See also Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, pp. 270–1.

63 The lady's companion: or, an infallible guide to the fair sex (4th edn, 2 vols., London, 1743), i, p. 14.

64 Peter Borsay, The English urban renaissance: culture and society in the provincial town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989), p. 150; Klein, ‘Interpretation’, pp. 886–8.

65 Fanny Burney, Camilla, or a picture of youth (1796) (Oxford, 1983), p. 444.

66 Burton, Lectures, i, p. 81.

67 Ibid., i, p. 215.

68 George Savile, marquis of Halifax, The lady's new year's gift: or, advice to a daughter (3rd edn, London, 1688), p. 100.

69 The ladies calling, pp. 30–1.

70 Hester Chapone, Letters on the improvement of the mind (1773) (new edn, London, 1777), p. 84; More, Strictures, ii, p. 39; Burney, Evelina, p. 164.

71 The polite lady, p. 229; Fordyce, Sermons, i, p. 55.

72 Davidson, Hypocrisy, p. 77; Mary Wollstonecraft, A vindication of the rights of woman (1792) (3rd edn, London, 1796), pp. 220–1, 308.

73 Wollstonecraft, Vindication, pp. 299–300, 317–18.

74 Ibid., p. 281.

75 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance self-fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (Chicago, IL, 1980), ch. 4; Amanda Bailey, Flaunting: style and the subversive male body in Renaissance England (Oxford, 2007), pp. 124–7; Karen Harvey, The little republic: masculinity and domestic authority in eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2012), pp. 130, 182–3.

76 Dabhoiwala, ‘Construction’, p. 213. See also Kent R. Lehnhof, ‘Acting virtuous: chastity, theatricality, and The tragedie of Mariam’, in Moncrief and McPherson, eds., Performing pedagogy, pp. 217–32.

77 Emma Major, Madam Britannia: women, church, and nation, 1712–1812 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 84–91, 161–5.

78 Yeazell, Fictions of modesty, p. 21; McKeon, English novel, p. 157. From this basis, McKeon claims that money was the reason for demanding chastity more systematically from elite women than from women of lower social status, since the inheritances of the lower ranks would have been considerably smaller.

79 Korhonen, Anu, ‘Disability humour in English jestbooks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, Cultural History, 3 (2014), pp. 27–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 34–5; Foyster, Elizabeth, ‘A laughing matter? Marital discord and gender control in seventeenth-century England’, Rural History, 1 (1993), pp. 5–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 7–9; Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous familiars: representations of domestic crime in England, 1550–1700 (Ithaca, NY, 1994), p. 75; Capp, Gossips, pp. 193–5, 232–3.

80 More, Essays, pp. 18–19; Burton, Lectures, i, p. 73.

81 The polite lady, p. 193.

82 Ibid., p. 193. This argument was supposedly influential, because a gentlewoman's whole life was often aimed at getting married, since they had few other means of providing for themselves.

83 Tague, Women of quality, pp. 33–4.

84 See, for example, The polite lady, pp. 195–8.

85 Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814) (London, 1994), p. 470. Sexual immorality was thought to be contagious and easily passed from woman to woman, especially between close relatives (Gowing, Domestic dangers, p. 99).

86 Gowing, Domestic dangers, p. 94.

87 Steele, Ladies library, i, p. 131.

88 Burton, Lectures, i, p. 211. Another illustrious example can be found in Pride and prejudice, where Lydia's shame dramatically lessens her sisters’ chances of decent matrimony. As Mr Collins graciously puts it: ‘This false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family?’ (Austen, Pride and prejudice, p. 227).

89 Burton, Lectures, i, p. 73.

90 Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, p. 228.

91 Spectator, no. 492, 24 Sept. 1712, vii, pp. 100–4.

92 Chesterfield to his son, 8 Jan. 1750, in Eugenia Stanhope, ed., Letters, written by the late right honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield, to his son (6th edn, 4 vols., London, 1775), ii, p. 317; Chestefield to his son, 14 Jan. 1751, in Stanhope, ed., Letters, iii, p. 101.

93 Steele, Ladies library, i, pp. 133–4.

94 Tague, Women of quality, pp. 178–82.

95 Klein, Lawrence E., ‘Sociability, politeness, and aristocratic self-formation in the life and career of the second earl of Shelburne’, Historical Journal, 55 (2012), pp. 653–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 659–60; Amanda Goodrich, Debating England's aristocracy in the 1790s: pamphlets, polemics and political ideas (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 5–8, 56–84; Jorge Arditi, A genealogy of manners: transformations of social relations in France and England from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century (Chicago, IL, 1998), pp. 1–17, 221–8.

96 Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator (1744–6) (6th edn, 4 vols., London, 1766), i, p. 246; Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, p. 36.

97 Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, p. 36.

98 David Hume, A treatise of human nature (1739–40), ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (2nd edn, Oxford, 1978), p. 152.

99 Abbé d'Ancourt, The lady's preceptor; or, a letter to a young lady of distinction upon politeness: taken from the French…and adapted to the religion, customs, and manners of the English nation (London, 1743), p. 46.

100 Steele, Ladies library, i, p. 128.

101 Fanny Burney to Charles Burney, 18 Apr. [1780], in Betty Rizzo, ed., The early journals and letters of Fanny Burney, iii: The Streatham years, part ii: 1780–1781 (Montreal and Kingston, London, and Ithaca, NY, 2003), p. 67.

102 Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, eds., A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, musicians, dancers, managers & other stage personnel in London, 1660–1800 (16 vols., Carbondale, IL, 1993), xvi, pp. 225–7.

103 Fanny Burney to Charles Burney [17 July 1782], in Lars E. Troide and Stewart J. Cooke, eds., The early journals and letters of Fanny Burney, v:1782–1783 (Montreal and Kingston, London, and Ithaca, NY, 2012), p. 77.

104 Henrietta Knight to Robert Knight, [1736], British Library (BL), Add. MS 45889, fos. 7–8, 9–10. See also Tague, Women of quality, pp. 180–1.

105 Kathleen M. Lynch, A Congreve gallery (Cambridge, MA, 1951), pp. 60–8.

106 Tague, Women of quality, p. 180.

107 Ibid., pp. 95, 180. Marisa Linton makes a similar argument concerning eighteenth-century France, claiming that, especially for the higher classes, a liaison was considered less shocking than flaunting it publicly (Linton, ‘Virtue rewarded?’, p. 43).

108 Horace Walpole, Reminiscences: written in 1788, for the amusement of Miss Mary and Miss Agnes B…y (London, 1819), p. 52.

109 Walpole, Reminiscences, p. 53.

110 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford and Elizabeth Goldring (4 vols., New Haven, CT, 1998), ii, p. 105; Horace Walpole to Mason, 8 Aug. 1780, in W. S. Lewis et al., eds., The Yale edition of Horace Walpole's correspondence (48 vols., London, 1937–83), xxix, pp. 72–3; Horace Walpole to John Pinkerton, 30 Sept. 1785, in ibid., Correspondence, xxvi, pp. 281–2.

111 Hannah Greig, The Beau monde: fashionable society in Georgian London (Oxford, 2013), p. 202.

112 Ibid., p. 200.