A Neutral Being Between the Sexes: Samuel Johnson's Sexual PoliticsSamuel Johnson's image in the popular imagination - that of a swaggering misogynist, a denigrator of women and their abilities - is based largely on frequently repeated quotations gleaned from Boswell's famous Life. By contrast, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many women intellectuals who were familiar with Johnson's works considered him a champion of women, an able defender in the ongoing debate about female nature and ability that had been going on since the middle ages, the querelle des femmes. In this study, Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer reclaims this earlier image of Johnson as a strong advocate of women's education, full participation in intellectual life, and full equality with men for the happiness of all society. Set in the context of gender expectations and prejudices in the eighteenth century, Kemmerer's work illuminates Johnson's contribution to the debate that still rages over whether men or women are more responsible for making life miserable. Johnson's ultimate answer is that the errors and expectations of both sexes play a large part, but that eliminating stereotypes and fostering a spirit of cooperation and respect between men and women would make life much more pleasant for all. |
Contents
| 23 | |
Must then Ambitions votaries break the bonds of nature? Sexual Politics in Irene | 38 |
A neutral being between the sexes Rhetorical Strategy in The Rambler | 59 |
To write like a woman Female Personae in The Rambler | 78 |
The endearing elegance of female friendship Equality and Sexual Difference in Rasselas | 93 |
When was powr beneficent in vain? | 116 |
Notes | 122 |
| 143 | |
| 153 | |
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androgyny argues Aspasia Astronomer Astronomer's Bathsua Makin beauty Boswell Boswell's Cali century Chapter cited parenthetically Clarendon Press condemn context conversation courtesy literature critics Culture daughter Demetrius discussion eighteenth eighteenth-century Eliza Haywood Elizabeth Carter emotional English epigraph equal Euphelia example experience female characters female personae feminine Feminist fictional Fontenelle's friendship gender happiness Haven Haywood human husband ideas imagine Imlac intellectual Irene Irene's John Johnson implies Johnson says Lady learning letter Mahomet male characters marriage marry Mary Astell masculine mind Misogyny moral agency Mustapha nature Nekayah novel Oxford passion Pekuah Plato play Poets psychological androgyny querelle Rambler Rambler 18 Rambler persona rape Rasselas Rasselas's rationality reader reading relationship Republic Rhetoric Samuel Johnson seraglio sexes sexual politics shows society Socrates son's speaking stereotypes Subsequent references tion translation tyranny unhappy virtue virtuous wife woman women writing Yale Edition Yale University Yale University Press York
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Page 13 - I could not find words to express what I felt upon this unexpected and very great mark of his affectionate regard. Next day, Sunday, July 31, I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. JOHNSON. " Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well ; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
Page 26 - ... friendship, that among the multitudes whom vanity or curiosity, civility or veneration, crowded about him, he did not expect, that very spacious apartments would be necessary to contain all that should regard him with sincere kindness, or adhere to him with steady fidelity. So many qualities are indeed requisite to the possibility of friendship, and so many accidents must concur to its rise and its continuance, that the greatest part of mankind content themselves without it, and supply its place...