Chapter 2 ‘[T]he gay part of reading’: corruption through reading?

‘[B]ooks of education and piety’

Two common assumptions underlie Cavendish’s and Manley’s negotiation of what reading is appropriate for young women’s education and pastime, and what consequences reading inappropriate texts may have. Firstly, as du Bosc elaborates, that reading is morally affective and hence potentially dangerous or beneficial to a person.⁴ Secondly, that young and/or female readers are especially vulnerable to the influence of reading because ‘the Brains of Children are both hot and moist; … their Softness doth not only make all things to be easily Imprinted, but the Images also of all sensible Objects to be here very fresh and strong’.⁵ It comes as no surprise, then, that the reading primarily recommended for women in the period can be summed up with Manley’s phrase, ‘books of education and piety’.⁶

The common assumptions outlined above are also addressed in prefaces, which frequently aim to market texts as wholesome for readers and negotiate what genres may be more or less likely to benefit or harm readers. Thus Cavendish specifies in the opening paragraph of ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’ that: ‘In this following tale or discourse, my endeavour was to show young women the danger of travelling without their parents, husbands or particular friends to guard them; for though virtue is a good guard: yet it doth not always protect their persons, without human assistance.’⁷ Cavendish refrains from determining the genre of her text, avoiding the problematic designation ‘romance’, although romance is of course the genre that features extensive travelling and virtuous damsels in distress. Instead, Cavendish stresses the text’s conservative didactic aim, presenting it as a warning of the danger of rape in the tradition of an exemplum authorised by a Bible episode, but certainly not as an entertaining ‘tale’ (p. 47). Cavendish’s opening hence indirectly endorses the assumptions about the effect of reading mentioned above while trying to evade du Bosc’s censure of the type of pernicious books he labels ‘Romans’ in the French original,⁸ translated as ‘looser Pamphlets’ in 1639 and ‘Romances’ in 1692.⁹

Manley’s New Atalantis likewise seems to subscribe to normative assumptions about reading judging by the double reading programme for young women it presents in the story of Charlot: the first programme for a virtuous education, the second for seduction.¹⁰ Charlot’s guardian initially intends her ‘to be educated in the high road to applause and virtue’ (p. 30):

He banished far from her conversation whatever would not edify, airy romances, plays, dangerous novels, loose and insinuating poetry, artificial introductions of love, well-painted landscapes of that dangerous poison. Her diversions were always among the sort that were most innocent and simple, such as walking, but not in public assemblies: music, in airs all divine: reading and improving books of education and piety. (p. 30)

The list of genres that a young woman should or should not read is conventional. Fiction in the form of romance, plays and novels, and all art to do with love, are out of the question because they are corrupting and ‘dangerous’. The only books allowed are educational and pious ones that ‘edify’ and ‘improv[e]’ a young woman.

This reading programme, whose effects I will discuss below, resembles the advice found in conduct books like Robert Codrington’s, published in 1664, where we read of young women’s education that:

In the first place they are to read Books of Piety, which may inflame their hearts with the love of God; and in this all the faculties of their Memory, Imagination, and of their Reason are continually to be exercised; it cannot be imagined how much this Impression prevaileth even to the conquering of Nature it self, for this will preserve their souls from the contagion and corruption of the world.¹¹

Fifty years later, George Hickes even provides an extended list of titles that he recommends for women’s reading,¹² in which over two-thirds of the roughly thirty titles are religious, five conduct books and the remaining works focus on morals, the art of conversation and friendship, as well as including, for the ‘curious’, ‘the best Histories and Memoirs’.¹³ By contrast, only ‘some select Profane Authors, that have nothing dangerous in them for the Passions’ are advisable, which ideally should ‘give them [young women] a distaste of most Plays and Romances’.¹⁴ Hence, histories are preferable to romances, and moral philosophy is likewise acceptable, whereas caution is needed regarding ‘Eloquence and Poetry’ as well as ‘Musick and Painting’, all liable to ‘confoun[d] quick and spritely Imaginations too much’ and especially ‘dangerous’ if ‘giv[ing] a sense of Love’ in a ‘polish’d and wrapt up’ fashion.¹⁵ Hence the necessity to ‘give an orderly Course’ to young women’s education along the lines of the educational programme designed by Charlot’s guardian since ‘Prohibition, will but increase the Passion’ and ‘Musick and Poetry, so they be but Christian, would be the greatest of all Helps, to disrelish all Profane Pleasures.’¹⁶

While these general ideas about a young woman’s ideal reading programme are reprinted in one conduct book after another, with passages travelling almost verbatim from translations of du Bosc’s Honneste Femme into the early eighteenth century, some conduct books also intimate what studies of early modern women’s libraries have confirmed,¹⁷ namely that female readers did not necessarily restrict themselves to ‘books of education and piety’. Thus, Codrington’s The Second Part of Youths Behaviour reiterates du Bosc’s condemnation of ‘looser Pamphlets’, but defines them as ‘idle Songs and Ballads’ that are to be forbidden.¹⁸ He criticises ‘Ladies who learn by heart the Tales of Parismus, or Amadis de Gaule’ instead of studying histories,¹⁹ yet elsewhere claims that concerning romances, ‘the most received opinion is, that such Romances that are of a serious, generous, and of a noble Subject, are not only to be permitted, but to be preferred to their observance’, singling out Gaultier de Coste, seigneur de La Calprenède’s Cassandra and the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney.²⁰ Moreover, for Codrington even ‘going to Stage-playes’ is acceptable, though they ‘are by divers accounted worse than vanity’, as long as women make ‘moderate use’ of this liberty and refrain from ‘daily frequenting’, which is ‘much to be condemned’.²¹

Analyses of extant records on early modern women’s book ownership and reading show that although all women’s libraries, as far as they are recoverable, contained a substantial number of devotional and religious books,²² they also regularly contained works of other genres, such as herbals, medicinal texts, ‘work books’ (that is, pattern books), conduct books, plays, romances, histories and political treatises.²³ Compared to sixteenth-century collections, the libraries of women in the seventeenth century seem to have grown in size, which generally also entails a greater variety of works.²⁴ Thus, among Cavendish’s contemporaries, Frances Wolfreston (1607–76) owned a large collection of devotional and theological books, but also romances and plays,²⁵ and Elizabeth Pepys (1640–69) owned a book closet of her own containing several romances in folio that she read and enjoyed, and which served as objects of prestige to be displayed to friends.²⁶

‘[G]ive me play-books, or mathematical ones’

It is against this background of conflicting convictions, admonishments and realities that Cavendish’s female protagonist in ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’ outlines a rather different ideal reading programme for young women. The scene is surprising in more than one respect. First, the reading programme is not simply imposed by an authoritative figure but negotiated by the heroine herself. This is potentially problematic, since it runs counter to the assumption that young women themselves cannot know what is good for them – or, as Manley puts it in relation to Charlot’s ‘disgust’ at being ‘denied the gay part of reading’, ‘’Tis natural for young people to choose the diverting before the instructive’ (p. 35). In addition to detailing what women should or should not read, conduct books therefore routinely state that someone ‘wise and vertuous’ should choose their reading material for them.²⁷ However, Cavendish’s heroine does not conform to this stereotypical view of ‘young people’, but chooses ‘the instructive’ over ‘the diverting’. Indeed, she echoes conduct books, insisting that she only desires to receive books ‘if they were good ones’, because otherwise ‘they are like impertinent persons, that displease more by their vain talk, than they delight with their company’ (p. 54). By likening books to interlocutors, Cavendish’s protagonist recalls the reiterated argument in conduct books that reading is useful to improve one’s conversational skills, an asset in educated women that is widely valued.²⁸ Still in conduct-book style, she proceeds to give reasons for her preferences, some of which correspond to common assumptions, whereas others challenge received ideas. Thus, in accordance with conduct-book tradition, she claims that ‘romances’ ‘in youth … beget wanton desires, and amorous affections’ (p. 54) and rejects Philip Sidney’s famous claim that even a questionable text like the romance of Amadis may inspire readers to more virtuous behaviour.²⁹ Her subsequent justification, however, is diametrically opposed to du Bosc’s image of the insidious poisonous influence of romance’s wicked aspects, as she states instead that romances ‘extoll virtue so much as begets an envy, in those that have it not, and know, they cannot attain unto that perfection’ (p. 54).³⁰ Cavendish’s heroine, who initially seems to intone conduct-book discourse, turns out to show equal irreverence to other standard affirmations of the genre, condemning for example histories, which du Bosc propagates as a preferable choice to romances.³¹ Indeed, the protagonist rejects all genres but two, as the following overview of her arguments in form of a table shows (pp. 54–5).

Cavendish’s heroine justifies her evaluation of genres with the same motivations conduct books put forward, namely piety and usefulness, but instead of Codrington’s ‘Books of Piety’ and the practical household books like herbals, pattern or conduct books, she singles out ‘play-books’ and ‘mathematical’ ones as the only acceptable genres to help her lead a ‘pious’ life and understand other ‘useful and pleasant’ arts, and even ‘the works of Nature’ (p. 55).

This stance is clearly informed by the lived experience of the Civil War and contemporary developments in the sciences, and it is also not entirely disinterested. Cavendish implies that in the wake of Civil War propaganda and conflicting accounts of the war and the roles played by statesmen like, for example, Cavendish’s husband, histories can no longer be read as truthful and straightforward educational works because they are inherently skewed, due either to having been written after the events or to being informed by party politics.³² Cavendish was not alone in her critical stance towards histories, as ironically shown by the mocking remarks of Samuel Pepys on Cavendish’s account of her husband’s deeds in the Civil War.³³ Cavendish’s heroine also seems to pick up on, or perhaps foretell, the development of contemporary opinions with her positive characterisation of plays as educational source material for the study of human nature.³⁴ As mentioned above, Codrington’s 1664 conduct book condones moderate play-going, a judgement that is reiterated in Hannah Woolley’s widely read Gentlewomans Companion (1673).³⁵ Yet, considering that Cavendish published her own plays in 1662, six years after ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’, the protagonist’s praise of plays is perhaps not innocent, and it also seems intriguing that in his section ‘Of Learned Ladies and Gentlewomen’ Codrington singles out ‘that great Mirrour of her Sex, and of our Age, the Marchioness of Newcastle’ as the example of present ‘Ladies’ who ‘do so excell in Knowledge, as it is much to be lamented, that the tyranny of Custome hath hindered many of them from publishing their Works’, adding that, by contrast, Cavendish ‘is only happy, by leaving the benefit of her Writings to Posterity’.³⁶ Whether or not Cavendish’s and Codrington’s propagation of plays’ usefulness is a concerted effort rather than a coincidence, it is taken up in later conduct discourse as evidenced by an Essay in Defence of the Female Sex from the end of the century, which describes ‘Theaters’ as ‘the best Schools in the World of Wit, Humanity, and Manners’.³⁷

Finally, the focus on scientific study in the heroine’s reading programme can be read in relation to Cavendish’s real-life aspiration to enter the exclusive male domain of the natural sciences.³⁸ It could, however, also respond to a minority strand in the discourse on female education, advocating that (elite) women should also be taught subjects usually reserved for men. In her treatise published originally in Latin (1638, revised 1641) and later in French (1646) and English (1659), the Dutch Anna von Schurman argues ‘all honest Discipline, … the Circle and Crown of liberal Arts and Sciences (as the proper and universal Good and Ornament of Mankind) to be convenient for the Head of our Christian Maid’.³⁹ Schurman thereby privileges ‘All which may advance to the more facile and full understanding of Holy Scripture’, as opposed to sciences like ‘Mathematicks’, which she classifies as ‘pretty Ornaments and ingenious Recreations’.⁴⁰ Schurman’s ideas were taken up by Bathsua Makin, who in her defence of women’s education insisted that: ‘The whole Encyclopedeia of Learning may be useful some way or other to’ women, including ‘Mathematicks’.⁴¹ Cavendish’s protagonist employs similar arguments, portraying mathematical works as conducive to leading a pious life, but in contrast to Schurman’s encompassing view of education, she is decidedly radical in her rejection of all theoretical speculation, be it based on philosophy, logic or religious faith. Thus, as with mainstream conduct-book discourse, Cavendish’s heroine endorses some of Schurman’s ideas while at the same time introducing far more subversive ones.⁴²

The usefulness of the protagonist’s reading programme, in line with Makin’s justification of female education, is borne out by her further adventures in the text. As she in turn takes on the roles of a shipmaster’s adopted son, a godly emissary and an army general, she needs knowledge of ‘navigation, fortification, water-works, fire-works, all engines, instruments, wheels and many such like’ (p. 55); in other words, knowledge of applied ‘arts’ based on mathematics. Furthermore, she constantly needs to turn dangerous situations to her favour by manipulating, convincing and encouraging other people, which presupposes the kind of knowledge of human nature and different characters that can be gained from plays, according to the heroine. The heroine’s success legitimates not only her choice of reading, but indirectly also her potentially problematic self-determination.

However, whereas the plot of Cavendish’s narrative vindicates the heroine’s generic preferences, matters become less clear-cut if one considers the genre of the text in which she herself is emplotted. The narrative, with its adventures, travel and focus on virtue, clearly partakes of the romance genre; that is, the very first genre the protagonist rejects – and also the very first genre she is offered by her guardian, who would like to make her amenable to the Prince’s advances.⁴³ Moreover, the heroine’s character corresponds perfectly to the romance protagonist of exaggerated virtue, and her experiences are full of potentially ‘ridiculous’ ‘impossibilities’, in addition to the text’s repeated representation of ‘wanton desires, and amorous affections’ in the figure of the Prince pursuing the heroine. The heroine’s arguments against romance and for mathematics thus take themselves the form of romance, begging the question of how we should interpret this circumstance. Why does Cavendish have recourse to romance conventions although she famously (and not quite truthfully, one assumes) declines reading romance?⁴⁴ Did she choose the romance genre on purpose because of its continued popularity despite conduct-book condemnations, the better to smuggle in her own ideas concerning reading and to make them more palatable through the very genre she seeks to overcome?⁴⁵ Or does her choice of genre slyly undercut the heroine’s self-determined education and contingent aspirations, exposing her reading programme as an idealised fantasy or signifying that even with all this acquired knowledge upper-class women cannot escape the romance world and its traditional conclusion, matrimony? The text gives no indication of how to resolve the contradiction of subscribing to traditional ideas about young women’s reading by denigrating romance as an inappropriate genre while at the same time proposing a radical alternative reading programme in the form of a romance-like text. Cavendish’s narrative is thus simultaneously daring in its proposals for women’s reading and potentially undermining its claims on a meta-poetic level through its very form, making it difficult to ascertain to what extent the proposed reading programme expresses Cavendish’s views on what women should or should not read.

‘[T]he gay part of reading’

Manley’s treatment of women’s reading is likewise conflicted, appearing to uphold traditional ideas concerning reading, while undercutting them within the narrative. As already seen, the first reading programme for young women proposed by the narrative is traditional, and it meets with success as Charlot turns into a virtuous and innocent young woman. Her guardian the Duke then falls in love with her and, in order to possess her, decides to corrupt and seduce her. He therefore ‘presented her with the key’ to his library, containing ‘a collection of the most valuable authors, with a mixture of the most amorous’, and initiates her new reading programme by handing her ‘an Ovid, and opening it just at the love of Myrra for her father’ (p. 35). The success of the Duke’s stratagem is immediate, affecting Charlot emotionally and making her receptive to his kisses (pp. 35–6). The Duke then ‘recommended to her reading the most dangerous books of love – Ovid, Petrarch, Tibullus’ and ‘left her such [books] as explained the nature, manners and raptures of enjoyment’ (p. 37). The allegorical figure Intelligence is emphatic in her condemnation of such reading matter for young women, insisting that: ‘There are books dangerous to the community of mankind, abominable for virgins, and destructive to youth; such as explain the mysteries of nature, the congregated pleasures of Venus, the full delight of mutual lovers and which rather ought to pass the fire than the press’ (p. 37).

The statement seems an obvious echo of du Bosc’s condemnation of books that ‘verily deserve not to be put to light, unles [sic] that of the fire, and whose impression rather then [sic] the reading were to be hindred’.⁴⁶ This idea, which is repeated by Codrington,⁴⁷ appears in conjunction with the equally reiterated notion that women should not aspire to read a great number of works, but should restrict themselves to a few ‘pleasing and profitable’ ones, since ‘one sole booke when it is good, may serve for a great Library’.⁴⁸ Manley’s narrative seems to refer to this notion as well, as it repeatedly stresses the problematic lack of control over Charlot’s ‘indefatigable’ reading once she is granted access to the Duke’s library and ‘Whole nights were wasted by her in that gallery’ (p. 37). Hence Charlot’s second reading programme is just as traditional as her first, in that it constitutes the specifically inappropriate reading programme for young women. Moreover, unlike Cavendish’s heroine, Charlot corresponds to the typical young and ‘curious’ reader, as she eagerly pursues her new studies and gives herself over to ‘the gay part of reading’ (p. 35).

However, Charlot’s story does not stop there. Despite her improper reading, she does not turn into a loose woman, and the Duke, though succeeding in making her fall for him, does not immediately gain his ends. When Charlot first allows his kisses, the Duke decides to ‘steal himself into her soul’ rather than to ‘rush upon the possession of the fair’ (p. 37), only to find himself caught at his own game. When they meet again:

Charlot by this time had informed her self [sic] that there were such terrible things as perfidy and inconstancy in mankind, that even the very favours they received often disgusted, and that to be entirely happy one ought never to think of the faithless sex.…

She had learnt to manage the Duke and to distrust herself. She would no more permit of kisses, that sweet and dangerous commerce. The Duke had made her wise at his own cost and vainly languished for a repetition of delight. (p. 38)

In contrast to her explicit condemnation of ‘dangerous reading’, the narrating voice of Intelligence does not emphasise the connection between Charlot’s inappropriate reading and her valuable gain of knowledge, but instead merely states it matter-of-factly: ‘The Duke had made her wise at his own cost’ (p. 38). Yet considering the foregoing insight readers are given into the Duke’s selfish motivations and desires, it seems clear that this wisdom, however inappropriately acquired, is far more useful and necessary to Charlot than her original reading education, which leaves her a vulnerable object of desire. Unfortunately for Charlot, her ‘distrust’ still does not go far enough, so that the Duke eventually manages to rape her and thus to deprive her of her temporary agency and bargaining power.

As part of her scandalous roman à clef, Manley’s sordid tale of Charlot’s depravation by her guardian of course aims to slur the reputation of the Duke’s real-life counterpart, the Dutch Hans Willem Bentinck, first Earl of Portland (cf. p. 273, n. 74). Beyond this party-political attack, however, the episode reflects critically on the education of women through reading programmes which, for better or for worse, are imposed on women by men to turn them into objects of their liking rather than truly to educate them. Only when it is already too late does a court lady attempt to equip Charlot with an alternative historical ‘conduct book’ for dealing with the Duke by making ‘her read the history of Roxelana who, by her wise address brought an imperious sultan, … to divide with her the royal throne’ (p. 41). Like Cavendish, Manley does not question the affective power of reading, but the episode’s meta-poetic reflection on The New Atalantis as a whole is less conflicted – if perhaps more subversive – than in Cavendish’s case. The New Atalantis with its liberal and at times detailed graphic depiction of sexual affairs certainly falls into the category of ‘dangerous’ rather than ‘pious’ reading material. Yet the episode implies that in an age of general depravity, such doubtful reading may be more useful and empowering than the aspiration to innocence and virtue.⁴⁹ Manley’s narrative thus offers an extreme illustration of Pierre Daniel Huet’s affirmation in his influential Traité de l’origine des romans (1670), translated into English in 1672, ‘that it is even in some sort necessary, that the young persons of the World should be acquainted with this passion [i.e., love], that they may stop their ears to that which is criminal, and be better enabled to deal with its artifices’ because ‘such as are least acquainted with Love, are most obnoxious to it; and the most ignorant are the soonest Duped’.⁵⁰

Conclusion

Both of the fictional episodes on women’s reading programmes discussed above occur early on in the respective narratives. In the case of Manley this means near the beginning of her roman à clef. In Cavendish’s volume of poems and tales Ntures Pictures, the narrative ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’ occupies a central position in the work (pages 218 to 272 out of a total 404), but resonates with the illustration on the frontispiece that shows a social gathering presided by Cavendish and her husband above the inscription:

Thus in this Semy-Circle, wher they Sitt,

Telling of Tales of pleasure & of witt,

Heer you may read without a Sinn or Crime,

And how more innocently pass your tyme.⁵¹

Moreover, the question of what constitutes good educational reading material is also taken up at the end of the volume, where the eponymous ‘She Anchoret’ discusses the worth of poetical and historical writing and the Greek Pantheon proceeds to purge ‘Heavens Library’ before the volume concludes with Cavendish’s ‘true Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life’.⁵²

The prominent positioning of the episodes in the respective works underlines their similarity to prefatory comments, functioning as meta-poetic reflections on the texts and as instructions to readers on how to read the narratives. In contrast to prefatory material, however, which is often directly associated with the voice of the author, the negotiation of fictional characters’ reading programmes arguably provides authors with more freedom to voice unconventional or subversive ideas, especially if, as in Cavendish’s text, the ideas are put forward by the character. Cavendish and Manley certainly make use of this licence, criticising the power exerted over women through their reading education. Furthermore, their depiction of reading shows a keen awareness of contemporary conduct-book discourse on women’s reading and its normative categorisation of genres. Cavendish and Manley’s narratives seem, at least on the surface, to endorse central tenets maintained by conduct books while at the same time deviating from traditional conduct-book assertions. They reflect critically on the prestige accorded to literary genres and suggest alternative evaluations, with Cavendish’s protagonist discarding the usually positively connoted histories and ‘divine books’ in favour of plays and mathematical works, and Manley’s text suggesting that genres like romance, deemed ‘dangerous’ for depicting amorous passions, may have unexpectedly positive educational effects. Cavendish and Manley thus simultaneously put forward alternative reading programmes and attempt to counteract the problem that they are voicing their criticism of female education through the less prestigious genres condemned by conduct books. Hence, both texts are daring interventions in the discussion of women’s reading education through their fictional depiction of female readers, but they remain conflicted: Cavendish’s text because its reading programme criticises the very genre in which it is presented, and Manley’s because, in contrast to its superficial endorsement of normative ideas on women’s reading, it can only imply but not explicitly affirm the worth of reading works like The New Atalantis.

Notes

1. 1.  Jacques du Bosc, The Compleat Woman (London: T. Harper and R. Hodgkinson, 1639), p. 12.

2. 2.  Conduct Literature for Women, 1640–1710, ed. by William St Clair and Irmgard Maassen, [Facs. reprints], 6 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002), I, pp. 2–4.

3. 3.  St Clair and Maassen, Conduct Literature for Women, I, pp. xxvii, 3–4, 5.

4. 4.  Assumptions concerning the affective impact of orations and reading derive from classical rhetoric and poetics and the ideology of humanist pedagogy. See, for instance, Peter Mack on the importance of moral reading in the classroom: Peter Mack, Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 12, 15, 17, 34.

5. 5.  François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon, Instructions for the Education of a Daughter. To Which Is Added, a Small Tract of Instructions for the Conduct of Young Ladies of the Highest Rank. With Suitable Devotions Annexed, trans. and ed. by George Hickes (London: J. Bowyer, 1707), p. 34.

6. 6. Delarivier Manley, The New Atalantis, ed. by Ros Ballaster (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1991), p. 30. Further references are in the text.

7. 7.  Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World and Other Writings, ed. by Kate Lilley (London: Pickering, 1992), p. 47. Further references are in the text.

8. 8.  Jacques du Bosc, L’Honneste femme, divisée en trois parties, 4th edn (Paris: H. Le Gras and M. Bobin, 1658), p. 10.

9. 9.  du Bosc, The Compleat Woman, p. 9; St Clair and Maassen, Conduct Literature for Women, I, p. 48.

10. 10.  For an early discussion of Manley’s endorsement of conduct-book ideas on the effects of reading, see Paul Bunyan Anderson, ‘Delariviere Manley’s Prose Fiction.’, Philological Quarterly, 13 (1934), 168–88 (pp. 179–80).

11. 11.  Robert Codrington, The Second Part of Youths Behavior (London: W. Lee, 1664), p. 5.

12. 12.  Fénelon, Instructions, pp. 292–9.

13. 13.  Fénelon, Instructions, p. 294.

14. 14.  Fénelon, Instructions, p. 237.

15. 15.  Fénelon, Instructions, pp. 238, 242, 246.

16. 16.  Fénelon, Instructions, pp. 248–9.

17. 17.  See, for instance, Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, ed. by Leah Knight, Micheline White and Elizabeth Sauer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018).

18. 18.  Codrington, The Second Part, p. 163.

19. 19.  Codrington, The Second Part, p. 169.

20. 20.  Codrington, The Second Part, pp. 6–7.

21. 21.  Codrington, The Second Part, pp, 28–30. For continued criticism of play-going, see, for example, George Savile Halifax, The Lady’s New-Year’s Gift, or, Advice to a Daughter … (London: M. Gilliflower and J. Partridge, 1692), pp. 157–8.

22. 22.  Joseph L. Black, ‘Women’s Libraries in the Private Libraries in Renaissance England Project’, in Knight, White and Sauer, Women’s Bookscapes, pp. 214–30 (p. 224); Marie-Louise Coolahan and Mark Empey, ‘Women’s Book Ownership and the Reception of Early Modern Women’s Texts, 1545–1700’, in Knight, White and Sauer, Women’s Bookscapes, pp. 231–52 (p. 240); David Pearson, Book Ownership in Stuart England: The Lyell Lectures 2018 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), ch. 3 (pp. 35–67); Georgianna Ziegler, ‘Patterns in Women’s Book Ownership, 1500–1700’, in Women’s Labour and the History of the Book in Early Modern England, ed. by Valerie Wayne (London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2020), pp. 207–23 (pp. 209–10).

23. 23.  Ziegler, ‘Patterns’, pp. 211–12; Coolahan and Empey, ‘Women’s Book Ownership’, p. 236; Black, ‘Women’s Libraries’, pp. 227–9.

24. 24.  Coolahan and Empey, ‘Women’s Book Ownership’, pp. 247, 240.

25. 25.  Sarah Lindenbaum, ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: How Electronic Records Can Lead Us to Early Modern Women Readers’, in Knight, White and Sauer, Women’s Bookscapes, pp. 193–213 (p. 197).

26. 26.  Kate Loveman, Samuel Pepys and His Books: Reading, Newsgathering, and Sociability, 1660–1703 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 151–152, 260–1.

27. 27.  du Bosc, The Compleat Woman, p. 5.

28. 28.  See, for instance, du Bosc, The Compleat Woman, p. 1.

29. 29.  Philip Sidney, Defence of Poesie, Astrophil and Stella and Other Writings, ed. by Elizabeth Porges Watson (London: Everyman, 1997), p. 101.

30. 30.  See also Cavendish’s similar criticism of romance exaggeration in Margaret Cavendish, The Worlds Olio (London: J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1655), p. 9.

31. 31.  du Bosc, The Compleat Woman, pp. 10–11.

32. 32.  See also the criticism of writing history in the narrative, ‘The She Anchoret’, in Margaret Cavendish, Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life (London: J. Martin and J. Allestrye, 1656), pp. 354–5. Similarly, ‘the Virgins’ in Cavendish’s play The Unnatural Tragedy criticise histories that pretend to record extempore speeches and private thoughts and exchanges verbatim when compiled after the facts; see Margaret Cavendish, Playes (London: John Martyn, James Allestry and Tho. Dicas, 1662), pp. 335–6. By contrast, in The Worlds Olio Cavendish presents history in more traditionally positive terms as aspiring to portray historical events truthfully (Cavendish, The Worlds Olio, pp. 6–10). For further discussions of Cavendish’s engagement with Roman history, see Julie Crawford, ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Books’, in Knight, White and Sauer, Women’s Bookscapes, pp. 94–114; Lara Dodds, ‘Reading and Writing in Sociable Letters; Or, How Margaret Cavendish Read Her Plutarch’, English Literary Renaissance, 41.1 (2011), 189–218.

33. 33.  See Loveman’s chapter on Restoration scepticism towards reading history (Loveman, Samuel Pepys and His Books, pp. 109–34), esp. pp. 122–3).

34. 34.  See also Cavendish’s similar praise of Shakespeare’s plays for truthfully depicting ‘all Sorts of Persons, of what Quality, Profession, Degree, Breeding, or Birth soever’ and ‘the Divers, and Different Humours, or Natures, or Several Passions’, Margaret Cavendish, CCXI Sociable Letters (London: W. Wilson, 1664), p. 245.

35. 35.  Codrington, The Second Part, pp. 28–30; Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion; or, A Guide to the Female Sex Containing Directions of Behaviour, in All Places, Companies, Relations, and Conditions, from their Childhood down to Old Age (London: D. Norman, 1673), p. 78.

36. 36.  Codrington, The Second Part, p. 62.

37. 37.  Anonymous, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex in Which Are Inserted the Characters of a Pedant, a Squire, a Beau, a Vertuoso, a Poetaster, a City-Critick, &c. in a Letter to a Lady (London: A. Roper and R. Clavel, 1697), p. 49.

38. 38.  Gary Waller, ‘From Baroque to Enlightenment: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn’, in The Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary Culture: From Mary Sidney to Aphra Behn (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), pp. 235–76 (pp. 253–6).

39. 39.  Anna Maria van Schurman, The Learned Maid; or, Whether a Maid May Be a Scholar? A Logick Exercise (London: J. Redmayne, 1659), p. 4.

40. 40.  Schurman, The Learned Maid, p. 5.

41. 41.  Bathusa Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues with an Answer to the Objections against This Way of Education (London: J. Darby, 1673), p. 24.

42. 42.  For alternative discussions of Cavendish’s views on reading and her reading practices, see Deborah Boyle, ‘Fame, Virtue, and Government: Margaret Cavendish on Ethics and Politics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 251–90; Deborah Boyle, ‘Margaret Cavendish on Gender, Nature, and Freedom’, Hypatia, 28 (2013), 516–32; Crawford, ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Books’; Dodds, ‘Reading and Writing in Sociable Letters’.

43. 43.  Helen Hackett also discusses Cavendish’s ‘ambivalent’ ‘attitude to romance’, cf. Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), esp. pp. 184–6.

44. 44.  See Hackett, Women and Romance Fiction, p. 184. See also Lara Dodds, The Literary Invention of Margaret Cavendish, Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2013), pp. 11, 229.

45. 45.  Kate Lilley assumes that Cavendish was fascinated ‘with the possibilities of romance as the scene of a woman’s heroic agency and successful negotiation of the theatres of power’ (Cavendish, The Blazing World, p. xx).

46. 46.  du Bosc, The Compleat Woman, p. 4.

47. 47.  Codrington, The Second Part, p. 158.

48. 48.  du Bosc, The Compleat Woman, p. 6. See also Codrington, The Second Part, pp. 160–1; Woolley, The Gentlewoman’s Companion, p. 87.

49. 49.  See also Barbara Benedict’s similar assertion that Manley presents ‘her own novel as a vehicle of female information’, Barbara M. Benedict, ‘The Curious Genre: Female Inquiry in Amatory Fiction’, Studies in the Novel, 30 (1998), 194–210 (p. 198).

50. 50.  Pierre-Daniel Huet, A Treatise of Romances and their Original (London: S. Heyrick, 1672), p. 108.

51. 51.  Cavendish, Natures Pictures.

52. 52.  Cavendish, Natures Pictures, pp. 287–357, 357–62, 368–91. Similarly to the protagonist’s reading programme in ‘Assaulted and Pursued Chastity’, the Greek gods decide to throw all works out of ‘Heavens Library’ that are ‘destructive to Truth’, including ‘Records that were of Usurpers’ and ‘Fabulous and Profitless Records’ (presumably histories), as well as ‘wanton and Amorous Records’, ‘Records of useless Laws, and Inhumane Sacrifices’, ‘Tedious speeches’ and ‘obstructive controversy’, p. 358; on Cavendish’s autobiographical representation of her reading, see Dodds, Literary Invention, pp. 11, 15.

Bibliography of secondary literature

• Anderson, Paul Bunyan, ‘Delariviere Manley’s Prose Fiction’, Philological Quarterly, 13 (1934), 168–88
• Benedict, Barbara M., ‘The Curious Genre: Female Inquiry in Amatory Fiction’, Studies in the Novel, 30 (1998), 194–210
• Black, Joseph L., ‘Women’s Libraries in the Private Libraries in Renaissance England Project’, in Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, ed. by Leah Knight, Micheline White and Elizabeth Sauer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), pp. 214–30
• Boyle, Deborah, ‘Fame, Virtue, and Government: Margaret Cavendish on Ethics and Politics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 251–90
• Boyle, Deborah, ‘Margaret Cavendish on Gender, Nature, and Freedom’, Hypatia, 28 (2013), 516–32
• Coolahan, Marie-Louise and Mark Empey, ‘Women’s Book Ownership and the Reception of Early Modern Women’s Texts, 1545–1700’, in Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, ed. by Leah Knight, Micheline White and Elizabeth Sauer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), pp. 231–52
• Crawford, Julie, ‘Margaret Cavendish’s Books’, in Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, ed. by Leah Knight, Micheline White and Elizabeth Sauer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), pp. 94–114
• Dodds, Lara, The Literary Invention of Margaret Cavendish, Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2013)
• Dodds, Lara, ‘Reading and Writing in Sociable Letters; Or, How Margaret Cavendish Read Her Plutarch’, English Literary Renaissance, 41.1 (2011), 189–218
• Hackett, Helen, Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
• Knight, Leah, Micheline White and Elizabeth Sauer (eds), Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018)
• Lilley, Kate, [Introduction and Notes], in Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World Called the Blazing World and Other Writings, ed. by Kate Lilley (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1992), Introduction pp. ix–xxxii; Notes pp. 226–30
• Lindenbaum, Sarah, ‘Hiding in Plain Sight: How Electronic Records Can Lead Us to Early Modern Women Readers’, in Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation, ed. by Leah Knight, Micheline White and Elizabeth Sauer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), pp. 193–213
• Loveman, Kate, Samuel Pepys and His Books: Reading, Newsgathering, and Sociability, 1660–1703 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)
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• St Clair, William and Irmgard Maassen, ‘General Introduction’, in St Clair and Maassen (eds), Conduct Literature for Women, 1640–1710, 6 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002), I, pp. ix–xxxviii
• Waller, Gary, ‘From Baroque to Enlightenment: Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn’, in The Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary Culture: From Mary Sidney to Aphra Behn (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), pp. 235–76
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