A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman
A composite profile of writers in my ‘Shut Out, Not Shut Up’ series, to date
Interested in the artist Elisabetta Sirani? See footnote.1
In the “Shut Out, Not Shut Up” series to date, I’ve sketched the life stories and writing of eight women writers2. This is a tiny sample of women authors spanning 150 years. Still, elements of their life stories highlight, overlap, and intertwine. A rough mosaic has emerged, shaping the contours of a woman’s, and an artist’s, form.
Six characteristics have converged across their life stories:
Money: whether the writer was born into wealth; whether she wrote to produce income
Marital status
Whether she had children, and how many survived childhood
How she obtained her education
Her age at death
Public response to her writing and life choices
These writers share several other characteristics. All of them were white Europeans, predominantly English. Most travelled, a few widely: since money and access to wealthy patrons were necessary for international travel, I’m not treating it separately.
These six identifiers distinguish the women in the series from other women of their day. They establish the writers as anomalies amongst the general population of contemporary women.
The eight women writers are (in chronological order):
Margaret (Cavendish) Newcastle, born 1623
Aphra Behn, born 1640
Mary Collier, born 1648
Charlotte Lennox, born 1730
Olympe de Gouges, born 1748
Mary Wollstonecraft, born 1759
Germaine de Staël, born 1766
Mary Shelley, born 1797
Money
Most of these writers were born without wealth and wrote to earn money. Only two (de Gouges and Newcastle) were born and married into the aristocracy. Some were working poor, like Mary Collier, who advocated (through her poetry) for the recognition of women’s labor rights and was herself a laborer.
How does the class distribution of this small sample compare to the larger population? About 40% of the English population in the 17th and 18th centuries was working poor and middle class (a relatively new class that was growing in size). By comparison, 63% of these writers lived either in poverty or with modest means.
Without wealth, these women weren’t afforded the luxury of writing solely for pleasure or acclaim. They had to earn a living by some means, and excepting Mary Collier3, they relied on their writing to earn money.
Their access to publishing is strikingly similar to what is available for unestablished writers today. The primary options for women writers were self-publishing and hybrid publishing, in which the author fronts the costs for a publisher’s production and distribution of the work. Women rarely had the connections with benefactors or major publishers on which literary men relied for illustrious careers.
When a woman published a book during this time, the frontispiece typically identified her only as ‘The Author.’ Margaret Newcastle was a bold exception when she produced a book that identified her name with pride4. More typically, women writers started their careers publishing anonymously and, once they became established, used their names on subsequent printings or books.
Marital Status
These women lived in places and in a time when women obtained social status through men—typically, fathers and husbands. Despite that, half of these women were either unmarried or married only briefly (and subsequently decided not to remarry).
These weren’t asexual women. About two-thirds of them had multiple intimate relationships with men outside of marriage. It’s possible that one or more were closeted lesbians; however, given the social and legal consequences of being identified as homosexual at the time, there is no historical record to know much about their sexuality.
On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that all but one of the writers who married were unhappy with their partners. Newcastle’s husband survived her. He wasn’t an ideal spouse, but Newcastle stuck with him.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, marriage was an institution that benefitted men much more than women. Few marriages were love matches; most women married when they were young. Marriage was a commercial transaction, and it was a bonus if the couple liked each other.
Women found status and protection in being married, and once married, separation and death were the only avenues open to women unhappy in their union. In this light, the fact that only 50% of this group of women were married signals a divergence from the general population of women.
Children
Almost 40% of these women had no children, and 75% of them had fewer than two children survive childhood. This fact sets them apart from women of their times: on average, women gave birth to about 9 children and raised more than 5 who survived childhood. Child mortality rates were exceptionally high during these centuries, as was the likelihood of maternal death from childbirth. You may remember that Mary Wollstonecraft’s early death at 38 was due to complications after the delivery of her daughter, Mary Shelley.
The lower marriage rate for these women naturally contributed to a lower average number of children. Any of the women who engaged in multiple extramarital affairs may have conceived and subsequently obtained abortions, which wouldn’t have been unheard of at the time. The first anti-abortion law was passed in Britain in 1803, so the women in my study lived at a time when abortion was legal if not socially approved.
All the women who had children also lost children to early death, and at least one had a miscarriage. Women and children were both more at risk to the health hazards of the times5 and their lives weren’t valued as much as those of adult males. Medical experts (men) expected to lose women to childbirth; they expected infants to die. Surgeons didn’t study disease and anatomy specific to women and infants, and this ignorance led to outcomes that fit their expectations.
Although men in power could rationalize the deaths of mothers, babies, and young children as natural and unavoidable, families still grieved these losses. Knowing that only about half the children they bore were likely to live long enough to become adults didn’t protect women from the devastation of this loss. They experienced this grief just as any mother would.
Might this dampen a woman’s interest in conceiving again, having lost one or more children? It’s possible. These were women who were able to express their inner selves creatively: might writing offer a solace unmatched by housework and child care? This too is possible, but speculation doesn’t help us understand6. We don’t know why seven of these writers left none or few surviving children behind.
Germaine de Staël, with four children who lived to adulthood, stands out in this group. She was quite wealthy, and no doubt had paid help to assist her in raising her children. It’s possible that the other writers could not both care for children and also spend hours daily alone, writing. The fewer children, the less demand on her time.
Education
Formal education was almost entirely limited to educating boys. There were few all-girl schools. Mary Wollstonecraft opened one, and it lasted for only a couple of years before she was forced to close it.
Writing requires literacy and the knowledge of classical literature and history. Writers also needed to be fluent in more than one language, since many texts were available only in the language of the author. Some of the women writers we’ve met in this series had picked up not only French, Spanish, and Italian, but also Latin and Greek. Some of them worked in translating written works. Given the growing interest in science and the political upheavals they lived through, the women were reading not just poetry, drama, and novels—popular entertainment for women—but also scientific papers and philosophy. How does one accomplish this without an education?
The options available to girls could only be found at home. Wealthier families could afford tutors for their children, and three7 of these writers were educated by teachers in their homes. The other women—almost two-thirds—were self-educated.
Autodidacts must be clever and committed to learning. Regardless her effort, the self-educated person is likely to have knowledge gaps: you don’t know what you don’t know. Their writing may lack the polish of a man formally educated.8 I admire them for forging ahead despite the handicap, and marvel at their accomplishments.
Age at death
Women of the 17th and 18th centuries were expected to live to about 40 years old; if a woman made it to 30, she could expect to live another twenty years9. Our group of women averaged a life span of 54 years. Of the two women whose early deaths reduce the average age—de Gouges at 45 and Wollstonecraft at 38—one was executed for enraging the King, and the other died of complications of childbirth. The rest lived to their 50s, and two of them attained the age of 74.
On the whole, they enjoyed better life outcomes than their contemporaries, no doubt due to the relatively fewer children they bore. Working at home put them at lower risk than other occupations open to women. It’s also possible that living without men proved more beneficial than being unhappily married.
Public response to writing and life choices
Publishing invited public criticism and shaming of these women writers. Even though several of them were connected well enough to have the public support of influential men, all of them were objects of public humiliation and scorn—one needn’t be online to become the target of trolls. The women were criticized for their looks, for how they dressed, for how they wrote, for their ignorance, for their audacity to participate in a male domain. Women who had successfully translated another language were scorned for not knowing the language. Women whose writing adeptly referenced classical literature were condemned for their literary ignorance.
No doubt being on the receiving end of such criticism is painful. How could it not be? And yet, not one woman retreated. They issued subsequent print runs with prefaces that riposted their critics. They persevered. If anything, the criticism may have spurred their prodigious output. These women weren’t idly dabbling in literature. This was their work. It defined who they were. The volume of literary works they produced belies their seemingly short lives.
The composite profile
The portrait that emerges from these eight stories is of a woman who exemplifies self-reliance. She educates herself and doesn’t need an unreliable husband for financial or emotional support. She has no children to raise and no family wealth to fall back upon. She writes because she must: for subsistence and fulfillment.
She isn’t easily categorized because she sees no boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed. She’s equally drawn to drama, poetry, story-making, natural philosophy, and critical exploration. Her tastes in fashion and politics are similarly transgressive.
She has multiple romantic partners. The innate passion driving her creativity extends to a rich romantic life. Having learned early that living fully would challenge social norms, with maturity comes the confidence to disregard social morality in making life decisions. She makes common cause with social disapproval.
She inspires enemies as easily as she seduces friends and lovers. This is not a woman easy to like. She leads with her ego. She’s prickly. Words are everything to her, and she wields them as tools and weapons. She wants to be admired and, importantly, read, but she really doesn’t care if you like her. That is not her point.
She may eschew fidelity to men, but she unfailingly supports her fellow women. Those close to her can rely on her financial and emotional support. When men mock women with falsetto squealing, she becomes the voice of all women, raised in protest. She is their pen in a world in which men have tried to lock away all the pens.
She’s afraid only that time will still her hand. She spends her days alone, hurriedly inking on paper all she can capture from her fecund mind.
She is en route to becoming the madwoman in the attic.
Fellow feeling
Reading words today that were published 300-400 years ago can be jarring. For instance, Charlotte Lennox’s “The Female Quixote” immediately impresses the modern reader with its archaic textual style: Lennox routinely capitalizes nouns and italicizes proper nouns. She doesn’t distinguish dialogue by using quotation marks. Margaret Newcastle, in “The Blazing World,” is averse to paragraph breaks: a single paragraph can span literally pages. Aphra Behn’s repetitive use of “’em’” to signify '“them” sounds to my modern ears like some 17th century seafaring cap’n.
The prose styles from centuries back, like their fashions, create a distance between now and then. Their social and political causes are not ours: we don’t fear the guillotine. We live in a time when the state not only allows but requires the education of female children. Arranged marriages aren’t the norm, and marriages based on love surround us. Widows are the usual inheritor’s of their husbands’ estates. Publishing is open to women, and self-publishing can be free (as it is for me, writing here). Many women writers are recognized with prestigious awards. So much has changed in these intervening years. It would be easy to say, How different these women were!
That is not my sense, but rather, How familiar these women are! Put aside the superficialities of fashion and the insubstantiality of revocable privilege: how much has woman gained? Girls are educated alongside boys, and often perform better academically as a group. Why, then, the persistence of wage inequality between the sexes? Women can perform onstage, but overwhelmingly their roles remain in service to male characters. Women have received the Nobel Prize for Literature, but the Swedish Academy behind that prize crumbled in 2018 from a scandal involving sexual harassment and abuse by a man of multiple women.
But perhaps what is most familiar are the women who dare to write despite harsh criticism not only of their work, but also of themselves as people. It’s hard enough to be a writer in any skin—to expose your mind fully in your writing. Feeling as if you’re not good enough never goes away. The writer works in solitude, and has no control over how readers will interpret the words she writes. Any criticism is hard to bear; public dismissal seems unbearable. And yet, a writer must write.
How different is our 17th century woman writer from the women writers you admire?
This is the portrait of the artist as an ageless woman.
Ellie’s Corner
I’m that most fortunate of people, happily married. Today Dave took Ellie for a walk because I’m dealing with a headache. Ellie came upstairs to bring me flowers from the trail. How lucky can a girl be?
Thanks for reading,
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Elisabetta Sirani was a Baroque painter and print maker in Bologna, Italy. She learned technique from her father, who begrudgingly allowed her into the studio where he painted. She became successful enough that she was able to support her family financially from her art. She died too young, aged 27, under suspicious circumstances. (Perhaps a maid murdered her? Or maybe it was a ruptured ulcer? Pick your story!) Elisabetta was one of Italy’s first women painters. She never married. Instead, she earned a living as an artist and started an art academy for women. Her story fits in well with today’s profile.
For anyone keeping count: I’ve published essays on seven; the eighth I’m working on now.
Mary Collier self-published only small runs of her collections. She wasn’t able to rely on this income to put bread on the table.
Newcastle was also an aristocrat known for her eccentricity and driven to seek attention.
Such as: waves of plague and influenza; unhealthy water and food; and the usual risks of poverty—malnutrition, dangerous working conditions, lack of access to medical care.
I’ve read theories that interpreted “Frankenstein” in light of Mary Shelley’s grief over the death of her prematurely born infant. I doubt this illuminates or explains the genius of her novel.
Two were born to wealthy families; the third is Mary Shelley, whose father was an educator.
Shakespeare himself was mocked for not attending university, and may have been self-conscious about the fact that his only formal education was in the school at Stratford. I guess you could say: he showed them.
You can see the impact of maternal mortality in these actuarial numbers.