Public vs. Private: Dismantling the Division into Separate Spheres

Women’s struggle to reconcile relationships taking place both in the private and public sphere has been subject to much controversy, as the ambiguity surrounding this theme is only heightened by factors such as “the potential disjunction between women’s public behaviour and private feeling that threatened to destabilize mechanisms of control, and the continuing opportunities for women to shape discourse about them”

(Boyd and Kvande 2008: 18). The separation between public and private gains a special significance when dealing with women’s position as, in their particular case, such distinction marked a clear differentiation between the way in which they could

37 This betraying of innocence is further emphasized by the use of cosmetics, as Tita Chico notes in Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Culture (2005).

Chico argues that for writers within the satiric tradition “face painting all too easily suggested to such satirists more widespread subterfuge, concern about women’s roles, social order, and the value and purpose of artifice” (2005: 108).

101 introduce themselves in public settings, and the way they actually felt in the private, domestic sphere of their household, a feeling that most probably differed from the

‘feeling’ they could exhibit in public environments.

This marked divergence between public and private displays made it problematical for women to establish a discourse that would faithfully represent their experience. To this already problematic scenery, one might add the equally complex task of determining what constitutes ‘private’ and ‘public’, as Boyd and Kvande argue

“public and private as opposing concepts include not only the sense of physical spaces but also the kind of activities and discourses that are displayed or enclosed” (2008: 19).

Physicality is then not the only element at play; what befalls in such physical settings, the kind of discussions that occur within them, also play a crucial role.

Despite the overwhelming amount of criticism that pleads to maintain the separate spheres archetype, critics such as Boyd and Kvande have observed that such paradigm is not completely satisfactory and fails to “account for the realities of social behaviour and experience for women or for men” (2008: 19). The problem, they argue, lies on the insistence to discern them as entirely separate entities that ought to be taken individually and not collectively. What Boyle and Kvane propose is a much more constructive way to approach the issue of separate spheres that promotes an

“intermingling of concerns, activities or persons” (2008: 19) as well as the realization that “nor can public or private be equated simply with men and women” (2008: 19).

This approach is interesting in the sense that it dismantles the separation between public and private as isolated elements, and actually interweaves them so that they become points of contact in which many different elements may co-exist in a satisfying manner. For this approximation to occur, as they proclaim, the first step would be to cease to associate a particular gender to each sphere – public as male and

102 private as female – and, instead, recognize that both genders are actively present in both spheres³⁸. In this respect, the act of recuperating women’s involvement in the public sphere is crucial, as it “helps to demonstrate to which extent the spheres were not separate but interpenetrating” (Boyd and Kvane 2008: 22) and it enhances recognition of the historical meaning of women’s existence.

This recognition is fundamental if one is to go beyond the assumption that women were solely subjugated individuals with no intervention whatsoever in public affairs, a claim that is refuted by the fact that “women’s daily lives and work show that they were not simply repressed and silenced, but were active, engaged participants in all spheres of their culture” (Boyd and Kvande 2008: 23). Though restrictions were placed upon women, it is also important to note how, despite these constraints, they still managed to become active participants, not simply in the private sphere but in other areas as well.

In Domestic narratives, such authentic female experience was not fully reflected, as these texts’ purpose “was not to reflect social practices but to intervene in practice by offering a constructed and embodied ideal […] as a model for readers’ imitation”

(Bannet 2000: 61). Heroines were meant to become models worthy of imitation, exemplary conduct-book females, whose attitudes and behaviours all responded to the cultural expectation that they become ‘proper’ women that could act as valuable role models.

Therefore, the notion of the ‘mixed character’ was somehow an uncomfortable one, and though necessary “on the grounds of probability, verisimilitude or realism”

(Bannet 2000: 61), mixed characters were often relegated to a secondary position, usually standing in direct opposition to the ‘perfect’ heroine. Their function was simply

38 Boyd and Kvane provide evidence of this by pointing out that “the effectiveness of this exclusion has been called into question; women certainly did enter public discussions and engage in public activity”

(2008: 21)

103 to display the faults that would not be acceptable in heroines and hence to demonstrate the imperfections that needed to be surpassed. Women’s writing, subject to higher pressures on terms of morality, was adherent to this pattern. Flawed heroines were found but they all capitulated towards the ‘correct’ path of virtue and redeemed their past follies. Whenever such follies were too marked, then, such character could not be termed a ‘heroine’, because writers “tended to center their narratives on characters who exemplified whatever their domestic agendas designated as the most perfect idea of virtue or of vice” (Bannet 2000: 61)³⁹.

This firmness in portraying exemplary heroines worthy of being imitated is best exemplified through Sidney Bidulph who, upon reflection on her own behaviour, always finds cause to rejoice in her mother’s endorsement of her modest disposition:

I had, notwithstanding, the good fortune to please my mother infinitely. She told me, after our visitor was gone, that my behaviour had been strictly proper; and blamed Sir George for his wanting to engage me too often in conversation [...]The man who does not reckon a modest reserve amongst the chief recommendations of a woman, should be no husband for Sidney [...] Sir George agreed with her as to the propriety of her observation, in regard to a modest reserve; but said, people now a-days did not carry their ideas of it so far as they did when his father’s courtship began with her; and added, that a young lady might speak with as much modesty as she could hold her tongue.

I did not interfere in the debate, only said, I was very glad to have my mother’s approbation of my conduct (18-19)

39 Bannet introduces the notion that such insistence on morality “was unstable because it often served women writers as a mask to conceal their designs” (2000: 67). Their ‘acceptance’ of morality’s demands was their only means to offer any sort of ‘resistance’ or, at least, to proclaim the message they wanted to bring forward, which was obscured under pretence of conventionality. Thus, the strictest exemplary tale was most probably written “doublevoiced, to disprove the evidence of their own example and seem more conventional than it was” (Bannet 2000: 68).

104 Sidney’s sense of herself, it appears, stems from her behaving in a manner that will earn her mother’s approval. Sidney’s modest reserve and her tendency to retrieve from action and become a passive, mostly silent, observant please her mother exceedingly, as that proves her ‘proper’ behaviour. Sir George, though admitting the fairness of his mother’s remark, makes yet another fair comment by stating that women may well express themselves while still maintaining a proper, modest countenance.

Sidney chooses to disregard Sir George’s point of view and seems determined to subscribe exclusively to what her mother deems ‘correct’, discrediting all other perspectives, including her own. Inevitably, such constant negation to take authority over her narrative and her unrelenting reliance on her mother as her sole moral compass proves to be less efficient than Sidney envisions.