Jean Grimshaw’s Socialism, Feminism and Philosophy: A Radical Philosophy Reader (1990) introduces the belief that conservative figures such as Mary Astell perpetuated such ideals by putting forward the belief that women “are taught merely to please, to be flattered and to obey” (Grimshaw 1990: 14) and, by consequence, any female who resisted such marked configuration was identified as unruly.
In her article ““Gender and Narrative in the Fiction of Aphra Behn” (1991), Jacqueline Pearson observes that in some narratives, the female narrator reflects “the empowering of women, or the mockery of men” (1991: 41) whilst, in others, such empowering is hindered by the weight of propriety and hence the female narrator finds herself “embedded within patriarchy and limited by it” (1991: 41). What is significant is that, in both instances, – when she becomes an advocate of empowerment as well as when she finds herself limited by societal restrictions – the female narrator is inescapably surrounded by inconsistencies and ambiguities that she must reconcile herself to.
Ros Ballaster’s Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740 (1992) brings about the fact that in women’s fiction, the “conscious and
self-50 reflective deployment of the persona of the female narrator habitually questions the rhetorical function of femininity in relation to masculininity” (1992: 84). Female narrators often became a means to dispute the suitability of prescribed female and male roles. Self-consciousness was not always a prerequisite but, whenever it was the case, such female narrators opened up the way for an exploration of the boundaries of femininity and masculinity and how one might surpass those.
The unveiling of such tensions became essential for women writers of the period. In Masquerade and Gender: Disguise and Female Identity in Eighteenth-Century Fictions by Women (1993), Catherine Craft-Fairchild argues that female authors such as Behn, Davys, Haywood, Inchbald and Burney all endorsed dominant ideologies concerning women’s subordinate role but they also managed to “highlight the contradictions inherent in eighteenth-century ideologies of gender, thereby subverting the dominant discourse” (1993: int 22). This allowed them to both “construct and deconstruct ideologies of female identity” (1993: int 22), which was a very important undertaking to construct an authentic female persona.
Gill Perry and Michael Rossington’s Femininity and Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture (1994) highlights the endless emphasis on feeling also contributed that this scrutiny of the female self. Wollstonecraft discerned sensibility “as an intrinsically corrupt and corrupting quality” (1994: int 11), which defied the period’s endorsement of the cult of sensibility.
This divergence between women’s inner subjectivity and its outer manifestations became the subject of psychoanalytical feminist analysis. In his contribution to the volume Speculations after Freud: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Culture (1994), Scott argues that in the expected “battle against the dominion of inferior desires, one does battle with oneself […] one sought victory by oneself over oneself in the body’s
51 desires” (1994: 214). What is interesting about Scott’s argument is that it does not so much reflect on women’s ‘fight’ with external aspects, such as social and cultural mores, but rather focuses on her internal struggle. Women battle against themselves to reconcile inner and outer longings; the main source of tension occurs within her own subjectivity.
Barbara Claire Freeman’s The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women’s Fiction (1995) stresses the fact that the demand for social theatricality was also reinforced in women’s fiction, as “it would appear that the only way in which a woman author could gain both financial reward and literary commendation was by creating characters who learn to agree to their own victimization” (1995: 78). Female character’s acute understanding and ‘acceptance’ of the necessity of their submissive state was reinforced.
In Strange Fits of Passion: Epistemologies of Emotion, Hume to Austen (1996), Adela Pinch shares such distrust of feeling, as he argues that “extravagant feelings could cause the greatest acts of benevolence; they could also cause women their ruin”
(1996: int 2). The implication that derives from Pinch’s reflection is that, when
‘rightfully’ managed, feelings have the capacity to prove one’s goodness and hence bear witness to ‘true’ virtue but these same acts, whenever they are not balanced, have the potential to produce undesirable outcomes.
Christine Roulston’s Virtue, Gender, and the Authentic Self in Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Richardson, Rousseau and Laclos (1998) reinforces the fact that sentimental narratives are concerned with producing “transparent and authentic writing”
(1998: int xiii) and, as such, revealed a clear willingness to provide “self-revelation and examination” (1998: int xiii). In the case of female characters, such act of self-examination became imperative. An authentic portrayal of women ought to include her
52 careful self-scrutiny so as to reflect on the different ways in which they female self is both revealed and concealed. This triggers an analysis of the tensions between her inner self and the outer persona she is exposes.
In Plots of Enlightenment: Education and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (1999), Richard A. Barney delves into this double-dimension of feeling, both denoting kindness and disruption, allows for some degree of theatricality. Barney notes the presence of “a kind of social theatricality, in which women must constantly attend to how they are perceived and what standing they have in terms of ‘reputation’” (1999:
288). Thus, the attainment of an impeccable social reputation highly depended on women’s ability to publicly ‘feign’ certain attributes so as to assert their ‘decency’.
2.8. The Paradox of the Desirability of Female Virtue: the Importance of