Women in a Mans World in Eliza Fenwicks Secresy :: literature eliza fenwick secresy gothic fiction

Women in a Man's World Eliza Fenwick's Secresy In examining how women fit into the "men's world" of the late eighteenth century, I studied Eliza Fenwick's novel Secresy and its treatment of women, particularly in terms of education. What I found to be most striking in the novel is the clash between two very different approaches to the education of women. One of these, the traditional view, is amply expressed by works such as Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Emile, which states that women have a natural tendency toward obedience and therefore education should be geared to enhance these qualities (Rousseau, pp. 370, 382, 366). Dr. John Gregory's A Father's Legacy to His Daughters also belongs to this school of thought, stating that wit is a woman's "most dangerous talent" and is best kept a well-guarded secret so as not to excite the jealousy of others (Gregory, p. 15). This view, which sees women as morally and intellectually inferior, is expressed in the novel in the character of Mr. Valmont, who incarcerates his orphaned niece in a remote part of his castle. He asserts that he has determined her lot in life and that her only duty is to obey him "without reserve or discussion" (Fenwick, p.55). This oppressive view of education served to keep women subservient by keeping them in an ignorant, child-like state. By denying them access to true wisdom and the right to think, women were reduced to the position of "a timid, docile slave, whose thoughts, will, passions, wishes, should have no standard of their own, but rise, or change or die as the will of the master should require" (Fenwick, 156). Opposing this view is the radical, or feminist, version of education, echoed in the works of such authors as Mary Wollstonecraft and Hester Chapone. Chapone, a member of the feminist bluestockings, writes in her Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young Lady that young girls should "seize every opportunity of improvement" through the study of "those persons, and those books, from which you can learn true wisdom." In her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft presents the idea that women could be on par with men if they were given an equal education. This idea is clearly expressed in the character of Sibella Valmont, Mr. Valmont's niece, who at one point tells her learned friend, Caroline Ashburn: I feel within the vivifying principle of intellectual life.