English ‘feminist’ writings and judith drake's an essay in defence of the female sex (1696)

Historical Journal

Volumn 44, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 727-747

  Smith, Hannah ^a  

^a NEWNHAM COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; FEMINISM; HISTORY; LEGAL ASPECT; POLITICS; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; PUBLICATION; RELIGION; UNITED KINGDOM; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

ENGLAND; FEMINISM; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; POLITICS; PUBLICATIONS; RELIGION; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WOMEN, WORKING;

EID: 21244435696     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X01001819     Document Type: Article

References (210)

1. [Judith Drake], An essay in defence of the female sex (London, 1696).
2. [Judith Drake], An essay in defence of the female sex (London, 1721), p. iii, 1. (Hereafter, all citations will be from the fourth edition.) Drake's parents, maiden name, and dates of birth and death are unknown. She was alive, although ill, in 1723 (British Library (BL), Sloane MS 4047, fos. 38, 42). She may have died by 1736: her son's will of that year makes no mention of her (Public Record Office (PRO), PROB 11/676 53).
3. Michael A. Seidel, ‘Poulain de la Barre's The woman as good as the man’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 35 (1974), pp. 499–508
4. Desmond M. Clarke, ‘Introduction’, in François Poulain de la Barre, The equality of the sexes (Manchester, 1990), pp. 1–39.
5. Mary Astell, A serious proposal to the ladies: parts I and II, ed. Patricia Springborg (London, 1997), p. 18.
6. Bridget Hill, The first English feminist: reflections upon marriage and other writings by Mary Astell (Aldershot, 1986)
7. Moira Ferguson, First feminists: British women writers, 1578–1799 (Indiana, 1985).
8. For an alternative view see Regina James, ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, or, Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft compared’, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, 5 (1976), pp. 121–130.
9. Myra Reynolds, The learned lady in England, 1650–1760 (1920; Gloucester, MA, 1964), pp. 305–311
10. Ferguson, First feminists, pp. 201–202
11. Hilda L. Smith, Reason's disciples: seventeenth century English feminists (Illinois, 1982), pp. 144–148.
12. Springborg, ‘Introduction’, Serious proposal, p. xxxv.
13. A. H. Upham,‘ English femmes savantes at the end of the seventeenth century’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 12 (1913), pp. 262, 273–274.
14. Evidence for Drake's authorship rests first on a British Museum second edition (shelfmark 1081.e.16) which was notated ‘Mrs Drake’ upon acquisition in c. 1780
15. secondly on Houghton Library, Harvard's edition of An essay in defence (1696) (shelfmark EC7 D7896.696ea), which has ‘Judith Drake ’ printed after the dedication
16. thirdly on a post-1741 catalogue of Edmund Curll attributing the work to ‘Mrs Drake’ (Florence Smith, Mary Astell(New York, 1916), pp. 173–82).
17. Curll pirated her son's work (James Drake, The lover: a poem (London, 1739), p. 9)
18. Robert Watt attributed the work to ‘Mrs Drake’, in Bibliotheca Britannica (Edinburgh, 1824),1, p. 316.
19. Judith Drake signed the dedications to James Drake the elder's Anthropologia nova: or a new system of anatomy (London, 1707)
20. James Drake had prefaced the Essay in defence. However, an ‘H. Wyat’ reputedly signed a first edition of the Essay in defence once owned by Philip Bliss (A bibliography of English character books, 1608–1700, Oxford Bibliographical Society (1925), pp. 154–5).
21. Sheryl O'Donnell, ‘Mr. Locke and the ladies: the indelible words on the tabula rasa’, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, 8 (1978), pp. 151–164
22. Joan K. Kinnaird, ‘Mary Astell and the conservative contribution to English feminism’, Journal of British Studies, 19 (1979), pp. 53–75
23. Smith, Reason's disciples, passim
24. Melissa A. Butler, ‘Early liberal roots of feminism: John Locke and the attack on patriarchy’, in Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman, eds., Feminist interpretations and political theory (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 74–94
25. John McCrystal, ‘Revolting women: the use of revolutionary discourse in Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft compared’, History of Political Thought, 14 (1993), pp. 199–203
26. Mills, ‘That tyrant custom’, passim.
27. Exceptions are Ruth Perry, The celebrated Mary Astell: an early English feminist (Chicago, 1986)
28. Patricia Springborg, ‘Introduction’, in Mary Astell, Political writings (Cambridge, 1996), passim
29. Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘Women's public political voice in England’, in Hilda L. Smith, ed., Women writers and the early modern British political tradition (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 56–74
30. Patricia Springborg, ‘Astell, Masham, and Locke: religion and politics’, in Smith, ed., Women writers, pp. 105–125
31. Van C. Hartmann, ‘Tory feminism in Mary Astell's Bart ‘lemy fair’, Journal of Narrative Technique, 28 (1998), pp. 243–265.
32. For male pro-women writers see Smith, Reason's disciples, pp. 15, 116–17, 193–7
33. Bridget Hill, ‘A refuge from men: the idea of a Protestant nunnery’, Past and Present, 117(1987), pp. 11 3–14, 118
34. Brenda Tooley, ‘“Like a false renegade”: the ends and means of feminist apologetics in A dialogue concerning women and An essay in defence of the female sex’, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 36 (1995), pp. 157–177
35. Springborg, ‘Introduction’, Serious proposal, p. xii.
36. Mark Goldie, ‘Danby, the bishops and the whigs’, in Tim Harris, Paul Seaward, and Mark Goldie, eds., The politics of religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 75–76
37. John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven, 1991), p. 234
38. R. A. Beddard, ‘Restoration Oxford and the remaking of the Protestant establishment’, in The history of the university of Oxford: seventeenth century Oxford, iv, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford, 1997), pp. 803–4, 847, 853.
39. G. V. Bennett, The tory crisis in Church and state, 1688–1730: the career of Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975), pp. 12–13.
40. Bennett, The tory crisis in Church and state, pp. 20–22.
41. Cited in Craig Rose, ‘Politics, religion, and charity in Augustan London, c. 1680-c. 1720’, (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1989), p. 108.
42. Cited in Craig Rose, ‘“ Seminarys of faction and rebellion”: Jacobites, whigs and the London charity schools, 1716–1724’, Historical Journal, 34 (1991), p. 835.
43. Rose, ‘Politics, religion, and charity’, pp. 65, 84–8, 95, 108–11, 115.
44. David L. Wykes, ‘Quaker schoolmasters, toleration and the law, 1689–1714’, Journal of Religious History, 21 (1997), pp. 179, 181–5.
45. Rose, ‘Politics, religion, and charity’, p. 108.
46. Daniel Defoe, An essay upon projects (Menston, 1969).
47. John Duncon, The returnes of spiritual comfort and grief in a devout soul represented (by entercousre of letters) to the right honourable the lady Lattice Vi-Countess Falkland in her life time. And exemplified in the holy life and death of the said honorable lady (London, 1648), pp. 144–6, 190–1.
48. For Cary's life see Kurt Weber, Lucius Cary, second viscount Falkland (New York, 1940), pp. 50–4, 94–6, 318.
49. Dictionary of national biography (DNB), ‘Clement Barksdale’
50. Clement Barksdale, Memorials of worthy persons (London, 1661), pp. 201–204
51. [Clement Barksdale], Memorials: examples of memorable men to awaken this age to greater care of good learning and true religion (London, 1675).
52. [Clement Barksdale], A letter touching a colledge of maids (London, 1675).
53. Barksdale, A letter touching a colledge of maids, p. A1.
54. Barksdale, Memorials: examples of memorable men, dedication
55. Barksdale, A letter touching a colledge of maids, p. A1.
56. A letter touching a colledge of maids., pp. A2–3.
57. [Edward Chamberlayne], An academy or colledge: wherein young ladies and gentlewomen may at a very moderate expence be duly instructed in the true Protestant religion … according to the pattern of some Protestant colledges in Germany (Savoy, 1671)
58. DNB, ‘ Edward Chamberlayne’
59. Chamberlayne, An academy or colledge, pp. 1–2.
60. Richard L. Greaves, ‘The role of women in early English nonconformity’, Church History, 52 (1983), pp. 300–3, 310
61. Anne Laurence, ‘A priesthood of she-believers: women and congregations in mid-seventeenth-century England’, Studies in Church History, 27 (1990), p. 361
62. Patricia Crawford, Women and religion in England, 1500–1720 (London, 1993), pp. 106, 120, 125, 129.
63. Chamberlayne, An academy or colledge, pp. 1–2.
64. An academy or colledge., pp. 3–4.
65. An academy or colledge., p. 6.
66. George Hickes,‘ A sermon preached at the church of St. Bridget on Easter-Tuesday, being the Ist of April, 1684. Before the right honourable Sir Henry Tulse, lord-mayor of London’, in A collection of sermons formerly preached by the reverend George Hickes, D. D. (2 vols., London, 1713), 1, 397–398
67. George Hickes, Instructions for the education of a daughter by M. Fenelon, archbishop of Cambray (1699; Dublin, 1753), pp. 2, 4, 128–32.
68. George Hickes, A second collection of controversial letters relating to the Church of England, and the Church of Rome, as they passed between an honourable lady, and Dr George Hickes (London, 1710), dedicatory epistle.
69. Hickes, ‘A sermon preached at the church of St. Bridget’, p. 398.
70. George Hickes, The spirit of enthusiasm exorcised: in a sermon preach'd before the University of Oxford … July 11 1680 (London, 1709), p. 2.
71. See also J. H. Overton, The nonjurors: their lives, principles, and writings (London, 1902), pp. 93–112
72. David C. Douglas, English scholars (London, 1939), pp. 93–119.
73. Hickes, ‘A sermon preached at the church of St. Bridget’, dedication.
74. [Bathusa Makin], An essay to revive the antient education of gentlewomen in religion, manners, arts, and tongues with an answer to the objections against this way of education (London, 1673), pp. 8–21.
75. For Makin see Mitzi Myers, ‘Domesticating Minerva: Bathsua Makin's “curious” argument for women's education’, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, 14 (1985), pp. 173–192
76. Jean R. Brink, ‘Bathsua Reginald Makin: ‘Most learned matron', Huntington Library Quarterly, 54 (1991), pp. 313–326
77. James L. Helm, ‘Bathsua Makin's An essay to revive the antient education of gentlewomen in the canon of seventeenth-century educational reform tracts’, Cahiers Elisabéthains, 44 (1993), pp. 45–51
78. Frances Teague, Bathsua Makin, woman of learning (Lewisburg, 1998).
79. Astell, Serious proposal, 1, pp. 7, 24.
80. Makin, An essay to revive, p. 24
81. William Greenhill, An exposition of the five first chapters of the prophet Ezekiel (1645; London, 1650), dedication.
82. Makin, An essay to revive, pp. 22–23.
83. An essay to revive.
84. An essay to revive., pp. 22–3, 25–6.
85. John Miller, James II: a study in kingship (Hove, 1978), pp. 58–9, 64–5, 69.
86. For Makin's royalism see Frances Teague, Bathsua Makin, woman of learning (Lewisburg, 1998), pp. 38, 46, 58, 69.
87. Astell, Serious proposal, 1, p. 18.
88. Serious proposal., pp. 25–26.
89. Springborg, ‘Introduction’, in Serious proposal, 1, p. xi
90. Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, pp. 175–180.
91. Astell, Political writings, p. 94.
92. Perry, Celebrated Mary Astell, p. 238.
93. Astell, Serious proposal, 1, p. 21.
94. Serious proposal., pp. 6, 17.
95. Serious proposal., p. 22.
96. Serious proposal., p. 16.
97. Serious proposal., pp. 23–24.
98. Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘Images of Queen Mary II, 1689–95’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42 (1989), p. 724.
99. Nahum Tate, A present for the ladies: being an historical vindication of the female sex (London, 1692), p. 100
100. Christopher Spencer, Nahum Tate (New York, 1972), pp. 20, 24, 27–33.
101. William Walsh, A dialogue concerning women. being a defence of the sex: written to Eugenia (London, 1691).
102. Phyllis Freeman, ‘William Walsh and Dryden: recently recovered letters’, Review of English Studies, 24 (1948), pp. 198–199.
103. Phyllis Freeman, ‘William Walsh's letters and poems in Ms. Malone 9’, Bodleian Quarterly Record, 7 (1934), p. 505.
104. Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: a life (New Haven, 1985), pp. 110–117.
105. Walsh, A dialogue concerning women, pp. 127–129.
106. Tim Harris, London crowds in the reign of Charles II (Cambridge, 1987), p. 93.
107. Walsh, A dialogue concerning women, p. 134.
108. No marriage has been traced, but the registers of St Andrew's, Holborn, record the baptism on 17 September 1700 of ‘Ann daughter of James Drake Dr of Phisick and Judith’ (Guildhall Library, London). The Royal College of Physicians described ‘Mrs Drake’ as ‘ relict of Dr Drake’ (Annals of the Royal College of Physicians, 1518–1915 (Reading, 1991), microfiche, p. 24).
109. Other, but unlikely, candidates for ‘Mrs Drake’ are James Drake's elderly stepmother, Sarah Drake née Thompson, and sister-in-law, Sarah Drake née Morris. But the latter was mother of two children by 1695, whereas the author of An essay in defence described her work as her ‘First-born’ (Essay in defence, dedication).
110. Narcissus Luttrell, A brief historical relation of state affairs (6 vols., Oxford, 1857), v, pp. 171, 315–16, 327, 389, 602; VI, pp. 16, 36, 43, 54, 57, 105, 112, 145
111. Charles Ripley Gillett, Burned books: neglected chapters in British history and literature (New York, 1932), pp. 618–622.
112. James Drake, Anthropologia nova: or, anew system of anatomy, ed. Judith Drake (2 vols., London, 1707), I, p. xi. The 1707 edition was prefaced partly by James Drake, but completed by an unknown author, mostly probably Judith Drake since she edited the manuscript for the press. It remains unsigned. The second edition of 1717 is prefaced by a completely new introduction signed ‘W[illiam] Wagstaffe’.
113. DNB, ‘James Drake’.
114. Judith Drake, dedication, in Drake, Anthropologia nova.
115. The younger Drake (c. 1703–36) was sent to Westminster school, and then the non-juring bastion of St John's College, Cambridge (G. F. Russell Barker and Alan H. Stenning, eds., The record of old Westminsters (2 vols., London, 1928), 1, p. 283
116. Robert Forsyth Scott, ed., Admissions to the college of St. John the Evangelist (4 vols., Cambridge, 1903), III, p. 25).
117. He was probably friends with the Tory poet Samuel Wesley the younger: a Samuel Wesley was a legatee of James Drake the younger's will (PRO, PROB 11/676 53). See also Thomas E. Brigden, ‘Samuel Wesley junior and his circle, 1690–1739’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 11 (1918), pp. 25–31, 74–81, 97–102, 121–9, 145–54.
118. Drake the younger's works were The humours of New Tunbridge Wells at Islington: a lyric poem with songs, epigrams etc. (London, 1734)
119. The lover: apoem (London, 1739).
120. See also Gentleman's Magazine, 2 (1817), p. 160.
121. Annals of the Royal College of Physicians, 1723, pp. 24, 28
122. BL, Sloane MS 4047, fos. 38, 42.
123. See also Estelle Cohen, ‘“What the women at all times would laugh at”: redefining equality and difference, circa 1660–1760’, Osiris, 12 (1997), pp. 127–129.
124. James Drake, The sham-lawyer: or the lucky extravagant (London, 1697), p. 18.
125. The song is acknowledged, like the Essay in defence, as ‘by a Lady’, unlike the other songs in the play which have no attribution.
126. DNB, ‘James Drake’.
127. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 46
128. Benjamin Boyce, Tom Brown of facetious memory (Cambridge, MA, 1939), p. 48.
129. Drake, Essay in defence, pp. 45, 94.
130. Both James Drakes were also critics of Blackmore. See Commendatory verses on the author of the two Arthurs, and the satryr against wit (London, 1700)
131. Gentleman's Magazine, 2 (1817), p. 160.
132. Drake, Essay in defence, pp. 77–79.
133. Essay in defence., pp. 79–80.
134. See John Kenyon, The popish plot (London, 1972), pp. 189–190.
135. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 5.
136. James Drake, The ancient and modern stages survey'd: or Mr Collier's view of the immorality and profaness of the English stage set in a true light (1699; New York, 1972), dedication, pp. 1, 367
137. James Drake, ‘A discourse concerning some influence of respiration on the motion of the heart, hitherto unobserved’, Philosophical Transactions, 281 (1702), pp. 1217–1240.
138. See also Rose Anthony, The Jeremy Collier stage controversy, 1698–1726 (1937; New York, 1966), p. 10
139. Edwin E. Williams, ‘Dr James Drake and Restoration theory of comedy’, Review of English Studies, 15 (1939), pp. 180–191.
140. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 48.
141. John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The library of John Locke (Oxford, 1965), p. 131.
142. Drake, Essay in defence, pp. 10–11.
143. Essay in defence., pp. 88, 94.
144. James Drake became a member of the Society in 1701. For perceptions of the Royal Society see M. C. W. Hunter, ‘The crown, the public and the new science, 1689–1702’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 43 (1989), pp. 100–101
145. Michael Hunter, The Royal Society and its fellows, 1660–1700: the morphology of an early scientific institution (1982) (British Society for the History of Science, 1994), pp. 38–9, 47–8.
146. Drake, Anthroplogia nova, 1, pp. v, viii.
147. Drake, Essay in defence, pp. 11–13.
148. Essay in defence., p. 14.
149. Essay in defence., pp. 14–16.
150. Essay in defence., p. 10.
151. Essay in defence., p. 3.
152. Essay in defence., p. 17.
153. Essay in defence., pp. 41–42.
154. See also Poulain de Barre, Woman as good as the man, p. 92.
155. Linda Pollock, ‘Teach her to live under obedience: the making of women in the upper ranks of early modern England’, Continuity and Change, 4 (1989), pp. 241, 256
156. Steven Shapin, ‘“A scholar and a gentleman”: the problematic identity of the scientific practitioner in early modern England’, History of Science, 29 (1991), pp. 290–291
157. Mordechai Feingold, ‘The humanities’, in The history of the University of Oxford, pp. 238–242.
158. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 40.
159. Essay in defence., pp. 20–21.
160. Essay in defence., p. 24.
161. Essay in defence., p. 26.
162. Essay in defence., p. 42.
163. John Locke, Some thoughts concerning education, ed.John W. and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford, 1989), pp. 217–18, 224–5, 243.
164. See also Makin, An essay to revive, pp. 34–5, 37
165. Astell, Serious proposal,1, p. 22.
166. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 36.
167. Essay in defence., pp. 42–48.
168. Essay in defence., pp. 36–9, 48.
169. Essay in defence., p. 51.
170. Essay in defence., p. 44.
171. Essay in defence., p. 51.
172. Essay in defence., p.27.
173. Essay in defence., p. 31.
174. Essay in defence., p. 52.
175. Astell, Serious proposal, 1, pp. 23–4, 29.
176. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 3.
177. Essay in defence., p. 7.
178. Essay in defence., p. 134.
179. Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness: moral discourse and cultural politics in early eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 2–14
180. Philip Carter, ‘Men about town: representations of foppery and masculinity in early eighteenth-century urban society’, in Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, eds., Gender in eighteenth-century England: roles, representations and responsibilities (London, 1997), pp. 48–52.
181. Thomas Brown, Miscellany essays: upon philosophy, history, poetry, morality, humanity, gallantry etc. by Monsieur de St. Evremont (London, 1694)
182. Boyce, Tom Brown, pp. 50, 75
183. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 47.
184. For Saint-Evremond in England see Joseph M. Levine, Between the ancients and the moderns: baroque culture in Restoration England (New Haven, 1999), pp. 140–158.
185. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 125.
186. Essay in defence., p. 76.
187. Essay in defence., p. 35.
188. Essay in defence., pp. 124–125.
189. Essay in defence., p. 123.
190. Essay in defence., pp. 125–129.
191. Essay in defence., p. 10.
192. Essay in defence., p. 46.
193. Benjamin Boyce, The polemic character, 1640–1661: a chapter in English literary history (Nebraska, 1955), pp. 2, 24
194. Charles Daves, Samuel Butler, 1612–1680: characters (Cleveland, 1970), pp. 10–11
195. George Wasserman, Samuel ‘Hudibras’ Butler (Boston, 1989), pp. 113–115.
196. Felicity Nussbaum, The brink of all we hate: English satires on women, 1660–1750 (Lexington, 1984), p. 34.
197. Thomas Brown, A legacy for the ladies (London, 1705), dedication.
198. Drake, Essay in defence, pp. xii-xiii.
199. L. W. Sharp, ed., Early letters of Robert Wodrow, 1698–1709 (Edinburgh, 1937), pp. xxiv-vii
200. Joseph M. Levine, Dr Woodward's shield: history, science and satire in Augustan England (Berkeley, 1977), p. 324.
201. Drake, Essay in defence, p. xiv.
202. Levine, Dr Woodward's shield, pp. 125–126.
203. Drake, Essay in defence, p. 4.
204. Essay in defence., p. 84.
205. Essay in defence., pp. 77, 84.
206. Essay in defence., p. 86.
207. Essay in defence., p. 86.
208. Drake, Essay in defence, pp. 29–31.
209. There is no surviving evidence to suggest that Judith Drake was acquainted with the young Elizabeth Montagu. For the Enlightenment in this context, Sylvana Tomaselli, ‘The Enlightenment debate on women’, History Workshop Journal, 20 (1985), pp. 120–122
210. Michèle Cohen, Fashioning masculinity: national identity and language in the eighteenth century (London, 1996), pp. 29–32.