The stable male dominated society of Great Britain in the middle third of the eighteenth century offered little opportunity for women to play an active role in political, economic, or social affairs. It also seemed to offer little encouragement to the ideas now gathered under the term feminism: the movement for civil and political equality of women and men, and the opportunity of self-determination and autonomy for women. Society assumed that women were subservient to men, that their natural destiny was marriage, and that, therefore, women needed only minimal education. The feminism of the late seventeenth century which had found its fullest expression in the works of Mary Astell had, by the seventeen thirties, an old-fashioned tone. Astell's feminism, founded in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) and Some Reflections Upon Marriage (1700), grew from her religious convictions; if woman's soul was as good as man's, her mind was equally good and made of the same reason, to love God². English society of the mid eighteenth century was little concerned with religion or radical political ideas. Trade, political office, improvement, enclosure, building the family fortune were subjects that were on most men's minds. When they thought about women at all, they thought of them as created for men's pleasure, to be used, guided, cared for, but not to be taken very seriously by the male sex. Pope's "Of the Characters of Women: An Epistle to a Lady³," though written to a lady of virtue, generally assumed the worst about her sex.

      Therefore, it is surprising to find published in 1739 a pamphlet titled Woman Not Inferior to Man: or, A short and modest Vindication of the natural Right of the Fair-Sex to a perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem, with Men by Sophia, A Person of Quality (London: John Hawkins). This was answered by a Gentleman in Man Superior to Woman; or, a Vindication of Man's Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman. Containing a plain Confutation of the Fallacious Arguments of Sophia, in her late Treatise intitled, Woman not inferior to Man. Interspersed with a Variety of Characters, of different Kinds of Women, drawn from Life. To which is prefix'd, a Dedication to the Ladies (London: R. Cooper, 1739). Sophia responded in Woman's superior Excellence over Man: or, A Reply to the Author of a late Treatise, entitled Man Superior to Woman. In which, the excessive weakness of this Gentleman's Answer to Woman not inferior to Man is exposed; with a plain Demonstration of Woman's natural Right even to Superiority over Men in Head and Heart; proving their Minds as much more beautiful than the man's as their Bodies are, and that, had they the same Advantage of Education, they would excell them as much in Sense as they do in Virtue. The whole interspersed with a variety of mannish Characters, which some of the most noted Heroes of the present Age had the Goodness to sit for (London: John Hawkins, 1740). The titles, or more precisely the subtitles, tell much about these pamphlets. The first, Woman Not Inferior to Man, is short (62 pages) and not particularly modest in its claims for women. the Gentleman's reply, Man Superior to Woman, is longer (74 pages), plain in saying Sophia is wrong, lengthened by its characterizations, mostly unflattering, of women. Sophia's rebuttal, Woman's Superior Excellence over Man, at even greater length (111 pages) repeats her first points, disposes of the Gentleman's arguments, and presents her equally unflattering portraits of men.

      In Woman Not Inferior, Sophia first outlines her arguments. She proposed to examine "the general notions which the Men entertain of our sex; on what grounds they build their opinions; and what are the effects to us and to themselves." She would examine also the differences between the sexes to see if men's claims of superiority were warranted, and forecast her conclusions that there is "no other differences between Men and Us than what their tyranny has created." (pp. 9-10) She spoke of "the little meanesses, not to mention the grosser barbarities" of men toward women. Why can man lord it over woman? His only real argument is custom - - that it has always been so. (pp. 31-35) But, she said, this is a foolish and irrational argument. Men are not wiser, more capable, more rational than women; only in physical strength are they superior, and "if brutal strength. . . is a sufficient plea, for their trampling upon Us, the lion has a much better title over the whole creation." (p. 18) the "differences of sexes regards only the body, and that merely as it related to the propagation of human nature," whereas in the soul and the brain, the sexes are alike. Why have men denied these facts? Out of "mean dastardly jealousy," Sophia said, to keep the opportunities of the world for themselves. (pp. 23-25)

      Men's main weapon for keeping women subordinate has been to deny them a proper education. Sophia repeated the circular arguments men use to support their positions: learning is useless for women because "we have no share in public offices. And why have we no share in public Offices? Because we have no learning." (pp. 26-28) Women have been kept out of public positions by a "spirit of violence, shameless injustice, and lawless oppressions," not by any lack of ability. There is no real reason why the world should not

      . . . see a Woman at the head of any army giving battle, or at the helm of a nation giving laws; pleading causes in quality of counsel; administering justice in a court of judicature; preceded in the street with a sword, mace, and other signs of authority; as magistrates; or teaching rhetoric, medicine, philosophy, and divinity, in quality of university professors. (p. 36)

      Men have clothed the professions with more mystery than they deserve. In medicine, for example, they have triumphed "in the art of inventing hard names, and puzzling a cure with the number, as well as adding to a patients grievance with the costliness of remedies." (p. 41) To show women's capabilities she cited examples of women who had succeeded in non-traditional professions; inevitably Queen Elizabeth was mentioned, as was Anna Maria von Schurman (p. 37), "an Eliza" who could be Elizabeth Elstob or Eliza Haywood (p. 47), and Boadicea. (p. 55)

      Her conclusions were that men have kept women uneducated, and this has made women "subject to all the follies they dislike in us." But with a proper education, women would be able to show men their good qualities, and all would be happier. Meanwhile, she

      . . . wou'd therefore exhort all my sex to throw aside idle amusements, and to betake themselves to the improvement of their minds, that we may be able to act with that becoming dignity our nature has fitted us to; and, without claiming, or valuing it, shew ourselves worthy something from them, as much above their bare esteem, as they conceit themselves above us. In a word, let us shew them, by what little we do without aid of education, the much we might do if they did us justice; that we may force a blush from them, if possible, and compel them to confess their own business to us, and that the worst of us deserve much better than the best of us receive. (pp. 55-62)

      The Gentleman's reply, Man Superior to Woman, began with a "Dedication to the Ladies," who were saluted as "Lovely Creatures." He condescendingly offered "Such pretty variable things as you" this pamphlet as "a useful Pocket-mirror" to reflect women as they really were. He argued that since "From the Beginning of the World till now, our Sex has enjoy'd an undisputed Sovereignty over the other. . . their joint Consent in all Ages sufficiently proves our Possession not usurped." (p. 1) Women possess men's hearts; men possess women's heads. This is entirely due to the generosity of men, not from any rights of women. Women, with no claims to reason, can only find true happiness "Safe in the Paradise of our protecting Love." (pp. 2-8) English women, he said, are treated better than any others; it was therefore particularly distressing to hear demands of equality from them. (pp. 10-12) He cited the usual Biblical and classical sources for the subjugation of women (St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, Genesis, Plutarch, Milton) (pp. 12-15, 34-40) and included vignettes of several female characters who go from bad to worse without male guidance.

      Women's minds are shallow, sufficient to consider fashion, entertaining, playing cards, while "The Understanding of Man has infinitely higher Objects to employ it's Speculations on." (p. 26) He even criticized allowing mothers to bring up their sons. (pp. 24-25) His arguments for keeping women out of statecraft included the allegation that they are so curious and given to gossip that they could not act steadily or keep secrets; (p. 38) women have been allowed to rule in England by men only to prevent civil war. (p. 40) His examples demonstrated that if women would not organize a house and family properly, then they surely could not manage anything larger, (pp. 40-46)

      In answer to Sophia's plea for better education for women, he said it was unnecessary, for "Tis their pretty Fluency in Nonsense, and their bewitching Confidence in Ignorance, which give their Charms the Power of pleasing us in the soft Moments, when unbending the Mind from Study we seek in their native Folly a Respite from Sense and Speculation." (p. 46) If women do learn to read they do not digest anything serious and tend to read novels, which of course are bad for their morals. His example of a lady's library was a hodge-podge of religious works, novels, pamphlets, newspapers, sewing, and dust. His learned lady was slovenly and unmarried; she needed a husband to make her sensible. (pp. 50-57) The Gentleman concluded

      . . . that if the Merit of Women be weighed by the End of their Production, and the Circumstances attending it, by their natural Capacity, and the Practice they have applied it to in all ages, by the living Variety of Instances of their Folly, Inconsistency, Impotence in Good, and Propensity to Evil, they are not only wide of the Perfection of Man, but even almost infinitely beneath him. (p. 64)

      Sophia's reply to the Gentleman, Woman's Superior Excellence of Man, made few new points. She disposed of his various arguments that since women have always been in subjugation it is right. (pp. 7-17, 41-65) She stressed again that women generally have many faults because they lack education; nothing has been done to help women improve their minds or their capabilities. (pp. 68-71) Woman's Superior Excellence is even more anit-male than Woman Not Inferior. Sophia observed that the fact that more widowers remarry than widows shows that men need women more than women need men. (pp. 46-47) The professional men, especially physicians and historians, came in for more rude remarks. (pp. 51-53) She found it difficult to ascribe much sense to any man. Look, she said, at "What a prodigious deal of time and money is generally spent to make Men fit for something," but the product is "clowns, fops, dunces, or pedants. "There may be women fools too, but "I am sure they are fools at much less cost and pains than those of the other sex." (p. 84) She worried not about how men would receive her work, but about the reaction of women. She hoped that her "fair partners in oppression" would not continue to hide their lights from false notions of "modesty, humility, or contracted timidity." They must make "a serious application to useful studies," which will not only occupy their leisure more profitably but will also make them better company in the world. these studies "must be of eminent service to them and to all Mankind in general. . . . they cannot fail to turn out better children, better parents, better servants, mistresses, or wives, and better subjects of the state, than indolence and ignorance is capable of making them." (pp. 85-91)

      Despite her forthright rhetoric, Sophia's pamphlets are essentially tracts calling for improved education for women. She hints at the possibilities that might be opened for her sex if they had the same training as men, but her final argument is that they will be better wives and mothers, and, secondarily, that they will be better satisfied as individuals. It is in this respect that Sophia pamphlets are most obviously a product of their own time. These were the arguments most eighteenth century works on female education. Sophia differs from others, however, in speaking more clearly about the male oppression and in saying that the only differences between men and women are physical. She is also little concerned about the details of female education, so that these pamphlets are not usually counted among the conduct or education tracts of the period⁴. Another factor that sets Sophia apart is that education, especially the education of women, was not being much discussed in the seventeen thirties. An apparently stable society is not usually worried about changes or improvements in the training of its children.

      Sophia also differs from the handful of other contemporary publications that could be called feminist. Two of these were concerned with women's work. One, an article in the Gentleman's Magazine, focused on the matter of men moving into traditional female occupations, a problem throughout the eighteenth century. The other, Mary Collier's The Woman's Labour, was a reply to the assumptions of Stephen Duck that women were incapable of real productive work⁵. The women with whom these works dealt were from the lower classes, those who had to work for their own and their family's support. Sophia was not concerned with these women: her arguments were directed at the education and prospects of females of the middle and upper classes. Closer to Sophia was Number VI of The Nonsense of Common-Sense, written by Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Lady Mary argued not so much that women were equal to men as that they should be treated with more respect, so that whatever virtues, rational qualities, and abilities they might have could flower and be recognizes. She was neither so explicit in her condemnation of men, nor so clear in her remedy for women's wrongs as Sophia⁶.

      This brings us then to the question of who wrote the Sophia pamphlets and why. The answers is we do not know. The identity of the Gentleman, if his persona was not just a strawman set up to prolong the series, is not particularly important. He said nothing that had not been frequently said in defense of male superiority. But the question of the identity of Sophia is more challenging. Her real feminism is neither commonplace nor duplicated in other writings of the time.

      The most frequently found attribution is to Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Most recently a 1975 reprint of Woman Not Inferior (London: Brentham Press) makes this attribution, but there is little real evidence for it. Lady Mary's biographer Robert Halsband makes no mention of her being Sophia⁷. She was not in London during the publication of the pamphlets. In July 1739 she left London for the continent where she was to remain for a number of years. Woman Not Inferior was published in November of that year. Furthermore, the feminism of Sophia is far advanced beyond that of Number VI of The Nonsense of Common-Sense. I suspect that Lady Mary has been said to be Sophia because she was the best known woman active in English society in 1739.

      Another attribution is that Eliza Haywood was Sophia. This seems to me more improbable than Lady Mary. It was presumably made because Haywood was alive and possibly writing in 1739-40. She was in fact in eclipse in the thirties and published nothing between 1736 and 1742⁸. The most conclusive arguments against Haywood, however, are those of style and content, for the pamphlets are like none of her other work.

      Doris Mary Stenton in The English Woman in History suggested that Sophia was a man. She found it "unlikely that a woman who felt deeply about the exclusion of women from all professions would have written like the so-called Sophia," an argument that seems to me to make little sense. Her further arguments involve the various reprints of the pamphlets and reveal, alas, that Stenton had not done her bibliographical homework fully enough⁹.

      Stenton was, however, partially correct, for much of the contents of the Sophia pamphlets came fairly directly from the work of a man, FranÇois Poulain de la Barre. His De l'Egalite des deux Sexes, Discours Physique et Moral, Ou l'on voit l'importance de se defaire des Prejugez was published in Paris in 1673. It appeared in English as The Woman as Good as the Man: or, the Equality of Both Sexes in 1677¹⁰. The use of Poulain de la Barre by Sophia was noted first in 1916 by C. A. Moore¹¹. He argued, with evidence from the French original which is equally valid using the English translation, that much of Woman Not Inferior was taken directly from Poulain de la Barre. Moore suggested too that Man Superior to Woman was written by Sophia, arguing with herself, since it also uses the French work, with additions which could have been inspired by any anti-female writer. Woman's Superior Excellence contains less Poulain and more of Sophia herself, especially in the characterization of various male types. However, even granting that the arguments and even some of the actual words of the Sophia pamphlets come from Poulain de la Barre, we still don not know who Sophia was. Who arranged, reargued and brought up to date the unsuccessful views of the seventeenth century Frenchman? The answer is clearly someone who knew the earlier pamphlet literature of the Querelle de Femmes¹². There is no evidence so far of the name or sex of this person.

      Surely more important than the identity of Sophia is the fate of the pamphlet series. We do not know how widely they were circulated or how many people read them in 1739 and 1740. I have read extensively in the personal writings of later eighteenth and early nineteenth century Englishwomen and thus far have found no references to the Sophia series. But it seems to safe to assume that they were read, either to reinforce their ideas of female equality or as an example of their dangerous influence. There were a number of subsequent editions. A second edition of Woman Not Inferior was printed in 1740; Woman's Superior Excellence was reprinted by Jacob Robinson in 1743; Man Superior to Woman was reprinted in 1744. In 1751 all three were reprinted together by Robinson as Beauty's Triumph: or, The Superiority of the Fair Sex Invincibly Proved, Wherein the Arguments for the Natural Right of Man to a Sovereign Authority over the Women are Fairly Urged and Undeniably Refuted; this was reprinted in the seventeen-nineties. Sophia's pamphlets were also reprinted in 1751 and 1758 under the title Female Rights Vindicated: or the Equality of the Sexes Morally and Physically Proved and in 1780 as Female Restoration, by a Moral and Physical Vindication of Female Talents. It seems therefore only reasonable to conclude that some women must have read these pamphlets throughout the latter half of the century.

      Mary Wollstonecraft could have read Sophia: many of their ideas are the same¹³. Other women, famous ones and those whose names are not remembered, presumably read these pamphlets which surely formed a part of the literature of the eighteenth century feminist underground. Sophia observed that history "is so much perverted to debase us¹⁴." It has also long, as "a kind of traditions of vulgar prejudices¹⁵," obscured and hidden her and other women who did not fit masculine ideas of what women ought to be.

1. An earlier version of this paper was read at the 1980 meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. I wish to thank various friends and colleagues who have read this paper, commented on it, and jopined me in the search for Sophia, especially Ruth Perry, Moira Ferguson and Susan Groag Bell.
2. Ruth Perry's biography of Mary Astell, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press is the definitive work on its subject. I am grateful to Prof. Perry for allowing me to read the work in manuscript. (Sunny's note: the book has been published as Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell - An Early English Feminist, U. of Chicago Press, 1986)
3. London, J. Wright, 1735. For a useful discussion of this poem, see: Felicity A. Nessbaum, "Pope's "To a Lady" and the Eighteenth-Century Woman," Philological Quarterly, 54 (1975): 444-456
4. For a survey of these works, see: Barbara Brandon Schnorrenbers, "Education of Women in Eighteenth Century England: An Annotated Bibliography," Women and Literature, 4 (1976): 49-55
5. Collier's and Duck's works are reprinted, edited by Moria Ferguson, in The Augustan Reprint Society, No. 230 (Los Angeles: William andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1985).
6. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, The Nonsense of Common-Sense 1737 - 1738, ed. Robert Halsband (Evanston, Il. 1947; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1970_
7. Robert Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montague (New York: Oxford University press, 1960); Robert Halsband, ed., The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vols. (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1965)
8. George Frisbie Whicher, The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood (New York: Columbia University Press, 1915) pp. 21-22
9. Doris Mary Stenton, The English Woman in History (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1957) pp. 292-294
10. "Writen Originally in French, and Translated into English by A. L." (London: N. Brooks, 1677). On Poulaine de la Barre, see: Michael A. Seidel, "Poulaine de la Barre's The Woman as Good as the Man," Journal of the History of Ideas, 35 (1974): 499-508
11. "The First of the Militants in English Literature," The Nation, 102 (17 Feb 1916): 194-196. I am grateful to Ruth Perry and Moira Ferguson for calling this article to my attention.
12. See: Joan Kelly, "Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes, 1400-1789," _Signs_, 8 (1982): 4-28
13. Both Ralph M. Wardle, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1951) and Eleanor Flexner, Mary Wollstonecraft (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1973) mention Sophia as one of Wollstonecraft's foremothers but give no evidence of direct influence.
14. Woman's Superior Excellence, p. 110
15. Ibid., p. 53

To the Bibliography Menu

e-mail sunshine@pinn.net