Edenic Equality and the Rejection of “Right Divine” in Lucy Aikin’s Epistles on Women (1810)

Abstract

ABSTRACTLucy Aikin’s Epistles on Women, Exemplifying their Character and Condition in Various Ages and Nations (1810) traces the deplorable condition of women in western civilization from “ill-fated Eve” in the Garden of Eden to the daughters of “fair Albion” in the eighteenth century. In her first epistle, Aikin characterizes the “natural” subordination of women to men as the “Right Divine” of kings to censure those, like the “great [Republican] Milton,” who condemn the religious legitimacy of monarchical rule, yet hypocritically sanction man’s despotic power over women by citing biblical authority. This essay explores how Aikin’s epic poem challenges the biblical origins of female subordination by offering an alternative exegesis of Genesis. I argue that Aikin wields her considerable scriptural knowledge to contest Eve’s culpability in the Fall, thereby refuting the religious pretext for women’s subjugation. Informed by the Dissenting tradition of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as well as prior feminist re-imaginings of Adam and Eve, Aikin positions herself as a theological and poetic authority fit to pen an epic revision of Genesis to rival John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1674).