Female Philosophers and the Comprehensive View: Elizabeth Hamilton's Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education

Abstract

In her Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, Elizabeth Hamilton offers one of her most memorable fictional creations – the radical female philosopher, Bridgetina Botherim. This article considers the significance of Bridgetina's most prominent physical feature – her squint. It suggests that this is just one example of many in Hamilton's work, in which the language of vision is employed to make a more specific point about the development of the mind. Within such moments, Hamilton makes use of a range of rhetorical strategies drawn from Scottish Common Sense philosophy – particularly the writings of Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart. It is this context that informs her Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education, in which she insists that, in contrast to the restricted vision of Bridgetina Botherim, women assume a “comprehensive view” of their duties as mothers and educators. In suggesting that women's domestic situation enables them to cultivate such a perspective, Hamilton appropriates the language of the “prospect view” – a privileged viewing position more typically associated with the leisured gentleman. This article explores the ways in which Hamilton negotiates this potentially transgressive gesture in order to formulate a domestic, yet philosophical, female subject-position.