Mr. Locke and the Ladies: The Indelible Words on the Tabula Rasa

Abstract

Mr. Locke and the Ladies: The Indelible Words on the Tabula Rasa SHERYL O’DONNELL By the close of the seventeenth century, arguments about women’s nature and consequent duties had shifted ground. Theological debates concerning whether or not women had souls gave way to inquiries into the nature of the “female mind,” and as Locke’s empiricism weakened the theory of innate ideas, religious speculations about women’s in­ feriority were replaced by secular proposals for their education.1 Locke’s emphasis upon the connection between experience and selfknowledge , his ideas concerning the origin of knowledge, and his regard for precise language helped Restoration and eighteenth-century women recognize themselves as rational beings whose minds should be exercised and developed. Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham, Catherine Trotter Cockbum, Lady Mary Chudleigh, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Hannah More were directly affected by Locke’s empiricism. But they accepted patriarchal doctrines of woman’s essen­ tial fitness for domestic and maternal spheres which accorded female learning no legitimacy outside the home. Rather than face public ridicule, they published anonymously, wrote in secret, burned their works, or phrased their feminism in terms of contributions to the common good. The same double bind that leads many twentiethcentury women to avoid success in traditionally male-dominated areas 151 152 / SHERYL O’DONNELL rather than lose their “femininity” confined women thinkers of the Restoration and eighteenth century. Locke’s empiricism blurred, but did not erase, patriarchal notions of women as highly venerated in­ ferior beings. Begun in 1671, Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding was redrafted several times and, after a long abridgement, appeared in Leclerc’s Amsterdam journal, La Bibliotheque universelle, in 1688; it was published in England in 1690. Locke’s avowed purpose, unlike that of the Scholastics or the great Continental philosophers of the seventeenth century, was practical rather than metaphysical. Written in an expansive, leisurely style, Locke’s Essay is just that—a weighing, a trial, an experiment, or, as Locke called it, “an inquiry.” Working in terms of exploration rather than declaration assures Locke an intimacy with his readers which enables him to show, lucidly, the thinking mind at work. In the “Epistle to the Reader,” Locke assumes the voice of a plain, stolid man whose quest for truth is intermittent: If it [the Essay] seems too much to thee, thou must blame the Subject: for when I put Pen to Paper, I thought all I should have to say on this Matter, would have been contained in one sheet of Paper; but the farther I went, the larger Prospect I had: New Discoveries led me still on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in. I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass than it is; and that some Parts of it might be contracted: the way it has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of Interruption, being apt to cause some Repetitions. But to confess the Truth, I am now too lazie, or too busie to make it shorter.2 Locke’s use of first person and his insistence that the reader retain an independent mind rather than remain “content to live lazily on scraps of begg’d Opinions” (“Epistle,” p. 6) give his readers an active role to play. By inviting readers to set their “own Thoughts on work, to find and follow Truth” (“Epistle,” p. 7), Locke abandons the rhetorical stance of authority used by many earlier philosophers. As­ suring the reader that “every moment of his Pursuit, will reward his Pains with some Delight” and that “he will have Reason to think his time not ill spent, even when he cannot much boast of any great Acquisition” (“Epistle,” p. 6), Locke introduces and defines the im­ portance of thinking as experience or as agon. 3 Mr. Locke and the Ladies I 153 Throughout the Essay, Locke uses his own observations—the cas­ sowaries in St- James Park (II, xxv; III, vi), a winter flood of the Thames (II, xxvii), a friend’s story of a medical operation (II, xxxiii)—to illustrate his remarks- He reinforces the effects of these familiar examples by...