800 Years of Women's Letters (2 page)

Fanny Burney was celebrated in her own time, even by the demanding Dr Johnson. Yet she was neglected until reread by feminists, specifically Dale Spender in
Mothers of the Novel: 100 Great Women Novelists Before Jane Austen
. Her epistolary novels reveal detailed study of society, and lively characterization through the speaking voice, qualities noticeable in epistolary novels today, of which the outstanding is Alice Walker's
The Color Purple
. Burney's witty letters about Dr Johnson, about life at court when she was lady-in-waiting, her meeting with Madame de Staël and her reactions to her weakness are all worth attention.

This book opens with the twelfth century, because in Paris and Germany women there began to write with assurance, and their letters have been preserved. It is only too possible that the majority of women's letters were thrown away, as even happened to some of Bach's manuscripts. The earliest letter-writer in English (as opposed to Latin) was Margaret Paston. She was the efficient, affectionate manager of her husband's estate while he practised law in London during the Wars of the Roses. Her description of facing attacks from neighbouring barons is so dramatic that it is now quoted in schoolbooks.

The main timespan of this study is, therefore, from the Wars of the Roses to the beginning of the Second World War. I also include two ancient Greek epistles, to prove that women were more vital then than is commonly supposed, and some present-day letters, mainly from women friends, to show the continuing power of female correspondence in analysing ideas, feelings and social issues.

In the Middle Ages letters were often dictated, especially by women, to scribes or secretaries. However by Tudor times public schools increased the literacy of the rising yeoman class. In 1660 an Act of Parliament set up a national Post Office. Twenty years later the service was enlarged and stamping introduced. This new penny post service set up 334 houses for receiving letters, which reached 200 towns outside London. Foreigners admired the efficiency of our service, an achievement which enhanced the social, and business, life of the middle classes. Writers such as Daniel Defoe praised the ‘utmost safety and Dispatch' of letters within the capital, up to ‘Four, Five, Six to Eight times a Day, according to the Distance of the Place makes it practicable'.
¹
It cost one penny inside London, to the person receiving the letter. Outside London both sender and receiver paid one penny each. Even money could be sent safely by post. France developed a service for the rich, of great help to writers such as Madame de Sévigné.

By the eighteenth century educated people were expected to be able to write elegant letters. In fact, some schools trained pupils by making letter-writing into a standard composition exercise. Students were often made to study and copy Greek, and especially Latin, letters. Recently established newspapers such as
The Tatler
(1709) and
The Spectator
(1711) received many letters, which soon became – and remain – a feature. Their editors, Addison and Steele, wrote that they had ‘Complaints from Lovers, Schemes for Projectors, Scandal from Ladies, Congratulations, Compliments and Advice in Abundance'.
²
Editor John Dunton initiated a popular item of the editor's reply to these ‘anonymous' widely read letters.

So much paper was being bought that the government hit on the cunning idea of taxing it, to obtain more revenue in order to finance the War of Spanish Succession in Europe, which ended in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht. The Stamp Act of 1711 imposed a tax on stamped vellum, parchment and paper and upon certain printed papers, pamphlets and advertisements. Clearly business was using far more paper, and many more people were corresponding with each other.

It was aristocratic women who gave social acceptability to the public letter-writing of women. The Duchess of Newcastle (1623– 94) was protected by a rich and powerful husband who had fought for Charles I and was rewarded by Charles II. She longed for fame, wrote a great deal in many genres and in 1664 brought out virtually the first volume of collected letters:
Sociable Letters
. Her aim was not modest: ‘I have endeavoured under the Cover of Letters to Express the Humour of Mankind.' She describes the communion of two female friends who are happiest when reading and writing to each other. Her preface states that if she were empress of the world, she would advance people of learning and wit, not just men. One of the correspondents is said to be fit to be an empress because ‘Nature had Crown'd her Soul with a Celestial Crown, made of a Poetical Flame of Understanding, Judgement and Wit, also with clear Distinguishings, and sparkling Fancies'.
³
She used the genre of letter writing to portray real life, to present actual problems and even propose solutions. The drawback of discursiveness was overcome by providing narrative; thus the epistolary novel started life.

Her admiration for knowledge
and
the imagination also distinguishes the writing of many women of her time and the following century. Thanks to the success of Restoration women, especially playwrights such as Aphra Behn, far more women felt able to take up the pen. Even if not encouraged by their menfolk, letter-writing was allowed, since it was done unobtrusively. Jane Austen sometimes pretended to be writing letters in the drawing room when in fact she was creating fiction.

The letter-writing of women was seldom taken seriously, as it posed no threat to the male-dominated literary establishment, which never counted it as ‘real' writing, though male letters were considered ‘literature'. Indeed, letters became a significant part of our culture. They are autobiographical, based on intimate experience, yet not opposed to the Puritan tradition of noting the facts of an individual's life. Many were encouraged by the notion that God's Divine Purpose could be discerned in the recounting of events – and emotions. Letters deepen self-inspection, at a time when Puritan divines considered self-examination a healthy step towards salvation.

Many of these letter-writers were upper-middle-class women who felt able, by the middle of the eighteenth century, to display their prowess in literature. The group known as the bluestockings provided a network of wealthy women with salons (like those of seventeenth-century France), encouraging the intellectual activity of women without disturbing the hierarchies of gender and class. Their letters to each other were frequently witty and honest. In 1782 Elizabeth Montagu (named ‘Queen of the Blues' by Dr Johnson) wrote about a friend:

I really believe she was just like Eve before she ate the apple, at least she answers to Milton's description of her. She would have preferred her husband's discourse to the angels. I am afraid you and I my dear friend should have entered some metaphysical disquisitions with the angel, we are not so perfectly the rib of man as woman ought to be.
⁴

That century has given us some outstanding letters from women. We have now rediscovered amusing, emotional, informed and well-argued letters which both influenced newly emerging fiction and were influenced by it. The most striking collections come from bluestockings with both the leisure and the learning for long correspondence. They often shared ideas and discussed projects, such as women's education. At times they recounted scandals in court, which could be salacious; at times they described the latest Paris fashions, providing a need for information only fulfilled much later by women's magazines.

Middle-class women were usually more preoccupied with their emotions, and used letters for self-analysis, an occupation encouraged by the Protestant Church with its emphasis on the individual conscience. In this letter of 1744, for example, salon topics are rejected in favour of a discourse of feeling, suitable both for the sharing of friendship – and for epistolary fiction:

There are times when even the magnificence of the sky, the fair extensions of a flowery lawn, the verdure of the groves, the harmony of rural sounds, and the universal fragrance of the balmy air, strike us with no agreeable sensations, nothing surely but the ungrateful perverseness of one's own humour. This reflection throws human happiness in a most mortifying light.
⁵

Women who needed to earn money now took to publishing collections of letters, often with a moral aim, sometimes with the didactic message transformed into an epistolary novel. Among these, one of the most successful was Eliza Haywood (1693–1756). Prolific and versatile, she developed sentimental, realistic, didactic and epistolary novels – and books on how to conduct oneself. She even set up a newspaper for women and composed its agony column! Booksellers co-operated with her in declaring that every epistolary work was genuine. The preface usually claimed that the letters had never been intended for publication, had been stolen or lost and only printed at great risk to the bookseller. Amazingly, letters became one of the most bought genres, perhaps because they seemed truthful. They proved a suitable vehicle for travel reports, and even for tales of adventures in distant countries. They also conveyed contemporary news reports; and public scandals; in fact, newspapers were often composed of topical letters. Hack writers tended to disguise their sensational accounts as eyewitness reports. The now respected ‘foreign correspondent' began work in this half-fictional letter form.

Letters on conduct served as manuals to the rising bourgeoisie. Designed as a guide through the complexities of social life, they explained morals, discourse and etiquette. Daniel Defoe went further in his
The Family Instructor
(1715) with advice on problematic situations between relatives and do-it-yourself counselling for parents and offspring. His
Conjugal Lewdness
(1727) even warned partners against indulgence in the sexual aspects of their marriages. The saleability of letters proved an asset to women. It was one of the few forms of writing familiar to them, unlike the epic poem or academic treatise.

Who was buying these letters? Respectable women could not easily enter bookshops, or the new coffee shops where newspapers were read; but by the middle of the eighteenth century they could subscribe, through catalogues. Publishers were as disinclined then as now to take risks, so readers were asked to subscribe in advance. Thus women with a little money of their own could exercise some influence and encourage wealthy friends, in both their reading – and writing.

By the time of the French Revolution the tone of women's letters became bolder on social issues, during a short-lived belief in the possibility of equality. The Romantic Movement was beginning to affect sensibility, and many writers felt able to discuss emotions at length. Both these aspects are present in the correspondence of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose
Vindication of the Rights of Women
(1792) remains a skilfully argued, path-breaking contribution to feminist thought. When she fell in love with an American businessman, Gilbert Imlay, she wrote passionate letters to him, particularly once she realized he was deceiving her. Nevertheless, she bore his child and agreed to go on a business journey for him round Scandinavia. Her travel letters range from philosophical, social and personal reflection to brilliant description, an example variously followed by a wide variety of Victorian women travellers, from the well-born Emily Eden, whose brother was Viceroy of India, to Mary Kingsley who funded her innovative studies of the Congo by useful, small-scale trading.

Though Victorian women had few legal and no voting rights, the slow increase in education allowed wider access to literacy. Isolated governesses wrote to friends, schoolteachers described their lot, while educated mothers found momentary release from large families. By the middle of the nineteenth century more men are proposing that their women write, from Shelley and George Lewes to Mr Gaskell. Though the motives may have been therapeutic and financial, the results are outstanding novels – and letters.

The example of well-known women publishing with impunity (from the time of Jane Austen's later novels, praised by the Prince Regent) made lesser-known females less inhibited about attempting to write, demonstrated in the many letters to novelists such as Mrs Gaskell and George Eliot requesting advice. These two deeply moral writers exemplify the social conscience of some intellectual Victorians. Concern with lack of welfare provision led many women to campaign publicly, through talks and above all letters, to redress wrongs. Caroline Norton worked for fairer divorce laws, attempting to free wives from overtly tyrannical husbands. Josephine Butler spent ten years in persuading men to repeal the repressive Contagious Diseases Acts, which discriminated against prostitutes and poorer women. Octavia Hill campaigned for better living conditions in the East End of London. And, of course, Florence Nightingale spent most of her life, while ostensibly resting on a couch, in her celebrated correspondence, which improved the standard of nursing care and education not only in Britain but worldwide.

Thanks to the penny post, reducing costs considerably, women's friendships were able to flourish in correspondence. There are many examples of talented wives, such as the undervalued Jane Carlyle and Geraldine Jewsbury, who shared insightful reflections on their society in remarkable epistles. A few decades later, well-known writers such as Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West sound more self-consciously literary, more openly emotional. They had achieved a standing in the twentieth century which gave them greater confidence in their worth and in their lesbian love.

In our century obviously there are far more women writing. Primary school education allowed many working-class women to write, virtually for the first time. Evidence of their letters, particularly during the enforced separations of the two World Wars, lies in the collections of the Imperial War Museum, London. Women have now resumed the eighteenth-century occupation of publishing books of their letters in order to earn a living, from travel writers such as Freya Stark, to novelists, including Françoise Sagan and Fay Weldon.