Selections from The Female Spectator

Portada
Oxford University Press, 1999 M01 28 - 336 páginas
After Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood was the most important English female novelist of the early eighteenth century. She also edited several serial newspapers, the most important of which, the Female Spectator, was the first modern periodical written by a woman and addressed to a female audience. This fully annotated collection of articles selected from the Female Spectator includes romantic and satiric fiction, moral essays, and social commentary, covering the broad range of concerns shared by eighteenth-century middle-class women. Perhaps most compelling to a twentieth-century audience is the evidence of what we might be tempted to call feminist awareness. By no means revolutionary in her attitudes, Haywood nonetheless perceives the inequities of her periods social conditions for women. She offers pragmatic advice, such as how to avoid disastrous marriages, how to deal with wandering husbands, and what kind of education women should seek. The essays also report on a broad range of social actualities, from the craze for tea drinking and the dangers of gossip to the problem of compulsive gambling. They allude to such larger matters as politics, war, and diplomacy, and promote the importance of science and the urgency of developing informed relations with nature.

Dentro del libro

Páginas seleccionadas

Otras ediciones - Ver todas

Términos y frases comunes

Pasajes populares

Página 142 - Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls : Who steals my purse, steals trash ; 'tis something, nothing ; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands : But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed, Oth.
Página 243 - Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made: Stronger by weakness, wiser men become As they draw near to their eternal home. Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view That stand upon the threshold of the new.
Página 175 - Success, the mark no mortal wit, Or surest hand, can always hit : For whatsoe'er we perpetrate, We do but row, w' are steer'd by Fate, Which in success oft disinherits, For spurious causes, noblest merits.
Página 302 - And know'st thou not, no law is made for love ; Law is to things which to free choice relate ; Love is not in our choice, but in our fate ; Laws are but positive ; love's power, we see, Is Nature's sanction, and her first decree.
Página 126 - So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife, loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church ; for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
Página 136 - Yet went she not, as not with such discourse Delighted, or not capable her ear Of what was high: such pleasure she reserved, Adam relating, she sole auditress; Her husband the relater she preferr'd Before the angel, and of him to ask Chose rather; he, she knew, would intermix Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute With conjugal caresses: from his lip Not words alone pleased her.
Página 137 - To whom thus half abash't Adam repli'd. Neither her out-side form'd so fair, nor aught In procreation common to all kinds (Though higher of the genial Bed by far, And with mysterious reverence I deem) So much delights me, as those graceful acts, Those thousand decencies that daily flow From all her words and actions...
Página 138 - There is a lust in man no charm can tame, Of loudly publishing his neighbour's shame." Hence ; " On eagle's wings immortal scandals fly, While virtuous actions are but born and die.
Página 156 - Our thoughtless sex is caught by outward form, And empty noise ; and loves itself in man.
Página 301 - What then remains, but, after past annoy, To take the good vicissitude of joy? To thank the gracious gods for what they give, Possess our souls, and while we live, to live? Ordain we then two sorrows to combine, And in one point the extremes of grief to join; That thence resulting joy may be renew'd, As jarring notes in harmony conclude.

Información bibliográfica