A Neutral Being Between the Sexes: Samuel Johnson's Sexual PoliticsBucknell University Press, 1998 - 155 pagina's Samuel Johnson's image in the popular imagination - that of a swaggering misogynist, a denigrator of women and their abilities - is based largely on frequently repeated quotations gleaned from Boswell's famous Life. By contrast, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many women intellectuals who were familiar with Johnson's works considered him a champion of women, an able defender in the ongoing debate about female nature and ability that had been going on since the middle ages, the querelle des femmes. In this study, Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer reclaims this earlier image of Johnson as a strong advocate of women's education, full participation in intellectual life, and full equality with men for the happiness of all society. Set in the context of gender expectations and prejudices in the eighteenth century, Kemmerer's work illuminates Johnson's contribution to the debate that still rages over whether men or women are more responsible for making life miserable. Johnson's ultimate answer is that the errors and expectations of both sexes play a large part, but that eliminating stereotypes and fostering a spirit of cooperation and respect between men and women would make life much more pleasant for all. |
Inhoudsopgave
| 23 | |
| 38 | |
A neutral being between the sexes Rhetorical Strategy in The Rambler | 59 |
To write like a woman Female Personae in The Rambler | 78 |
The endearing elegance of female friendship Equality and Sexual Difference in Rasselas | 93 |
When was powr beneficent in vain? | 116 |
Notes | 122 |
Works Cited | 143 |
Index | 153 |
Overige edities - Alles bekijken
A Neutral Being Between the Sexes: Samuel Johnson's Sexual Politics Kathleen Nulton Kemmerer Fragmentweergave - 1998 |
Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen
androgyny argues Aspasia Astronomer Astronomer's Bathsua Makin beauty Boswell Boswell's Cali century Chapter cited parenthetically Clarendon Press condemn context conversation courtesy literature critics Culture daughter Demetrius discussion eighteenth eighteenth-century Eliza Haywood Elizabeth Carter emotional English epigraph equal Euphelia example experience female characters female personae feminine Feminist fictional Fontenelle's friendship gender happiness Haven Haywood human husband ideas imagine Imlac intellectual Irene Irene's John Johnson implies Johnson says Lady learning letter Mahomet male characters marriage marry Mary Astell masculine mind Misogyny moral agency Mustapha nature Nekayah novel Oxford passion Pekuah Plato play Poets psychological androgyny querelle Rambler Rambler 18 Rambler persona rape Rasselas Rasselas's rationality reader reading relationship Republic Rhetoric Samuel Johnson seraglio sexes sexual politics shows society Socrates son's speaking stereotypes Subsequent references tion translation tyranny unhappy virtue virtuous wife woman women writing Yale Edition Yale University Yale University Press York
Populaire passages
Pagina 135 - A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table than when his wife talks Greek. My old friend Mrs. Carter," he added, " could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus from the Greek, and work a handkerchief as well as compose a poem.
Pagina 139 - You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished with wings and hovering in the sky, would see the earth and all its inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to him successively by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel.
Pagina 13 - I could not find words to express what I felt upon this unexpected and very great mark of his affectionate regard. Next day, Sunday, July 31, I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. JOHNSON. " Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well ; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
Pagina 61 - I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper.
Pagina 64 - I have mentioned failed to obtain happiness, for want of considering that marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship ; that there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity ; and that he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness, that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.
Pagina 43 - Interval of peaceful Sorrow; The Lust of Gold succeeds the Rage of Conquest, The Lust of Gold, unfeeling and remorseless ! The last Corruption of degenerate Man ! Urg'd by th' imperious Soldier's fierce Command, The groaning Greeks break up their golden Caverns Pregnant with Stores, that India's Mines might envy, Th' accumulated Wealth of toiling Ages.
Pagina 130 - This wrong connexion in our minds of ideas in themselves loose and independent of one another, has such an influence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, as well moral as natural, passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked
Pagina 26 - ... friendship, that among the multitudes whom vanity or curiosity, civility or veneration, crowded about him, he did not expect, that very spacious apartments would be necessary to contain all that should regard him with sincere kindness, or adhere to him with steady fidelity. So many qualities are indeed requisite to the possibility of friendship, and so many accidents must concur to its rise and its continuance, that the greatest part of mankind content themselves without it, and supply its place...
Pagina 38 - Cato' it has been not unjustly determined, that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language, than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here " excites or assuages emotion :" here is " no magical power of raising fantastic terror or wild anxiety.
Pagina 84 - Think naught a trifle, though it small appear ; Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles life.