From Virgil to Van Amerongen
We could easily fill a whole library with books that have taken their inspiration from the emotional nature of women. From Virgil's "Varium et mutabile semper femina" (Woman remains a changeable and capricious creature) to the more recent, ironic "We men do not cry" from Martin van Amerongen, [1] history is paved with casual comments that attribute to women a different way of relating to emotions from men.
The idea that women are more emotional than men appears to be embedded in Western culture, not only in the opinion of the general public, as expressed down the ages by poets and journalists, but also in science, which has from its beginnings projected the phenomenon of emotionalism almost exclusively onto the female body. Whereas in earlier times the explanation was sought in the uncontrollable motions of the uterus, a chronic imbalance between bodily fluids or weak nerves, [2] nowadays all this is translated into a biochemical and evolutionary jargon that explains the origins of "natural" differences of psyche and behavior between the sexes in terms of the sex-specific workings of hormones and the structure of the cerebral hemispheres. [3] So from antiquity right up to the present day, Western culture has had what one might almost call a "respectable" tradition of presenting emotionalism and womanhood as unquestionable equivalents.
Differences in interpretation
Yet despite this apparent solidity and continuity, the concept of the emotional woman has been subject to erosion in the course of history, and the meanings attached to the phenomenon of female emotionalism have been highly changeable. For whatever the differences between women's and men's bodies, they were not always held to imply an automatic inequality of mind.
In classical philosophy the soul was in principle sexless, and this was also true of early Christian theology, which preached the spiritual equality of the sexes. [4] Thus the refusal to attribute different mental faculties to men and women on the basis of their physical differences can also boast a long tradition. It is not their bodies but their upbringing and poor education that explain why women behave in certain ways, Christine de Pisan posited around 1400 in response to misogynous comments by contemporaries. Her assertion started off a fierce debate that continued for several centuries, and which became known in early modern times as the Querelle des femmes. [5] This historical debate introduced the opposition that still determines the debate on the psychological differences between the sexes today: the opposition between nature and culture, between biological determination and social conditioning, that De Pisan had been the first to express.
Another opposition that greatly influenced the meanings attached to female emotionalism was that between positive and negative appraisals. As early as 1748 the Dutch journalist and encyclopedist Egbert Buys reflected on the complexities involved:
It is true that Women's passions are in general far stronger than those of Men; this is why their wrath, hatred, vengefulness, unchastity, pride and other impulses far exceed those of Men: but it is equally certain that where their inclinations are for the good, they surpass Men in their qualities of patience, love, mercy, chastity, humility and endurance. [6]
It is no coincidence that Buys should have chosen the year 1748 in which to champion female "inclinations," as will become apparent further on in this article. But what concerns me here is that female emotionalism may be associated with the most diverse types of emotional responses, from wrath to patience, from hate to love, from vengeance to mercy, which are not only quite different in content but which are also valued quite differently.
So although the concept of the emotional woman appears to be a standard historical fixture, we can find ample historical grounds for questioning the monolithic and supposedly unchanging essence of this female emotionalism. The emotional woman is an archetype [7] in Western consciousness, but one with a highly variable meaning. Thus a historical analysis of this archetype will make it possible to problematize the hackneyed dichotomy between female emotionalism and male rationalism, and to inquire into changes that may have taken place in the genderedness of emotions. Female emotionalism proves to have been far less unambiguous over the course of time than is generally believed, nor has male rationalism always been placed in an antithetical relationship to emotionalism. This is nor only because of the different attitudes to emotions that have existed at various times, but also because of a historical shift in the conceptualization of sexual difference itself.
To gain a better understanding of the historical interaction between these two changing categories, I should like to focus on the eighteenth century--which, despite its usual label as the Age of Enlightenment, was equally a time in which passions, sentiment and liaisons dangereuses caused feelings to run high. It was also an age in which writers such as Egbert Buys in their weekly magazines breathed new life into the debate on the meaning of human emotions and the emotional differences between the sexes from an enlightened point of view. I shall therefore base my argument to a large extent on these Enlightenment weeklies, dubbed in the Netherlands "Specratorial" papers--or "Spectators" for short--because they were all modeled on the great example of their day, the weekly Spectator (1711-1712) written by the English journalists Steele and Addison. [8]
In the Netherlands as elsewhere, the Spectators reflected the main trends in European Enlightenment thought. Although the Dutch Enlightenment culture had certain characteristic features that distinguished it from, for example, the French or Scottish variants, [9] the ideas that were expressed on sexual difference mirror clear international trends. This case study of Dutch texts adds complexity, but shows how the writers' shifting views were closely attuned to their intended readership and clarifies the crucial role played by ideas about emotion in gender imagery.
The Enlightenment debate in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic
Anyone brought up with the notion that the eighteenth century was the Age of Enlightenment tends to associate it exclusively with the great philosophers who wrote their most famous works in this period. Yet the eighteenth-century Enlightenment manifested itself in another way, that is less well-known. It was the first period in history in which ordinary members of the public started taking an active part in the intellectual debates of their day.
The Dutch Republic may not have been richly endowed with Great Thinkers, but its high level of literacy and well-developed network of bookshops meant that the ideas of the Enlightenment reached a relatively large public. This was an age that cherished the ideal of the enlightened citizen who understood the value of human sociability, was a well-informed participant in public debates and endorsed the pursuit of universal happiness. As a result, numerous societies were founded, focusing on cultural or literary issues or popular science, to meet the need for education and opinion-forming among the citizenry. This project was also furthered by the Spectatorial papers that discussed matters of general interest for a wide public on a weekly basis.
In the eighteenth century these periodicals, dozens of which appeared on the market in the Netherlands, as elsewhere, served as indicators for the public opinion of the day. To use a phrase coined in the eighteenth century they were "barometers of taste" [10]--middle-class taste, to be sure, as the Dutch Spectators were written by and for the upper middle classes who had assumed the role of the country's enlightened, moral vanguard. The journals would also publish letters and articles sent in by readers, thus keeping the public actively involved in their content. Although the Spectators emphatically targeted female as well as male readers, the genre was scarcely accessible to women writers. [11] Betje Wolff and Petronella Moens are the only Dutch women who are known to have contributed actively to the Spectatorial canon. [12]
Still, even though the female voice is largely absent, for an investigation of prevailing ideas on the genderedness of emotions these journals provide some extremely revealing material. The texts reflect the debates on the differences between men and women, on true human nature, on the ideal upbringing, on the way in which the sexes should consort with one another, and on the value of the emotions that played an important role in social relationships. They tell us about the way in which the archetype of the emotional woman manifested itself in the collective (male) consciousness of these middle-class circles. In the course of the eighteenth century we detect a shift, which may be defined as a historic departure in the ideas on emotions. Whereas the emotional sensitivity of women was initially seen as a problem and a hazard, in the latter half of the eighteenth century women's susceptible emotions came to be invested with an entirely different meaning.
Over the centuries numerous mythical and/or historical figures have served as models for the dangers posed by women's impulsiveness and lack of self-control. Jewish tradition has given us Lilith, from the Old Testament we know Eve, while classical antiquity produced Xantippe and the Amazons. In the sixteenth century the Low Countries added two local viragos: Mad Meg from a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the historical battle-axe "Kenau," a Haarlem widow whose role in the Dutch war of liberation from the Spanish soon became legendary but whose unfeminine pugnacity was later rejected. All these female figures reflect the impulsive and undisciplined character that women develop in the absence of male leadership and that wreaks havoc all around them.
In the Dutch Spectators we see this archetype embodied in the figure of the "bad-tempered wife," the unmanageable woman who subverts her husband's authority by assuming the dominant role. She is driven by two primary emotions: wrath and a thirst for power. Thus the "bad-tempered wife" represents the emotionalism attributed to women in its most negative form. The epithet "bad-tempered" refers not only to passing impulses but equally to her character: [13] instead of being a dutiful wife, she reverses the customary relations of authority and with her thirst for power causes chaotic scenes that strike at the roots of society.
The bad-tempered wife was not an invention of "enlightened" Spectator writers, but a legacy from the past that was not easy to shake off. The stories about the bad-tempered wife were remnants of an older theme, which had become known as "the battle to see who wears the trousers," which was occasionally fought out in popular farces and prints, sometimes in a quite literal sense.
The Dutch historical psychologist Lene Dresen-Coenders has traced the origin of this theme to the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, linking its popularity to a new division of labor between the sexes that evolved in fifteenth-century Western Europe. While women had previously participated independently in the production and sale of goods in farming and other traditional businesses, the rise of the urban middle classes restricted their activities more and more to domestic tasks, while men increasingly assumed sole responsibility for providing the family's income. An unforeseen consequence of this separation between the worlds of women and men was that women started claiming dominion over everything that took place in the home. This destabilized power relations between the sexes: according to prevailing beliefs it was the man, as head of the family, who should have the last word on all family matters, including domestic affairs and children's upbringing. [14]
Anthropological research has shown that it is particularly in situations marked by a highly gendered division of labor, including women's ascendancy in domestic affairs, that men tend to become truly afraid of women's power. [15] This fear is also reflected in the ideology underlying the witch craze that was under way in Europe in this same early modem period. Although for a variety of reasons the witch hunts in the Dutch Republic were less extreme than in many other countries, the literary and artistic portrayals of the bad-tempered wife are clear evidence that fear of women's power existed here too. This male preoccupation with women's power was probably in part a response to the general disruption of the social equilibrium in Western Europe--a result of the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism and of the increased pressure on secular authorities caused by frequent epidemics and successive waves of famine. More importance came to be attached to a harmonious, stable family life, as the balance of power within marriage was deemed to symbolize that in society. Secular and religious leaders viewed undisciplined women as a problem that transcended the embarrassment caused to their husbands: such women posed a threat to the very fabric of society. [16]
Emotions: weakness or strength?
In the imagery associated with the bad-tempered wife, emotions were accorded a key role. This is in line with popular Western beliefs that often link emotions to chaos and the loss of control. From this point of view, emotions are disruptive and jeopardize the existing order, both within an individual and in society. [17] It was the bad-tempered wife's wrath and lust for power that disturbed the equilibrium of society, and these were the emotions that had to be subdued by male reason.
But this raised a thorny problem: these women's husbands were also to blame, since they had clearly failed to tame the inflamed passions of their spouses. Instead of calming them down with their male intellect, these lily-livered fellows kowtowed to them. The link between maleness and the power of reason was hence generally more tenuous than the ideology stipulated. There was also a strong tendency to blame the bad-tempered wife's quirks on poor upbringing. She had been set a bad example at home, she had lacked the guidance of a strong, wise, male hand, her father having been absent or overly indulgent.
The wrath and thirst for power attributed to the bad-tempered wife were far from random emotional phenomena: they were affects associated with persons of relatively high standing in society. Those high up in the social hierarchy could afford such affects (up to a point)--but for the lowly to express them was intolerable. Wrath and lust for power can be classified among what Fischer has called the "strong" emotions because they are associated with a strong ego that places the person high up on the scale of social relations. [18] With her attacks of rage, the bad-tempered wife therefore made a double bid for power: not only did she try to bring her husband under her thumb, but she also dared to indulge in vehement emotional outbursts that did not go with her subordinate position in society.
These stories thus illustrate the strange paradox that Lutz describes as running through many expositions on emotion: on the one hand emotionalism stands for weakness, and on the other hand it represents a strength that may not be ignored. [19] The weakness of the emotional woman conceals a certain strength; within this strength lies her weakness. This paradoxical state of affairs, which was seen as a negative phenomenon in the case of the bad-tempered wife, could also be interpreted in a positive sense, however. The Spectator writer Buys mentioned above, who in 1748 presented patience, love and mercy as emotional weaknesses that should be appreciated as positive strengths, was one of the first commentators in the Dutch Republic to formulate this new attitude. But where had these new views germinated?
While in the heavily urbanized Republic of the Netherlands, the Spectatorial writers were haunted by images of bad-tempered, scolding and rebellious wives, in England a new emotional woman was born--Pamela.
Pamela was the literary creation of the English writer Samuel Richardson, who would secure a prominent place in the history of literature with his epistolary novel Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded (1740-1741). With his psychological character sketches he was the first to introduce an element of depth into what had thus far been the superficial genre of the novel. It was with Richardson that the novel came of age, and his female protagonists played an important part in this development. After Pamela came Clarissa: or, The History of a Young Lady (1747- 1748), which was an even greater popular success. After this Richardson wrote The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-1754), in which women--contrary to what the title suggests--are once again in the leading roles.
Richardson's epistolary novels hinge entirely on the emotional lives of his characters. The details of these lives are revealed to the readers through the intimate correspondence conducted between the main characters. These novels, carried along not by events but by emotions, were in that sense a new departure from the burlesque, picaresque, pastoral and heroic/chivalric romances that had gone before them. [20] The moral message with which Richardson infused his books was another new element in narrative fiction. The books written by Richardson and his followers accordingly became known as moral or didactic novels. The contrast between vice and virtue was hammered in incessantly.
Pamela tells the story of a young maidservant of humble origin, who finds herself constantly obliged to fend off sexual advances by Mr. B., her aristocratic employer, in whose mansion she lives and works. She manages to preserve her chastity by devising a whole series of evasive maneuvers. This steadfastness is eventually rewarded with marriage to Mr. B., who becomes a reformed character as a result of her unwavering virtue:
The beauty of Virtue triumphs in her example over the passions and prejudices of her husband, giving them both the now united prospect of Bliss stretching until all Eternity. [21]
Writing to her parents, Pamela describes her feelings as she lives through these events. In the girl's letters, her emotional state is the most important indicator of her virtue: her confusion, perplexity, shame and fear, followed later by sympathy, forgiveness and love, are all typical feminine emotions that speak well for Pamela's character. [22]
In Clarissa too, a virtuous young woman (though this time well-born) threatens to fall victim to the base impulses of a powerful man. Lovelace is a ruthless fellow who will stop at nothing to lure the desirable Clarissa into his bed. Clarissa is cornered time and time again, and it is not within her power to change the situation. Although she does not allow her moral integrity to be compromised, the events that unfold prove her undoing. Her delicate constitution cannot cope with all the emotion, and the tragic impact of the strain on her health finally kills her. In Clarissa's case, more than in Pamela's, her physical constitution reflects her inner disposition: her keen sense of morals makes impossible demands on her, her spiritual and emotional resistance is necessarily translated into attacks of physical illness--the only escape route remaining to her. [23]
In his last book, Sir Charles Grandison, Richardson returns to the same theme, but for the first time he introduces a male hero, who saves the defenseless Miss Byron from the claws of a malevolent villain. Sir Charles Grandison is one of the first representatives of a new type of man, the sensitive hero, who was to be all the rage in the late eighteenth century. His sensitive and charitable nature makes him into a masculine ideal with feminine traits, a semi-androgynous character whose surprising popularity I shall discuss below. His success, according to a Dutch Spectator writer, belies
a fallacy with the most dangerous of consequences which in general has held sway for all too long, [ ... ] that a degree of debauchery and vice are needed to perfect the character of a fine man. [24]
Still, it is not Grandison's emotions that lie at the heart of the narrative, for his role as a correspondent in this epistolary novel is minimal. In the published letters it is once again the women who report on their emotional state, emphasizing the sensitive elements of their feminine character. The "man of feeling" would not start expounding on his emotions until the works of later sentimental authors such as Sterne and Mackenzie. [25]
The success of sentimentalism
It may be difficult for today's readers to understand what made Richardson's novels so popular in their day. The plots hold few surprises and the bulky novels tax the reader's endurance to the utmost. Richardson's success, however, was based partly on the familiarity of the situations he described, as is clear from the "fan mail" he received from his readers, both men and women. These letters also show that Richardson's characteristic style had struck a sensitive cord with the reading public. [26]
Conjuring up emotions was an important aim of Richardson's work: he believed that he could get his readers to make the same virtuous decisions in their lives as his own characters, provided he could successfully manipulate their feelings. The textual strategies he used to achieve this, such as the publication of fictitious letters from heroines whose tears flow freely, moving his readers in turn to tears, were emulated by many subsequent writers. Literary historians hence attribute Richardson with having played an important part in the development of sentimentalism, the eighteenth-century literary school that elevated the evocation of deep emotions to a goal in itself.
Rousseau, Sterne and Goethe are only a few of the many authors who trod in Richardson's footsteps with their lyrical expressions of feeling. Richardson was not in fact the first writer to dedicate his work to sentiment--in France, for instance, he had a predecessor in Abbe Prevost, and in Britain, moral philosophers and theologians had already prepared the ground with their theories on "moral sense." [27] But with Richardson, emotion was canonized--it became the standard against which all literary work was measured. And although some critics accused Pamela of hypocrisy, while others found Richardson's story lines outrageously implausible, the general public thought otherwise. Effusive reviews, translations and imitations the very titles of which echoed the source
of their inspiration, all testify to Richardson's enormous popularity. [28]
The Dutch Spectators too gave Richardson an excellent press. According to these writers, his books helped their female readers to steer their emotions in the right direction:
It is most unfortunate that there is such a dearth of Writing about Morality, and in particular about the nature and guidance of passions [ ... ] it therefore seems to me highly profitable for young ladies to read the English and Dutch and other Spectators [ ... ]. I would venture also to commend to them the writings of Mr Richardson [ ... ]. While it is true that these writings are Novels, they are by no means such as to corrupt the heart, as most others will. [29]
With praise of this kind it is scarcely surprising that the Dutch Spectators are full of allusions to Richardson's characters. From the mid-eighteenth century onward, these weeklies published scores of brief sentimental narratives, some of them based on international sentimental best-sellers.
One example is the love story that appeared in the Bataafsch Musaeum of 8 April 1771, where the reading of Pamela serves as a touchstone to determine whether the two young lovers will be able to find happiness: if both are unable to keep back their tears on reading a particularly dramatic passage together, the young woman interprets this as "convincing proof of the concordance of their inclinations" and knows that she has found her true love. This exemplifies a sentimental topos in which virtuous souls find each other in the shared experience of reading a moving text. [30]
The sentimental novel satisfied the demand for "safe" secular reading for women. In an age that saw books roll off the presses in increasing numbers, and with more and more middle-class women acquiring the time and means to read, the demand for such literature soared. Moral content was an important criterion for women's reading, precisely because women were believed to be more easily influenced than men, and it was feared that the traditional, unrealistic romantic novels would inflame their imagination. The "new" model, however, provided a kind of socialization that