This final chapter demonstrates female capacity for reasoning and logical argument in many areas: skill in argument demonstrated by women in power, or addressing those in power, in an attempt to persuade; skill in expounding ethical or theological ideas, and in analysing other people. All these writers possess the ability to deploy ‘patriarchal’ discourses together with female responsiveness to individuals.
The chapter opens with two letters from Hildegard of Bingen. Respected for her visions and sermons, she was often asked for advice. Here she takes the initiative, to persuade the young king ‘readily to do good, for your mind is well-disposed, except when the foul habits of others overwhelm you’. She uses bold biblical images to frighten a Pope with her warning. The second letter is proof of the power possessed by a women when in charge of a large independent nunnery.
There are a fair number of letters available from queens, who were in a position to wield power, and negotiate. I include the first translation in English of a letter by Isabella la Católica, mother of Catherine of Aragon, to her brother, King Enrique, to persuade him to let her marry the man of her choice. This was Ferdinand of Aragon who proved an excellent consort, and who was possibly a model for Machiavelli’s The Prince. Together they reunited Spain, making it the most powerful country in the known world: Isabel had the foresight, alone among Europeans, to back Columbus.
The two letters of Elizabeth I demonstrate her skill in adapting her discourse to the topics on which she wished to legislate or persuade. Her faith is as strong as her sister’s, but vastly distinct in tone and content. Both took power as Head of the Church, and displayed patriarchal ability to use that power forcefully. Distinct in tone, but not in common sense, are the letters of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who used her influence to stop the Franco-Austrian war, and Queen Victoria. Both sound naïve, but they carried out their duty better than most monarchs.
The working-class is not omitted, with two brave, skilful letters from groups petitioning men in power to improve their pitiful earning position.
Every century offers evidence of the skill with which women used ‘patriarchal’ discourse to convince their readers, such as Aphra Behn who deployed many different types of language in order to earn a living (see Chaper Seven). By the eighteenth century, groups of intellectual women were corresponding with each other; and far more so as the century drew to its revolutionary close.
Mary Wollstonecraft is the best-known among many who argued for women’s equality, as in the letter to Talleyrand earlier. Women novelists, in less argumentative vein, possessed the ability to pronounce balanced judgements on the awesomely distinguished, as Fanny Burney on Dr Johnson.
By the nineteenth century, women wrote on public issues and social reform, from Elizabeth Fry on prisons to Beatrice Webb for the Fabians. Suffragette views are so well kown that I have included only one – a farseeing argument for a Women’s Movement from Christabel Pankhurst – because of its classlessness. Anaïs Nin argues for honesty in wartime, in a letter to a homosexual friend. Finally, La Pasionaria links her personal grief for the death of her son with public support for the Revolution.
Hildegard of Bingen had mystic visions, composed moving plainsong and ran a large convent. Yet she always found time to help powerful men with her letters of advice. The first letter is to Henry II of England. He had been crowned king in 1154. He greatly admired the Emperor, Barbarossa, and a marriage was planned between the babies of the two royal houses, which Henry cancelled when his future son-in-law was passed over in the imperial succession. King Henry supported the antipope, while the English bishops, Thomas à Becket among them, supported Pope Alexander. Henry became Thomas’s enemy, but did penance after his murder at Canterbury in 1170. The archbishop was canonized three years later.
To a certain man who holds a certain office, the Lord says: ‘Yours are the gifts of giving: it is by ruling and defending, protecting and providing, that you may reach heaven.’ But a bird, as black as can be, comes to you from the North and says: ‘You have the power to do whatever you want. So do this and do that; make this excuse and that excuse. It does not profit you to have regard for Justice; for if you are always attentive to her, you will not be a master but a slave.’
Yet you should not listen to the thief who gives you this advice; the thief who, in your infancy, when you had become, from ashes, a thing of beauty, after receiving the breath of life, stripped you of greater glory. Look, instead, more attentively upon your Father who made you. For your mind is well-disposed, so that you readily do good, except when the foul habits of others overwhelm you and you become entangled in them for a time. Shun this, with all your might, beloved son of God, and call upon your Father, since willingly he stretches out his hand to help you. Now live forever and remain in eternal happiness.
Following Eugenius, Anastasius IV reigned briefly as Pope between 12 July, 1153 and 3 December, 1154. Although an upright figure himself, he won a reputation for tolerating lesser men in positions of influence. Note Hildegard’s bravery in criticizing the Pope, in spite of his position as leader of the Church.
So it is, O man, that you who sit in the chief seat of the Lord, hold him in contempt when you embrace evil, since you do not reject it but kiss it, by silently tolerating it in depraved men. And so the whole earth is disordered by a great succession of heresies; for man loves what God has destroyed. And you, Rome, like a man lying at the point of death, will be so confounded that the strength of your feet, on which up till now you have stood, will ebb away. For you love the King’s daughter, Justice, not with a burning love, but as though in the numbness of sleep; so that you drive her from you. But she herself will flee from you if you do not call her back.
But the high mountains will still hold out to you the jaw-bone of assistance. They will lift you up, supporting you with the massive timbers of tall trees, so that you will not be despoiled completely of all your honour – the glory of your betrothal to Christ. You will keep some wings to adorn you, until the snow of manifold mockeries arrives, producing much folly. Beware, therefore, of wanting to associate yourself with the ways of the pagans, lest you fall.
ED. M. FOX, LETTERS OF HILDEGARD OF BINGEN (1987)
Hardworking Margaret Paston not only ran a large estate whenever her husband was away, she helped her children with their financial problems. In this letter Margaret writes to her son with serious news about her husband’s will.
1450
This is to let you know that I am sending you by the bearer of this letter £40 in gold coin, which I have borrowed for you on pledge, because I would not take the money laid aside for you at Norwich; for, so I am told by the chancellor, Master John Smith, and others, we have all been cursed for administering a dead man’s goods without licence or authority, and I think matters are going all the worse with us because of it. For the reverence of God, get a licence from my lord of Canterbury, to ease my conscience and yours, to administer goods to the value of three or four hundred marks, and explain to him how your estates have been in such trouble these past two years that you could get nothing at all from them, nor can take anything now without hurting your tenants. They have been so harrassed by unjust means before now, and you have so much important business in hand, that you cannot afford to be forebearing with them or keep your rights without using your father’s goods for a time. This I hope, will ease our conscience in respect of what we have administered and spent before; because we have no more money to pay off this £40 and all other charges than the £47 which you and your uncle know about, which is laid aside at Norwich.
By your mother
ED. ALICE D. GREENWOOD, SELECTIONS FROM THE PASTON LETTERS (1920)
Isabella of Castile (1451–1501) transformed a peninsula of disparate, warring kingdoms into the nation-state of Spain, much as we know it today. Only eighteen when she wrote this letter to her brother, King Enrique, she displays many skills in argument: she underlines her position and rights, as sister and heir to the throne; as sister, she stresses her love for the brother; as princess, she renounces civil war, in order to bring peace to their kingdom. She gives many reasons why the man she favours as her future husband would prove better than her brother’s choices for her, which he had endeavoured to impose by keeping her under house arrest.
October 1470
My worthy Lord and powerful King: your lordship knows full well that after the illustrious King Alonso, my brother and your lordship’s, had passed from this life, many nobles, prelates and knights, who had served and followed him, remained in my service in Avila; I might well have retained the titles and land which Alonso, our brother, won before his death. But I have always placed my great, true love at the service of your majesty’s person and welfare, and the peace and security of these kingdoms. Conscious of your Majesty’s desire to put an end to the wars, riots, dangers, deaths and disturbances, I wished to defer everything which seemed to strengthen my power and authority in order to further the will and disposition of your Excellence. Nevertheless it must be recognised that the lawful succession of these kingdoms always belonged, and still belongs, to me, as legitimate successor and inheritor . . . since you, in the presence of many nobles and the Papal Nuncio, as I have been informed, had sworn on the Holy Bible, and publicly announced, throughout your kingdoms, and much of Christendom, that I am your Heir and legitimate successor.
F. FERNÁNDEZ-ARNESTO, FERDINAND AND ISABELLA (1975) TRANS. OLGA KENYON
Lucrezia Borgia, sister of the infamous Pope, enjoyed a certain amount of power through him. But he was jealous of her relationships which forced her to be circumspect, as this witty letter to her lover Pietro Bembo, shows. As with many women, she expresses ‘powerlessness’ to match his wording, so partly absolving herself from the rashness of a longer missive which could have been intercepted. However, she is aware that when a man falls in love, it is the one moment when a woman in patriarchal society has a modicum of power – which she seems to enjoy in her playing on words. Thesauriero is a pun on a title meaning both thesaurus and treasurer.
[1517]
My dearest Misser Pietro,
I know that the very expectation of something awaited is the greater part of satisfaction because the hope of possessing it lights up desire. The rarer it is, the more beautiful it seems, the commoner, the less so. I decided to put off writing to you until this moment, with the result that by awaiting some exquisite reward to your most exquisite letters, you have become the source of your own satisfaction; you are both creditor and payer.
Nevertheless I have in two of my letters, confessed to Monsignor Thesauriero of my debt to you and this may have constituted no small part of that which I can pay. As far as the rest is concerned, I do not believe that I can be held bound. In your letters you express with such ease all that you feel for me, I, just because I feel so well disposed towards you, am unable to do so. It is this feeling of powerlessness which absolves me from the debt. However as it would be undesirable for me to be both prosecutor and judge of my own cause, I submit to the weighty judgement of the aforesaid Monsignor Thesauriero, commending myself to his Lordship and you. Ferrara the seventh day of August.
Your own Duchess of Ferrara
A. FRASER, LOVE LETTERS (1976)
Mary Tudor (1516–1558) was imbued with the intense Catholic faith which had supported her mother during the long years of rejection by Henry VIII. After the persecution of Catholics, she was determined to reimpose her faith. Her resolve was strengthened by her marriage to Philip II of Spain. By January 1555 she felt secure with the re-establishment of Catholicism, and an apparent pregnancy. She determined to persecute a few well-known Protestants, but without the processions and public confessions demanded by the Spanish Inquisition at that time. This letter is far more humane in approach than attitudes in Rome, though she might be accused of Jesuitical rationalization. Compare it with her sister’s humanistic approach, in the next letter.
| To Pole, her legate | January 1555 |
. . . touching good preaching, I wish that may supply and overcome the evil preaching in time past. And also to make a sure provision that none evil books shall either be printed bought or sold without just punishment therefore. I think it should be well done that the universities and churches of this realm should be visited by such persons as my Lord Cardinal with the rest of you may be well assured to be worthy and sufficient persons . . . Touching punishment of heretics me thinketh it ought to be done without rashness, not leaving in the meanwhile to do Justice to such as by learning would seem to deceive the simple, and the rest so to be used that the people might well perceive them not to be condemned without just occasion, whereby they shall both understand the truth and beware to do the like. And especially within London I would wish none to be burnt without some of the Council’s presence and both there and everywhere good sermons at the same. I verily believe that many benefices should not be in one man’s hands but after such sort as every priest might look to his own charge and remain resident there, whereby, they should have but one bond to discharge towards God whereas now they have many, which I take to be the cause that in most parts of the realm there is overmuch want of good preachers and such as should with their doctrine overcome the evil diligence of the abused preachers in the time of the schism; not only by their preaching but also by their good example without which in mine opinion their sermons shall not so much profit as I wish. And like as their good example on their behalf shall undoubtedly do much good, I account myself bound on my behalf also to show some example in encouraging and maintaining those persons well doing their duty (not forgetting in the meanwhile to correct and punish them which do contrary) that it may be evident to all this Realm how I discharge my conscience therein and minister true justice in so doing.
BL HARLEIAN MS 444, F. 27; COTTON MS, TITUS C VIII, F. 120
Elizabeth I had seen religious persecution of Catholics under her brother, and burning of Protestants during her sister’s reign. She was determined to keep a middle way between destructive extremes. Her people could believe what they wished, she demanded no window on their souls, but she insisted on social behaviour that would not promote fanatical reaction. Here she writes to the bishops, stressing her responsibilities as Supreme Governor of the Church, and pointing out her own unique responsibilities for the post
1584
One matter touches me so near as I may not overskip. Religion is the ground on which all other matters ought to take root, and being corrupted may mar all the tree; and that there be some fault finders with the order of the clergy, which so may make a slander to myself and the Church whose overruler God hath made me, whose negligence cannot be excused if any schisms or errors heretical were suffered.
Thus much I must say that some faults and negligence may grow, as in all other great charges it happeneth; and what vocation without? All which if you, my Lords of the clergy, do not amend, I mean to depose you. Look ye therefore well to your charges.
I am supposed to have many studies but most philosophical. I must yield this to be true, that I suppose few that be no professors have read more. And I need not tell you that I am so simple that I understand not, nor so forgetful that I remember not. And yet amidst so many volumes I hope God’s book hath not been my seldomest lectures; in which we find that which by reason, for my part, we ought to believe, that seeing so great wickedness and griefs in the world in which we live but as wayfaring pilgrims, we must suppose that God would never have made us but for a better place and of more comfort than we find here. I know no creature that breatheth whose life standeth hourly in more peril for it than mine own; who entered not into my state without sight of manifold dangers of life and crown, as one that had the mightiest and the greatest to wrestle with. Then it followeth that I regarded it so much as I left myself behind my care. And so you see that you wrong me too much if any such there be as doubt my coldness in that behalf. For if I were not persuaded that mine were the true way of God’s will, God forbid I should live to prescribe it to you. Take you heed lest Ecclesiastes say not too true; they that fear the hoary frost the snow shall fall upon them.
ED. G. HARRISON, LETTERS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH I, 1558–1570 (1935)
Elizabeth I also gave forceful orders when war threatened. In this first letter she orders Essex back to London, which he had left without her permission, just after the storm’s destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Essex,
Your sudden and undutiful departure from our presence and your place of attendance, you may easily conceive how offensive it is, and ought to be, unto us. Our great favours, bestowed on you without deserts, hath drawn you thus to neglect and forget your duty; for other constructions we cannot make of those your strange actions. Not meaning therefore to tolerate this your disordered part, we give directions to some of our Privy Council to let you know our express pleasure for your immediate repair hither; which you have not performed, as your duty doth bind you, increasing greatly therby your former offence and undutiful behaviour, in departing in such sort without our privity, having so special office of attendance and charge near our person. We do therefore charge and command you forthwith, upon receipt of these our letters, all excuses and delays set apart, to make your present and immediate repair unto us to understand our further pleasure. Whereof see you fail not, as you will be loth to incur our indignation, and will answer for the contrary at your uttermost peril
MARIA PERRY, THE WORD OF A PRINCE: A LIFE OF ELIZABETH I (1990)
The queen decided that Parliament’s desire to declare war on Spain was unnecessarily aggressive – and too expensive. She preferred Drake’s plan of hit-and-run attacks on what remained of the Spanish fleet. Sir Roger Williams set sail, with her beloved Essex, to attack and plunder before her order was received. Her angry letter demands the death of the disobedient Sir Roger.
1589
Although we doubt not but or yourselves you have so thoroughly weighed the heinousness of the offence lately committed by Sir Roger Williams, that you have both discharged him from the place and charge which was appointed him in that army and committed the same to some other meet person, yet you should also know from ourself by these our special letters our just wrath and indignation against him and lay before you his intolerable contempt against ourself and the authority you have from us in that he forsook the army and conveyed also one of our principal ships from the rest of the fleet. His offence is in so high degree that the same diserveth by all laws to be punished by death, which if you have not already done then we will and command you sequester him from all charge and service. Therefore consider well of your doings herein.
MARIA PERRY (1990)
Maria Theresa, wife of Emperor Joseph of Austria and the mother of Marie Antoinette, writes to her sister, in October 1744, about her attempts to persuade her husband not to go to war, she was twenty-seven; Franz Joseph was thirty-six. In the end she got her way.
I was sick with anger and pain, and I made mon vieux [her husband] ill with my wickedness. I fell back on our usual refuge, caresses and tears; but they did not work, although he is the best husband in the world. . . . In the end I got into another temper, to such effect that now we are both ill. I can’t move him at all, and at the same time I have to confess to myself that his reasons are plausible enough. All the same, if he really goes off I shall either follow him or shut myself up in a convent.
E. CRANKSHAW, MARIA THERESA (1969)
She also drew up a programme for her daily life. Though young, she took her duties and responsibilities seriously.
. . . The Queen must learn to economise her time; method was half the battle. She must allow time for dressing properly, for eating properly and for retreat; only thus could she keep her end up and the world at bay. Very well then, assuming that she got up at eight o’clock she was to give herself an hour for dressing, breakfast and hearing Mass. After Mass, half an hour with her children. Then, from 9.30 to 12.30 it would be solid work; documents to read and initial, ministers to confer with, audiences to take. At 12.30 she was to stop everything, to relax before the midday meal at 12.45. Above all she must be punctual at meals, and she must eat her food before it got cold – and drink up her after-dinner coffee before that got cold. After the meal an hour for herself, her children.
E. CRANKSHAW (1969)
In this open letter Flora Tristan persuades English workers to fight to improve their rights, towards the end of the Chartist movement.
Be sure of this, that your freedom and progress depend entirely on spreading throughout your ranks a thorough knowledge of every law and institution which either harms or benefits the workers’ interests.
History shows us that urban and rural workers have been slaves for thousands of years. Their servitude might have endured for ever had not the advent of printing brought books within their reach. Reading has spread slowly among the working classes, but greater freedom has always followed in its wake. When people could read the Bible and the Gospels, they rejected the domination of Rome and the priests; when they had newspapers to instruct them in the rights of man, they demanded that their rulers should be accountable for their actions, that public office should be open to all, and that all (or at least all males) should have equal civil and political rights. I will acquaint you with the callous egotism, revolting hypocrisy and monstrous excesses of the powerful English oligarchy and its unpardonable crimes against the people. I will prepare you for the inevitable and terrible struggle between the proletariat and the aristocracy, and help you to judge whether the English people are destined to throw off the yoke and rise again, or whether this great nation must remain forever divided between a cruel and corrupt aristocracy on the one hand and a wretched and degraded people on the other.
Through the English example you will see how precarious is the existence of a people whose civil liberties are not guaranteed by political rights and social institutions, established in the equal interests of all. You will see how important it is for you to obtain these two guarantees and fit yourselves through education to make proper use of them.
Workers, if you would persevere in the study and investigation of these evils and reflect on them calmly, you will need to steel your hearts and summon up all your courage, for you will uncover wounds too deep to heal.
I clasp your hands in mine, all you men and women who up to this day have counted for nothing in the world. I join with you in the common task, I live in you through love,
I am your sister in humanity,
Flora Tristan, 1842
TRANS. J. HAWKES, THE LONDON JOURNAL OF FLORA TRISTAN (1982)
Fanny Burney (1752–1840) met many intellectuals of her time at her father’s house, since Dr Burney was a celebrated and hospitable musicologist. Though young when she met the redoubtable Dr Johnson, she penned this unimpressed portrait, addressed to a friend of her father, nicknamed ‘Daddy’, Samuel Crisp. He advised her ‘that trifling, negligence, even incorrectness, now & then in familiar epistolary writing, is the very soul of genius and ease’.
28 March 1777
My Dear Daddy
My dear father seemed well pleased at my returning to my time; and that is no small consolation and pleasure to me. So, to our Thursday morning party: Mrs and Miss Thrale, Miss Owen came, Mrs Thrale a very pretty woman still; she is extremely lively and chatty, has no supercilious or pedantic airs. Miss Owen, a relation, is good-humoured and sensible, a sort of butt, prodigiously useful in drawing out the wit and pleasantry of others.
My sister Burney was invited to meet and play to them, and in the midst of the performance Dr Johnson was announced. He is terribly ill-favoured; is tall and stout; but stoops terribly; he is almost bent double. His body is in continual agitation, see-sawing up and down; his feet are never a moment still; and in short his whole person is in perpetual motion. His dress too, considering the times, and that he had meant to put on his ‘best becomes’, being engaged to dine in a large company, was as much out of the common road as his figure; he had a large wig, snuff-coloured coat and gold buttons, but no ruffles to his shirt. He is shockingly near-sighted, and did not, till she held out her hand to him, even know Mrs Thrale (whom he loved). He poked his nose over the keys of the harpsichord, then my father introduced him to (sister) Hetty, as an old acquaintance and he kissed her!
His attention, however, was not to be diverted five minutes from the books, as we were in the library; he pored over them, almost touching their backs with his eyelashes, as he read their titles. At last, having fixed on one, he began, without further ceremony, to read, all the time standing at a distance from the company. I question if he even heard the duet.
Chocolate being then brought, we adjourned to the dining-room. And here, Dr Johnson being taken from the books, entered freely and most cleverly into conversation; though it is remarkable that he never speaks at all, but when spoken to; nor does he ever start, though he admirably supports any topic.
ED. A. DOBSON, THE DIARY AND LETTERS OF MME D’ARBLAY (1904)
Queen Victoria treated her uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, as adviser, confidant and substitute father. In her inimitable childlike discourse she describes a government crisis. As Head of State she took her work of attending to parliamentary matters seriously.
Buckingham Palace, 18th June 1844
My Dearest Uncle, – . . . I can write to you with a light heart, thank goodness, to day, for the Government obtained a majority, which up to the last moment last night we feared they would not have, and we have been in sad trouble for the last four or five days about it. It is the more marvellous, as, if the Government asked for a Vote of Confidence, they would have a Majority of 100; but this very strength makes the supporters of the Government act in a most unjustifiable manner by continually acting and voting against them, not listening to the debates, but coming down and voting against the Government. So that we were generally in the greatest possible danger of having a resignation of the Government without knowing to whom to turn, and this from the recklessness of a handful of foolish half ‘Puseyite’ half ‘Young England’ people! I am sure you will agree with me that Peel’s resignation would not only be for us (for we cannot have a better and a safer Minister), but for the whole country, and for the peace of Europe – a great calamity. Our present people are all safe, and not led away by impulses and reckless passions. We must, however, take care and not get into another crisis; for I assure you we have been quite miserable and quite alarmed ever since Saturday.
Since I last wrote to you, I spoke to Aberdeen (whom I should be equally sorry to lose, as he is so very fair, and has served us personally, so kindly and truly), and he told me that the Emperor has positively pledged himself to send a Minister to Brussels the moment those Poles are no longer employed; that he is quite aware of the importance of the measure, and would be disposed to make the arrangement easy, and that he spoke very kindly of you personally. Aberdeen says it is not necessary to disgrace them in any way, but only for the present de les éloigner. The Emperor has evidently some time ago made some strong declaration on the subject which he feels he cannot get over, and, as I said before, he will not give up what he has once pledged his word to. Then, no one on earth can move him. Au fond, it is a fine trait, but he carries it too far. He wrote me a very kind and affectionate letter from the Hague.
ED. J. RAYMOND, QUEEN VICTORIA’S EARLY LETTERS (1963)
She wrote to politicians in slightly less personal discourse.
To Sir Robert Peel
Pavilion, 18th February 1845
The Queen has received Sir Robert Peel’s letter, and is glad that the progress in the House of Commons was so satisfactory.
The Queen was much hurt at Mr Borthwick’s most impertinent manner of putting the question with respect to the title of King Consort, and much satisfied with Sir Robert’s answer. The title of King is open assuredly to many difficulties, and would perhaps be no real advantage to the Prince, but the Queen is positive that something must at once be done to place the Prince’s position on a constitutionally recognised footing, and to give him a title adequate to that position. How and when, are difficult questions. . . .
ED. A.C. BENSON, LETTERS OF QUEEN VICTORIA (1907)
To the King of the Belgians
Windsor Castle, 25th March 1845
. . . I copied what you wrote me about Peel in a letter I wrote him, which I am sure will please him much, and a Minister in these days does require a little encouragement, for the abuse and difficulties they have to contend with are dreadful. Peel works so hard and has so much to do, that sometimes he says he does not know how he is to get through it all!
You will, I am sure, be pleased to hear that we have succeeded in purchasing Osborne in the Isle of Wight, and if we can manage it, we shall probably run down there before we return to Town, for three nights. It sounds so snug and nice to have a place of one’s own, quiet and retired, and free from all Woods and Forests, and other charming Departments who really are the plague of one’s life.
Now, dearest Uncle, adieu. Ever your truly devoted Niece,
Victoria R.
ED. A.C. BENSON (1907)
These two letters are from groups of women workers seeking improved conditions, the first written during the Revolution of 1848, the second during the American Civil War. Both groups are composed of mothers attempting to support their children; their efforts have been undermined by employers undercutting their already meagre wages. Their language in both cases is forceful, their bravery notable in signing their names and addresses.
| Parisian garment workers Gentlemen: |
August 1848 |
Please consider the request of some poor working women. The convents and the prisons take all our work away from us; they do it for such a low price that we can’t compete with them. Almost all of us are mothers of families. We have our keep, our nourishment and our lodgings to pay for and we are not able to make enough to cover these expenses. The employers also wrong us by sending their garment-making orders out of Paris; thus we can find no work and are nearly reduced to begging. Therefore, gentlemen, we urge you to put an end to these injustices. All we want is work.
We hope, Gentlemen, that you will be good enough to consider our request. We salute you with respect.
[Signed by seven women, with their addresses]
EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN ET AL., VICTORIAN WOMEN (1981)
| Philadelphia seamstresses | July 1862 |
We the undersigned formerly doing sewing for the United States Arsenal at Philadelphia most respectfully remonstrate against the action of Col. Crossman in taking the work from us and giving it to contractors who will not pay wages on which we can live – many of us have husbands, fathers, sons & brothers now in the army and from whom we derived our support. Deprived of that as we are our only mode of living was by sewing and we were able by unceasing exertions to barely live at the prices paid by the Arsenal. The Contractors who are speculators offer about fifty per cent of the prices paid heretofore by the Arsenal – we respectfully ask your attention to our case. We have all given satisfaction in the work we have done. Then why should the government money be taken from the families of the poor to enrich the wealthy speculator without any gain to the government.
Very Respy Yours &c
Anna Long Widow 5 children 121 Mois St.
Louisa Bastian 124 Mirris St.
Mary Hamelton 1673 Front St. Husband at war
[Some 100 signatures followed these – many with the indication that the women were widows with children or had husbands or sons in the army.]
EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN ET AL. (1981)
George Sand, the novelist, writes to Edmond Planchot, a youngish admirer of her work. He was an enthusiastic botanist.
Nohant, 11 April 1857
I envy your youth and wonderful journeys interwoven, no doubt, with dangers, sufferings and disasters, which are so grandly compensated for, by the vast spectacles of nature and the riches of all Creation. I expect that you take a great many notes and that you keep a journal which will help you to give a full account of your travels.
These vast excursions, however we may look upon them (and the best thing to do is to look at them from all quarters at once) always hold a powerful interest and you will find many resources of your future in them. Take an interest in natural history; even if you are not very well up in it, your collections and observations would have their own usefulness. Please bring me back some butterflies and insects; the humblest and most paltry would mean riches to me; and as I know some collectors, I could introduce you to some interesting people when you come back.
The best way of bringing back butterflies and insects is to put off setting them up. When the butterfly has been killed and has a long pin through its body its wings close up and it dries in that position. One can thus bring back a number; set side by side in a small box, and if they are securely packed and are not touching each other there is no risk of damage. On arrival they can be softened, opened and spread out by very simple processes, which I will undertake. You must stick a little piece of camphor at each end of your box. You can also bring back chrysalises of butterflies and insects in bran. A good number of them die or fail to hatch out on the journey, but there are always a few which can be hatched out here by artificial heat and produce superb specimens.
But I am far more bent on news of you, than butterflies, and if I can be useful to you in any way whatsoever, please remember me. Adieu monsieur. My best wishes go with you, and I pray God that they may still bring you good luck.
Yours sincerely,
George Sand
G. SAND, LETTRES D’UN VOYAGEUR (1987)
In March 1912 as, under her leadership, the tactics of the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) entered a more militant phase (window-smashing, setting fire to or bombing churches, piers, pavilions, letter boxes etc.) Christabel, the eldest of Emmeline Pankhurst’s three daughters, fled to Paris to avoid arrest. From there, with the help of couriers who took her orders and inflammatory Suffragette copy back to London, she continued – some thought with a reckless disregard for political realities and for the prison/forcible feeding ordeals of her dwindling band of hardcore devotees – to direct the Votes for Women campaign. Several would-be male supporters travelled to Paris to urge her to follow her sister Sylvia’s example in making a close alliance with the militant Labour movement and its newspaper the Daily Herald. She was not to be moved, and in August 1913 one of these envoys, Henry Harben, a wealthy Liberal turned socialist, was warned off in two remarkable letters which show ‘the Maiden Warrior’ in full radical feminist flow:
My view of the situation is this. The Daily Herald can help us if it will be attacking the Government: firstly on account of the refusal to give votes to women, and secondly on account of the policy of coercion. Between the WSPU and the Daily Herald League and Movement there can be no connection. Ours is a Woman’s Movement and the Herald League is primarily a Man’s Movement or at any rate a mixed Movement. . . . The great need of the time is for women to learn to stand and act alone. . . . No men, even the best of men, ever view the Suffrage question from quite the same standpoint as women. You speak of the Herald Movement and the WSPU as being akin . . . but there are great psychological differences. . . . The women’s rebellion has been in preparation for centuries. It is expressing something deeper and bigger than anything expressed by present-day unrest among men. Women are beginning to realise that they must grow their own backbone before they can be any use to themselves or to humanity as a whole. It is helpful and it is good for men themselves when they try to promote women’s emancipation; but they have to do it from the outside, and the really important thing is that women are working out their own salvation . . . and are able to do it, even if not a living man takes any part in bringing it about.
Another fundamental difference, is that the Herald League tends to be a Class Movement. Ours is not a Class Movement at all. We take in everybody – the highest and the lowest, the richest and the poorest. The bond is Womanhood! If women, with their greater altruism, had had their due influence from the beginning they might have been able to prevent the existence of abuses which men socialists are now trying to get rid of. [Though she fully agreed that the Parliamentary Labour Party had been a miserable failure, she was not at all sure that workers’ control was the answer to the nation’s ills.] If it turned out that Britain could only be governed by riot and violence I am game for that sort of thing. But I mean to try at the other thing first – when the vote is won! Not that we value it only or chiefly for its political value. We want it far more for its symbolic value – the recognition of our human equality that it will make. This may sound very old-fashioned and nineteenth century, but women have a lot of leeway to make up. When we have done that, then we will help the men to solve the problems of the twentieth century. Plainly they can’t settle them without us. But for the time being it comes to this. The men must paddle their canoe and we must paddle ours.
EDS. DAVID MITCHELL, QUEEN CHRISTABEL: A BIOGRAPHY OF CHRISTABEL PANKHURST (1977) (The originals can be found in the Harben-Tuke papers, British Library Dept. of Manuscripts, Add MSS 58226)
Freya Stark reveals a gentler vein of female humour, analysing the politics of Arabic manners, in this letter to Venetia Buddicom written on her first visit to the Middle East.
Brumana
4 January 1928
Dearest Venetia,
I have just been taking a rest from perpetual Arabic, looking into Graves’ book on Lawrence. Save us from our friends! I begin to feel the man almost unbearable. This attitude of continually saying ‘I would like to be modest if only I could’ is ridiculous and probably not at all true to the poor man. If only I can get to Baghdad, I have a letter to Mr Woolley who worked with him on the Euphrates and should be full of interesting information. I see with pleasure that it took four years in the country to teach him Arabic: it makes me feel less painfully stupid. I now begin to follow the drift of conversations and to attempt ambitious subjects like Doughty’s Arabian travels in my efforts with Miss Audi at lunch. There is plenty of practice: every afternoon we pay a lengthy call (about two hours) and sit on a divan talking gossip interspersed with one of the sixteen formulas of politeness which I have collected so far. After a while a large tray is brought in with all sorts of delicious sweetmeats, wine, tea; we take a little of each – (fearfully bad for my inside) – and say ‘May this continue’ as we put down the cup; and the hosts say ‘May your life also continue’, and then we leave. I believe there is no feeling of class in this country at all: you are divided by religions, and as you see nothing practically of any religion but your own, you never have the unpleasant feeling of being surrounded by people who are hostile and yet bound to mix up their lives with yours.
I am very popular here – the one and only person who has ever come to learn Arabic for pleasure.
Your loving
Freya
EDS. C. AND L. MOOREHEAD, THE LETTERS OF FREYA STARK (1974–82)
In this letter, Anaïs Nin argues for honesty in wartime at the beginning of the Second World War.
| To Robert | 1939 |
You refuse to free yourself from serving in the Army by declaring your homosexuality. And by this you will live a double lie, for you are also against war. At the same time you feel burdened with guilt. Our only prison is that of guilt. Guilt is the negative aspect of religion. We lost our religion but we kept the guilt. We all have guilt. Even Henry [Miller, the novelist] has it, who seems the freest of all. Only domestic animals have guilt. We train them so. Animals in the jungle do not have it.
Everything negative should die. Jealousy as the negative form of love, fear the negative form of life.
You speak of suffering, of withdrawal, retreat. Face this suffering, for all the real suffering can save us from unreality. Real pain is human and deepening. Without real pain you will remain the child forever. The legend of Ondine tells of how she acquired a human soul the day she wept over a human love. You were caught in a web of unreality. You choose suffering in order to be awakened from your dreams, as I did. You are no longer the sleeping prince of neurosis. Don’t run away from it now. If you run away from it without conquering it (I say accept the homosexuality, live it out proudly, declare it), then you will remain asleep and enchanted in a lifeless neurosis.
ANAÏS NIN, JOURNALS (1970)
La Pasionaria, who fought in the Spanish Civil War, links the personal and political in this letter, written a few weeks after the death of her son Ruben, to the young workers at Krasnoiarsk, who had named their brigade after him.
| Dear Friends and Comrades: | September 1942 |
As both a mother and a communist, I was moved when I was told that a Brigade which has named itself after my son is working on the construction of the great Krasnoiarsk Hydroelectric Power Station. It’s difficult to convey what this means to me. My son Ruben is still alive in your dreams, in your hopes and in your heroic work, the construction of the biggest hydroelectric power station in the Soviet Union!
Even as a child in Spain he was used to hard work and struggle. He always helped us in the difficult life of a worker’s family. He distributed banned Party literature and newspapers with us. He took part in demonstrations where workers were attacked more than once! When I was arrested, the leaders of our Party decided to send my two sons to Russia, to let me devote myself to the revolutionary activities of our Party, in the tough living conditions we were facing in Spain, without having the constant worry of leaving them to fend for themselves.
In the Soviet Union, Ruben worked in the Lijachov factory and during the Spanish war he returned to fight alongside his countrymen in the ranks of the People’s Army.
When the Spanish Republic was defeated, he was interned by the French government, like thousands of other Republican soldiers, in a French concentration camp – which he was allowed to leave to go back to the Soviet Union, his second homeland. He attended the Military Academy, and joined the Soviet Army to go on to fight from the very first day against the Nazi aggressors. He was gravely wounded while defending Bielorusia, and was awarded the Order of the Red Flag for bravery. His wounds had not fully healed when he took up arms again, to be killed heroically in the defence of Stalingrad. He was given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Please forgive this short biography of my Ruben, as brief as his life; he was 22 years old. But I wanted to write, so that the friends and comrades who named their Brigade after him should know that Ruben wasn’t a rich man’s son, but a worker like you and a young communist who fought in Spain and sacrificed his life in defence of the Soviet Union.
Dolores
TRANS. O. KENYON, PRIVATE COLLECTION