"A Counterpart to the Ephesian Matron": Steele's "Inkle and Yarico" and a Feminist Critique of the Classics

This essay investigates how Steele uses Spectator 11's heroine, Arietta, to challenge the classical story of the Ephesian Matron, and to suggest some of the eighteenth-century limits of the classical tradition for women and the variety of Others that tradition excludes. Although critics have claimed that the Spectator represents an optimistic response to the challenges of modernity, essays like Steele's "Inkle and Yarico," and even Spectator 69, allusively evoke a stronger sense of uncertainty, and suggest that the past continues to serve as a dangerous template for commonplace antifeminism and the potential brutality and self-interest of colonial expansion.