Mr. Locke and the Ladies: The Indelible Words on the Tabula Rasa

M r. L o c k e a n d th e L a d ie s: T h e In d e lib le W o rd s o n th e rqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Tab ula Rasa SHERYL O ’ D O N N E L L By the close of the seventeenth century, arguments about women’s nature and consequent duties had shifted ground. Theological debates concerning whether or not women had souls gave way to inquiries into the nature of the “female m ind,” and as Locke’s empiricism weakened the theory of innate ideas, religious speculations about women’s in­ feriority were replaced by secular proposals for their education.1 Locke’s emphasis upon the connection between experience and selfknowledge , his ideas concerning the origin of knowledge, and his regard for precise language helped Restoration and eighteenth-century women recognize themselves as rational beings whose minds should be exercised and developed. Lady Damaris Cudworth M asham, Catherine Trotter Cockbum, Lady M ary Chudleigh, Lady M ary W ortley M ontagu, and Hannah M ore were directly affected by Locke’s empiricism. But they accepted patriarchal doctrines of woman’s essen­ tial fitness for domestic and maternal spheres which accorded female learning no legitimacy outside the home. Rather than face public ridicule, they published anonymously, wrote in secret, burned their works, or phrased their feminism in terms of contributions to the common good. The same double bind that leads many twentiethcentury women to avoid success in traditionally male-dominated areas 151 152 / XWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA S H E R Y L O ’ D O N N E L L rathe r than lose the ir “femininity” confined women thinkers of the Restoration and eighteenth century. Locke’s empiricism blurred, but did not erase, patriarchal notions of women as highly venerated in­ ferior beings. Begun in 1671, Locke’s E ssa y C o n c e rn in g H u m a n U n d e rsta n d in g was redrafted several times and, after a long abridgement, appeared in Leclerc’s Amsterdam journal, L a B ib lio th e q u e u n iv e rse lle , in 1688; it was published in England in 1690. Locke’s avowed purpose, unlike that of the Scholastics or the great Continental philosophers of the seventeenth century, was practical rather than metaphysical. W ritten in an expansive, leisurely style, Locke’s E ssa y is just that— a weighing, a trial, an experiment, or, as Locke called it, “an inquiry.” W orking in terms of exploration rather than declaration assures Locke an intimacy with his readers which enables him to show, lucidly, the thinking mind at work. In the “Epistle to the Reader,” Locke assumes the voice of a plain, stolid man whose quest for truth is intermittent: If it [the Essay] seems too much to thee, thou must blame the Subject: for when I put Pen to Paper, I thought all I should have to say on this M atter, would have been contained in one sheet of Paper; but the farther I went, the larger Prospect I had: New Discoveries led me still on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in. I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass than it is; and that some Parts of it might be contracted: the way it has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of Interruption, being apt to cause some Repetitions. But to confess the Truth, I am now too lazie, or too busie to make it shorter.2 Locke’s use of first person and his insistence that the reader retain an independent mind rather than remain “content to live lazily on scraps of begg’d Opinions” (“Epistle,” p. 6) give his readers an active role to play. By inviting readers to set their “own Thoughts on work, to find and follow Truth” (“Epistle,” p. 7), Locke abandons the rhetorical stance of authority used by many earlier philosophers. As­ suring the reader that “every moment of his Pursuit, will reward his Pains with some Delight” and that “he will have Reason to...