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Canto 3 from 1714 ed. of Pope's Rape of the Lock. Engraving by Claude Du Bosc after Louis Du Guernier.61

In eighteenth-century England, marriage always was considered the life's goal of the upper-class female. Though in many ways subject to the ideals of femininity and behavior prevalent at the time, some members of the Society of Ladies were surprisingly forward-looking in their ideas about female education and the woman's place in society. (See Edification.) Emilia may comment of one female playwright that although "a woman of admirable good sense, she is still a woman, and consequently must retain a few foibles of her sex" (no. 70), but she also frequently defends the intelligence of women against the male presumption that it does not even exist. When in an argument with a friend, Emilia "opposed her with what little reason I was mistress of, and asserted, that it was in the power of women to rule if they had a mind" (no. 53). She uses reason-a faculty that women were frequently thought not to possess, a faculty that was frequently thought to belong in the domain of masculinity-to defend women's power to reason. Referencing her own position as writer, Emilia later asks: "Why should a book or a pen be more appropriate to a man than a woman, if we know how to use them? I can see no reason why they should be denied us in any degree" (no. 101).

Indeed, the Society of Ladies is certainly more "feminist" than Mrs. Crackenthorpe. In one of her most interesting publications, Lucinda prefigures Virginia Woolf's famous dictum that every female writer should have "a room of one's own": "From those dear companions in whom is neither falsehood nor forwardness, my few honest counselors, my books, I begin today's advices. Here 'tis I can differ in opinion without exposing myself to the storms of dispute. Here I can be instructed calmly and at leisure in truth and knowledge without being despised for my ignorance, or blamed for my curiosity" (no. 111). In her manifesto on women's intelligence and the concomitant male insistence on denying that intelligence, Artesia fumes: "what enrages me most is to see our sex so stupid as to believe themselves better treated than the women of other nations, because we are more egregiously cheated out of our right and liberties than they" (no. 88).

Family Group. By Francis Wheatley. 1775/1780.62

Although presumably not written by Lucinda, the publication drips with irony; the "letter" was probably created for the very purpose of mocking it. The letter implies that, by pursuing knowledge and careers as writers, this Society of Ladies is actually a society of masculine women. Beneath the irony, which itself lies under the surface, lies another layer of confusion over gender roles and gender conventions. Rosella echoes this confusion in her discussion on cosmetics. She writes: "I call it artifice, ladies, I hope without offence, because 'tis seldom that we find a woman formed by nature for all the great designs of pleasing upon all occasions with the nice embellishments of dress, mien and manners, and all the culture studied art can give her. This management depends not on the rules that the grave and wisest philosophers can prescribe but on those charms that we find within ourselves most conducive to the bringing mankind under the verge of our power" (no. 55). A female must navigate between her desire to remain independent and assert her intelligence and her need to integrate and ingratiate herself into society through artifice, attraction, and manipulation. An eighteenth-century female's need to find a man and marry a man could overwhelm all else. (See Marriage and Courtship.)

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