Do What I Tell You

“Be even cautious in displaying your good sense.”

 “The men will complain about your reserve. They will assure you that a franker behavior would make you more amiable. I acknowledge that on some occasions it might render you more agreeable as companions, but it would make you less amiable as women.”

“You will not easily believe how much we consider your dress as expressive of your characters.”

John Gregory, from A Father's Legacy to His Daughters , 1774

 “The danger of pedantry and presumption in a woman--of her exciting envy in one sex and jealousy in the other, would be I own sufficient to frighten me from the ambition of seeing my girl remarkable for learning.  Such objections are perhaps still stronger with regard to the abstruse sciences.”

If you have natural modesty, you will never transgress its bound, whilst you are converse with a man, as one rational creature to another, without any view to the possibility of a lover or admirer, where nothing of that kind is profest—where it is, I hope you will be able to distinguish the effects of real esteem and love from idle gallantry . . . .”

Hester Mulso Chapone, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, 1773

The advice quoted above reminds eighteenth-century women to, in essence, remain stupid or pretend to be so. It suggests a careful calculation about behavior around men. And, importantly, it probably strikes a modern ear as so odd that we have to ask: Who read this stuff?  And why? 

While these quotations are somewhat out of context, and Chapone, in particular, actually was interested in educating women, much of the conduct literature of the eighteenth century sounds patronizing and degrading to our modern ears. Advice about reading, for example, suggests a limited critical understanding on the part of the reader. Don't read anything fictional without getting advice, Chapone warns. Samuel Johnson worries that readers won't be able to tell the difference between right and wrong if the bad characters aren't clearly delineated (see Rambler #4). At best, many of these essays and letters seem boring and overly moralizing to modern readers.

It is important to remember that texts like these were big sellers, steady sellers over decades of time. Excerpts from books like Chapone's and Gregory's were reprinted in anthologies and these anthologies sold well and kept the writers names and ideas in circulation for years after the original publication date, and after the author's death.

Before we dismiss this as simply another strange historical phenomenon, we should remember the enduring popularity of self help and advice books even today. In particular, we might compare the moralizing and religious strain of the steady sellers on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the enduring popularity of books about living spiritually. The language and the terms though which the issues are discussed is very different across time. But consider:  Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life is an all time best-seller; Spencer Johnson's, Who Moved My Cheese? also shows up there.  What Not to Wear is in its tenth season. Advice and self help show up on best seller lists like this one, this one, and even this one from 1968.

Think those rules about how women aught to behave about men are strange and outdated? Check this out, from The Rules, by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider:

“Don’t meet him halfway or go Dutch on a date.”

“Don’t open up too fast.”

“Don’t call him and rarely return his calls.”

“You don’t accept a weekend date after Wednesday.”