LEARNING AND VIRTUE: MARGARET MORE ROPER

In their prolific writings about women, sixteenth-century men gave only minor consideration to the question of women's education. Even in those few books devoted exclusively to women's upbringing, authors lingered but briefly on intellectual development before hurrying on to detailed advice about feminine conduct. Such general neglect gives particular prominence to the writings of the humanists, Juan Luis Vives, Thomas More, Richard Hyrde, and Thomas Elyot, who appear to advocate something akin to a liberal education for women. Indeed, the obvious assumption might be that only because certain humanists gave certain women access to books and encouraged their studies did the number of women writers increase so dramatically in the sixteenth century. But if women did indeed gain an education, they also confronted restrictions upon their knowledge. As this chapter will show, Tudor educational theorists were at best ambivalent and at worst prohibitive when considering how women might use their education.

What was the relationship between women's education and the establishment of a women's literary tradition? Part of the answer lies within the books that considered whether and how women should be educated. While these writings were not necessarily closely followed prescriptions, they nonetheless recorded the contemporary attitudes, beliefs, rationalizations, prejudices, and expectations which confronted, and may even have formed, women writers. Whether advocating or proscribing women's education, these writers expressed a devastatingly consistent cultural doctrine on women's function in society, establishing in the process an image of the ideal learned and virtuous woman.

The main problem for women writers evolved from the nature of the virtue that their learning was intended to foster. While male virtue might be expressed by an active life in the world or public service or eloquence, women were taught that feminine virtue meant a private, domestic existence, lived in "obedience, silence, and chastity." Indeed, writers on female education seem obsessed with these three traditional feminine virtues at the very moment when they are considering the untraditional topic of improving women's minds. Discussing change in so important an area seems to have summoned fears that women would step beyond the private sphere, and so these educators compensated by insisting on women's "natural" domestic attributes. As their own writings consistently show, women received this message and often felt compelled to reveal how their learning had indeed increased their virtue.

It is important to realize about these treatises that those who argue for and against women's education proceed from the same assumptions about woman's nature. The belief in woman's inherent intellectual weakness justified both advocating that her mind be improved and insisting that she was incapable of learning. The conviction that woman's sphere was domestic warranted both the prohibition of women's education and the establishment of a curriculum appropriate to her place in society. In considering the works of Juan Vives (as translated by Richard Hyrde), Thomas Elyot, Richard Mulcaster, and Giovanni Michele Bruto (as translated by "W.P."), we will find that while all but Bruto advocate the intellectual improvement of daughters, all four writers assume women are lesser creatures belonging to the private domain. Their advice would pose particular problems for an incipient writer and prohibitions like theirs may well have influenced the kind of writing women did.

An influential voice on women's education was that of Juan Luis Vives, tutor in the service of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's highly educated queen. Vives's Instruction of a Christen woman (1523), translated into English in 1529 by Richard Hyrde, a tutor in Sir Thomas More's household, had over forty editions and translations in the sixteenth century, including eight reprintings of the English version between 1540 and 1592. According to Hyrde's preface, More fully approved of Vives's program and had himself considered translating the Instruction. He did in fact oversee Hyrde's work, making corrections and endorsing the final copy.

The humanists did indeed see themselves as women's benefactors, countering the streams of vilification from misogynist writers. Hyrde, in his preface to the Instruction, says he often wonders at the "unreasonable oversyght of men whiche never ceace to compleyne of womens conditions. And yet having the education and order of them in theyr owne handes not only do litell diligence to teache them and bryng them up better but also purposely withdrawe them from lernyng by whiche they myght have occasyons to waxe better by their selfe." Like every other sixteenth-century educator, Vives focuses women's education on the development of her virtue, primarily defined as chastity, and with it, the attendant qualities of domesticity, privacy, and piety. All of his analysis of woman's nature and his recommendations for her upbringing conform to his fundamental insistence on her chastity. For Vives, chastity certainly means physical purity, as the admonitions to girls, wives, and widows to avoid male company and to dress modestly confirm; occasionally he seems to refer to a larger sense of spiritual purity.

In Chapter Six, "Of virginite," significantly juxtaposed to the chapter, "What bokes be to be redde and what not," Vives remarks that even the pagans valued virginity, and cites the example of Pallas who, born of Jupiter's brain, signified that "virginitie and wysedome were joyned together. And they dedicated the nombre of seven both to chastite and wysdome...." This coupling is not new, as for centuries church fathers and ecclesiastical scholars had waged a vigorous battle against women for the cause of a celibate clergy. They too insisted that chastity and wisdom were joined together, that chastity allowed the triumph of the mind over the flesh, and that sex and marriage destroyed the ability to serve God. Women were of course the main temptation, and everyone from Eve on was a potential danger to the holy living of mankind. But where chastity for men was by no means central, for women it was prescribed as the preeminent goal for all, whether celibate, maiden, wife, or widow. "For as a man nedeth many thynges as wysedome, eloquence, knowledge of thynges with remembrance, some crafte to live by, Justice, Liberalitie, lusty stomake, and other thynges mo ... in a woman the honestie is in stede of all" (Giv). And again, "chastyte is the principall vertue of a woman and counterpeyseth with all the reste: ... shamfastnes and sobrenes be the inseperable companyons of chastite" (Liv v). For Vives, chastity is the fountainhead of all virtues necessary for a woman, as "demureness/measure/ frugalite/scarsite/diligence in house/cure of devotion/mekenes ..." (Mii). As the end point of an education, however, chastity so defined transforms a potential widening of spirit and growth of mind into something which allies piety, good manners, and efficient housekeeping. The vigilant censorship that Vives enjoins on a girl's teachers provides her with the examples of chaste women from history and literature and the injunctions to be found in "the Gospelles and the actes and the epistoles of thapostles and ye olde Testament saint Hieronyme/ saint Cyprian/ Augustine/Ambrose/Hilary/Gregory/ Plato/Cicero/Senec/ and such other...." These she must study only under the tutelage of "some wyse and sad Men" to avoid her depending on her own judgment and misconstruing her texts. Instead of the free exploration of his world that would lead a man to develop judgment and the virtues suitable for public life and action, a woman would receive pieces of information about the world, filtered through her preceptor whose goal was to make her a chaste wife, mother, and if it so happened, widow. The only role another woman might take was as governess to modify the girl's behavior, to act as a virtuous role model, or as a duenna to keep her cloistered.

Vives himself provides specific lists for women's reading, and in so doing, helps us to understand more about women's writing. While some of his injunctions resemble the cautions teachers leveled at male pupils, Vives fears more danger for women because of their weaker intellect. Believing that a woman should "lerne the vertues of her kynde all to gether out of bokes whiche she shall either rede her selfe or els here redde ..." (Liv-Liv v), Vives first proscribes all books harmful to women, notably romances and poetry. In the case of romance, Vives feared content that was "but of war and love ..." and naming such works as Amadis, Lancelot, and Guy, he decries books "idell menne wrote unlerned and sette all upon filthe and vitiousnesse." (By contrast, one remembers Sir Philip Sidney's remark in The Defence of Poesie that "I have known men that even with reading Amadis de Gaule, which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy, have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage.") Vives thinks such books are written merely to tempt women's chastity, "to make bokes of baudes craftes...." To offer examples of love's adventures is apparently to risk inclining a woman toward them, since her judgment is so weak. As for poetry, Vives claims that the dangerous Ovid himself warned chaste souls to shun "the most witty and well lerned poetes of the grekes and latynes that wryte of love [as] Calimachus, Phileta, Anacreon, Sappho, Tibullus, Propertius and Gallus. ... Therefore a woman should beware of all these bookes likewise as of serpentes or snakes. And if there be any woman that hath suche delyte in these bokes that she wyl nat leave them out of her handes: she shuld nat only be kept from them but also if she rede good bokes with an yll wyl and lothe therto, her father and frendes shuld provyde that she maye be kepte from all redynge" (F v-Fii). Prohibiting imaginative literature may have been the single most damaging step Vives could take as far as the education of a potential writer is concerned, because those who do not read it, will not write it. The next roadblock is almost as prohibitive, discouraging the development of language, rhetoric, and particularly eloquence. In Chapter Four, Vives remarks, "As for eloquence I have no great care nor a woman nedeth it nat: but she nedeth goodnes and wysedome. Nor it is no shame for a woman to hold her peace...." Because Quintilian and St. Jerome praised eloquence in the exemplary Cornelia and Hortentia, Vives does not wholly condemn it, but because of its public aspect, it is not a goal of her education and may interfere with her female virtue. This view never dies during the period, and even a century later, in 1631, Richard Brathwaite can advise gentlewomen to talk only "of such arguments as may best improve your knowledge in household affaires, and other private employments. To discourse of State-matters, will not become your auditory; nor to dispute of high poynts of Divinity, will it sort well with women of your quality. These Shee-Clarkes many times broach strange opinions, which, as they understand them not themselves, so they labour to intangle others of equall understanding to themselves." The old patristic injunction that with chastity went obedience and silence finds a continuing place in Renaissance doctrine for women.

Later in the sixteenth century, some writers did approve of women writing poetry, but the tendency is to trivialize their efforts. In his Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham designates the chapter, "A division of figures, and how they serve in exornation of language," "for the learning of Ladies and young Gentlewomen, or idle Courtiers, desirous to become skilful in their owne mother tongue, and for their private recreation to make now and then ditties of pleasure, thinking for our parte none other science so fit for them and the place as that which teacheth beau semblant, the chiefe profession as well of Courting as of poesie: since to such manner of mindes nothing is more combersome then tedious doctrines and schollarly methodes of discipline, we have in our owne conceit devised a new and strange modell of this arte, fitter to please the Court then the schoole." Even allowing for Puttenham's inculcation of gentility in courtiers, male or female, he assumes that a woman, like an idle courtier, would not be capable of scholarly discipline. If, surmounting all these barriers, a woman should still seriously wish to write poetry, she is confronted by hostility and by poetic traditions and conventions that had been adapted to masculine experience.

Because of his service to Catherine of Aragon and through his translator, Richard Hyrde, Vives may have influenced the education of specific women like the Princess Mary and the daughters of Thomas More. Probably more theoretical was the work of Sir Thomas Elyot, the scholar, diplomat, and author, also an admirer of Queen Catherine and a friend of Thomas More. Elyot supported the education of women, while seemingly unable to relinquish a belief in their secondary position and limited sphere. What emerges even more clearly in Elyot's Defence of Good Women (1540) are the inherent contradictions in the programs for women's education that might create particular anxieties for the beneficiaries. The Defence of Good Women is a dialogue between Candidus and Caninius, who argue for and against women's education, and concludes with the arrival and evidence of Zenobia, the legendary queen of Palmyra. As the antagonist, Caninius has to concede at the end of the dialogue, "I see well inoghe, that women beinge well and vertuously brought up, do not only with men participate in reason, but some also in fidelitie and constauncie be equall unto them." The presence of Zenobia, now a Roman captive, provides dramatic evidence of woman's ability to learn moral philosophy and to become a ruler with all the appropriate virtues of that position. Candidus introduces Zenobia, pardoned by Rome for "her nobilitye vertue and courage" as "well lerned in greke ... and doth competently understand latine, but excellently the Egyptian language." She teaches her children and "wryteth as they say of Alexandria and the orient eloquent stories" (51-52). Zenobia herself evinces becoming reluctance to be away from home, for fear of her reputation, and then testifies to the importance of studying moral philosophy before she married "late" at age twenty, "for I knewe the better what longed to my duety" (55). And what Zenobia learned between sixteen and twenty was "that without prudence and constancy, women mought be broughte lyghtely into errour and foly, and made therefore unmete for that companye, wherunto they were ordeyned: I meane, to be assistence and comfort to man through theyr fidelitie ..." (56). Adapting the virtues to woman's special case, Zenobia explains that "Justyce teacheth us womenne, to honour our husbands nexte after god: which honour resteth in due obedience ...," that Fortitude keeps women in a "vertuouse constancy" and that "in a woman, no vertue is equall to Temperaunce, wherby in her wordes and dedes she alway useth a just moderation, knowynge whan tyme is to speke, and whan to kepe silence, whan to be occupyed and whan to be merye. And if she measure it to the wyll of her husbande, she doth the more wysely ..." (57). As a wife, Zenobia never said or did anything which did not please her husband; when a widow, she was able to assume command of her country's government so capably that the country thrived:

And to the intente that the name of a woman, shulde not amonge the people be had in contempt, I used so my procedynges, that none of them mought be sayd, to be done womanly. Wherfore I sate alway abrode amonge my counsaylours, and sayde myne opinion, so that it seemed to them all, that it stode with good reason. ... More over, I caused good lawes to be publyshed ... I made justice chiefe ruler of myne affection ... to the whiche wysedome and polycy I atteyned by the study of noble philosophy. Also thereby I acquired such magnanimitie, that nowe I kepe in as strayt subjection al affections, and passions, as the Romaynes doo nowe me and my chyldren. (61-64)