The Poets

What miraculous breath of spirit must inspire the great poets. I, for all my effort, could never wrangle experience, truth, sound, and sense, the experiences of my life and the lives of others, and capture them all within the vessel of a poem. Such a vessel would contain the very potency of life's elusive vapors, distilled down to the most basic elements, neither too much nor too little, sweetened like a decanted wine in the most elegant of rose hued glass. Pull the stopper, and it pours out forever.

The Grammar of Morality?

I'm not exactly an ethicist, but I've been wondering about grammar as a metaphor for morality. I look at horrendous grammar almost every day, working as a writing tutor at my university. Most people don't think of grammar as important or even necessary, but I do.

Isn't it important to be able to coherently express yourself to others? And that's on the most basic level. (Usually, I wouldn't suggest beginning a sentence with "and" to students, but I find it appropriate to punctuate my point with a colloquial sentence fragment).

On a more intellectual level, being able to cogently express one's thoughts, especially on the university level, is extremely important and necessary for the communication of the ideas that power our constantly changing and developing world.

Grammar isn't just a list of rules to follow, a set of hoops one must jump through in the writing process because "that's the way it works;" grammar is the only way one can ensure coherency of expression. Communication would be impossible without regulatory rules.

Now, as to the question of whether grammar is an adequate metaphor for morality, in relation to a recent article by David Brooks in the New York Times, I think it's perfectly appropriate. Brooks discusses morality's connection to successful evolutionary traits, positing our emotions as the major actors in our moral decision making process: 'Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.'"

In opposition to Socratic thought, which advocates emotionless, independent "deliberation" on moral questions, Brooks and other researchers believe that our moral "instincts" (the word stands in stark contrast to "deliberation") come from an evolutionary trait: our inheritance from generations of successful cooperators.

How does this relate to grammar? Grammar is by nature descriptive. It doesn't determine how language works, it looks at how our language operates and creates "rules" (more accurately, descriptions of a language's predictable behaviors). In reality, when one says that language follows rules, one really means that language operates in predictable ways, which can be described by "rules."

At the most basic level, language developed to enable us to communicate, to solve problems, and to express ourselves. Grammar simply describes the ways in which our language adapted to the problems of self-expression. Take verbal conjugation, for example:

A cave-woman is attempting to convey to her small social network an anecdote, in hopes that her experience may be useful to others and subsequent generations. She describes a day in which she and two other women go out to forage. She and the two other women discover a new technique for retrieving nuts from a tree. In describing the actions they took to her gathered audience, the woman must convey the fact that two of the women stood on the ground, holding baskets, while another woman climbed the tree to shake the branches.

We hold.
She shakes.

The way the verbs are conjugated reveals that more than one woman held the baskets, while only one shook the branches.

This may be a confusing example, and I am sure English verbs are far too irregular for this purpose (and I'm sure ancient cave-women, northern European or otherwise, did not speak English), but I think it illustrates my point.

Grammar is a tool used to describe how language customarily works, for optimum ease and coherence of communication. "Morality" or "ethics" is a system used to describe the customary actions and beliefs which have allowed our ancestors to cooperate successfully within various social systems, throughout a long expanse of time.

The article by Brooks is well worth a read. My own little comparison might not do this new view of moral studies justice. If you aren't considering reading whole article, here are the last two paragraphs to give you a taste of the significance:

"The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.

Finally, it should also challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central. The evolutionary approach also leads many scientists to neglect the concept of individual responsibility and makes it hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself."

A "Mock" Argument for Women's Education: Victorian Style

23 March, 1820

To the members of the petition committee:

Dear Sirs (for you are all undoubtedly sirs),

The recent proposal to open a school for girls within this community has raised the concerns of many, and some, yourselves included, have taken upon themselves the task of opposing this experiment vocally. You and the members of your faction object to this school on the grounds that girls need not be educated, that they should concern themselves only with those skills which will of practical use later on in life, and that as girls are incapable of neither understanding abstract concepts nor applying them to any good use, a school for girls should not be paid for at the public expense. If any of these positions reflected any modicum of truth, I would be the first to object to the wasting of public funds on a useless venture; however, the arguments you pose are not so solid as you believe, and the prejudices and misconceptions which our society, nay, our very culture, has promulgated about women color your judgment and blind you to women’s true capabilities and the possible benefit their education may have for society. This opposition to the education of girls comes, I think, from three factors: the gross arrogance on the part of men, the view of women as sub-human, and the inability of women to (until recently) express their true intellectual potential.

The arrogance of men blinds them to their own faults while directing them to describe, in detail, the faults of the creatures they consider themselves to dominion over. Beasts are dumb and vicious, slaves are unintelligent and submissive, women are simple, fickle, and in need of "guidance." I can find no better examples of this arrogance than in the literature of the past century, old enough that it has been widely read, current enough that its themes and arguments are still agreed with. In particular, the great Alexander Pope is a worthy example. The bevy characters in his "Epistle 2. To a Lady," Calista, Papillia, Calypso, Narcissa, etc., are intended as examples which support the poet's view of women. These are, however, female characters who embody faults common to both Pope paints pictures of wicked, fickle, idiotic women, and expects that the "skill" of his satire will point out his criticisms of women in such a way that the reader will be subtly convinced, or, if a witty man of opposite opinion, "tickled when he is hurt in this manner," as Dryden claims. This is utterly ridiculous. Pope's intended wit neither "tickles" nor wittily instructs; he could hardly be more blunt, despite his attempt at using such devices as these obviously constructed characters. His so called "honest" painting of the characters he discovers in women does not require female subjects; the vices and follies he sees expressed in the so called "weaker" sex are present among his own gender, if he would care to look. If he followed the example of his good friend Mr. Swift, he might be able to style himself an "equal opportunity critic," and correct his oversight of men's faults. sexes.

On the topic of Mr. Swift, the clergyman of renowned insight into the contradictions within our human condition, I am not so swift to see his critique of women as the result of a particular prejudice, but rather as an extension of his rather despondent view of our whole human race. That being said, the views expressed in his sordid "Lady's Dressing Room" continue to support the supposition that women are somehow self-destructive, confused, wretched animals, whose God-given nature has been replaced by a well constructed, deceptive mask. If he is surprised to see in women "Such order from confusion sprung\ Such gaudy tulips raised from dung," then he must also wonder at seeing the same in men, not in the artificial mask of cosmetics, "ointments, daubs, and paints, and creams" but in the carefully constructed, sanctimonious badges of glory and mastery with which men justify their constant iniquitous actions, their wars, theft, lies, and oppression. I would argue with Mr. Swift that we all wear masks; it is only that women's masks are more noticeably artificial and pitiful because of their pitiful state and the artificial "honors" bestowed upon them by men to justify their dejected state within society. The derision with which these writers view these female trappings is due to the “short –lived tyranny” which these “artificial graces,” as Mary Wollstonecraft writes, over men. This “tyranny” is illusory, and allows women just enough control over men that they do not bother to realize that they lack control over themselves.

Among those reasons published which argue against the education of girls, the one that seems the most prevalent (and popular amongst men) is the presupposition that women are created changeable, emotional, irrational, self loving, and simple, and are thus incapable of strenuous study past the simple "accomplishments" they are obliged to learn for their "development" as amiable companions to men. This theory has long been held by men as far back as the Patristics. The theory that woman is inferior in nature to men arises out of Aristotle's "scientific" understanding of women's passivity in the process of procreation. The Church Fathers, especially within the period we have begun to call "Medieval," being ready at every moment to see the natural world emblematically, that is, as reflecting spiritual truths through the organization of natural principles, were quick to see woman's passivity in the act of creation as a sign of woman's intended passivity in every other area of life. I dare say contemporary theologians would not be so quick to apply this theory. Modern science has shed some light on the inner workings of natural processes, and though modern clergy would say that all things are designed by God, they would not necessarily insist that the migration of geese had any deep theological significance.

This view has been reflected in men's writings, either implicitly or explicitly, the latter being the case more often in our current century. In the past, this view of women has been worked into the female characters written by men, in prose, poetry, and on the stage. Whether she be otherworldly and angelic, the angel of the hearth, or flighty, fickle, and self-interested, men's depictions of women in their writing have always been either horribly idealistic or unrealistic. They hold the female creature to an idealistic standard that they have created, and force her to conform to a mold that serves them, rather than seeing her as an individual being, with her own characteristics, aspirations, and potential. This unrealistic categorization of women has contributed to the common view that women are to fulfill only the roles men assign to them, and that they are indeed designed by God with one purpose only. Their education, then, is superfluous; if a woman is put on this earth to be the companion of a man and to bear children only, what need has she to understand natural philosophy, to read Cato, or to plumb the depths of theological inquiry with her male counterparts? Recently (that is, within the last half-century), women in literature have seemed more like caricatures than characters. W. Congreve's Lady Wishfort in "The Way of the World" is a sad mockery of a woman in her later years. Her whole purpose is to find and catch men. I wonder why men find such a character so funny, and why she earns more derision than a younger woman engaged in the same frantic search for love. Is it woman's purpose to live with male companionship as their only desire? If so, why is an older woman blamed for continuing in this enterprise? In her younger days, she was no doubt taught that her existence mattered only in relation to the husband she could catch and the children she could bear. Once past the age for either of these, what is left for her but the haunting, all-consuming memory of the things she could not accomplish? Women such as this are “made ridiculous and useless when the short-lived bloom of beauty is over.” If widowed and childless, what other fodder can a woman have to fuel life's fire if she has been taught that she has no other purpose beyond marriage and childbearing, and has been taught nothing else about the world but that she has only one place in it? When this is considered, it is no wonder there are so many poor widows relying upon public charity. If education was more readily available to women, who would doubt single women, both spinsters and widows, would benefit? There is no doubt that “a well stored mind would enable a woman to support a single life with dignity.”

Until recently, men have had no reason to expect more from women than they had thought them capable of (i.e. very little). Until recent centuries, literature that attested to women's capabilities to raise their minds out of the domestic sphere to ascend the heights of knowledge was limited to religious mystics like Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, whose "divinely inspired" status may have done more harm for women's status than good. If the only women whose writing was accepted were those who claimed to have divine sanction, then the writing of other women who did not claim such backing would have been ignored; Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich were accepted in spite of the fact that they were women, because of their mystical experiences. Common women writing from their own common experiences could not claim any legitimacy from their kinship with these two uncommon women. Because of their inability to express themselves or the legitimacy to be taken seriously, how could women have possibly argued for their rights as human beings? Of course men would see them as petulant, child-like, and irrational when women became angry and frustrated after pleading with men schooled in the art of rhetoric and argument. Any person would become flustered trying to catch a yippy little terrier that darted around them in circles, no matter how justified or important the need to catch the little terror. That a woman may fall into a heap and sob upon loosing an argument is not a result of her overly-emotional, irrational nature, but rather the combined effect of being denied the chance to learn how to express herself convincingly and of being out-paced in wit by the one denying her that chance. Women must resort to cunning and under-hand dealing to accomplish anything because their uncultivated minds are incapable of openly opposing the objects of their vexation.

In our present day, certain women have stood forward to assert themselves among their intellectual peers. Whether granted an education along with their brothers by an indulgent parent or self-taught, women have been publishing poetry and prose (both quality and dross, much like their male counterparts) for at least the last one-hundred and fifty years. Some may call these bold women "Sapphos" as Mr. Pope does, but their testimony gives a unique insight into the lives of women, heretofore a mysterious realm, untried by even those men whose ambition drives them to assault the heights of heaven. Is society harmed by such revelations? Mr.'s Pope and Swift were quick to respond to women's self-disclosure, but I have already dealt with them. My short censure of these two satirists pales in comparison to the short work Lady Montagu, Countess Winchilsea, Viscountess Irwin, and the poor Mary Leapor made of them in their poetic responses. My opinion of men's underestimation of women is most in common with Viscountess Irwin's "Epistle to Mr. Pope." My own thoughts and feelings could not be more eloquently summarized. Men must realize that they share common vices with women, and that women are their equals. This century’s surge of female poets has shown how quickly women have, through more access to education, attained the same level of poetic skill as men. Anna Letitia Barbauld’s poems reflect her cogent use of the long, meditative form, and yet, her subjects are varied; she is capable of attention to politics, sympathy for M. Wollstonecraft’s struggle for women’s sake, and meditative insight into aspects of women’s experience that men cannot even begin to sketch like childbirth and clothes washing. And who could deny the veritable genius of M. Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”? If women were ever considered incapable of complex philosophical speculation and social commentary, let M. Wollstonecraft set the record straight; I have never read a more cogent or convincing treatise that agreed more with my sensibilities or opened my eyes to truths I had not had the courage to consider.

Mary W. Shelley, M. Wollstonecraft’s daughter, has composed perhaps the most important novel of our time. Her Frankenstein reflects the anxieties of our day and offers in the character of Frankenstein a vision of the dangers of ambition and the value and purpose of human limitations. Her story also supports a point I believe fully, and refines her mother’s position that “without knowledge there can be no morality”; the purpose of education is not to make people happy or moral; rather, it exists to ensure the freedom of the individual, and the cultivation of God-given gifts. To pretend that women are given only the gifts of child-bearing and nurturing places limitations on the unknowable design and purpose of God. Are men placed only on this earth to dominate and conquer? Not all men are soldiers and statesmen, though men are the physically stronger sex. Frankenstein’s monster became convinced that he could act no other way than monstrously because that was all people assumed of him, as if his choices were determined by his outward appearance. If women are denied the opportunity to cultivate their minds, the norm will continue to consist of simple women whose machinations annoy men and bring scorn upon themselves. M. Wollstonecraft writes, “It is contrary to reason to expect virtue from those who are not free.” Men must allow for the cultivation of girls’ minds, so that the inner monstrosity of ignorant, needy women caused by the low expectation of men will become a shadow of the past and women will be able to be men’s true partners in life, rather than their dependants. The ignorance of women is a thorn in the side of this country that tribulation could easily twist; women must share responsibility with men if the whole of the English population is to work together to defend and cultivate our nation.

Respectfully submitted for your review,

Amelia H. Wayne