ABSTRACT
It is an old adage that behind every successful man there is a woman. In many eras and societies it has been believed that the proper place for female power and influence is behind the scenes. In eighteenth-century Britain the importance of having a successful woman behind a man who himself wished for success, prosperity and happiness was well recognized. Conduct literature, which largely confined women of the leisured ranks to the home, nonetheless also carved out for them a sphere of importance and considerable authority within that area. The educational writer Fénelon argued that women’s education needed far more attention than was customarily given to it, explaining that women, ‘who have the direction of all domestic affairs . . . consequently decide the greatest concerns of all mankind’.1 In 1799 Hannah More agreed that women should tend to domestic cares, where their influence was vital, but stressed that the impact of that influence also spread far beyond the home itself:
The general state of civilized society depends more than those are customarily aware who are not accustomed to scrutinise into the springs of human action, on the prevailing sentiments and habits of women and on the nature and the degree of estimation in which they are held.2
