Women and Literary Criticism

Do women have the right to criticize? Throughout the eighteenth century it was commonly held that literary judgment was—or should be—a privilege reserved for men. A woman who set forth literary opinions in public exposed either her folly or her presumption. Women, according to Jonathan Swift, were the “ill-judging Sex,” inclined, like Echo, to take more delight in repeating “offensive Noise” than in celebrating Philomela's song. ¹ Henry Fielding, playing the role of “Censor” to the “great Empire of Letters” in the Covent-Gar-den Journal, debarred all “fine Ladies” from admission to the lofty “Realms of Criticism.” Women, he averred, spoke only a debased critical language, a repetitious modern lingo composed of the phrases, “sad Stuff, low Stuff, mean Stuff, vile Stuff, dirty Stuff, and so-forth.” They were “Gothic” marauders in the republic of letters, usurping authority “without knowing one Word of the ancient Laws, and original Constitution of that Body of which they have professed themselves to be Members.” ² In the 1750s, Oliver Goldsmith and Tobias Smollett took turns reviling Isabella Griffiths, the wife of Ralph Griffiths, who had dared to emend Goldsmith's works and publish reviews of her own in her husband's Monthly Review. Smollett boasted that his own journal, the Critical Review, was free of the depredations of “old women” like Griffiths, whom he dismissed, with palpable sexual disgust, as the “Antiquated Female Critic.” ³ In 1769, when Elizabeth Montagu published her only critical work, The Writings and Genius of Shakespear [sic], James Boswell worried aloud about resentment which might be aroused by a woman “intruding herself into the chair of criticism” and was eager to defend his mentor Samuel Johnson against charges of prejudice against his bluestocking rival. But Johnson's distaste for modern-day “Amazons of the pen” was nonetheless apparent: “I am very fond of the company of ladies,” he observed in one conversation. “I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.” Women were most pleasing, in Johnson's public view, “when they hold their tongues.” ⁴