While some male Romantic writers ventured beyond the private into the public, there were also their female counterparts, bursting the bubble of the private sphere in order to bring themselves into the world of rationality. Just as Wordsworth disregarded "rationality" in favor of sentiment, women writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen made attempts to abandon the traditional realm of the heart for that of the head: "Romantic women writers, whether conservative or radical, celebrated not the achievements of genius nor the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings but rather the workings of the rational mind, a mind relocated" (Mellor "A Criticism of Their Own" 30). A mind relocated is not a mind completely absent from the private sphere, but a mind that broadens the boundaries of itself to include elements of the public. Like their male counterparts, these writers seem to be on a quest to form a more complete human ideal. But instead of tempering reason with passion, they temper passion with reason: "these [Romantic] women critics consistently argued that sensibility must be joined with correct perception, that literature must record not flights of fancy or escapist desire but empirical truth" (Mellor "A Criticism..." 39). This notion can be seen in at least two of the works that we have read for this semester: "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and Persuasion.
In "Vindication," Wollstonecraft "not only advocates the advantages for women of a rational (rather than sentimental) education, but attempts to insert the author herself into the predominantly male discourse of Enlightenment Reason, or 'sense'" (Jacobus 58). That is, Wollstonecraft attempts to place herself, and women in general, into the public sphere. She does so by claiming reason as a "feminine" attribute, something that women can posses as easily as men:
The most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart...to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent...it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. This was Rousseau's opinion respecting men. I extend it to women, and confidently assert that they have been drawn out of their sphere by false refinement, and not by an endeavour to acquire masculine qualities. (380)
According to Wollstonecraft, reason is essential to any human being, and to deny women reason in the private sphere is unnatural. To go outside that sphere in order to "get it," moreover, is not an attempt to become more "masculine" but more virtuous-more human.
Wollstonecraft also goes outside of her sphere when she denounces passion, not with the intention of obliterating it, but of tempering it with reason: "Women as well as men ought to have the common appetites and passions of their nature, they are only brutal when unchecked by reason: but the obligation to check them is the duty of mankind, not a sexual duty" (399). This seems to correspond to what Mellor asserts: "Denouncing sexual passion, [Romantic] women writers urge their readers to embrace reason, virtue, and caution" ("A Criticism..." 60). This attempt to live a life guided by reason is exactly what Wollstonecraft would support, and is exactly what is demonstrated by Anne Elliot in Jane Austen's Persuasion .
According to Mellor, women Romantic critics and writers "insisted that the cultural role of literature is to educate even more than to delight, to educate by teaching readers to take delight in the triumph of moral benevolence, sexual self-control, and rational intelligence" ("A Criticism..." 45). In Persuasion , Anne exhibits all of these characteristics, and therefore she deviates from the traditional role of heroines in the private sphere. That is, instead of being "carried away" by Wentworth the first time that he proposes, she exercises a kind of moral sense of duty by obeying what Lady Russell, Anne's mother figure, desires. And while she realizes that Lady Russell's advice was not correct, she does not believe that she was incorrect in heeding it: "I was right in submitting to her, and that if I had done otherwise, I should have suffered more in continuing the engagement than I did in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my conscience. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion" (164). Again, we see a kind of balance between sentiment and duty, between emotion and rationality. Anne's sense of morality and self-control set her apart from "flights of fancy" or "escapist desire," but they do not overcome her. That is, she may exercise rationality and control when dealing with Wentworth, but she also harbors a strong love for him and consequently joins sensibility with perception-a balance between characteristics of both spheres.
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