Chapter Two The Problem of Propriety
2.3 Laughing Against Patriarchy
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others. Concentrating too much on her own reputation, she cannot interact with others in a meaningful and fruitful manner. She cannot reveal her true emotions and opinion toward others. Her relationship with others lacks sincerity and honesty. Convinced that she must suppress her own genuine desire because of social expectation, a proper lady may appear socially acceptable. Yet her self-hood is necessarily circumscribed, her personal development throttled.
2.3 Laughing Against Patriarchy
From the previous sections, we can see that female propriety greatly constrains
a woman’s personal development. Ironically, the most influential textual champion of propriety, eighteenth-century conduct books, claims that their advice take intoconsideration women’s individuality and, as a result, can improve the quality of their social life. For instance, Thomas Gisborne tries to show his readers what is female virtue and what is not:
Young women endowed with good understanding, but desirous of justifying the mental indolence which they have permitted themselves to indulge; or disappointed at not perceiving a way open by which they, like their brothers, may distinguish themselves and rise to eminence, are occasionally heard to declare their opinion, that the sphere in which women are destined to move is so humble and so limited, as neither to require nor to reward assiduity (10-1).
In this passage, Gisborne shows that he knows the eighteenth-century women’s dissatisfaction with their limited life. They ask to be treated equally as men. However, Gisborne’s conduct book advice women to give up such ambition and to learn instead how the subordination of their desires can increase the “happiness of society”
(Gisborne 11). Gisborne does not believe women can control themselves as men do.
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He states that women are unreasonable and self-indulgent. His conduct book teaches women to be humble and to place little trust in their own views.
Gisborne mentions that when a family introduce their daughters to the public, they must
Let her not be distracted in the years by nature particularly designed for the cultivation of the understanding and the acquisition of knowledge, by turbulence and glare of polite amusements. Let her not to be suffered to taste the draught which the world offers to her, until she has learned that, if there be sweetness on the surface, there is venom deeper in the cup;
until her has acquired a right judgment and a well-directed taste as to the pursuits and pleasures of life, or, according to the expression of the Apostle, has become disposed (99-100).
Gisborne writes these warning to women and their family to avoid the possibility of harms imposed on women. In his description, he implicitly states women are naïve so that they are easily allured by enjoyment and deceived by excitement. Their family must teach them what is right judgment and direct them into the right way. In other words, women cannot build their own selfhood independently. Their identities are fully constructed by their family or the society’s will and expectation. Furthermore, Gisborne also lists what women should not learn:
Let not the young woman be consigned to some fashionable instructress, who, processing at once add the last polish to education, and to introduce the pupil into the best company, will probably dismiss her thirsting for admiration; inflamed with ambition; devoted to dress and amusement;
initiated in the science and the habit of gaming; and prepared to deem every thing right and indispensable, which is or shall be recommended by modish example. Let her not be abandoned in her outset in life to the
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giddiness and mistaken kindness of fashionable acquaintance in the metropolis; nor forwarded under their convoy to public places, there to be whirled, far from maternal care and admonition, in the circles of levity and folly, into which, even had maternal care and admonition been at hand to protect her, she ought not to have been permitted to step (101).
Women are instructed not to have their own desires. Their desire for wilder social experiences, for “the metropolis,” is frowned upon as dangerous. Their knowledge is chosen and censored by their educators, especially those who can offer “maternal care and admonition.” Pursuing admiration may break down their temperance and chastity.
Because of craving ambition, they may become aggressive and transgress the
boundary marked out by their social status. Their desire for dress and amusement may make them materialistic and self-indulgent. If they are interested in science and gaming, they improperly step into men’s world and forget that their duty should be fulfilled in the private sphere rather than the public one. Women’s instructress should properly supervise them to prevent them from going astray. Gisborne’s advice on women shows that women should not have their free will. Everything they do, or everything that they want to do, is limited and needed to be censored.
Self-effacement is a common problem for proper ladies in the eighteenth century. Social expectations dictate that they must assume that they can never be men’s equals, let alone men’s superior. If a woman dares to think otherwise, she is likely to encounter ridicule and disdain. John Gregory makes this point clear:
By the present mode of female manners, the ladies seem to expect that they shall regain their ascendency over us, by the fullest display of their personal charms, by being always in your eye at public places, by
conversing with us with the same unreserved freedom as we do with one other; in short, by resembling us as nearly as they possibly can. —But a
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little time and experience will show the folly of this expectation and
conduct (17).
Gregory reveals his contempt for women. He suggests that a woman’s best blessing lies in her acceptance of her inferiority, her reconciliation with the demand of female propriety.
Such assumption and advice are quite common in the eighteenth century.
Women accept and follow what those conduct books instruct them to do, and so do their family and the whole society. However, is it necessary that women must follow the rules dictated by others rather their free will? Audrey Bilger in her book Laughing
Feminism raises a question while discussing female characters in the novels of
eighteenth-century female authors: Would women’s freedom lead to promiscuous behavior” (Bilger 15)? Can women be free and well-behaved at the same time? In the view of those conduct books authors, it is impossible.
In the previous quotations, Gisborne clearly indicates that women cannot handle their free will and that they will eventually indulge their desire if once they are allowed to pursue freely what they want. Such repressive prejudice is usually couched in terms of and disguised by familial affection. Unsurprisingly, some conduct books are written as bequest to offsprings. A case in point is John Gregory’s Father’s
Legacy to His Daughter (1761), in which he instructs his daughter on how to act like
a proper lady in the eighteenth century. As Bilger has aptly put it, “[f]rom the late eighteenth century onward, the expressive possibility of women were increasingly hampered by culturally mandated ties of affection and solicitude to fathers, brothers, husbands, and other figures of male authority” (Bilger 21-2).Even when an advice is written by mothers, such as those in Marchioness de Lambert’s Advice of A Mother to Her Daughter (1790) and Lady Pennington’s An
Unfortunate Mother’s Advice to Her Absent Daughters, in A Letter to Miss
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Pennington (1790), it instructs its readers not to repeat the failures of other women
and again mentions their father’s warning and their husband’s commands. In the eighteenth century, women are tied to their family. Adequate education of daughters by their mothers ensures that women are restrained by themselves from generation to generation. It seems that women cannot retake their autonomy under patriarchal suppression because of the well-constructed male censorship upon female sex, censorship in which women themselves also participate. Significantly, while eighteenth-century conduct books seek to subordinate female voices to maleexpectations, the numerous pieces of advice therein also reveal certain ways through which women can potentially subvert patriarchal hegemony (Bilger 24).
Bilger finds something potentially revolutionary in eighteenth-century conduct books. Women cannot fight against men in finance or politics. Their only weapon is through communication. Although women’s verbal communication also needs to be censored by men, Bilger mentions a subtle communication which can strike down patriarchal dominance—laughter. “Laughter calls attention to itself in an aggressive, forceful manner and, within the confines of decorum, it suggests an insubordination in proportion to its volume” (Bilger 24). She maintains that laughter can express
women’s emotion without losing decorum and that it can subtly indicate women’s thoughts.
Laughter, unlike language, has its ambiguity and uncertainty which offer women an opportunity to react differently after observing other’s reaction to their laughters. Laughter can mean merriment or sarcasm. It can also be used to ease the tension of a social occasion. Laughter in Bilger’s belief is quite effectively
destructive. “Laughing at men involves a rejection of the hierarchy that subordinates women and calls for a rebellion against women’s so-called superiors” (Bilger 116).
Bilger’s argument, in fact, draws on Gisborne’s discussion on female laughter
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in his conduct book. In Gisborne’s work, he imagines a scenario where a vulnerable man is attacked by women’s laughter:
And if a man of grave aspect and more wakeful reflection presumes to step within the circle, they assail the unwelcome intruder with a volley of brilliant raillery and sparkling repartee, which bears down knowledge and learning before it; and convulse the delighted auditors with peals of laughter, while he labours in his heavy accoutrements after his light-armed antagonist, and receives at every turn a shower of arrows, which he can neither parry nor withstand (113-4).
In this passage, Gisborne describes men’s predicament when they receive presumably
“malicious” laughter. He suggests that women should not force men into that kind of embarrassment. The laughter bears down men’s “knowledge and learning.” That is why he cannot react immediately to his embarrassment.
This imaginary scenario conveys two important messages. One is that women can express their true emotion without words or aggressive body language. Laughter may be fierce or blunt, but it has its ambiguity. It can refer to women’s pure
merriment or ignorance of the whole situation. Another is that women are able to defy patriarchal education. Men expect women to act for their sake. In the public space, women should follow men’s rules. When men talk about something vulgar, women have to act like that they do not know the meaning behind the vulgar words; when men talk about their business or their interest, women have to pretend intrigued and reply duly. Men do not expect that women can act differently because they think women will behave as the patriarchal society requires them to do. However, laughter can confuse them and arouse the anxiety of patriarchal society.
Bilger reads laughter in the context of eighteenth-century female propriety. She accurately describes the psychological repression that a proper lady must undergo:
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To act the part of the proper lady, a woman had to conceal anger, aggression, and other ‘unfeminine’ feelings; a lady-like demeanor
involved much indirect, circuitous behavior and a great deal of repression and duplicity. Thus, the eighteenth-century woman who had independent views of self-hood was required to live a double life (59).
A proper lady who wants to have her individuality must lead a double life. On the one hand she has to follow the rules of being a proper lady and to perform like a proper lady. On the other hand, she has to keep reminding herself what she really wants and to express her thoughts privately. However, laughter, Bilger suggests, allows women to break the manacle of this “double life” and to unleash the pent-up emotions that such a life must entail.
With the help of laughter, can women in Mansfield Park move beyond simply being men’s property? Does Austen agree with Bilger about the successfully
subversive power of female laughter? The next chapter seeks to answer these questions properly.