One of the Pillars of Early Modern English “Feminism”

775J Judith Drake, (fl. 1696-1723).


An essay in defence of the female sex. In which are inserted the characters of a pedant, a squire, a beau, a vertuoso, a poetaster, a city-critick, &c. In a letter to a lady. Written by a lady. The third edition with additions.


London: printed for A. Roper and E. Wilkinson at the Black Boy, and R. Clavel at the Peacock, in Fleetstreet, 1697. Price $6,500

Quarto. 19 x 11 cm. Signatures: A8, B4, Bb-K8, L4 With an engraved frontispiece, “The Compleat Beau” Third EDITION (a year after the first edition.) . Bound in contemporary, speckled calf, ruled in blind. with spine is rebacked with “Female Sex” gilt spine. Internally, this copy is in excellent condition with clean, fresh leaves and large margins.

“‘An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex” (1696) was one of the most significant English contributions to the early modern debate concerning women. Attributed to Judith Drake (c. 1670- post 1723), who wrote it in the form of a letter to a female friend following ‘a private conversation, between some gentlemen and ladies’, the tract vigorously and wittily vindicated female intellectual abilities and character. Drake drew upon John Locke’s ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ (1690) to construct a rationalist framework upon which to argue that it was custom and language which engendered the belief that women were intellectually inferior to men. Drake then proceeded to reject the cult of the ancients and, in their place, championed the work of ‘modern’ learning and the value of informal education for women. Additionally, Drake contended that men shared the character faults of which women were usually accused. She accentuated masculine follies by sketching satiric portraits of various male types, such as the :

“There remains nothing more, but to shew that there are some necessary Qualifications to be acquir’d, some good Improvements to be made by Ingenious Gentlemen in the Company of our Sex. Of this number are Complacence, Gallantry, Good Humour, Invention, and an Art…”


“Drake’s welding of rationalist epistemology to ‘feminist’ argument was of particular originality within the context of early modern pro-women writings. Only two ‘feminist’ texts had previously employed such a methodology as a foundation for their discussion, and only one of those had been English. The earliest was “The Woman as Good as the Man” (1677), a translation of François Poulain de Barre’s Cartesian analysis of how gender is culturally constructed. Two decades later, another Cartesian-inspired tract joined the debate, Mary Astell’s ‘A Serious Proposal to the Ladies’ (1694/7) Since Drake’s treatise was published two years after Astell’s, she has been relegated to the position of being a disciple of Astell’s. Indeed, owing to confusion over the authorship of the anonymously published ‘Essay’, the work has been credited to Astell.

 “Judith Drake drew upon one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, John Locke. Locke’s book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding would help Drake construct a rationalist framework to defend the female sex. With it, she argued that “there are no innate Ideas, but the Notions we have are derived from our external Senses, either immediately, or by Reflexion.” If human knowledge was based upon experience, men and women therefore had the capacity to become intellectual equals. Instead, custom and language had engendered the belief that women were intellectually inferior to men. Drake proceeded to reject what she deemed  “the cult of the ancients” and, in their place, championed the work of ‘’modern” learning and the value of informal education for women.:

Book of the Week — An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex…

 

“Drake’s wholehearted espousal of rationalist argument is one of the defining notes of her work. She relied upon rationalism to formulate and justify her ideas concerning the intellectual and moral worth of women. Drake’s foremost intellectual debt was undoubtedly to Locke’s ‘Essay’. ‘The greatest Difficulty we struggled with’, she wrote, ‘was the Want of a good Art of Reasoning, which we had not’til that defect was supply’d by the greatest Master of that Art, Mr. Locke.’ Drawing upon Locke she stated that ‘there are no innate Ideas, but the Notions we have are derived from our external Senses, either immediately or by Reflection.’ If human knowledge was based upon experience, men and women therefore had the capacity to become intellectual equals. Additionally, the intellectualequality of the sexes could be demonstrated by knowledge which drew upon experience.


“Although Drake satirized the seemingly more bizarre activities of enthusiasts for the ‘new sciences’ in the ‘Essay’, in general she was a warm supporter of the cause and approved of the work of the Royal Society. Drake called upon ‘the new science’ to prove her case. She related how physicians had informed her that ‘there is no Difference in the Organization of those parts which have any Relation to, or Influence over, the Minds.’ Likewise, careful observation from nature could demonstrate this equality too. Drake noted that the behavior of animals showed that ‘there is no difference betwixt Male and Female in point of Sagacity.’ Drake drew a similar conclusion from studying the behavior of those most bereft of literate influences, the rural poor. ‘The condition of the two Sexes is more level, than amongst Gentlemen, City-Traders or rich Yeomen’, she remarked. Drake’s belief in the ability of the female intellect led her to speculate further that the inferior bodily strength of women suggested that they were created for thinking, whereas men were built for action. Consequently, she proposed that women could perform intellectual tasks in business, such as accounting, whilst men should carry out jobs requiring physical labor.

 “The underlying importance of party politics is exemplified in one of the greatest works of early modern ‘feminism’, Judith Drake’s An essay in defence of the female sex (1696). Although Drake shared political similarities with other tory ‘feminists’, including the more celebrated Mary Astell, Drake’s work differed radically from theirs over how an Anglican tory society could be maintained. Instead of stressing the necessity of teaching the tenets of Anglicanism to young women, as had her predecessors, Drake combined tory ideas with Lockean philosophy and concepts of ‘politeness’ to formulate an early Enlightenment vision of sociable, secularized, learning and the role female conversation could play in settling a society fractured by party politics.” (Dr Hanna Smith)


Drake also believed that ‘all Souls are equal, and alike’. Thus, for Drake, there were no rational grounds for contending that women were intellectually inferior to men. Such a belief was only sustained through ‘the Usurpation of Men, and the Tyranny of Custom’.”

(Dr Hannah Smith, “English ‘Feminist’ Writings and Judith Drake’s ‘An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696)”, The Historical Journal, 44 (2001), pp. 27-47.)
Wing D 2125B (formerly Wing A 4058, under Astell); Halkett & Laing, “Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature”, Vol. 2.; Devereaux, Johanna. “‘Affecting the Shade’: Attribution, Authorship, and Anonymity in ‘An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex.’” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 27, no. 1, 2008, pp. 17–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20455350. Accessed 27 Mar. 2024.