De Achttiende Eeuw
27 (1995) 2
Lia van Gemert,
Eighteenth-century Dutch female writers and their authorship
In this article, several aspects of the authorship of Dutch female writers from the eighteenth century are discussed. Although most of them showed modesty about their own work, they also knew very well how to meet the expectations from the world of letters. Often their talent for poetry had been recognized in their youth already and subsequently they were given the chance to practice. As long as writing activities did not prevent other duties, such as house keeping, they were allowed, especially when the contents of the verses supported the ideal of usefulness.
This general pattern of ‘usefulness’ is elaborated in various ways. Many authors, for instance Bosch and Deken, wrote quite a lot of ‘occasional’ poems for all sorts of events, from birth to death, from public to private life. Women like Van Zon, Wolff and De Lannoy reflected on the art of writing in theoretical verses, which could be highly serious, but also ironical. Between 1760 and 1790 Van der Horst-Roelfzema, Slicher, De Lannoy and Wolff focused on the role of women in society and their image as writers. Especially De Lannoy and Wolff claimed to be full-grown authors, equal to their male colleagues. Along with the fact that a growing number of women could publish their work, female writers took the chance to express their own opinions.
omhoog
Willeke Los,
The disguise of morality. Virtue and vice as expressions of masculinity and femininity in Dutch eighteenth-century educational discourse?
Ideas of women and femininity played an important part in Dutch educational discourse in the second half of the eighteenth century. Although at first sight women seemed to be particularly associated with the general complaint of the effeminacy of Dutch culture as a consequence of French influence, Dutch critics did not consider women to be mainly responsible for the problem of effeminacy. Effeminate conduct could be detected in men and women alike. Therefore, the criticism on the effeminacy of Dutch culture, was not specifically directed against women but sprang from a cultural criticism directed at the upper classes of society. By ridiculing the upper class way of life, Dutch educational authors contested their power to rule. In contrast with the vices of society the virtues of republicanism were presented as a healthy foundation of society. Although images of masculinity and femininty played a part in this discourse, there was no univocal connection between masculinity and virtue and femininity and vice or the other way around. Vice and virtue could be expressed in masculine and feminine ways but both were sexually neutral in essence.
omhoog
Wil Borger,
Spinsters in Alkmaar, 1725-1750
Did spinsters in Alkmaar during the first half of the eighteenth century have opportunities to make an economically independent way of living and did they have opportunities on the labour market? In her article ‘Women without men’, Olwen Hufton draws a rather gloomy picture of the social and economic position of widows and spinsters from different classes in England and France. She argues that they were more of less outcasts of society. In my research on the social and economic position of spinsters in Alkmaar I try to compare their situation with Hufton’s theses by studying their financial position, their profession or source of income and their housing.
Contrary to Hufton’s vision, spinsters in Alkmaar were reasonably or even very well able to make an independent living. The profession of the spinsters we found was generally a homeworker, and most of them did not employ other workers. The retail trade was favoured among them, but many had a living as needle woman or maid-servant too. Of approximately half of the spinsters I traced, their way of housing is known. Surprisingly most of these women owned their own house. The women who lived in with others were maid-servants; they therefore had a restricted freedom in living conditions. But all the other spinsters of this group were heads of a household of their own, living alone or with a sister or brother. It seems probable that a good many spinsters were able to choose for an independent living in all the different periods of their life.
So the theory of Olwen Hufton about the social and exonomic position of spinsters is too gloomy indeed, when we look to their way of life in the city of Alkmaar.
omhoog
Dini Helmers and Els Kloek,
Suzanna von Wolzogen Kühr (1883-1953), a women’s historian avant la lettre
In 1914 Suzanna von Wolzogen Kühr published her study on the Dutch woman of the first half of the eighteenth century. It was her graduation study of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Leiden. Six years later, in 1920, she published a supplementary study, dealing with the Dutch woman in the second half of the eighteenth century. In this article, a description is given of the life and work of this unknown women’s historian avant la lettre. Von Wolzogen Kühr has been born and raised in the Dutch East Indies. Around 1904 she came to Holland to study Dutch literature at Leiden. Although she was not engaged in the feminist movement of that time, she wrote this unique study of the history of women in the eighteenth century, based on a wide range of especially literary sources, varying from spectators, poems and farces to travel literature and pamphlets. After a short career as a schoolteacher at The Hague, she led a retired life at Lunteren, together with her mother and sister. She was an active member of the theosophian community.
omhoog
Hans De Canck,
Printing in times of revolution : a survey of the careers of the Louvain brothers Michel (ca. 1770-ca. 1820)
The three brothers Michel – Jozef, Johannes Petrus Georgius and Franciscus – worked at the same time as printers/booksellers in the university town Louvain. This provides an interesting starting point for research into the influence of the changing political context of the Southern Netherlands at the end of the eighteenth century upon the activities of printers. The constant change of governments, law and order certainly took effect on the profile of printers and their production. According to the three different printing-stocks we have reconstructed – amplified with fragmentary archives – there is an obvious fluxion in genre and number of printed matters. The new enlightened ideas and shifting values in human society offered new chances for printers, obviously shown by the politically motivated Jozef Michel (1745-1812). On the other hand he also pointed out that by sharing certain political opinions in tumultuous times, a great risk was taken. He became persona non grata in 1793 after his role as a democratic, jacobin printer in 1791-1793. J.P.G. (1748-1824) and Franciscus (1760-1818) Michel went to work the better way and did not commit themselves politically. Nevertheless, they also had to deal with the risks of fastly changing tastes and censorship, what made it precarious to invest in new printed matter, to rebuild a network of new commercial relations, and to sell their supplies that suddenly became old-fashioned or forbidden. That these risks were real, can clearly be concluded from the printing activities of both of them.
omhoog
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