More from "What's the Message?"

The positive response I received from the first post about women's periodicals from the eighteenth century, along with a request for more from the essay, prompts today's post.



From the Essay:
Now, we didn’t simply make up a few attention-grabbing headlines and stick them on a copy of an engraving. These headlines are inspired by actual stories from some of the
eighteenth-century conduct books.

This mock-up feature headlines drawn from actual Female Spectator issues. (This one is in color, which would have been difficult to do in the eighteenth century, to say the least, but just play along here.)
From the Female Spectator Volume Three we find a long sermon against gossip. It begins: “Nothing more plainly shews a weak and degenerate Mind, than taking a Delight in whispering about every idle Story we are told, to the Prejudice of our Neighbors” (2).
Volume One of The Female Spectator ran a lengthy essay on the vital importance of young women choosing the right husband. It says “to be well convinced of the Sincerity of the Man they are about to marry is a Maxim, with great Justice, always recommended to a young lady” (13). The story goes on to describe a young woman who made a foolish, hasty choice of marriage partner with, of course disastrous consequences. Martesia, the young woman, ends up married to a man of dubious character, they drift apart and even begin to sleep in separate beds. Martesia has an affair and becomes pregnant. She attempts to conceal the pregnancy and delivers a still-born baby in secret. But the whispering began and she, in the end, had to flee England. With a sum of support from her husband, she went into “voluntary Banishment from Friends and Country, and roaming round the World in fruitless Search of that Tranquility she could not have failed enjoying at home in the Bosom of a Comfort equally beloved as loving” (Female Spectator 23).
Taking a cue from an actual essay in the Female Spectator Volume Two, we find the writer saying from the beginning “there is no one Thing more generally talked of, and so little understood, as the sin of ingratitude. All complain of it in others, but none acknowledge it in themselves” (2). The essay runs for several pages and gives many examples of how to avoid this particular sin.
Our last and perhaps most interesting headline come from Volume three of The Female Spectator. In it the writer tells a story of a woman named “Constantia” who though the seeming epitome of virtue finds that her husband is cheating on her. How does she defeat her rival and regain her husband’s affections? Easy! She retains “the most tender affection for her husband, but while the guilty pair imagined her easy and resign’d to her fate, she was continually laying Schemes to change it” (Female Spectator 33). Her scheme we find is to pretend to be sick and take to her bed. Also, luckily, it seems “heaven was pleased that she should prove with Child, which, together with her continued Sweetness of Behaviour, turn’d his Heart” (Female Spectator 41). So the remedy it appears is to be nice to your cheating husband, continue sleeping with him, pretend to be near death and eventually he’ll come around.
Women’s magazines are still blatantly telling women how to act, how to talk, how to get or keep a man and how to dress, though the most numerous items have to do with men, sex and relationships. In the November 2005 issue of Cosmopolitan we find these articles; “Boost His Body Confidence,” “Get the Affection You Desire”, “A Dinner He’ll Die For”, “How to Turn Him On Without Touching” and introduces a new sex position, naturally to keep a man interested.
Though they take a friendly tone, these women’s magazines, just like the examples we’ve seen from the eighteenth-century, still play on a woman’s insecurities and self doubts. They still seek to teach women (though admittedly the some of the lessons have changed). We didn’t find any eighteenth-century articles about how to be great in bed.
However, today’s magazines hold up near-impossible-to-achieve standards of beauty as the womanly ideal. The main focus is still about attracting, holding on to and pleasing men. These magazines tell a woman “you can’t possibly get along in the world without our advice. Listen to us. We are the modern sages. Behave as we tell you. Look like this girl. We’ll tell you how to behave in any situation. Style your hair like so and wear these clothes. It’s the only way you’ll ever be happy.”
Today’s magazines, just like the periodicals from the eighteenth century, still assume a woman needs instruction from self-styled experts in all areas of her life. That’s the message and, judging by the continuing popularity of women’s periodicals, its one women are still buying.

Works Cited:
Cosmopolitan 239.5. Dec. 2005

Female Spectator 1. The Spectator Project. CETH. 10 Nov. 2005.
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Female Spectator 2. The Spectator Project . CETH. 10 Nov. 2005.
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Female Spectator 3. The Spectator Project CETH. 10 Nov. 2005.
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