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Revolution and Romanticism
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A facsimile reprint in the Revolution & Romanticism series chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth ISBN 1 85477 172 8 174 x 110 mm 190 pages, frontis
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MARY ANNE RADCLIFFE The Female Advocate 1799 Mary Anne Radcliffe (c.1746-post 1810) had experience of being a governess, teacher and companion, and also of trade. She ran a shoe shop in Oxford Street, and a cake shop; she sold patent medicines. She deplores the inroads men have made into occupations more suited to women: ‘men milliners, men mantua-makers... men stay-makers, besides all the numerous train of other professions, such as hair-dressers’. These are occupations for women of a certain class (not of the working class) whom fortune has treated harshly. Her angry polemic provides an interestingly down-to-earth view of female roles in the 1790s to set beside Wollstonecraft. £30 $55 Look... to the shops of perfumers, toymen, and others of a similar occupation; and above all, look to the haberdashery magazines [stores], where from ten to twenty fellows, six feet high, may be counted in each, to the utter exclusion of poor females, who could sell a toothpick, or a few ribbons, just as well.... A tax upon those fellows would be very salutary, say I! |
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