Chapter 47 - Women writers

Summary

WO′MAN. [wifman, wimman, Saxon; whence we yet pronounce women in the plural, wimmen, Skinner.]

1. The female of the human race.

O woman, lovely woman, nature form’d thee

To temper man: we had been brutes without thee. Otway.

“I dined yesterday at Mrs. Garrick’s, with Mrs. Carter, Miss Hannah More, and Miss Fanny Burney,” said Samuel Johnson in 1784. “Three such women are not to be found: I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs. Lennox, who is superiour to them all” (Boswell, Life, 4:275). More remarkable than Frances Burney’s chagrin at this striking remark is Boswell’s neglect of the obvious leads with which it presented him. He says little in his biography about the other authoresses named here, all of whom could have filled gaps in his Life, especially concerning Johnson’s early years.

Boswell had no interest in his subject’s relations with intellectual women. The record shows, though, that Samuel Johnson was throughout his career the friend, supporter, and champion of female writers, whether they be translators, poets, playwrights, or novelists. From his first days, laboring on the Gentleman’s Magazine and picking up whatever jobs he could, he thought of them as fellow authors, struggling like him to gain a living in a literary marketplace that was undergoing critical changes (see chapter 13, “Authorship”). Nothing, in fact, demonstrates Johnson’s extraordinary freedom from the commonplace prejudices of his time more than his relationships with them. To see this is to realize that there is an alternative to Boswell’s story about Johnson’s life – focused on Johnson in the later, more comfortable circumstances of his life and in largely masculine company – that demands to be told.