By Bailey Meyerhoff
The miscellany format of eighteenth-century periodicals meant that publications such as Charlotte Lennox’s Lady’s Museum (1760–61) covered a variety of topics and genres. Since one of the periodical’s primary aims was to educate as well as entertain, it included fiction and nonfiction, juxtaposing excerpts of Lennox’s serialized novel with pedagogical pieces on subjects like geography, history, and—importantly for the purposes of this essay—the scientific study of plants, animals, and physics, then known as natural history and natural philosophy.
Science and Women’s Periodicals
Just as eighteenth-century English women generally had limited access to education, there were restraints, too, on what varieties of science were deemed appropriate for them to study. Subjects like natural history and natural philosophy were deemed suitable for female study in part because their empirical nature “enable[d] women to continue to fulfill their female duties while they pursue[d] pleasure and education.”[1] On the other hand, women were largely restricted from studying more abstract scientific subjects (such as Newtonian physics), which were viewed as masculine intellectual pursuits incompatible with the domestic life of women. In any case, natural history and natural philosophy were common additions to eighteenth-century magazines for and by women, Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectator (1744–46) and Lennox’s Lady’s Museum offered some of the most interesting demonstrations of this. Predating the Museum by a little over a decade, the Female Spectator advocated a hands-on approach to scientific study: Haywood encouraged her readers to conduct their own scientific experiments and observations while detailing correspondents’ own within the magazine. The Lady’s Museum, on the other hand, was more interested in providing detailed accounts of the natural world that enabled women to study meticulously crafted reports on its subjects from within the confines of their homes.
While both periodicals were essential to the advancement of women’s accessibility to educational scientific content, this critical introduction will explore Lennox’s inclusion of scientific material within the Lady’s Museum. It will outline the detailed study of insects in the magazine—and the proto-feminist implications.
Entomology
One of the most common subjects for female scientific study in the eighteenth century was entomology (the study of insects). There are a couple of reasons for the frequent appearance of insect studies in women’s periodicals: first, as mentioned, varieties of empirical observation were considered appropriate modes of female scientific study that would not interfere with women’s domestic work. Additionally, because women were confined to domestic spaces, insects were easily accessible to them—they could, for example, gather beetles and caterpillars for study right from their gardens, and this was the kind of scientific study that Haywood especially encouraged in the Female Spectator.
Entomology was also an important component of the Lady’s Museum. Lennoxincluded a regular series in the magazine called “Philosophy for the Ladies,” which often detailed the behaviors and physical transformations undergone by insects such as, for example, the swallow-tail butterfly, the day-fly (today called the “mayfly”), and the lion-pismire (also known as the “antlion”).[2] The account of the lion-pismire is an especially interesting one that describes not only the creature’s transformations but also the strategic and rather vicious predatorial tactics it used, such as the way that it crafts a “snare” in the sand to trap its victims in.[3] As Sagal notes, Lennox is distinguished in these descriptions in part by her simultaneous goals of making her subjects enjoyable to read about as well as thoroughly and accurately detailed in their minutiae.[4] Meticulous scientific accounts such as this encapsulate her unflinching pedagogical focus within the Lady’s Museum broadly and “Philosophy for the Ladies” more specifically.
Furthermore, a common tactic used by eighteenth-century women in their scientific accounts—including the entomological descriptions penned by Lennox—was to use natural philosophy as a vehicle for the admiration of God’s creative work. Lennox felt that to study the natural world was indeed to study God’s craft. For example, writing in another of the periodical’s scientific series, “Of the Universe Considered Under a General View,” Lennox notes that the study of natural philosophy “serve[s] to calm our ruffled passions, and, by a regular transition, convey our contemplations from the creature to its Creator.”[5] In this way, Lennox attributes a kind of morality and religiosity to the study of nature and insects, which assisted its status as an acceptable subject for women to study.
Entomology as Proto-Feminist Tool
One of the reasons why women were encouraged to study insects involved their similar status of insignificance. As Girten notes, women and insects were thought to share attributes such as smallness (in both size and cultural significance) and thus were “invited” to identify with their entomological subjects through their study.[6] Because women, like insects, were perceived as physically and socially insignificant, eighteenth-century women writers’ sustained interest in, and meticulous descriptions of, the lives of insects can be read as proto-feminist.
Writing specifically about Haywood’s Female Spectator, Girten notes that the “inordinate amount of text” with which Haywood uses to account for the insects that she studies demonstrates “that the diminutive and insignificant are only superficially so. When observed rightly (i.e. philosophically), the trivial is far from trite.”[7] We can apply this same logic to Lennox’s entomological explanations: By meticulously detailing the lives of “insignificant” insects and by placing her entomological accounts alongside contemplations of the universe within her periodical, Lennox counters their widely perceived status as insignificant. Furthermore, because women were connected with insects through their perceived insignificance, we can read Lennox’s advocation for entomological importance as an argument for women’s own status as, like Girten puts it, “far from trite.” Girten goes on to write: “Through the practice of natural philosophy, . . . women may turn their ostensibly trivial lives into lives of public significance, thus challenging the gendered separation of spheres that enables their confinement.[8] Indeed, even Lennox’s editorial persona or eidolon as “the Trifler” underscores and troubles, through satire, this notion that women’s issues are mere “trifles”; for Lennox, to “trifle” is to subvert the status quo. Furthermore, Sagal notes that while women’s lives were indeed constrained by their positions of domesticity, reading about insects and the natural world enabled them to explore it in ways that were otherwise inaccessible to them.[9]
Thus, periodicals such as the Lady’s Museum not only assisted in altering perceptions of so-called “insignificant” creatures through their miscellaneous format, but they also functioned as a vehicle that enabled women to explore the universe around them. In these ways, the common practice of entomological study among women in the eighteenth century can be interpreted as a proto-feminist activity that helped women to alter social perceptions of so-called “insignificant” creatures such as insects and themselves, while also enabling them to explore a world beyond their domestic lives. Lennox’s meticulous explanations of insects in the Lady’s Museum transported women beyond their not so small world to enable them to ponder their place in the universe.
NOTES
[1] Kristin M. Girten, “Unsexed Souls: Natural Philosophy as Transformation in Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectator,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 43, no. 1 (2009): 58.
[2] “Philosophy for the Ladies – Abridged Teaching Edition,” The Lady’s Museum, ed. Charlotte Lennox (1760–61), accessed 9 August 2023, https://ladysmuseum.com/teaching/course-reader-documents/philosophy-for-the-ladies-abridged/.
[3] Lennox, “Philosophy for the Ladies,” 13.
[4] Anna K. Sagal, Botanical Entanglements: Women, Natural Science, and the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England (Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2022): 46–47.
[5] “Of the Universe Considered Under a General View,” The Lady’s Museum, ed. Charlotte Lennox (1760–61), accessed 9 August 2023, https://ladysmuseum.com/of-the-universe-as-considered-under-a-general-view/.
[6] Girten, “Unsexed Souls,” 59, 61.
[7] Girten, “Unsexed Souls,” 61–62.
[8] Girten, “Unsexed Souls,” 57.
[9] Anna K. Sagal, “Philosophy for the Ladies: Feminism, Pedagogy, and Natural Philosophy in Charlotte Lennox’s Lady’s Museum,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 28, no. 1 (Fall 2015): 157.