‘An Old Maid in a House Is the Devil’: Single Women and Landed Estate Management in Eighteenth‐Century England

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 423-438
Author(s):  
Sarah Shields
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Single Women ◽  
Estate Management ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Old Maid

Frances Brooke, Editor, and the Making of the Old Maid (1755–1756)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn R. King
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Old Maid

Kathryn King’s essay takes as its focus Frances Brooke’s Old Maid (1755–6), one of several crucial texts in a burst of female periodical editorial activity at mid-century. It offers a fresh reading of information about the Old Maid’s contributors, focusing especially on the marginal notes to the original issues inscribed by the paper’s chief contributor Lord Orrery. These annotations, King reveals, constitute a largely unquarried source of information about Brooke’s practices and her understanding of her role as editor. They moreover, cast light on her ambiguous relationship with the nobleman who supplied nearly a quarter of the paper’s contents. Brooke’s own contributions receive dedicated attention before King concludes by assessing why the female editor is often passed over in the stories we tell of female authorship in the eighteenth century.

Conservation and Conservatism

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Orr
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Political Field ◽  
Modern Conservatism ◽  
The Devil

The philosophy of free-market conservatism has swept the political field virtually everywhere, and virtually everywhere conservatives have been, in varying degrees, hostile to the cause of conservation. This is a problem of great consequence for the long-term human prospect because of the sheer political power of conservative governments. Conservatism and conservation share more than a common linguistic heritage. Consistently applied they are, in fact, natural allies. To make such a case, however, it is necessary first to say what conservatism is. Conservative philosopher Russell Kirk (1982, xv–xvii) proposes six “first principles” of conservatism. Accordingly, true conservatives:… • believe in a transcendent moral order • prefer social continuity (i.e., the “devil they know to the devil they don’t know”) • believe in “the wisdom of our ancestors” • are guided by prudence • “feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions” • believe that “human nature suffers irremediably from certain faults.”… For Kirk the essence of conservatism is the “love of order” (1982, xxxvi). Eighteenth-century British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke, the founding father of modern conservatism and as much admired as he is unread, defined the goal of order more specifically as one which harmonized the distant past with the distant future. To this end Burke thought in terms of a contract, but not one about “things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.” Burke’s societal contract was not, in other words, about tax breaks for those who don’t need them, but about a partnership promoting science, art, virtue, and perfection, none of which could be achieved by a single generation without veneration for the past and a healthy regard for those to follow. Burke’s contract, therefore, was between “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born . . . linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world” ([1790] 1986, 194–195). The role of government, those “possessing any portion of power,” in Burke’s words, “ought to be strongly and awefully impressed with an idea that they act in trust” (ibid., 190).

Picturesque Landscaping and Estate Management: Uvedale Price at Foxley, 1770–1829

Rural History ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Daniels ◽  
Charles Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
High Culture ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Estate Management

Georgian landscaping is conventionally studied as an example of high culture, in terms of the history of art, literature and aesthetics. We take a more down to earth view and look at landscaping as an example of estate management, in terms of such topics as farming, planting, leases and rents. We do not pretend that the study of estate management offers a sort of ground-truth for understanding landscaping. Terms like ‘rent’ and ‘estate’ are of course no more eternal, nor less ideological, than terms like ‘picturesque’ and ‘landscape’. We will not neglect high culture, indeed a central theme of the paper is how the aesthetics of painting helped frame estate management. Even a casual reading of the literature on ‘improvement’ in the eighteenth century reveals a complex overlapping of not just economic and aesthetic issues but moral and political ones too. And the point of this paper is to reinsert landscaping and estate management into this complex.

scholarly journals The Devil in the Holy Water: Political Libel in Eighteenth-Century France

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Darnton
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Holy Water ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
The Devil

This lecture discusses an investigation of the vast but unstudied literature of libel that appeared in the French book market during the eighteenth century. It concentrates on four interconnected libelles from 1771 to 1793, and combines an analysis of the genre with an account of a colony of French refugees in London. These refugees were noted to have made slanderous attacks on public figures in Versailles, and even grafted a blackmail operation on to their literary speculations. The lecture shows how an ideological current was able to erode authority under the Ancien Régime and became absorbed in a new political culture.

scholarly journals Zitelle e zitellacce. Prejudices and scorn in the perception of widows and single women in Italy in the 19th century

2017 ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Monica Miscali
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Neutral Word ◽  
Single Women ◽  
Considerable Change ◽  
Living Alone ◽  
Bourgeois Society ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Hostile Attitude ◽  
Old Maid

Abstract: Living alone in the pre-industrial world often created more complications for women than for men. The main source of this discrimination was a widespread prejudicial and hostile attitude towards unattached women and widows in general. Past societies have generated both pejorative and celebratory words to describe women who have never been married or were widowed. Expressions such as “old maid”, “vecchia zitella” or the slightly more benevolent expression “poor widow” have become commonplace. The aim of this paper is firstly to highlight the negative prejudices suffered by single women and widows in past centuries. Secondly, it hopes to demonstrate the considerable change in society’s attitude towards unmarried women that accompanied the rise of the bourgeois society and that transformed the semantic sense of the otherwise neutral word zitella to the pejorative one it has today. Despite focusing on the particular case of Italy, it will also seek to give a brief overview of the situation in the rest of Europe.Key words: Widows, single women, zitella, prejudices, stereotypes, ItalyRésumé: Vivre seul dans le monde préindustriel a souvent créé plus de complications pour les femmes que pour les hommes. La principale source de cette discrimination était une attitude préjudiciable et hostile envers les femmes seules et les veuves en général. Les sociétés du passé ont généré de nombreux mots péjoratifs pour décrire les femmes qui n’ont jamais été mariées ou qui étaient veuves. Combien de fois avons-nous entendu des mots tels que «old maid», ou bien «vieille fille» ou encore l’expression apparemment bienveillante “pauvre veuve”. Le but de cet article est de mettre en évidence les préjugés négatifs qui ont été employé au cours des siècles passésafin de décrire les femmes célibataires et les veuves et de montrer comment l’attitude de la société envers les femmes célibataires a considérablement changé avec la montée de la société bourgeoise qui a transformé le sens sémantique du mot “zitella” originairement neutre en un terme au sens aujourd’hui péjoratifact francese. L’article se concentrera sur les cas de l’Italie, mais il cherchera aussi à donner un bref aperçu de la situation dans le reste de l’Europe.Mots-clés: Veuves, femmes célibataires, vieille fille, préjugés, stéréotypes, zitella  

4. The classical and positivist traditions

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
Stephen Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
The Devil

This chapter discusses in detail the two major themes in the formation of criminological thinking. The tension between these two traditions has existed since the development of positivism in the nineteenth century and is still of considerable importance in present-day debates about crime and ‘law and order’. It is common to single out France as typifying all that was bad with the administration of the criminal law in pre-eighteenth-century Europe. France provided an extreme example of what passed as criminal ‘justice’ throughout most of Europe. It was generally believed that crime was the consequence of evil. In some cases, it was assumed that the Devil or demons had taken over individuals and directed them to perform wicked acts. Alternatively, people whose faith in God was weak might have yielded to temptation and made a pact with the Devil.

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