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Common Misconceptions
Common Misconceptions
There were two related misconceptions
about women’s writing in 18th century Britain.
First was the idea that what women were credited with
writing was not, in fact, written by women. In other
words, it was commonly believed that women were not
capable of socially accepted and eloquent writing -
based on their lack
of education and their supposed inability to perform
in an intellectual environment.
The second related misconception was that
female authorship was assumed based on the type of discourse
written (traditionally
feminine subjects or genres). These cyclical ideas
promoted the ideas that women could not write anything
worth reading, or that “bad” or “domestic”
writings were clearly written by women. Both were untrue,
yet reflected the vision of the time. Women writers
had a lot of social barriers to their success, yet they
still worked to break down these pre-existing and untrue
beliefs.
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