Cindy K Renker - Women from the Parsonage: Pastors’ Daughters as Writers, Translators, Salonnières, and Educators

Women from the Parsonage

ISBN 978-3-11-058751-7
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-059036-4
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-058762-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960719

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: Patrick Branwell Bront: The Bront Sisters (Anne Bront; Emily Bront; Charlotte Bront), oil on canvas, ca. 1834. National Portrait Gallery, London. DEA PICTURE LIBRARY / Kontributor / De Agostini / gettyimages.de

www.degruyter.com

Cindy K. Renker

What do Lessing, Wieland, Emerson, Tennyson, and Nietzsche have in common? They are among the many prominent writers and thinkers who were the sons of Protestant clergymen, something of a cultural phenomenon during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When one looks at the exceptional education these men received, often at the hands of their fathers themselves, it comes as no surprise that the sons of pastors became some of the most influential minds of their time. But what about the daughters of clergymen? The influence that the parson had on the education of his own daughters, at a time when learned women were frowned upon, has largely been ignored. The pastor was a learned man with a university education (trained theologically and philosophically) and his parsonage was a center of learning with a study and an above average library. These circumstances alone offered unparalleled learning opportunities for girls.

Studying a group of women by way of the fathers profession is a rather recent approach in gender, historical, and especially literary studies. This edited volume is intended to shed light on a group of well known as well as lesser known women from the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century whose fathers were Protestant clergymen of different ranks and occupations, with diverse incomes and levels of education. These women became important writers, accomplished translators, celebrated salonnires, and distinguished educators; they founded schools and hospitals and headed charitable organizations and events. Their privileged education and social standing provided them with opportunities to participate not only in private but often in public literary, intellectual, and pedagogical discourse by publishing in such non-gender-specific genres as autobiographies, novels, poetry, treatises on education and health, travel writing, and translations.

Although scholars in the past have taken occasional note of these womens origin, parentage, upbringing, and extraordinary education often, however, only as an aside there has been little focus on the connection between the upbringing and education and the later lives and works of these women. In the case of the most prominent writers included in this collection, Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront, biographers recognized and investigated that connection to some extent. However, in the case of most pastors daughters, the connection between their priviledged education and their intellectual pursuits has remained largely unexplored.

The essays on individual women included in this volume will reveal commonalities and parallels among this group who hail from various Protestant regions of Europe. In all, this collection contains essays on ten daughters of clergymen, some of which have been marginalized and neglected. Five women (Susanna Elisabeth Zeidler, Friderika Baldinger, Sophie Schwarz, Friederike Brun, and Louise Aston) are from German-speaking areas; one of the women (Susanne Curchod aka Madame Necker) is from French-speaking Switzerland, and the other four writers (Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Elizabeth Carter, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Bront) are from England. Examining the lives and works of these women with their diverse geographical, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds offers opportunities for comparison across borders. In sum, this collection of essays attempts to underline the significance of this group for transnational, cultural, and social history and for the history of gender and education, as well as for literary studies. It is meant as a closer examination of the connection between womens upbringing/education and their intellectual pursuits.

The essays have been organized in chronological order (by birthdates) and not by region, so that the reader can recognize the shift from mostly religious writing to more secular writing, the increase in productivity and prolificity, and the rise of women in the public sphere across these regions of Europe. In the same vein, it also becomes apparent that the pastor-fathers increasingly allowed their daughters to study more subjects such as the natural sciences (for example, physics) and languages (such as Hebrew and Greek) that had been off-limits to women of previous generations. While this appears to have been the general trend, it is also important to remember that the fathers level of education, willingness to teach such subjects, and financial means to support such instruction, if he was unable to teach those subjects himself, were also factors. In addition, sometimes it was the pastor-brothers or pastor-husbands or other spiritual fathers (for example in the case of Susanna Elisabeth Zeidler or Friderika Baldinger) who not only continued to provide educational opportunities and supported their sister, wife, or spiritual daughter in her writing and other intellectual pursuits, but who also encouraged publishing and assisted in the publishing process.

Intellectual, cultural, and social historians have highlighted and examined the central importance of the pastor, his family, and the parsonage the Old Rectory or Pfarrhaus. The parsonage was a space where private and public spheres intertwined. The important role of the pastor or parson in society and for the local community as religious leader and educator has also been established. Even the singular importance and various roles of the pastors wife in the local community as housekeeper, boarder, gardener, or midwife have been examined. In all, the parsons family constituted an integral part of early modern and modern society, with women increasingly taking on more roles and inhabiting more functions that called for more education. Family members did not necessarily operate in different spheres, as was the case in other middle-class families, but rather worked as a unit. As for education, the parson and his family had become the example par excellence in that arena and in the rearing of children for the rest of the middle class and gentry by the end of the Ancien Rgime. Education had been highly valued in the Protestant parsonage since the Reformation, initially instigated by the fervency to read the Bible for oneself and the desire to understand and impart the new theology to ones own family and the local community. This pursuit of knowledge and education manifested itself in the fact that pastors often educated their sons themselves before sending them off to universities and frequently took in boys to board and educate alongside their own children. Furthermore, it is common knowledge that the sons of pastors often joined the clergy themselves or became educators, writers, and scholars. Moreover, in most cases, the pastor also took it upon himself to educate his own daughters and often taught subjects that were not deemed appropriate or necessary for girls by other educators or society at large.