Bathsua Makin

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Bathsua Makin, engraving by William Marshall, circa 1640 to 1648

Bathsua Reginald Makin (born 1600 , died around 1675 ) was an English scholar and early suffragette . She was described by contemporaries as the most educated woman in England. Makin campaigned for girls and women to receive a comprehensive education, which at the time was, with few exceptions, reserved for men.

Life

Bathsua Reginald's father, the teacher Henry Reginald (also known as Henry Reynolds), placed great emphasis on his daughter's education. So she learned not only to read, but also six other languages ​​in addition to English : French , Spanish , Italian , Latin , Greek and Hebrew .

In 1622 she married Richard Makin, a servant at the court of James I , with whom she moved to Westminster . They had eight children. By this time Bathsua Makin had been teaching at her father's school for several years. She was later a teacher of members of the English aristocracy , including Princess Elizabeth Stuart (1635-1650), the second eldest daughter of Charles I , who she taught in the 1640s. Her husband lost his fortune and was absent during the English Civil War , so Bathsua Makin had to look after her children on her own. She continued to work as a teacher. Around 1670, she founded a coeducational school that taught girls the same subjects as boys, including math, science, philosophy, languages, and rhetoric, rather than just arts and home economics as in other schools.

Makin was in close contact with other eminent scholars of her time, including Simonds D'Ewes , who in his autobiography praised Makin's education and intelligence and emphasized that she was far superior to her father in this. Makin had a pen friendship with Anna Maria von Schürmann .

Little is known about Makin's last years. The exact date of her death is uncertain.

Two portraits of Bathsua Makin - an engraving by William Marshall and an ink drawing by John Brand - are in the National Portrait Gallery in London .

Works

At the age of 16, Bathsua Makin published her first book called Musa Virginea . It is a collection of poems in praise of King James I in several languages. Together with her father, Makin published a book about a shorthand system they developed .

Makin's most important work is her work An Essay To Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues, with an Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education , which she published in 1673. In it, she explained why comprehensive education for girls is just as rewarding as that of boys. Makin was one of the first intellectuals to publicly believe that women were not mentally inferior to men. She gave examples of educated women from antiquity to her own time. She emphasized the benefit that a woman's education had in housekeeping and in her roles as wives and mothers. Education is a better activity for women than senseless pastimes like excessive beauty care. At the end of the work she advertises the school she founded.

rating

While Bathsua Makin is described by some as an early feminist , others see her as a proto-feminist because her demands were limited in comparison to the feminist positions developed a little later: Makin emphasizes the intellectual abilities of women, but does not reject the superiority of Men in public places, but put emphasis on the usefulness of education for women especially for their traditional domestic activities. Makin's writing also focuses on upper-class women who have sufficient free time to educate themselves. In the research literature it is discussed to what extent Makin's comparatively cautious demands could be traced back to the fact that she had to adopt a moderate tone in order to be able to publish her writing at all, or whether she made concessions to the supremacy of men in order to develop more persuasiveness and from its mostly male audience not to be rejected from the start. This was also economically necessary for Makin, as her income depended on attracting female students. On the other hand, her independent career as a teacher was a significant turning point in the history of women's education and work: Makin's own good education was by no means just a pastime, but gave her the opportunity to be economically independent and to support her family. Despite some qualifications, Makin is seen as the most prominent advocate for girls' education of her time. Their demands, limited as they may have been compared to those of later thinkers and activists, paved the way for women to be admitted to higher education institutions. Makin also inspired and influenced early feminists, including the philosopher and writer Mary Astell . Her catalog of educated women from the past also makes her a pioneer in women's history .

Publications

literature

  • Jean R. Brink: Bathsua Reginald Makin. "Most Learned Matron". In: Huntington Library Quarterly. Vol. 54, No. 4, 1991, ISSN  0018-7895 , pp. 313-326.
  • Joanna Brooks, Lisa L. Moore, Caroline Wigginton: Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions. Oxford University Press, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-974349-0 , pp. 59-65.
  • Meg Lota Brown, Kari Boyd McBride: Women's Roles in the Renaissance. Greenwood Press, Westport 2005, ISBN 978-0-313-32210-5 , pp. 43-45.
  • Jane Donawerth: Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900. An Anthology. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD 2002, ISBN 978-0-7425-1717-2 , pp. 73-74.
  • Bruce A. Kimball: The Liberal Arts Tradition. A Documentary History. University Press of America, Lanham, MD 2010, ISBN 978-0-7618-5132-5 , pp. 204-205.
  • Mitzi Myers: Domesticating Minerva. Bathsua Makin's Curious Argument for Women's Education. In: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. No. 14, 1985, 173-192.
  • Carol Pal: Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-107-01821-1 , pp. 177-205.
  • Diana Robin, Carole Levin, Anne Larsen: Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance. Italy, France, and England. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2007, ISBN 978-1-85109-772-2 , p. 224.
  • Sarah Gwyneth Ross: The Birth of Feminism. Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England. Harvard University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-03454-9 , pp. 240-242.
  • Vivian Salmon: Bathsua Makin. A Pioneer Linguist and Feminist in Seventeenth-Century England. In: Brigitte Asbach-Schnitker, Johannes Roggenhofer (Ed.): Newer research on word formation and historiography of linguistics. Ceremony for Herbert E. Brekle on his 50th birthday. Narr, Tübingen 1987, ISBN 3-87808-284-3 , pp. 303-318.
  • Anne Leslie Saunders: Bathsua Reginald Makin (1600–1675?). In: Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis Rugg Brown, J. Elizabeth Jeffrey (Eds.): Women Writing Latin. From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe. Volume 3: Early Modern Women Writing Latin , Routledge, New York / London 2001, ISBN 0-415-94247-0 , pp. 247-270.
  • Jane Stevenson, Peter Davidson (Eds.): Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700). An Anthology. Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-818426-3 , pp. 218-222.
  • Frances N. Teague: Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning. Associated University Presses, London 1998, ISBN 978-0-8387-5341-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Portrait of Bathsua Makin NPG D13657 and NPG D5786 from the National Portrait Gallery pages , accessed August 13, 2016.
  2. ^ Salmon, p. 304.
  3. ↑ a b Ross, p. 241.
  4. ^ Myers, p. 174.
  5. ↑ Teague, pp. 97-98.
  6. ^ Pal, p. 181.
  7. ↑ Kimball, p. 205.
  8. ↑ Donawerth, p. 74.
  9. ↑ Saunders, p. 247.
  10. ↑ Brink, p. 313.
personal data
SURNAME Makin, Bathsua
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reginald Makin, Bathsua; Reginald, Bathsua
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English scholar and early suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH 1600
DATE OF DEATH around 1675