Photo-Feminists: The Inter-textual Discussion of Eighteenth-Century Periodical Frontispieces

The visual afterlife of the two frontispieces from the first volume of Eliza Haywood’s periodical, The Female Spectator (1744-46) promotes the argument that middling women should be allowed to learn the same proto-disciplinary topics that men studied by representing how women could include both amusements and informal learning in between their duties as wives and mothers. The Female Spectator’s frontispiece, the emblem to Frances Brooke’s The Old Maid (1755-56), the frontispiece to Charlotte Lennox’s The Lady’s Museum (1760-61) and the 1789 frontispiece to The Lady’s Magazine (1770-1847) have the common element of the image of Minerva to visually continue the debate of female knowledge. Each image not only responds to the Female Spectator’s depiction of women learning, but also builds on the previous periodical’s visual response with time specific portrayals of the changes in balancing distractions with informal education. Analyzing the visual representations of women learning within the context of Michael Warner’s argument on the developing overlapping publics and counterpublics in the eighteenth century, and Tita Chico’s argument on the coquet figure reforming through proto-disciplinary knowledge, brings attention to the changing notion that middle-class women did not have the interest, access, and capability to learn proto-disciplinary knowledge. This paper concludes that the progression of the images represents the development and gradual acceptance of women’s informal education through the visual and textual representations of women studying natural philosophy, ancient history and moral philosophy in the frontispieces. Thus, Haywood’s periodical acts as a catalyst for subsequent periodicalists’ debates on women’s education.