essay on woman by john wilkes

An Essay on Woman in Three Epistles

AN ESSAY ON WOMAN, IN THREE EPISTLES.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. And Sold by Mr. GRETTON, in Bond-Street. And Mr. POTTINGER, in Pater-Noster-Row.

AN ESSAY ON WOMAN.

EPISTLE II.

K NOW then thyself... and make the Sex thy care, The proper study of Mankind's the FAIR; Plac'd in that state — which all who know thee, know A Politician, Poet, Parson, Beau; Created half to rise, and half to fall, Great son of Homer — doating on a doll; Truth's friend so fond of female falsehood grown, The glory, jest, and riddle of the town. Go, wond'rous creature, as Apollo leads, And mark the Path majestic Milton treads; The little versifiers teach to write, Then to thy bottle and thy w.... at night. The wondering actors, when of late they saw A grave Divine explain theatric law, Admir'd the wisdom of the rev'rend cowl, And shew'd a C....., as we shew an owl. Has he who wrote the Rosciad e'er inclin'd. Ten days together to one female mind? Then might thy friend be constant to his W...., And PRIVILEGE be pleaded then no more. Woman to man still yields {and where's the harm?) Who keeps her close while she has power to charm; Then yields her to his fellow-brutes a prey: And where's the fault, my friend, in us, or they? Two principles in human nature reign, Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain: Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul; And reason yields to its supreme controul: Great strength the moving principal requires, Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires; Sedate and quiet sense and reason lie; We yield to passion, and from reason fly. We sieze immediate good by present sense, And leave to fate and chance the consequence: Thicker than arguments temptations throng, More pow'rful these, though those are ne'er so strong. Self-love and reason to one end aspire, Pain our aversion, pleasure our desire; But greedy still our object to devour, We crop, without remorse, the fairest flow'r: Pleasure, with us, is always understood, Howe'er obtain'd, our best and greatest good. Passions, like elements, though born to fight, By female pow'r subdu'd, are alter'd quite; These 'tis enough to temper and employ, While what affords most pleasure, can destroy. All spread their charms, but charm not all alike, On different senses different objects strike; Hence different ladies, more or less inflame; Or different pow'rs sometimes attend the fame; And calling up each passion of the breast, Each lady, in her turn, subdues the rest. As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, Imbibes the flame which ends not but with death; The flame, that must subdue the fair at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength. So cast and mingled too in Woman's , frame, Her mind's disease, her ruling passion came. Imagination plies her dangerous art, And pours it all upon the peccant part: Nature it's mother, habit is it's nurse, Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse. We wretched subjects to the female sway, The tyrant, Woman, one and all, obey; Who, bent to govern by her own wise rules, Will, if she finds not, aim to make us fools; Teach us to mourn our state, but not to mend; A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend! Proud of her easy conquest all along, She still allays our passions, weak or strong. Virtuous and vicious every man must be; Women are neither in a small degree; The rogue and fool, by fits, is fair and wise, Women are always what they most despice: 'Tis but by parts Man follows good or ill; Woman's sole sovereign is her own dear will , While ev'ry man pursues a different goal, Womans whole aim's unlimited controul, The faults of men, and their defects of mind, Afford the highest joy to womankind. See some peculiar whim each man attend; See every Woman lab'ring to one end: See some fit passion ev'ry man employ; Empire alone affords the Woman joy. Behold the Girl , by Nature's kindly law, Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw; Some other bauble gives her youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite. Dress, dancing, balls, amuse her riper age, And drams and opiates are the toys of age; Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before, 'Till tir'd, she sleeps... and life's poor play is o'er .

EPISTLE III.

O H Happiness! to which we all aspire, Wing'd with strong hope, and borne by full desire, Oh Ease! for which in want, in wealth we sigh, That Ease for which we labour and we die. Why should the Female ever have the power, To tyrannize o'er Man, and to devour? Why should the wife, the learned, and the fool, The brave, the rich.... submit to Woman's rule? Ask of the learn'd the cause, the learn'd are blind, This bids us seek, that shun all Womankind; Some place the bliss in serving one alone, Some by a single Passion are undone. Some, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain. Some, swell'd to Gods,... confess all pleasure vain; Some hold the maxim others wrong would call, To try all Women... and to doubt them all. Oh, Sons of Men! attempt no more to rise, But own the wond'rous force of Woman's eyes; Who, big with laughter, your vain toil surveys, And shews her power a thousand diff'rent ways. Know all the happiness we hope to find, Depends upon the will of Womankind. Nothing so true as Pope, long since, let fall, "Most Women have no characters at all"; How many pictures of one nymph we view! All how unlike each other... all how true! See Sin in state majestically drunk; Proud as a Peeress, prouder as a punk; Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride; In whose mad brain the mix'd ideas roll, Of Tallboy's breeches, and Caesar's soul. Who, spite of delicasy, stoops at once, And makes her hearty meal upon a dunce. In Men we various ruling passion find, In Women... two alone divide the mind; Those only fixed, they, first or last, obey, The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.

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An Essay on Woman

Learn about this topic in these articles:, discussed in biography of wilkes.

…the proof sheets of “Essay on Woman,” an obscene parody on Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man,” which had been written by Wilkes and Thomas Potter years before. Wilkes had commenced, but not completed, printing 12 copies, probably for the “Monks.” At the start of the parliamentary session in November…

history of obscenity law

…obscene libel for his poem An Essay on Woman, a parody of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man . Prosecutions for obscenity in other European countries also betrayed a merging of moral and political concerns. Perhaps the most celebrated obscenity trial in 19th-century France was that of Gustave Flaubert, who was…

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• Parliamentary History

John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty, and: An Essay on Woman, by John Wilkes and Thomas Potter. A Reconstruction of a Lost Book (review)

• Peter David Garner Thomas
• Edinburgh University Press
• Volume 25, Part 3, 2006
• pp. 418-420
• 10.1353/pah.2006.0050
• View Citation

Additional Information

• John Wilkes. The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty , and: An Essay on Woman, by John Wilkes and Thomas Potter. A Reconstruction of a Lost Book
• Peter D. G. Thomas

John Wilkes has been the subject of nearly a dozen biographies, some scholarly, others intended for a wide readership. This one by Professor Cash falls into the latter category, as the author candidly states. 'I have written this book for a general audience of well-read intelligent people' (p. 395): but he does supply copious endnote references for the benefit of scholars. Cash is not an historian, but an American specialist in eighteenth-century English literature. His book is a product of his retirement. It has been 15 years in the making, and his age at publication is 83. The research has been assiduous and wide-ranging. In addition to his perusal of all the Wilkes manuscripts and printed records Cash has visited several locations associated with Wilkes. On his own terms he has been largely successful, producing the biggest biography to date, informed and readable, with abundant detail on the life and career of Wilkes, that rascal and radical. It was the blatancy of his sex life that gave Wilkes his notoriety, for, boasting he had no small vices, he did not indulge in such pursuits of his time as gambling, excessive drinking, and gluttony. His political fame arose from his mostly successful championship of 'liberty', notably that of parliamentary electors, and more generally that of the individual against state power. All this is conveyed in a chatty writing-style, with Wilkes often referred to familiarly as 'Jack'. The political terminology, indeed, is rather too colloquial and modernized: the contrast of 'right' and 'left' does not fit easily into the Georgian scene. And the last 15 years, which saw a late flowering ofWilkes as a classical scholar, are passed over quickly. Cash, too, can be perverse, as in claiming that John Wilkes was probably born on 17 October 1726 (p. 7), exactly a year after the date now accepted. Yet his younger brother Heaton [End Page 418] was born on 9 February 1727, and John, at the time of his marriage on 23 May 1747, had attained the legal age of majority, 21. Nevertheless, there has been no biography on this scale since the 1917 one by Horace Bleackley, and as a very full account of John Wilkes, with much new detail, it replaces that book as the best general life.

But historians will not be happy with this book. It is unfortunate that neither the author nor his publisher saw fit to have the text vetted by a historian, for it contains a myriad of triling errors of fact and misconceptions about the British political and social system. A duke is not the same as an earl (p. 33); the Elder Pitt was not wealthy (pp. 38-9); Lord North was not 'a little man', nor was he called George (p. 146); Lord Egremont may have been a chief persecutor of Wilkes, but he was not a Scot (p. 103); and so on. Cash is often careless about chronology, misdating when men held office or acquired titles. His summaries of political events tend to be confused and inaccurate. More disturbing than this propensity to error is the political interpretation of the period. Although Cash occasionally cites the work of Sir Lewis Namier he has failed to grasp the overthrow of whig historiography. He follows 'the great historian George Otto Trevelyan' in asserting that George III's political aim was to establish 'a personal government', an attempt foiled by the failure of the American War (pp. 57, 369). Fortunately he does not apply this interpretation in detail, but here is his summary of the 1774 general election: 'George III kept his control over Parliament in this election. . . In the rural areas and...

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• Pope, Alexander (1688–1744)

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Essay on Woman, An  

A lewd verse parody of *Pope’s Essay on Man (1732–4). It was composed in 1754 by John Wilkes... ...

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‘An Essay on Woman’ by John Wilkes and Thomas Potter: A Reconstruction of a Lost Book with a Historical Essay on the Writing, Printing, and Suppressing of this “Blasphemous and Obscene” Work

• Notes and Queries 50(2):241-242
• 50(2):241-242

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Wilkes University Archives Repository

• Item 61: An Essay on Woman by John Wilkes, Esq., (removed to Half Box #1) , 1788
• Created: 1788

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• Wilkes, John, 1725-1797.

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• Box: 6, Folder: 61 (Mixed Materials)

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• DOI: 10.1093/nq/s5-iii.71.369e
• Corpus ID: 160059214

An essay on woman

• J. Wilkes , Thomas S. Potter , Arthur H. Cash

3 Citations

Wilkes, john (1725–1797) and the “wilkes and liberty” movement, the strange case for women's capacity to reason: judith sargent murray's use of irony in “on the equality of the sexes” (1790), mystifying what matters: erotic antiquarianism in erasmus darwin’s portland vase, related papers.

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A reconstruction of a lost book, with an historical essay on the writing, printing and suppressing, by john wilkes , john wilkes , and thomas potter.

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An essay on woman by john wilkes and thomas potter: a reconstruction of a lost book, with an historical essay on the writing, printing and suppressing ... work (ams studies in the eighteenth century) - hardcover, wilkes, john ; potter, thomas.

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• Publisher Ams Pr Inc
• Publication date 1721
• ISBN 10  0404635369
• ISBN 13  9780404635367
• Binding Hardcover
• Number of pages 200
• Editor Cash Arthur H.

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