Reading a Book, James Jacques Tissot, 1872

VICTORIAN artists painted an extraordinary number of portraits of women reading books.  Despite what feminists say, women were frequently seen in the act of contemplation in the nineteenth century. And painters found it inspiring. They saw something important in the act of feminine contemplation, as if it nourished them.

Virginia Woolf claimed intelligent women would never be anything short of suicidal unless they were just like men and spent years in academic institutions toiling away as specialists, their minds pointed toward goals like trans-Atlantic freighters. Still, women actually did find meat for their thoughts on their own, outside universities and the theaters of intellectual achievement. They were not deprived of reading material. What is a university but a bunch of books?

Woolf resented the fact that the attention of women is relatively unmoored and more adapted to interruption. She was angry women were not reading in institutions.

Nineteenth century paintings of reading women, such as this one by Charles Edward Perugini and this one by William Etty, usually depicted women in serious poses, but the one above by James Jacques Tissot seems to be a humorous commentary on refinement. That the artists found the reading habits of women significant speaks to the character of the Victorians. Literacy is inherently moral. As Richard Allen wrote in his essay “Hunger in America:”

Literacy is not a knack. It is a moral condition. The ability to read attentively, reflectively, and judiciously is also the ability to be attentive, reflective, and judicious. It is not an optional adornment for just and sane living. It is a necessity. It is the necessity. It is not a variety or portion of education. It is education. It is the whole thing, the wholesome nourishment of the mind, by which it may grow strong enough to be the master of the will and not its slave, the judge of desire and not its procurer, the censor of sentiment and not its tool, and the inquisitor of belief, not its flack. It is our only path to whatever wisdom we can have, which is our only path to whatever goodness we can know, which is our only path to whatever happiness we can enjoy.

                                                                       — Comments —

Lydia Sherman writes:

You are quite right. Feminists often write to me saying that I should be so glad to live in this current age where women are not oppressed and can “go to college.” They claim that before this present age, women were not allowed to read. The artists of the Victorian era dispel that notion. I’ve found plenty of paintings of mothers reading to their children, or mothers giving their children “lessons” around the kitchen table, or women reading newspapers. Not only did women read, they wrote. We piece together some of our personal history from their letters and diaries and the newspaper articles they authored. What galls the feminists is that women did all this outside of the learning establishments like universities and colleges. That is still what bothers them. They do not even want us to homeschool our children, because it is not confined to a controlled institution. Typing in “19th century paintings of women and books,” or “18th century paintings of women reading” yields enough paintings to show that artists considered it a worthy subject. Female novelists and poets and teachers existed long before the Victorian era. Here are two more nieteenth century paintings of women reading. 

Girl Reading, by Charles Edward Perugini, 1839-1918 (read more about him here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Edward_Perugini)

The Love Letter by Edmund Blair Leighton, (born 1852)

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