♀️ Feminist Friday ♀️ Jane Anger Jane Anger was an English..

♀️ Feminist Friday ♀️ Jane Anger Jane Anger was an English author of the sixteenth century and the first woman to publish a full-length defence of her sex in English. The title of her defense, Jane Anger Her Protection For Women was published in 1589. In the late sixteenth century, it was rare for women to write and publish on secular, or non-religious themes. It was also rare for women to argue against male supremacy. Scholars know virtually nothing about Jane Anger's life. Jane Anger is known only as the writer of the pamphlet, Jane Anger Protection for Women (1589). There was more than one Jane Anger living in England at the time, however, none of them have been identified as the writer of the pamphlet."According to Moira Ferguson, the history of surnames for this period suggest that her surname was probably derived from the Anglicized French "Anjou",.Anne Prescott argues that," presumably, the Jo. Anger, whose poem on the author appears at the end of the volume, was a relative or spouse. The pamphlet defends women and makes serious claims regarding female’s authorship. For the first time, her text brought a distinctive new voice to English writing, which emphasized the voice of female anger. By developing this innovation, she "transformed the idea of masculine models of composition to invent a female writing style to suite to her enterprise." Some modern commentators argue that, "Anger deliberately reworks her opponent’s misogynist ideas to establish a direct feminine perspective that goes beyond the querelle frameworks." Since Jane Anger was the first major female polemicist in English, there is no doubt that Anger shows the interest and value in the creation of feminist consciousness, because in the Middle Ages, the feminist polemic was a favourite topic for academic disputation. Jane Anger's pamphlet, Her Protection of Women, (1589) was a response to the male-authored text of Thomas Orwin, Book His Surfeit in Love. Pamela Joseph Benson argues that, "the Protection remains undifferentiated from other interventions in the querelle because it relies largely on the traditional issue of sexual behaviour to evaluate woman’s moral nature." Anger's arguments are a compilation of allusions, sayings, and some examples that match to those in the Book his Surfeit. She exposes the mono-gendered basis of the Surfeiter's "objective" or "natural" assertions. Anger's text responds to the male-dominated rhetoric of the female gender, passionately defends and attacks the male writes' complaint stating that he is "surfeit", or "sick with sensual indulgence of women." Through defending her intervention in the debate, she constantly touches the reader's awareness that women were not confident enough to express their own opinions or "masculine" emotions. Her pamphlet opens with a critique of masculine rhetorical practices, especially paying an attention to their overemphasis on "manner" over "matter." She immediately targets a contradiction between the high value male writers, who place women as a stimulus to their creativity and the decline of women. She touches the notion of the mythmaking that accompanies men's claims to inspiration: "If they may one encroach so far into our presence as they may but see the lining of our outermost garment, they straight think that Apollo honours them." She describes the details of how men's ignorance of women allow them to misread women's behaviours, particularly, in regard to sex, she writes: "If we will not suffer them to smell on our smocks, they will snatch at our petticoats; but if our honest natures cannot away with that uncivil kind of jesting, then we are coy. Yet if w bear with their rudeness and be somewhat modestly familiar with them, they will straight make matter of nothing, blazing abroad that they have surfeited with love, and …telling the manner how." Jane Anger describes her work as "that which my chooloricke vaine hath rashly set downe…it was ANGER that did write it." Importantly, Anger repeatedly points out that men continue to misinterpret women because male writers "assume" that women are not capable of entering the male sphere of the printed word to challenge them: "their slanderous tongues are so short, that the time wherein they have lavished out their words freely hath been so long, and they know we cannot catch hold of them to pull them out, and they think we will not write to reprove their lying lips." Anger tries to answer some general male charges against the looseness of women's moral, arguing that men's own "filthy lust" causes them to "invent" an idea of women's lascivious nature. Above all, as the counter argument to the Surfeiter's account that women seduce men only to make the men's lives miserable, Anger proposes her own story. According to Anger's view of courtship: that men prey on women, "If we clothe ourselves in sackcloth, and truss up our hair in dishclouts, Venerians will nevertheless pursue their pastime. If we hide our breasts, it must be with leather, for no cloth can keep their long nails out off our bosoms." Anger's way of caricaturing the Surfeiter allowed her to produce an imaginative and unique piece of writing. At the end of her pamphlet, though Anger blames the Surfeiter for his views, she admits the fact that she had the pleasure using his style. Anger's work is full of misogynist materials, which were circulating in popular prose romances of her time, including some of Greene's and John Lyly's works. Scholars have their own interpretations whether she should be called "feminist," "protofeminist," or "prowoman," but her work definitely opened up a new possibility for women writers of the sixteenth century. *** Disclaimer: It is important to remember that some of the women you will read about during Feminist Friday will have done unsavory, bad, and sometimes even terrible or unforgivable things during their lives. I have decided to include any women found to be problematic rather than disregard them entirely because I believe that it would be a disservice to do otherwise. The different women discussed here have lives that span over thousands of years during which life on Earth and humanity in general changed immensely and unrecognizably. Some of their values will be outdated. Some will be laughable. Some offensive. However, I implore you to try and look at these women as individual members of a world made to tame, shame, shackle, subjugate, abuse, and kill them. Do not ignore the horrors of the past. You are free to dislike them (I dislike many!) but recognize their achievements within the context of their time and place in the world.