Child Rearing in Theory and Practice: the letters of John Locke and Mary Clarke

Mendelson, Sara

doi:10.1080/09612021003633994

Cited by 3 publications

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“…15 Mary Clarke's marital letters demonstrate a confidence in her abilities to run the Chipley estate and household without the help of her husband and it is there that Clarke brought eleven children into the world, eight of whom survived to adulthood. 16 The Clarkes had an intellectually illustrious connection: Mary Clarke's cousin was the philosopher, John Locke, with whom her husband also had a strong and lifelong friendship. 17 Both Mary and Edward Clarke exchanged many letters with John Locke from the 1680s onwards, several hundred of which survive to this day.…”

Section: Women's Letter-writing and The Life Of The Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…18 Between 1684 and 1691, the Clarkes and Locke engaged in a three-way epistolary discussion about child-rearing, the results of which were immortalised in Locke's famous work of educational philosophy, Some Thoughts on Education. 19 However, despite the fact that the letters themselves discussed the particulars of rearing the Clarkes' children, the published version was stripped of these references and presented Locke's voice alone in its exposition of educational theory.…”

Section: Women's Letter-writing and The Life Of The Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Sara Mendelson has commented, Mary Clarke's epistolary style was 'noteworthy for the ironic wit with which she deflates the pretensions of the male world of high politics.' 31 Clarke was not making a feminist argument in this letter, but she was applying her critical eye to current affairs. Instead of claiming ignorance, Clarke demonstrated her firm grasp of national events.…”

Section: Women's Letter-writing and The Life Of The Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Women, Letter-Writing and the Life of the Mind in England, c.1650–1750

Hannan

2013

Literature & History

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For letter-writing as representation of the self see R. Earle, Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writing, 1600-1945 (Aldershot, 1999, especially contributions by Earle, Whyman, and Ditz; and for letters as a tool of education and socialisation see S. Whyman, The Pen and the People: English Letter Writers, 1660-1800 (Oxford, 2009 All quotations from seventeenth-and eighteenth-century letters reproduced here, maintain the spelling and grammar of the original source. 3It has largely been through the careful reading of previously unstudied letters, diaries and autobiographies written by women (as well as the study of their more self-consciously literary outputs such as novels, plays and poems) that we can begin at least to hear the lost voices of women in the past. 5 Here, it is shown that letter-writing can offer insights into a range of relationships with writing. Correspondence is also revealing of who women wrote to: men, other women, groups of like-minded others, specific intellectual confidants or supportive family contacts. Moreover, as an artefact of human relationships, the letter places the impulse to read, think and write firmly within its social, political and cultural context. This article proposes an interpretation of intellectual life that can more accurately be described as the 'life of the mind'. 6 Used most famously by Hannah Arendt, in her exploration of the 'activity of thinking', the phrase is employed here to emphasise the experience of thinking life as well as the tangible textual outcomes of thought. 7 In Arendt's discussion of the life of the mind, she identifies 'the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content,' as a defining feature. 8 This inclusive approach to human thought is helpful when considering women's epistolary writing in this period because it took such 5

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Section: Women's Letter-writing and The Life Of The Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women's Letter-writing and The Life Of The Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women's Letter-writing and The Life Of The Mindmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Women, Letter-Writing and the Life of the Mind in England, c.1650–1750

Hannan

2013

Literature & History

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“…On family relationships, Mendelson considers John Locke's concern with female aspects of child‐rearing, contrasting his epistolary relationship with Mary Clarke (and her husband Edward) with her exclusion from the text of his famous Some thoughts concerning education (1693). Indeed, although he acknowledged a deep debt to Edward, Locke removed all reference to Mary from his work.…”

Section: University Of Cambridgementioning

confidence: 99%