Introduction

36
Vanessa Mangione
and unprepared her education has made her (“Hysterically Speaking”164). This
proves Calantha’s self-assessment:
“I am not like those I see: – my education, my habits, my feelings are different;
I am like one uncivilized and savage; and if you place me in society,
you will have to blush every hour for the faults I shall involuntarily commit.
Besides this objection, my temper – I am more violent – …” (49)
Again, Lamb’s source for this explication of education comes directly from Wollstonecraft’s
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Both women have penetrated and
understood the dilemma such an education beholds for women. The idea of a
proper lady was a fixed concept; every female aberration that challenged this concept
was scrupulously judged by society. A desiring woman violated the idea of
“natural femininity”, and the belief that masculinity and femininity were biological
parameters of identity. Concerning their sexual identities, as Wilson states, they
had two options to choose from, to be the “passive object or active subject of
desire”. Nevertheless, Wilson proceeds “the expression of desire was traditionally
associated with the masculine and the sexual power which this position ideally
represents … any expression on the woman’s part is seen as kind of theft” (“Exaggerated
Woman” 204). Calantha, as Lamb herself, thus becomes “unnatural”
and is judged as a disfiguration of femininity. Desiring and longing women become,
in their expression of their passion for men, “unsexed” beings. Women are
only expected to fulfil men’s desires within the symbolic.
Contrarily, they are also raised to be sensual beings. They are explicitly taught
how to use their bodily facilities to arouse men, and how to neglect their minds.
As Wollstonecraft puts it:
Taught from their infancy that beauty is a woman’s sceptre, the mind
shapes itself to the body, and roaming around its gilt cage, only seeks to
adore its prison … . Women, confined … having their thoughts constantly
directed to the most insignificant part of themselves, seldom extended their
thoughts beyond the triumph of the hour. But were their understandings
once more emancipated from the slavery to which the pride and sensuality
of man and their short-sighted desire, like that of a dominion in tyrants, of
present sway, has subjected them, we should probably read of their weakness
with surprise. (qtd. in Craciun 128)
They are intentionally kept ignorant of reason and have only their bodies to turn
to whose desires they are not allowed to articulate, as it is considered as “unfeminine”
and “unnatural”. However, a woman’s way to express her desire is over her
body, as she has been taught since childhood how to use it to seduce men and
eventually catch a husband.
Accordingly, using the example of Calantha and her fall, Lamb demonstrates
the dangers of being forced to comply to the symbolic solely. Without being al-