‘And Feminine To Plead’: Early Feminist Reception of the Hortensia Exemplum

Caroline Bishop

University of Pennsylvania

In women’s writing before an organized and well-disseminated women’s history, it is customary to find female authors anxious to create historical continuity for the female gender on the analogy of male (ie, mainstream) history. Such anxiety often results in a so-called ‘catalogue’ of women, with most (if not all) of the list culled from male sources, and with the Graeco-Roman world providing a sizeable amount of the exemplars.

It is in this context that I trace the use of the exemplum of Hortensia. Famous for her role as spokeswoman of the female cause during the Second Triumvirate, Hortensia, linked with concepts of female authorship and public speech, offers an exemplum that resonates with later female writers. To foreground the discussion, I begin with an overview of the ancient sources in which Hortensia is mentioned (Valerius Maximus’ Facta et Dicta Memorabilia, Appian’s Bellum Civile, and Quintilian’s Intitutio Oratoria). It was, however, probably not these ancient sources upon which the first female catalogue-writers relied, but rather Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris, published between 1355 and 1359. Christine de Pizan, writing fifty years later, lifts many of the notable women in her Le Livre de la Cité des Dames from Boccaccio, and gives Hortensia pride of place.

Hortensia shows up with some frequency in female-authored English texts after Christine, starting with the Elizabethan catalogue The Monument of Matrons (1582); then, interestingly, in several anti-misogynistic works: 1620’s Swetnam the Woman-Hater Arraigned by Women and the famous proto-feminist The Womens Sharp Revenge of 1640. The latter, subtitled “An Apology this case for the defence of us women” expresses the opinion that “were there now surviving to vindicate our vertues, any of the Ancient Greeke Poetresses…Or amongst the Romans; an Hortensia”, such a defense would be easily mounted.

Later, at the beginnings of the first organized feminist movement, Hortensia gains favor again. To chart the exemplum’s use at this important time, I look at two early feminists, one British (Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger), one American (Sarah Moore Grimke). Benger’s work, The Female Geniad (1791) is a standard catalogue of women, but Grimke’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838) affords a chance to examine Hortensia’s importance for early feminist theory. Hortensia is, for Grimke, a perfect example of the fact that “intellect is not sexed; that strength of mind is not sexed; and that our views about the duties of man and the duties of women, the sphere of man and the sphere of woman, are mere arbitrary opinions, differing in different ages and countries, and dependent solely on the will and judgment of erring mortals.”

I end the paper by examining theoretical models that might help to explain Hortensia’s appearance within female writing. Using Steven Knapp’s (1989) theory of collective memory and Cixous’ consideration of female writing, I ask if the use of the Hortensia exemplum represents feminist consciousness, or if reliance upon male texts must always necessitate a (re)inscription of patriarchy.