James Fordyce

Sermons to young women

James Fordyce

Printed at Boston : By Thomas Hall ; For S. Hall, Thomas and Andrews, J. White, D. West, E. Larkin, W.P. Blake, J. West, and J. Nancrede, 1796.

First Boston Edition. 276 pages. 12mo.  Bound in contemporary sheep. Red Moroccan spine label.  Front joint cracked. Foxing browning. Contemporary signature of James Hyde.  Evans 30435. 

First published 1766, Fordyce's sermons was a collection of instructions on how a woman should behave.  The book was widely reprinted throughout the 18th century, with this copy being the first Boston edition.  To Fordyce, women were to be attentive to men, attractive, and illustrate Christian ideals of womanhood and modesty.  Sermons to Young Woman came under heavy criticism in Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Women," published 1792.  In Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," Mr. Collins reads aloud from Sermons to the Bennet sisters.  "Lydia gaped as he opened the volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages, she interrupted him". (Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Bentley, 1853. 60 p.)  Austen's portrayal of Mr. Collins' reading of Sermons gives an intertextual criticism of the stifling patriarchalism and subservience promoted by Fordyce's outmoded Sermons.  The value of this book isn't in its precepts, rather in illustrating the history of the struggle for women's equality.  The perceptions about women promoted in this book kept women from being full members of society and colored the views of 18th and early 19th century American and British society.