Restoration culture

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William Wycherley and Aphra Behn.

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Interpretation A is largely convincing about most women, although it underplays some real changes for a minority.

It is right about the law and education. A married woman's property and earnings legally belonged to her husband, and women could not vote, sit in Parliament or go to university. Most girls received little schooling, and the boarding schools for gentry girls concentrated on needlework, music and dancing. In 1673 Bathsua Makin complained in her Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen that girls were taught only these 'accomplishments'. It is also right that most women's lives were shaped by work: as farm workers, servants, spinners or partners in family shops and trades, as they always had been.

It is also fair that the famous women were unusual. Nell Gwyn, the Duchess of Portsmouth and Aphra Behn were known precisely because they were so different from ordinary women.

However, the interpretation is less convincing when it says the Restoration 'changed very little'. Some new opportunities did open up. From 1660 women could work as actresses on the public stage. Aphra Behn earned her living by writing plays from 1670, and Mary Beale worked as a professional portrait painter. Margaret Cavendish published books on natural philosophy and attended a Royal Society meeting in 1667. Makin did not just complain: she ran a school and argued in print that women should learn languages and sciences. Among Quakers women preached, and Margaret Fell defended this in Women's Speaking Justified (1666).

Overall, the interpretation is convincing for the great majority of women, whose legal status and daily lives changed little, but it is too dismissive of the new roles that a small number of women, mostly in London and among the elite, began to take.

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Charles II had a genuine interest in science. He kept a laboratory at Whitehall where he carried out chemical experiments, and he was fascinated by clocks, navigation and shipbuilding. He also knew that Louis XIV gained prestige from supporting academies of learning, and that England's trade and navy needed better science.

Because of this, he supported the group of thinkers who met at Gresham College and founded a society for experimental learning on 28 November 1660. In 1662 he granted them a royal charter, and a second charter in 1663 named them 'the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge', with Charles as founder and patron. He gave them a silver-gilt mace. This royal backing gave the new science respectability at a time when it was often mocked, and it helped attract wealthy and fashionable Fellows such as Samuel Pepys.

Charles's support became more practical in the 1670s. In 1673 he founded the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital to train boys in navigation for the navy and merchant ships. In 1675 he ordered the building of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and appointed John Flamsteed as the first Astronomer Royal, to study the stars in order to solve the problem of finding longitude at sea. He also gave scientists important posts: Christopher Wren became Surveyor of the King's Works in 1669.

However, Charles's support had clear limits. He gave the Royal Society almost no money, so it depended on members' subscriptions, many of which went unpaid. The Observatory was built cheaply, for about 500 pounds, and Flamsteed had to find his own instruments. Pepys even recorded the king laughing at the Society for spending its time weighing air. As a result, Charles gave science prestige and direction more than funding.

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I largely agree that the Restoration brought little change to the role and status of most women, but it did open new, public opportunities for a small number, mostly in London and among the elite, which makes the statement too absolute.

The case for little change is strong when we look at the law and at most women's daily lives. A married woman's property and earnings legally belonged to her husband, and women could not vote, sit in Parliament, attend university or enter professions such as law. Most girls received little formal education; gentry girls who went to boarding schools were taught needlework, music and dancing, which is why Bathsua Makin complained in 1673 that girls' minds were being wasted. The great majority of women worked, as they always had, as farm workers, spinners, servants and partners in family shops and trades. The new centres of male sociability, the coffee houses, were largely closed to women as customers, and the Royal Society, symbol of the new science, admitted no women as Fellows.

Moral attitudes also stayed unequal. At Charles II's court men such as the Earl of Rochester were admired as witty rakes, while women who behaved similarly, including many actresses, were condemned as whores. This double standard shows that women's status had not improved.

However, there were changes, and some of them were directly caused by the Restoration. When Charles II reopened the theatres in 1660, women's parts were played by women for the first time on the public stage. Actresses such as Nell Gwyn, Mary Betterton and Elizabeth Barry earned wages and fame. The theatre also gave women writers an opening: Aphra Behn's plays, from The Forc'd Marriage (1670) to The Rover (1677), made her the first Englishwoman known to earn her living by writing. Other women found new public roles: Margaret Cavendish published books on natural philosophy and visited the Royal Society in 1667, Mary Beale worked as a professional portrait painter, and Bathsua Makin ran a school as well as writing about education.

At the top of society, women could have real influence. Royal mistresses such as Barbara Villiers and Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth, were believed to shape royal decisions, and the Duchess of Lauderdale rebuilt Ham House in the latest style and played a part in her husband's political career. Queen Catherine of Braganza set fashions such as tea drinking. In religion, Quaker women preached, and Margaret Fell defended their right to do so in Women's Speaking Justified (1666), although such roles had roots in the 1640s and 1650s rather than in the Restoration itself.

These changes were limited. They affected a few dozen actresses and a handful of writers and court ladies, mostly in London. Even the most successful women were criticised: actresses were seen as immoral and Behn was attacked for indecency in ways male writers were not. None of these changes altered the legal position of women.

Overall, I agree with the statement for the great majority of women, whose legal status, education and work hardly changed between 1660 and 1685. But the Restoration did bring something new: for the first time women appeared on the public stage and earned money by writing plays, and a few women gained visible roles in science, art and politics. These changes were small, but they were important precedents, so 'little change' is closer to the truth than 'no change'.