3.1 Education and Enlightenment

Reference HolstHolst (1791: 31) introduces her book as a response to ‘the writings of our best pedagogues, namely Rousseau, Basedow, Campe, Salzmann, and others besides’. While her critical remarks rarely attack their specific arguments, it quickly becomes apparent that Basedow and Campe are her primary targets. She begins with a chapter entitled ‘Sketch of the History of Education of the Eighteenth Century as an Introduction to our subject’, which is followed by a subtitle that signals her critical intentions: ‘Comparison of the Errors Made in Education Before and After the Basedowian Era’. Holst’s goal is to take stock of the achievements made over the past century and to discern what has been gained under Basedow’s influence on German pedagogy. From the book’s opening pages, she positions herself as a participant in the Enlightenment project, imbued with a deep concern for the progress of reason:

In agreement with Basedow, Holst argues that until the eighteenth century, education was undertaken in a careless manner. The early education of children was left to nurses and maids, who, in the years preceding their formal education, filled their minds with superstition and folk knowledge. Once the children entered the schooling system, the curriculum was piecemeal, consisting of a loose programme of reading, writing, religion, and foreign languages. Teachers viewed the children as lacking in self-control, such that the task of education was to impose discipline through external constraint. The situation remained unaltered, Holst writes, until Locke presented a new anthropology in the seventeenth century, according to which a child’s early treatment is not unimportant for its future prospects but has an irreparable effect on what they will become. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), Locke argued that children are born without pre-existing ideas and imbued only with natural inclinations. Thus conceived, the primary task of education is not to fill empty minds with facts but to work with the child’s free capacity of association as it acquires ideas through sensory engagement with the natural world (Reference LockeLocke 1693: 75–9). In Reference HolstHolst’s (1791: 13) words, Locke ‘showed that early, purposeful instruction saves time and effort, while slavish treatment hinders, if not completely prevents, the development of the human mind’.

Holst’s pedagogy retains several Lockean elements. She affirms Locke’s emphasis on early parenting, which leaves an indelible mark on the child’s moral formation, and extends his claim that vices should be dealt with swiftly as they arise in the course of the child’s development. In agreement with Locke, she argues that parents should not simply instil good habits through repetition and clear guidance but also through example. Locke and Holst agree that defects in a child’s character reveal more about the pedagogical environment than the child’s natural disposition. Yet Holst’s reading of Locke is modulated by the next figure in her historical survey. Rousseau, she recounts, built on Locke’s anthropology and yet placed greater emphasis on the role of nature in the child’s formation:

The basic premise of Rousseau’s pedagogy, according to Holst, is that human beings are born free. Where Locke recommended a comprehensive curriculum and a strict programme of repetition, Rousseau advocated for a non-coercive upbringing aligned to the student’s own interests. ‘Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the author of things’, Reference RousseauRousseau (1979 [1762]: 37) writes in the opening lines of Emile, whereas ‘everything degenerates in the hands of man’. Children have a natural capacity to make associations and learn from nature. The products of culture, including books and prescribed curricula, coerce the child’s mind into the forms of thinking and doing that underwrite the unjust institutions of modern society. In contrast, Rousseau advocates a non-coercive education that does not compel but rather engages the child’s natural faculties:

Holst notes that Locke’s empiricism, refined by Rousseau’s insight into the child’s natural capacities, places the student at the centre of the pedagogical context. The pioneering work of the two great pedagogues of the modern era placed England and France at the forefront of educational reform; at least until the mid eighteenth century, when Basedow ‘awakened the imitative spirit of the Germans’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 13). In the preface to the Method Book, Reference Basedow and GöringBasedow (1880 [1770]: xi) declared that his aim is to remedy the ‘great disorder in the usual style of teaching in schools’ with a new programme of learning. The disorder traces back to the early eighteenth century, when schools used the Latin system to press the natural faculties of students into a mould that is ‘without reality’ (Reference Basedow and GöringBasedow 1880 [1770]: xi). To apply the new pedagogy to the German context, Reference Basedow and GöringBasedow (1880 [1770]: 18) proposed a programme of education aligned to the ‘the natural order of cognition’. A non-coercive curriculum begins by engaging the senses, works towards the rational ordering of ideas, and culminates in the public use of reason through the expression of words. Reference HolstHolst (1791: 13–14) explains that while the Germans ‘cannot claim the honour of having invented an art and discovered a science, they at least strive for the glory of having brought it to the level of perfection’. Their ambition transformed the landscape of German schooling, such that ‘Everywhere one saw new institutes established, school improvements made, and Philanthopine founded’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 14). With the explosion of new writings and schools inspired by Basedow’s reform, the Germans ‘call out with triumphant voices: we are here! We have arrived at the summit! Through us the great work has been brought to perfection!’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 14). Proponents of the Enlightenment were seduced by Basedow’s grandiose claims, filling bookshops and school libraries with literature for children.

Holst’s scorn for the Philanthropinists’ self-acclaimed pre-eminence is thinly veiled. While she expresses her support for a new programme of education based on the student’s natural capacities, she argues that Basedow and his colleagues introduced a series of errors into the German schooling system. Despite claiming to ground the pedagogical context in the natural ordering of cognition, they overemphasize the use of reasoning with young children and underplay kinaesthetic learning, play, and imitation ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 22). They fail to recommend age-appropriate lessons, and thus excite children’s imaginations without the proper groundwork ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 34). By promoting the use of general elementary books, they overlook each child’s particular needs ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 47). And by engaging the students with colourful children’s literature, they over-stimulate the imagination and stifle the organic maturation of virtue ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 74). The four errors of modern education endow the sons and daughters of Germany with four corresponding vices: ‘stubbornness and unpredictability, superficial ignorance, arrogance and fame-seeking, and that unfortunate early maturity which enervates mind and body’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 19).

3.2 The Errors of Modern Education

Holst unpacks the four errors of modern education in the chapters that follow her brief historical survey. The opening chapter is titled ‘Excessive and premature reasoning produces stubbornness and disobedience in the young’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 22). Holst’s first move is to show that despite claiming to ground the pedagogical context in the natural ordering of cognition, the Philanthropinists overemphasize the use of reasoning with young children and underplay kinaesthetic learning, play, and imitation. Returning to Locke, she argues that the formation of a child’s capacity to act in light of reasons first requires the teacher to ‘speak just as determinately as the child acts’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 24). The child must learn that the teacher is serious and possesses the power to enforce their command, Holst claims, otherwise it will overextend its own will and develop stubbornness. After the child’s mother, the practical teacher plays the greatest role in the formation of its moral and rational character. Rather than engaging the child in the practices it hopes one day to participate in, the teacher must work closely with it ‘to determine at what age and at what degree of the child’s ability this reasoning must begin’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 26).

Here we begin to glimpse the positive implications of Holst’s critique of modern education. True education requires that each child has a single teacher who can nurture its unique capacities and freely guide it towards the principles of the sciences. The first task for such a teacher is to discern the indelible mark left by the child’s ‘first educators’, which they can build on but never entirely eradicate. Only then can the teacher provide appropriate instructions that gradually invite the student to grasp the reasons behind the content they learn. The first error thus does not so much concern the system of education as its application ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 30–1). Holst notes that even Rousseau, who has done so much to improve the state of education, fails to apply his theory of children’s learning in practice, for he instructs teachers to reason with children about matters for which their moral and rational concepts are not yet fully formed. Rousseau’s ‘heated imagination’ – his over-excitement with the idea that children are agents in the learning process – caused him to conclude that teachers must discourse with their students ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 29). To avoid the first error, Holst argues that the teacher must balance reasoning with instruction; they must assist the child to orient itself in the world by setting activities that promote physical movement and invoke the child’s curiosity, gradually inviting it into the realm of reason giving and receiving.

Holst’s critique of Rousseau is ultimately directed at Basedow and Campe. She claims that the pioneers of the Philanthropin, swept away by Rousseau’s enthusiasm, recommend teachers to reason which children before their minds are fully formed.Footnote ²² Not only does this error betray a misunderstanding of how children learn, but it also reveals a danger that comes with the scholar’s vocation:

Holst cautions her readers from blindly accepting the elevated position Basedow and Campe have claimed for themselves as authorities in German pedagogy. The perfection of modern education, she contends, does not lie in current pedagogical practice but in an uncharted future.

The second error targets the Philanthropinists’ claim that lessons should be light and engaging. The title for the section links the error with two of the four vices resulting from modern education: ‘The hallmarks of our modern educated virtue are superficial knowledge and a spirit of frivolity, produced by teaching too many sciences at once, dressed up in a light, playful garb and deprived of pedagogical means’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 34). Holst’s primary target in the section is Campe’s major pedagogical work, Fatherly Advice For My Daughter (1789), in which he claims that education should not begin with an abstract system of words but with the concrete human vocation ‘to make oneself and others happy through the proper training and application of all one’s powers and abilities in the circle in which and for which providence has caused him to be born’ (Reference CampeCampe 1796 [1789]: 8). The theory of children’s learning developed by Locke and Rousseau, for Campe, entails that the teacher should abandon rote learning and disciplined revision and instead present the material through verse, story, and image. To disseminate this method across the schools and institutes of Germany, Campe produced the Small Children’s Library, a series of educational resources which purport to offer everything a child requires for its training in ‘morality, religion, political science, psychology, criticism, and the fine arts’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 38–9). While Holst agrees that education should engage the child’s mind, she argues that colourful and captivating material in fact dulls its natural capacities. It leads the child to think that it has mastered a science when in fact it has merely skimmed its surface.

In response to Campe’s pedagogical material, Reference HolstHolst (1791: 34) claims that education ‘cannot bring forth or create genius; but it can contribute immeasurably to its development or to its suppression’. As Campe rightly notes, the task of a non-coercive education is to enable a child’s genius to emerge on its own course. Yet Reference HolstHolst (1791: 38–9) contends that Campe’s Small Children’s Library stands in ‘contrast with the principles laid down by this scholar’. The mass production of colourful children’s books ensures that modern education ‘leads her pupils to the spring too early; they drink as much as they can, and yet, because they are not yet up to this strong drink, they are initially intoxicated and now believe they are equal to it’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 37). The superficial knowledge they produce is more dangerous than not knowing at all, for it leads children to believe that they do know, leaving them unable to judge the limits of their knowledge ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 43).

Holst’s alternative is extremely demanding. Her claim is that standardized pedagogical material cannot solve the problems of German education, for it fails to acknowledge the unique constitution of each child. Campe’s elementary books cannot replace a practical educator who has mastered the sciences and is able to introduce their principles at the right moment in the student’s unique developmental path. A teacher who ‘does not have a keen spirit of observation and wise judgment, wrought by much experience, believes he can use without hesitation what such famous theoretical educators write’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 39). Parents also succumb to the promise of Campe’s learning books and defer their responsibility as first educators. Yet a teacher who grasps the principles of the sciences understands that ‘the child’s gaze tends to turn to those objects that are of most interest to it’, and thus encourages the child to follow the ‘zest’ of its own mind ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 45). By carefully guiding the child’s interest, the practical teacher creates an environment in which learning is self-directed. The goal is to ‘arouse the child’s passion’ such that it learns naturally rather than by coercion ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 46). To avoid the ‘surface knowledge’ of modern pedagogy, which teaches children to accept the information presented in elementary books on trust, the ‘true culture of the mind’ consists in an internal, self-developed unity. ‘The less I can withhold my applause from almost everything Herr Campe presents in this fine treatise’, Reference HolstHolst (1791: 38) states, ‘the more I have to lament that he goes completely against his own rules in the application’.

Reference HolstHolst (1791: 47) extends her diagnosis of the superficial knowledge produced by modern education in the third chapter of the book: ‘The Conceit [i.e., the spirit of frivolity] is further generated by the use of reading books for children’. She begins by estimating that about half the adult population are now affected by this conceit, which comes from the surface knowledge and false confidence produced by superficial learning. Reference HolstHolst’s (1791: 49–50) claim is that social vices like overconfidence and triviality begin from an early age. Echoing Locke, she argues that while most adults consider children as ‘dolls, with which they can play for a short time according to their liking’, children are in fact watching their movements and passions and are constantly forming concepts ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 52). Capacities are not fully formed, awaiting to mechanically unfold, but are mere potentialities that require appropriate nurture and care. History, for instance, is not simply a matter of learning facts. It is a matter of ‘developing the human intellectual powers’ by acquiring an appreciation for the different stages in the development of culture ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 57).

Reference HolstHolst (1791: 58) acknowledges that Campe designed his children’s library by following ‘the otherwise correct conclusion that the development of the mind of a single child takes without danger the same course taken by the whole of humankind’. This is once more to say that the error lies not in his theory of children’s development but in its application. Holst recommends that teachers introduce subjects that are appropriate for a given developmental stage. The practical teacher must explain concepts and introduce new ideas ‘according to the nature of the abilities and capacities of his pupil, and the particular situation in which he is brought up’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 63). Yet this simply ‘cannot take place’ with the use of standardized reading books for children with ‘such different characters, abilities, and ages’. In contrast to the frivolous students produced by modern education, uneducated people make no pretence to knowledge, for they are aware, like Socrates, that they know nothing ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 70). It is the half-enlightened person, ignorant of the principles that unite the sciences, who believes that everything was given to them in their education ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 71).

Reference HolstHolst (1791: 74) examines the final error in the fourth chapter of the book: ‘The early maturation of virtue, which is enervating to mind and body, arises from an overstimulated imagination, which has its source in the prevailing sensuality and luxury present in children’s literature’. The primary target of the chapter is ‘education through enthusiasm’, which reflects the overbearing sensuality found in the writings of the Philanthropinists. One of the symptoms Reference HolstHolst (1791: 75) examines – an issue widely discussed in the pedagogical literature of the time – is ‘a tendency toward onanism and immorality that now prevails among the young’. Holst draws on the public concern with the ‘devastating vice’ of masturbation to elucidate the vital but often misused role of the imagination in education. According to her philosophical anthropology, the vices of imagination have less to do with the young than with the conditions of their upbringing, which can produce imbalances in a child’s constitution such as an overheated imagination. ‘If the plant ripens too hastily’, Reference HolstHolst (1791: 76) explains, ‘the fault is certainly that of the gardener’. It was his responsibility to ‘shelter it from the burning sun, to water it when it was parched, to prune its leaves and wild shoots, to give the soil … the right mixture so that the plant entrusted to him would develop in due time so that he could hand it over to the owner of the garden for useful service’. The implication of Holst’s critique is clear: ‘if our boys and girls mature before the time of nature, the blame is mainly on their education’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 77).

Reference Louden and DyckLouden (2021: 87) notes that Holst’s description of the Philanthropinists as ‘enthusiasts’ is unusual, for Basedow and his colleagues prioritized rational self-legislation over sentimentalism and clearly aligned themselves with the Enlightenment. Her charge points back to the critique of Rousseau in her examination of the first error: in their enthusiasm to apply the insights of the new pedagogy, the Philanthropinists overemphasize sensuous learning and downplay the use of age-appropriate rules, and thus misjudge the ‘economy of the human body’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 80). Their stimulating teaching methods awaken the child’s drives too early, creating a poor environment for the child’s capacities to develop on their natural course. Reference HolstHolst’s (1791: 81) point is that each power must develop in balance with the others at the proper time, for ‘an overstretched imagination is master of the passions’. Thus the teacher, as gardener of the child’s budding capacities, should not blindly follow a generic programme of learning but should instead attend to the unique balance of the child’s bodily powers. Holst agrees with Basedow and Campe that human development ‘begins with sensation’, yet she claims that the developmental process consists in ideas mediating and directing the drives, leading to their perfection ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 81). Enthusiasm ‘is over-excitement, and according to the eternal laws of nature, over-excitement must always be followed by exhaustion’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 88). Reference HolstHolst (1791: 89) warns that ‘enthusiasm, as a means to educate the youth, is always very dangerous in the application’, for it tends to produce self-centred adults.

In the final pages of the book, Holst recommends several texts that point to an alternative path for German pedagogy. One is Moses Mendelssohn’s Morning Hours, in which Mendelssohn laments the prevalence of enthusiasm in modern culture. On Reference HolstHolst’s (1791: 91) reading, Mendelssohn attributes this worrying trend to the neglect of speculative philosophy and the ‘desire to see and touch what cannot fall into our senses’. She chastises Basedow’s Elementary Work, which attempts to represent the characteristics of God through images, and instead commends Wieland’s Agathon, which reveals the pitfalls of enthusiasm and a heated imagination, as an alternative to Rousseau’s romantic conception of nature. For Holst, Mendelssohn and Wieland show that the task of education is to empower young people to navigate the world, to make wise decisions that promote their happiness and the happiness of others:

Holst’s questions anticipate a line of inquiry she will later develop in On the Vocation of Woman. The Roussouian conception of nature taken up by Basedow and Campe, she suggests, is a fantasy of learned men, which leads one to chase an imagined past rather than to undertake the more arduous task of refining civilization into a realm of freedom. While the animal fulfils its vocation by following the immediate stimulus of the senses, the sensuality of the human being is perfected through the cultural refinement of the mind (c.f. Reference HolstHolst 1802: 101/44). True education thus requires a dedicated teacher who can attend to the child’s physical and intellectual development, introducing the right amount of sensory input according to their specific needs.

3.3 The Sexless Mind

In contrast to Basedow’s Method Book, Holst’s Observations is not a systematic work of pedagogy. It is a critique of modern education that attempts to carve out space within the pedagogical community for a future in which the individuality of each child is placed at the fore. In the forward to the book, the editor Johann Gottwerth Reference MüllerMüller (1791: Vorrede) promises that Holst’s critical remarks will be followed up by an exposition of her own pedagogical model. Unfortunately, a second instalment never came to fruition. Nevertheless, the four errors identified in the book work towards a positive conception of the child’s one teacher, a highly educated practitioner who works from firm principles to guide the child to the right sources at the appropriate moment in its intellectual and physical development.

Holst’s diagnosis of the errors of modern education is not overtly gendered. As Reference SotiropoulosSotiropoulos (2004: 100) notes, Holst is not primarily concerned with the restrictions Rousseau and his followers placed on women’s education but with the ‘fallacies in their theoretical assumptions about how young children learn’. It is vital to note, however, that at ‘no point does she differentiate between the sexes’ and that she consistently emphasises ‘a common humanity before gender identity’ (Reference FroniusFronius 2007: 208). In this final section, I identify the implications of Holst’s argument for the complementarian basis of modern pedagogy; implications she will make explicit in On the Vocation of Woman.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, the representation of women’s education in popular journals was generally positive and early pedagogical literature actively encouraged women to engage in popular debates. Journals such as The Patriot (1724–26) targeted a female audience and promoted an education guided by the principles of morality and reason. Gottsched’s journal The Judicious Female Critics, founded in 1725, encouraged women to learn foreign languages, to write letters on pressing moral and social matters, and to thoughtfully educate their children. Yet in the second half of the century, pedagogy became increasingly tailored to narrowly prescribed gender roles. In Emile, for instance, Rousseau argued that a woman’s education must be circumscribed to her subordinate position in nature as man’s helper. Foregrounding Kant’s and Fichte’s complementarianism, Rousseau argues that the perfection of woman must occur through man:

Like several women writers in the late eighteenth century, Holst did not reject Rousseau’s pedagogical theory wholesale. As we have already seen, her work as a teacher was partly inspired by his empiricist account of a child’s intellectual development. Yet Holst contends that at the very moment he restricts women’s learning on physiological grounds, Rousseau contradicts his own theory in its application. If it is true that children are born free, and that their education must be tailored to their natural capacities, then a child’s teacher cannot predict his or her needs in advance. It takes extensive time both inside and outside the classroom for a teacher to discern the child’s natural capacities by allowing them to emerge and develop on their own course ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 35). Holst’s critique of modern education seeks to show that German pedagogy has reproduced the Rousseauian contradiction. While the modern pedagogues of Germany claim that education should be non-coercive – aligned to the immanent course of children’s learning – they nevertheless set a general, gender-specific curriculum that prejudges the student’s needs and thereby undermines the student’s agency in the learning process.

For Holst, the contradiction between the modern theory of education and its application to German schooling is particularly evident in the gendered account of learning advanced by Basedow and Campe, which circumscribes the general human vocation to physiologically determined ends. In his Method Book, for instance, Basedow includes a section ‘On the Different Education of Sons and Daughters’, in which he draws extensively from Rousseau (fifteen pages of direct quotations) to remind the parents of Germany that because women are ‘under the dominion’ of men, the education of girls should teach them ‘how to bear’ their subordinate vocation (Reference Basedow and GöringBasedow 1880 [1770]: 159).Footnote ²³ Basedow’s strict qualification does not entail that women should remain uneducated. He had planned to open a school for girls next to the Philanthropin named the Catherineum (after Catherine the Great of Russia), which did not eventuate for financial reasons, and his own daughter Emilie was a star pupil at the Philanthropin (see Reference LoudenLouden 2020: 5, 187–8). Nevertheless, Basedow’s written work and pedagogical activities, which had an enormous effect on German society, reinforced a complementarian view of gender that prescribes different curricula to boys and girls.

While she was deeply aware of Basedow’s influence on German pedagogy, Holst’s diagnosis of the errors of modern education suggests that she was primarily concerned with Campe’s position in Fatherly Advice For My Daughter. After leaving the Philanthropin in 1777, Campe moved to Hamburg to establish a new pilot school based on a family model, and it is possible that his influence stifled Holst’s efforts to fundraise for a new academy for girls in the city. Like Basedow, Campe grounds the scope of education in the human vocation to perfect one’s naturally given capacities. Yet going beyond his former colleague, Campe claimed that the education of girls is sharply qualified by a second vocation determined by their reproductive capacities. Girls must be taught to recognize that they ‘have a twofold vocation, one general and one particular, one as human being and one as woman’ (Reference CampeCampe 1796 [1789]: 5). A woman’s desire for higher learning is thus a symptom of her miseducation. A good mother fosters natural modesty in her daughter, which makes her content with her subordinate duties.

Holst does not openly attack Campe’s distinction between a woman’s two vocations. Nevertheless, her argument removes the importance of gender from the pedagogical context. The task of the teacher, she contends, is to awaken in the child the ‘ideal of perfection’ such that it does not know ‘the great gulf between action and feeling’ ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 60). In Holst’s analysis, the ideal of perfection is without qualification; every human being is called to perfect the capacities given to them by nature. While the practical teacher must be acquainted with what nature has made of each child – the singular balance of physical and intellectual capacities – Holst rejects the idea that physiology conditions perfection. Education should enable children to ‘survey their own capabilities and estimate their own perfection’, and thus to pursue the ideal of humanity as far as they can ([Reference HolstHolst] 1791: 61). With perfection as the guiding ideal, the human vocation is shared equally, irrespective of sex.

Holst’s Observations is a bold and unprecedented text. In the first work by a woman to publicly criticize the Philanthropinist movement, Holst positions herself as a scholar who has a stake in the debate concerning modern education in Germany. Müller, the editor of her book, anticipated the radical implications of her critique. While he explains to the reader why Holst’s credentials place her in good stead to evaluate the state of German pedagogy, he is nevertheless careful to distance himself from her substantive claims:

Müller justifies his decision to publish Holst’s book by appealing to the progress of pedagogical science. He clearly recognized that the emphasis Holst placed on the student’s humanity before socially codified roles stages a radical shift in the field. By demonstrating how the ideal of perfection governs the developmental path of every human being, Holst rejects the gendered qualifications Basedow and Campe placed on the human vocation and contends that there should be no pre-determined constraints on a child’s learning. If men and women are equal as far as the constitution of the mind is concerned, then the same moral and intellectual virtues should guide the formation of both sexes – even if nature has called them to different forms of life.

Despite Müller’s reservations, Holst’s Observations was positively received in the academic community. One reviewer declared that the author of Observations displays ‘much insight’ into the field of modern pedagogy and the practical demands teaching (Anonymous 1792: 545). The author does not simply explicate the ‘merits of the method of education developed by Locke, Rousseau, Basedow, and their successors’, the reviewer notes, but also demonstrates that ‘in the various applications of their theory, especially in regard to the means of education (the writings and libraries for children, which they supply in large quantities), they violate the essential foundations of the philosophy of education’. The reviewer was clearly surprized to find that such a scholarly work was written by a woman. In a backhanded endorsement of Holst’s abilities, he notes that there is nothing in ‘the flow of ideas, the tone, and the language’ to suggest a woman’s hand. When Johann Reference BeckmannBeckmann (1806: 549) decided to reveal the authorship of Observations without Holst’s direct permission, he explains that she deserves ‘the privilege of being called by her own name’, for the depth of her knowledge and the force of her argument proves her standing as a ‘scholar [Gelehrte]’ in the field of pedagogy. Observations appears to have withstood the test of time. Several years after her death, one of Holst’s obituarists states that her book was ‘received with the greatest approval’ and that, when her authorship was revealed by Beckmann in 1806, there was a great stir in the scholarly community (Anonymous 1846: 318).

4.1 Woman and the Novel

The eighteenth century is often described as the age of letter writing (Reference BrantBrant 2006; Reference Fritz, Matthews-Schlinzig, Schuster, Steinbrink and StrobelFritz 2020). As postal routes expanded across the globe, letters offered an intimate genre to explore the inner contours of the self and its place within a rapidly changing society, sitting somewhere between the private and public spheres. While the sanctions on education made it difficult for women to participate in academic debates, the publication of collected letters opened new opportunities for women writers and readers to examine the impact of those debates on their lived experience. Following Rousseau’s Julie, or The New Héloïse (1761), the epistolatory novel became one of the most widely discussed genres in literary journals, allowing women to imaginatively explore alternative visions of femininity. Given the historical importance of Rousseau’s Julie to both Wobeser’s Elisa and Holst’s critique, it will be helpful to rehearse a few of its major themes.

Rousseau’s Julie was a staggering literary success across Europe. It was available in German almost immediately and attracted widespread attention from the German scholarly community (Reference Nenon and NiekerkNenon 2018: 239). Women readers were especially interested in the heroine’s learned education, which stood in stark contrast the restricted education Rousseau prescribed to Sophie in Emile. The ‘new Héloïse’ is a reference to the medieval Héloïse, an erudite woman renowned for her scholarly prowess and passionate exchange of letters with her teacher Abélard. After marrying in secret, Héloïse is forced to renounce Abélard by her unyielding uncle. In Rousseau’s rendering, the story takes place in the home of an aristocratic family in Vevey, a tranquil village on Lake Geneva. The youthful Julie d’Étange falls in love with her tutor, known simply as Saint-Preux, who awakens in her a passion for music, literature, and the arts. Julie’s letters to Saint-Preux disclose a sensitive and expressive woman who relates to her desire as a natural power, driving her to revolt against the conventions of morality. Through the exchange of letters, Julie and Saint-Preux envisage a new form of relationship that is not decided by economic or social considerations, as was the accepted practice in middle- and upper-class society, but by mutual feeling and the pursuit of their own happiness. Their love drives them outside of society to a bond that resembles the state of nature Rousseau describes in the Second Discourse, in which members are not bound by convention and contract but by feeling and sympathy.

Yet a state of nature bound by romantic love cannot last in a society governed by countervailing rules and regulations. Julie’s father opposes their illicit relationship and Saint-Preux is forced to leave Vevey for the Parisian metropolis. When Julie’s mother discovers her daughter’s ongoing correspondence with Saint-Preux, she becomes distraught, falls ill, and dies. Julie feels responsible for her mother’s death and, in her grief, consents to marry Baron von Wolmar, an older man chosen by her father. Her resignation does not, however, signal the end of her passion. Julie undergoes a profound transformation as she learns to weave her sympathetic character together with her familial duties. At their wedding, she is struck by a new sense of self in her role as wife. In contrast to the impossible romantic bond with Saint-Preux, Julie’s marriage with Wolmar forms the ideal human community, a balance of freedom and order, play and learning, abundance and economy, which several characters contrast with the decadence of Parisian courts and salons. Under Julie’s oversight, Wolmar’s country estate in Clemens is governed by virtue and sympathy rather than reason and merit. When Saint-Preux returns, Julie has become a conscientious wife and mother, devoted to her husband and to the education of her children. While his presence in Clemens prompts an inner struggle, Julie remains true to her husband. She attempts to integrate Saint-Preux into her new world by employing him as tutor to her children. Nevertheless, she begins to experience moments of languor and depression. The novel ends with her premature death. After rescuing one of her children from the lake, Julie catches a severe cold and dies a few days later.

The reception of Rousseau’s Julie in the German states reflects the ongoing debate between proponents of Enlightenment and those associated with Storm and Stress, a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music that celebrated individual subjectivity and the free expression of emotion (Reference GuthkeGuthke 1958: 386). Critics from both sides of the struggle praised the book for offering an important exploration of the relation between social progress and human passion. Yet they differed in how they interpreted Julie’s transformation and subsequent fate. Those aligned with the Enlightenment, such as Mendelssohn and Lessing, criticized Rousseau’s depiction of social and cultural decline. Reference Mendelssohn, Lessing, Mendelssohn and NicolaiMendelssohn (1761: 258) was particularly scornful of the novel’s sentimental language and argued that the narrative is ‘uneven’, the dialogue ‘dragging’, and that its ‘passions overshoot the reader’s imagination’. Julie’s sacrifice is unconvincing, he claimed, for she becomes ‘more than a virtuous lady; she becomes an angel’ (Reference Mendelssohn, Lessing, Mendelssohn and NicolaiMendelssohn 1761: 272). Reference Lessing and BellLessing (1879 [1767]: 253) agreed that the novel’s composition is piecemeal. Citing Mendelssohn, he disparaged the inconsistency of Julie’s transformation: ‘At first she is a weak and even a seductive maiden, then at last she becomes a woman who surpasses all one could dream of as a model of virtue’. For those associated with Storm and Stress, Rousseau spoke to a new generation that sought to combine the ideals of Enlightenment with feeling and passion. Reference GoetheGoethe (1882 [1811]: 154) praised Rousseau’s portrait of Julie’s bond with Saint-Preux, which depicts a ‘beautiful union … harmoniously formed by nature’. For Goethe, Julie enlivens the reader to a depth of human feeling that revolts against social convention in the name of nature, revealing that happiness requires violent and often frustrated passion. Reference JacobiJacobi (1809: 144) celebrated Rousseau’s portrayal of Julie’s transformation for displaying how ‘the human heart is such a weak thing, but also how without it no bliss in life would be possible’.

The tensions in Julie inspired a series of epistolary novels by women writers in Germany. La Roche’s The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim (1771) continues Rousseau’s exploration of the way that a woman’s education forms the basis for an inner happiness that cannot be undermined by unjust external events. Like Julie, Sophie Sternheim receives a learned education in her family home that evenly balances knowledge and virtue, merit and sympathy, including the study of music, philosophy, history, and languages. After the death of her parents, Sophie enters courtly life where she must learn to deal with practices that are contrary to her ideals. When slighted in marriage by Lord Derby, she learns to rely on her own resources as a governess and teacher. While she ends in a conventional marriage with Lord Seymour, the novel focuses on Sophie’s ability to navigate the conflict between her subjective desire for self-fulfilment and the objective social order, which she encounters outside the confines of marriage. The emphasis placed on her broad knowledge and cultivated intellect place La Roche’s Sophie at odds with the Sophie of Rousseau’s Emile, whose education prepares her for a life of devoted service to her husband, but not with Rousseau’s Julie, for whom knowledge and virtue form the foundation for the happiness of an individual in society. La Roche emphasizes the fact that virtue and knowledge are inherently valuable for all individuals in society, regardless of their gender.

In the tradition of Julie and The History of Lady Sophia Sternheim, Wobeser’s Elisa presents the actions of an educated woman whose learned knowledge and training in virtue enables her to pursue a happy life despite adverse external circumstances. Yet her novel is more closely aligned to the Stoic ideal of self-restraint advanced by Enlighteners such as Mendelsohn and Kant, according to which happiness demands the triumph of duty over the sentimental desire for self-fulfilment. Before her father’s premature death, Elisa is given a thorough education that aligns both her mind and heart to virtue. Despite her fiery imagination and sentimental heart, her education has established a rational and moral sense which keeps her firmly grounded on the path of virtue. She falls in love with Hermann von Birkenstein, an upright gentleman who is almost equal to her love. Wherever Elisa goes she is admired; even Birkenstein is overawed by her perfection and is resigned to the fact that he cannot merit her affection. Yet at the very moment Elisa declares her attachment to Birkenstein, her mother introduces her to another man, Graf von Wallenheim, and informs her that he is to be her husband. Elisa’s sister Caroline has fallen in love with Wallenheim’s cousin, who is in the custody of Wallenheim’s father. The father will only consent to the marriage of his nephew if his recalcitrant son marries the sister. To secure Caroline’s happiness, Elisa’s mother demands that she relinquish her attachment to Birkenstein and accept the overlooked Wallenheim. Elisa protests that this dark and withdrawn man has little prospect to make her happy. ‘O, my mother!’, she cries, ‘With reason, the Creator gave me the right to choose my own happiness. By obeying you, I resist the first commandment of nature, which calls me to happiness!’ (Reference Wobeser[Wobeser] 1798: 68). Bidding her to cease this ‘romantic chatter’, Elisa’s mother informs her that all joys are given ‘from the hand of virtue’ and that happiness stems from a soul ‘imprinted with virtue and innocence’. The first commandment is thus obedience to family, and happiness will follow. Sacrificing her own fulfilment for the sake of her sister, Elisa yields to her mother’s request:

Even before their marriage, Wallenheim proves to be a selfish and impulsive man with little regard for the demands of virtue or the happiness of others. On their wedding day, Elisa places aside all hope for material happiness, all desire for recognition in marriage, and commits herself entirely to her marital duties. In a telling episode, Elisa discovers a letter from Wallenheim’s mistress, requesting financial aid to settle her growing debts. Knowing that her husband is unable to assist his lover and fearing that he may be forced to borrow the money at great interest, Elisa sends her own jewels to remedy the situation. Refusing to confront those who do her an injustice, Elisa displays a faultless commitment to her duty as wife and mother. By seeking happiness in the fulfilment of duty alone, Elisa is presented as the perfect unity of sense and sensibility. Following the form of Rousseau’s Julie, Elisa dies prematurely at the close of the novel. Yet in contrast to the ambivalence of Julie’s demise, Elisa dies content in the unshakable knowledge that she has lived her days as a virtuous daughter, a faithful wife, and a dedicated mother.

4.2 The Immanent Scope of Happiness

In her letters on Elisa, Holst explores the role of education in securing a woman’s happiness. In the preface to the second edition of the novel, Reference WobeserWobeser (1798: x) explains that she crafted the narrative in such a way ‘that pure morality alone, and the principles of positive religion, should form the basis of Elisa’s actions’. The circumstances are so hostile to her desires that Elisa’s satisfaction is underscored by nothing other than the knowledge that she has acted virtuously, which no earthly power can take away from her. The aim of the novel, Wobeser explains, is ‘to show that peace in death arises primarily from the conviction of having done one’s duty on earth; beyond that, a curtain is drawn, which we humans will probably never lift’. She concludes the preface as follows:

Wobeser informs her readers that her intention in writing Elisa was to offer a system to guide German women through the twists and turns of life in a society that is often antagonistic the happiness of women. In her letters, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1799a: 346) evaluates the novel against Wobeser’s goal of personifying the ‘purest moral principle of unselfishness’. She introduces the novel as ‘a series of actions by … a woman who combines a fully devoted, benevolent heart with an educated mind’. This woman ‘never works for herself, only for the happiness of others, and combines the most perfect renunciations with the warmest feelings … that answer to reason alone’.

While pure motives might seem attractive to one committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment, Holst claims that to act ‘by reason alone’ is a dangerous ideal for a woman. She begins her analysis by inviting her friend to note that the novel’s depiction of rationality is divorced from Elisa’s lived experience, including her attachment to family and friends, the way she is treated in marriage, and her longing for earthly happiness. In the attempt to portray unselfishness as a ‘pure principle’, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1799a: 346) informs her friend, Elisa is depicted as ‘an angel, not a human’. In many scenes throughout the novel, Elisa’s dedication to duty evokes such amazement in the reader that ‘in our excitement we so gladly forget that we cannot step out of the circle of humanity, that we can never become angels, and that therefore such an ideal is not for us earth dwellers’. To take up Elisa’s system, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1799a: 347) writes, you ‘must completely give up rational self-love, which wise and good nature certainly did not give you in vain’. Reference Holst and LindemannHolst’s (1799a: 348) point is that if a woman takes Elisa as her model, she ‘must become supernatural in order to be truly perfect’. Angels do not enter reciprocal relationships with humans. For instance, when Wallenheim acknowledges Elisa’s virtue, he is not prompted to reform his behaviour by treating his wife with respect. Rather, he is overawed by her nobility and filled with despair at his own baseness. Elisa floats over the unjust institutions that determine the shape of women’s lives by embodying an unshakable independence. She is the ideal of composure (Gelassenheit) – the highest virtue of the Enlightenment – as she readjusts her comportment to meet every situation she encounters. Alan Reference MenhennetMenhennet (1986: 254) notes that Elisa is an exemplary work of Enlightenment literature, for it ‘prefers acceptance of the God-ordained state of things to the assertion of the individual will in rebellion against it’. Reference Köpke and PaulsenWulf Köpke (1979: 97) accounts for the popularity of Elisa among readers alighted with the Enlightenment as resulting from the novel’s capacity to evoke ‘the sense of passive devotion in idealized form’. In the face of gross mistreatment, Elisa ‘remains (always) gentle, tolerant, passive, devoted, accommodating’.

Holst concedes that Wobeser’s depiction of Elisa’s profound sense of duty and steadfast composure in the face of serious setbacks is a moving fable. Yet as ‘a contribution to morality’, she writes, ‘it is misguided’ (Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1799a: 352). The problem with Wobeser’s depiction of Elisa’s angelic self-sacrifice, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1799b: 32) explains, is that it casts ‘the vocation of woman [as] a superhuman ideal’. She frames her objection in pragmatic terms: ‘I see the thing for what it is, and therefore stick to my conviction that pure air, pure morality, pure reason, and pure virtue are not for the frail inhabitants of this earth’ (Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1799a: 350). Yet Holst’s pragmatism turns on a deeper moral psychology according to which rational self-love demands recognition in society. By casting aside material satisfaction for the sake of duty, Elisa fails to grasp that happiness is grounded in the immanent conditions of a life. Moreover, her renunciation does nothing to challenge the wrongs committed against her by her family and her spouse. For Holst, Wobeser’s call for heroic self-sacrifice dangerously shifts the reader’s attention from Elisa’s concrete relation to others to a transcendent realm of virtue that inhibits a woman’s capacity to make informed decisions that promote her happiness and the happiness of those who depend on her. When Elisa’s mother forbids her from marrying Hermann, for instance, Elisa concedes that her ‘unspeakable love’ can be overcome for such an ‘unconditioned duty’ (Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1799b: 40). Since she is a ‘supernatural being who can check her desire if she chooses to’, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1799b: 41) explains, ‘she could easily bring herself to do it’. Yet ‘for we daughters of the earth, we must not let it come to that, we must watch over the emergence of our passion’.

Holst appeals to her friend – and to the readers of Lindemann’s Musarion – to consider whether Elisa truly remedies the half-enlightenment of women identified in the preface to the novel. The reader is told that Elisa’s father ensured that she grew up with a ‘good heart’, a ‘sublime, loving soul’, and a strong sense of virtue, such that his untimely death does not undermine her prospects for happiness (Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1799b: 32). Moreover, the reader is told that Elisa’s knowledge and moral training is so great that, when she enters society, her admirers remark at her philosophical mind and scholarly training. Yet the nature of this education – what it consists of and how it transforms a woman’s hope for earthly happiness – is not mentioned in the novel. The portrait of Elisa suggests that a woman’s education somehow elevates her above the complex demands of modern life.

To check her friend’s admiration of Elisa, Holst sketches an alternative programme of education that she will develop at length in On the Vocation of Woman. A woman’s education, she writes, should not merely consist of the positive religion expounded in novels but should also include ‘the physical and moral history of humanity; the history of the earth and its revolutions, which show us how everything works towards development and perfection; but above all the history of humanity, its perfection, connected with the thirst for knowledge; its desires and wishes’ (Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1799a: 356). By gaining a firm grasp of human history, women come to understand that their impact on human civilization is equal to that of men, if not more significant. Given that men and women co-create the social order, women ‘require a high degree of moral conviction in the important matters that affect our peace and happiness’ (Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1799a: 358).

In addition to the study of history, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1799b: 31–2) recommends a wide range of eighteenth-century literature, including Henry Fielding’s Amelia, Madame de Beaumont’s Letters of Madame du Montier, Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women, Campe’s Fatherly Advice for My Daughter, Meiners’ History of the Female Sex, Mauvillon’s Husband and Wife, and Pockels’ Characteristics of the Female Sex. Holst by no means endorses the vision of femininity presented in these books; indeed, she attacks several of them in On the Vocation of Woman. Yet she explains that they nevertheless have a great deal to teach a woman. Like the study of history, they show her that the health and well-being of society depend inextricably on the moral formation of women. Such books aid a woman to see that Wobeser’s superhuman depiction of Elisa is not only unrealistic but also dangerous, for it encourages women to spurn the self-love that a proper attunement to one’s rationality demands, removing their desire from the immanent order of society to a realm of fulfilment that transcends it.

4.3 Realizing Self-Love through Social Duty

While Holst recommends a wide range of literature to her friend, the only text she examines at length is Rousseau’s Julie (see Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1799b: 35f.). In Rousseau’s novel, Julie receives an extensive education that includes music, drawing, and foreign languages. In her letters to Saint-Preux and her cousin Clare, Julie displays a refined intellect that enables her to feel and express her own sentiments, demonstrating how a learned education empowers a woman not only to follow her heart but also to realize her desire for happiness through the principles of virtue and humanity. Like many women writers of her time, Holst identified strongly with Julie’s desire for recognition, which outstrips the complementarian ideal of marriage defended by her male peers – including Rousseau.Footnote ²⁵ While Julie discovers a natural and self-fulfilling relationship with Saint-Preux that can only be realized outside the bounds of social convention, it is by sacrificing her attachment and accepting the wise and good Wolmer that she finds a way to realize her desire within the conventions of society. In Julie’s words, by reconciling herself to marriage she enters a ‘holy union’ of passion and duty, ‘a new state that was to purify my soul and restore it to all its duties’ (Reference Rousseau, Roger and KellyRousseau 1997 [1761]: 292).

Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 213) invites her friend to consider which of the sacrifices ‘corresponded to a sublime and noble character’: Elisa’s or Julie’s. In contrast to Mendelssohn’s charge that the portrayal of Julie is woefully inconsistent, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 215) claims that Rousseau masterfully presents the growth of a woman ‘as if it were the course of nature, without leap, without deus ex machina’. After renouncing her love for Saint-Preux and marrying Wolmer, Julie discovers a faithfulness in marriage that honours her rational self-love. She falters only when she encounters Saint-Preux after their prolonged separation. And even when she feels her passion rekindle, Julie recalls her social duties and checks her desire. ‘After a long struggle’, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 216) writes, ‘she had to make this sacrifice if she did not want to jeopardize her and her dear friend’s [i.e., Saint-Preux’s] happiness and the beautiful understanding of a happy family’. Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 214) contends that ‘Julie’s renunciation of her beloved … was indisputably a sacrifice of true filial duty; it was the action of a sublime, powerful soul’.

In comparison to Julie’s transformation, Elisa’s sacrifice does not promote her happiness or the happiness of her family. It merely secures the conditions for Elisa to play the part of an angel. Elisa, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 216) recounts, ‘is in love with a noble young man, who is completely on a par with her and not entirely without fortune’. Birkenstein is ‘the noblest of his sex’ and ‘the only one capable of making her happy’. Yet in response to her mother’s unreasonable request, Elisa denies the fulfilment of her desire and instead accepts a man who does not have the character to make her happy. ‘These circumstances were indeed so poorly conceived’, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 217) declares, ‘that one cannot understand how the author had no others at her disposal’. Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 220) explains that the sacrifice made by ‘the so very enlightened Elisa’ was not prescribed by ‘her proper duties’. In fact, because ‘there were no reasons for Elisa’s sacrifice’, the educated reader should find her actions morally reprehensible, for ‘the whole happiness of her life lay in the balance’ (Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1800a: 221). Elisa’s angelic character renders her completely unsuitable as a model for we human beings, who are unable to spontaneously relocate our desire without undergoing a transformation. ‘Nature has connected the desire for happiness too intimately with our being’, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 223) writes, ‘so that to follow it is one of our first duties, insofar as it is not fulfilled egoistically, to the detriment of the happiness of our fellow creatures’.

At the core of Holst’s moral psychology is rational self-love, a commitment to the duties corresponding to one’s own rationality such that one seeks one’s material happiness through one’s duties to oneself and others. On Holst’s reading of Julie, Rousseau masterfully guides the reader through Julie’s youthful passion, which sparks a desire for recognition in the state of nature, to the discovery that ‘passionate love [schwärmerisch Liebe] is not the most important requirement [in marriage], but rather respect and friendship’ (Reference Holst and LindemannHolst 1800a: 223). Julie’s sacrifice was justified by the promise of friendship with a wise and respectful man. Elisa’s sacrifice had no such justification. To have a duty to marry any man, Holst avows, a woman must at the very least ‘be able to respect him’. To marry a man that one cannot respect is to neglect a duty to oneself:

In addition to one’s duties to others, rational self-love expects others to honour and respect one’s dignity and rights. Anticipating the argument she develops in the second chapter of On the Vocation of Woman, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 223) claims that marriage ‘is a union which, since it is entered into for life, has the most important influence on our happiness, and therefore must be entered into with the greatest caution’. The only thing we owe to ourselves, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1799a: 359) writes to her friend, is ‘a better training of [our] powers and a wise enjoyment of a domestic happiness tested by experience’. Elisa’s angelic self-composure means that she does not confront Wallenheim’s moral failings or pursue supportive friendships outside of marriage. Viewed as a human being rather than an angel, her sacrifice reveals a passion that is not self-love but self-loathing, for it maligns the appreciation of one’s moral worth that underpins rational agency. For Holst, a reader of Elisa could only be moved by the protagonist’s fate if they shared Wobeser’s obsession with purity and had no feeling for women’s dignity and rights. The upshot of Holst’s moral psychology is that a woman’s self-realization should not diminish her sphere of influence to the inner recesses of her heart but rather open her marriage and her household to the equitable conditions of rational self-love, which requires that she confront unjust social conventions that prevent the mutual respect between mother and child or husband and wife. Holst encourages her friend not to esteem Elisa as a model of feminine virtue. A reader of Wobeser’s novel imbued with a proper feeling for her self-worth should grieve Elisa’s pitiable decisions and see that it is not due to her virtue but rather to her misjudgement that Elisa’s life has been unhappy. ‘Tell me who you marry’, Reference Holst and LindemannHolst (1800a: 224) proclaims, ‘and I will tell you who you are’.

Holst concedes that happiness in marriage remains elusive under the present social conditions. In keeping with tradition, Rousseau’s new Héloïse meets a tragic end. While Julie offers the portrait of a respected wife, a competent mother, and a discerning housewife, she ultimately fails to reconcile her romantic longing for self-fulfilment with the happiness of fulfilling one’s social duties. Her death is followed by a hymn to love, honouring her attempt to integrate duty, virtue, and happiness and lamenting the failure of society to make room for beautiful souls. For Holst, Rousseau’s novel does not resign the reader to a distinctly human fate, as Jacobi saw it, but instead opens the tension between romantic longing and social obligation for public discussion. Can we envisage a form of society in which individual happiness can fuse with objective social conditions? For Goethe and Jacobi, Rousseau’s Julie shows us that frustrated passion is a necessary part of a feeling soul capable of profound happiness. For Mendelssohn and Lessing, the tension indicates that Rousseau failed to see that virtue could master sensibility. Holst settles for neither conclusion. In Julie’s fate, she discerns a future reconciliation in which individual happiness will genuinely fuse with concrete social conditions. The key is a reciprocal vision of marriage in which husband and wife each find their happiness in the happiness of the other. Just as women who fail to choose partners worthy of their respect will struggle to find happiness in this life, so men who seek to rule over their wives will find only frustration and sorrow in the home. For Holst, Rousseau’s Julie encourages both men and women to reflect on the way they inhabit social roles, potentially transforming the complementarian ideal of marriage into an egalitarian community of mutual regard as husbands and wives learn to seek their individual happiness through their union. The means of this transformation, however, are only hinted at in her letters.

5.1 Unveiling Ideology

On the Vocation of Woman begins with Reference HolstHolst’s (1802: 3/10) fiery demand that men justify the right they have presumed for themselves to hold back ‘an entire half of humankind, barring them from the source of the sciences and allowing them at most to skim their surface’. Surveying the recent wave of texts on the vocation of woman, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 12/13) observes that male scholars tend to appeal to nature as ‘the basis of their claim that women are subordinate to and dependent on men, and to establish that women have inferior mental powers’. Specifically, they call on physiological characteristics including strength and the tautness of nerves to demonstrate that nature has wisely set a complementarity between the sexes. Consider just a few texts that Holst has in mind. In his Method Book, Basedow argues that

Basedow calls on nature as an unshakable ground to justify the right of men to rule over women. While human beings, considered as an abstract ideal, are fully equal, nature has bestowed greater strength on one of the sexes. This greater strength supposedly qualifies the abstract, universal equality of human beings with the concrete, social inequality of the sexes. A similar inference can be found in Campe’s Fatherly Advice to My Daughter:

Like Basedow, Campe identifies a combination of natural and social causes for woman’s inferior intellectual and physical powers. Yet he is careful to explain that the different characteristics nature has assigned to men and women justify social inequality. Campe reassures the daughters of Germany that their subordinate social status does not mean that they have a lesser influence on society. ‘While it sounds incredible on first hearing’, he explains, ‘the public welfare of the state lies in a large part in your hands’, that is, in ‘the way in which the female sex fulfils its natural and civil vocation’ (Reference CampeCampe 1796 [Reference Erxleben1789]: 17). Given the profound influence of women on matters of the state, it is essential that they receive an education to enables them to perform their duties well. This education, however, requires carefully defined limits. An unrestricted education would entice a woman to neglect the duties bestowed on her by nature.

Holst does not challenge Campe’s claim that there is a physical difference between men and women. Nor does she challenge his claim that this physical difference has implications for the forms of life available to men and women. In the opening paragraphs, she states that woman bears a ‘gentle, amiable, and often unrewarded … threefold calling’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 2/9). Yet Holst also states that as a human being, woman is ‘a perfectible being fit for developing its faculties, both physical and moral’. Notice the subtle distinction Holst makes between a woman’s threefold calling (Beruf) and her participation in the human vocation (Bestimmung). In contrast to Campe’s assertion that women bear two vocations – a human vocation qualified by a gendered vocation – Holst’s anthropology identifies a general, ideal human vocation that is expressed through the particular, non-ideal calling of one’s sex. A woman’s calling does not limit, restrict, or qualify her humanity; it simply defines the course her perfection will take. As Reference Schmid, Scarbath, Schlottau, Straub and WaldmannPia Schmid (1999: 19) rightly notes, Holst’s major claim in On the Vocation of Woman is that the ‘primary goal of education is not the perfect housewife, wife or mother, but perfection as a human being’. Thus, while Holst does not throw off the duties traditionally bestowed on women, she demonstrates how a proper orientation to the human vocation extends a woman’s sphere of influence through her threefold calling. The endorsement of gendered duties places Holst’s argument much closer to conservative feminists such as Angelika Reference FeurerFeurer (1789), Madame de Reference GenlisGenlis (1801), and Wilhelmine Reference HalberstadtHalberstadt (1808) than to radical feminists such as Olympe de Reference GougesGouges (2014 [1791]) and Mary Reference WollstonecraftWollstonecraft (2014 [1792]), who explicitly defended the public rights of woman.Footnote ²⁶ Yet as we will see, Holst’s argument anticipates several conclusions that are much closer to the radical feminists than she admits.

Having distinguished between the universal human vocation and woman’s particular calling, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 13) then interrogates an inference found in ‘all of the writings that men have written about this matter’: that women, by nature, are subordinate to men. Repurposing an argumentative strategy of her earlier book, Observations, Holst notes that Rousseau was ‘the first to make this error’. In Emile, Reference RousseauRousseau (1979 [1762]: 37) claims that the institutions of modern society are unjust to the extent that they coerce the natural freedom of human beings into arbitrary conventions. Yet by calling on nature as the foundation of right, Rousseau endorsed a normative foundation for gender relations according to which ‘women, weaker in physical strength, were assigned the second place, giving way and bowing to power’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 18/15). The inference from nature to right is a performative contradiction, Holst contends, for it employs philosophy – an achievement constitutive of the break from nature to culture – to uphold nature’s normative superiority over culture. It is baffling for a learned man to equate physical strength with right, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 9/12) observes, for physical strength loses its raw value ‘as soon as humanity passes from the state of nature to the state of culture’. In the transition from nature to culture, human beings forfeit the individual right to violence and acquire the incomparably superior right to justice.

Holst rejects the idea that the Enlightenment, as it stands, heralds the arrival of a just society. She joins several of her contemporary reformers, including Hippel and Wollstonecraft, to argue that the Enlightenment is profoundly incomplete. A decade before Holst’s book, Reference HippelHippel (1979 [1792]: 93–4) noted that Rousseau’s hypothesis of the state of nature conveniently justifies the elevated status of men, who ‘would like to convince the other half of humankind that it is not we but nature who pushed them into the background and subjected their will to ours’. Similarly, Reference WollstonecraftWollstonecraft (2014 [1792]: 22) claimed that Rousseau failed to discern ‘whether the evils which his ardent soul turned from indignantly, were the consequence of civilisation or the vestiges of barbarism’. Holst agrees with Hippel and Wollstonecraft that the perfection of humanity requires the triumph of reason over the raw might of nature. The key to the state’s perfection is not found in an imagined past, in which men, but not women, were free from coercion. It lies in an uncharted future in which the equality of the sexes becomes the foundation of citizen society.

To disrupt the influence of Rousseau’s error on her male peers, Holst develops a counter-narrative according to which the social contract transformed the natural conception of right. In her retelling, the transition to the state of culture did not subvert nature by introducing coercive institutions. Rather, it began the process of nature’s completion. The development of culture, Holst explains, was in fact nature’s intention all along, which crafted human beings in such a way that they could not remain in violent contagion, lest they destroy themselves completely, but would instead be impelled to ‘develop all of their powers’ by discovering a value immeasurably higher than physical strength (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 18/15). At the very moment human beings form a social contract, physical strength ceases to be the arbiter of right. The state of culture requires that men and women recognize each other as rational beings, whose thoughts and actions are answerable to reason.

Holst’s critique of Rousseau’s version of the social contract is radical in its context. What is even more radical, however, is that her critique unearths the ideological function performed by philosophy, which enabled men to justify inequality despite the progress of culture. Reference HolstHolst (1802: 19/15) contends that once humanity departed from the state of nature, it did not transform itself into ‘philosophical minds as if by a stroke of magic’. The first step towards the state of culture, and even the following steps towards a legal code, was ‘merely the work of need’. It was the propensity of human beings to violent contagion that drove them ‘to see the advantages that the social contract would grant them’, and those in power ‘took care of themselves first’. Because a portion of the state of nature carried over into the state of culture, women, as the weaker sex, were forced to ‘silently withdraw’. When conditions had stabilized, and society began to reflect on its achievement, the philosophers sought to justify the emergent conditions, which worked squarely in their favour. Yet the philosophers failed to acknowledge that human beings ‘kept as much of the state of nature as was compatible with their current needs’. It was only as new difficulties arose that the philosophers were confronted with their fallacious reasoning, meaning that the state of culture developed only gradually, ‘advancing forward only one step at a time’. In Holst’s view, philosophy plays an ambiguous role in the progress of culture, for it brings emergent rights to conscious reflection at the very moment it perpetuates violence by intellectual means. In this sense, the Rousseauian error extends the barbarism of nature into the state of culture:

Holst’s critique of the Rousseauian error perpetuated by her male peers foreshadows Stanley Cavell’s distinction between knowing and acknowledging. For Reference CavellCavell (1976: 263), to acknowledge another human being is not simply to know that they are a member of homo sapiens but also to know what that knowledge means; that is, to allow that knowledge to make its claim. Similarly, Holst argues that by inferring the inferiority of woman’s intellect from the prevailing social inequality, men cover over the injustice of their elevated position and thus cannot, on pain of contradiction, acknowledge the possibility of a rational constitution in the female sex. As soon as men acknowledge women as equal bearers of reason, ‘the entire right of the strong disappears and physical strength is relegated to a subordinate rank, where it belongs’.

Holst’s critique of Rousseau exposes the irrational motives of those who engage in philosophy. ‘What’, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 21/16) dares to ask, ‘is the cause of the error that occurs when intelligent men philosophize about human rights and civil relations?’ Her answer exposes the unconscious dynamics of power that underpin the self-fashioned rationality of the Enlightenment: ‘Only the human inclination that makes one unwilling to share rights that have been enjoyed exclusively for so long’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 21/16). The philosophical justification of inequality occludes an unconscious desire to uphold convenient social conventions. Arguments against the education of women are thus expressions of a distinctly male fear:

Holst’s argument in this passage outstrips her previously stated intentions, anticipating the critiques of Enlightenment that would shortly follow in the work of Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, who unearthed the fear behind the master’s drive to maintain the slave’s subordinate status. Applied to gender, her argument presages the feminist writings of Mill and Taylor, Hedwig Dohm, and Simone de Beauvoir, who exposed the role of male fear in the production of social inequality. Reference HolstHolst’s (1802: 27/18) radical claim is that the male writers who appeal to physiology to deny women an equal role in marriage and the state enjoy an elevated social position due to barbarism rather than right, ‘and men would not like to admit this’. The enjoyment taken in their superior social standing keeps men locked in self-deception and blind to the advantages available to them and to others under the conditions of culture.

Holst identifies an additional fear that prevents men from grasping the full implications of the state of culture: the fear that learned femininity will not conform to male desire. To illustrate this fear, she cites Pockels’ portrayal of the learned woman:

Pockels affirms the view we identified in Kant and Fichte that learnedness is a masculine virtue. When learnedness appears in a woman, she loses her natural modesty. She becomes a ‘non-woman’, something ‘monstrous’ in the sight of men (Pockels, cited in Reference HolstHolst 1802: 131/54).

Holst discerns the fear of learned femininity in the work of scholars who claim that learned women will no longer find fulfilment in their domestic duties. Campe, for instance, argued that a woman with intellectual aspirations will destroy a man’s hope for domestic happiness:

Exasperated by such ridiculous caricatures of learned women, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 270–271/101) declares that this ‘worn-out claim repeated by all writers who have dared to write about the female vocation … does not deserve refutation’. Such a claim cannot be attributed to a learned intellect, she claims; it is the expression of a fragile ego that has been slighted by an intelligent woman (see Reference HolstHolst 1802: 12 n/13 n). Instead of providing a refutation, Holst reverses the argument by satirizing the learned man who neglects his duties as husband, father, and master of the house. In a series of witty vignettes, Holst depicts a host of learned men – a mathematician, theologian, lawyer, doctor, historian, scientist, poet, and merchant – who pursue learnedness for self-interested reasons and thus fail to fulfil their vocation as human beings. What use is such a man, Holst dares to ask, to his wife?

By inverting Campe’s caricature, Holst demonstrates that it is not the idea of a learned woman that is contradictory but the idea of learnedness when separated from the human vocation to perfect one’s capacities and contribute to the wellbeing of the whole. True learnedness, she contends, is inseparable from virtue. A man is never criticized when he gains knowledge that extends beyond his calling. In fact, extensive learning for its own sake is a virtue that gains the esteem of his peers. However, at the very moment a woman expresses interest in learning something that exceeds the minimum that is required to keep conversation at table, prepare her children for their schooling, and maintain an orderly household, men find it necessary to write lengthy books warning other men that extensive study makes a woman less agreeable, yielding, and attentive to his needs and the needs of his family. The preoccupation among male scholars with the threat posed by a learned woman, Holst claims, betrays their complete disinterest for the extensive number of actual women who overlook their duties due to vices that result from ignorance. Why is it, Holst asks with unguarded frustration, that men ‘get so much more worked up about the rare exception of a pseudo-learned woman who is unfaithful to her vocation, who neglects her duties as a mother, than about the thousands who are unfaithful to their vocation because ignorance and unbridled passions?’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 237/90). Again, Holst holds back from answering her question lest these men ‘be forced to blush’.

5.2 Higher Intellectual Education

Holst claims that the most effective way to improve the status of women – indeed, the most effective way to improve society as such – is to promote the higher intellectual education of women. The implications of her argument, once more, are extremely demanding. Higher intellectual education is not an optional pursuit for a few especially motivated women but a duty for all (middle- and upper-class) women. Exactly what higher intellectual education consists in, however, is not explicitly addressed in the text. One of her reviewers impatiently notes that Holst’s ‘remarks thereon are found scattered freely here and there in the body of the work itself; it is quite tedious to put them together’ (Anonymous 1802c: 96). Fortunately, the situation is not quite as bad as the reviewer makes out. Halfway through the first chapter, Holst presents three principles to guide women’s higher education.

The first principle concerns the scope of a woman’s education. The ‘education of women’, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 63/31) writes, ‘must be entirely free’. To place restrictions on what a woman can learn is to claim authority over another mind, which cannot be substantiated before the judgement seat of reason. The upshot of the first principle is that women ‘must be able to explore any field of knowledge to which our genius leads us’. Here we see the gendered implications of Holst’s argument in Observations laid bare. If there can be no predetermined restrictions on a student’s genius, then any other consideration, such as physiology or sex, must come second. Holst acknowledges that there are genuine natural constraints on a student’s learning; not all children are equally intelligent or share the same interests. Yet the direction and extent of their learning is determined by internal composition, not external rules. Holst’s first principle has clear implications for the use of elementary books in women’s education. Novels such as Rousseau’s Julie and Wobeser’s Elisa demonstrate the importance of a thorough training for women in the modern world. A woman must learn the history of human endeavours, including those documented in classical texts. She must acquire a fine judgement in the arts, including a feeling for the depths of human expression in poetry in multiple languages. And at the centre of a woman’s education stands philosophy, ‘the science that teaches us our true conditions in regards to the highest being, ourselves, and the external world’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 64/31). Philosophy enables a woman to grasp how the various domains of knowledge hold together and to feel her significance as an actor on the world stage.

The second principle concerns the proper motivation for a woman’s education. The higher intellectual education of women, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 65/31) states, ‘must flow from the only true source: humankind’s duty to develop all its powers and to contribute to the wellbeing of the whole as an active member’. Reference HolstHolst (1802: 67/32) was alive to the fact that the male scholars criticized learned women for having impure motives – ‘the wretched desire to shine’ – which drives them to show up their husbands and neglect their families’ needs. As we will see later on, several of Holst’s reviewers interpret her book as a testament to the dangers of female learning, which tempt a woman to engage in subject matters that are beyond her capacity and calling. Anticipating such a critique, Holst flips the argument on its head by noting that even if learned women are guilty of the vices charged against them, those vices stem not from a natural defect but from the present state of society, which makes it difficult for women to seek higher education for pure motives. The desire to shine arises when the true source of knowledge is withheld. Reference HolstHolst (1802: 65/31) repeats Wobeser’s lament about women’s half-knowledge in the preface to Elisa, stating that ‘half-baked and superficial knowledge makes us vain and proud’. It is true knowledge, she claims, that ‘makes us humble and self-effacing’. Men, by denying women access to higher learning, are thus partly responsible for the vices they discern in learned women.

Yet the crown of a woman’s higher intellectual education is not philosophy understood as the a priori speculation undertaken by Leibniz or Kant. Rather, it is a branch of philosophy Reference HolstHolst (1802: 196/76) terms ‘the philosophy of history’. The philosophy of history, she explains, consists in ‘tracing the course that human inclinations and passions have taken at all times’ and investigating ‘the course of the gradual development of the predispositions and capacities of the human mind from the first stage of culture to its zenith’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 196/76). The philosophy of history determines the conditions and institutions in which the enlightenment of humanity is advanced and frustrated, empowering women ‘to feel their value from a philosophical perspective’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 197/76). The value of women, understood from a philosophical perspective, includes an appreciation of women’s rights, which enables a woman to feel the injustice of her present social standing. By grasping their historical standpoint at the zenith of culture, women discover that their present subordinate status is not a natural condition, for departing from the proverbial state of nature was always nature’s intention. A woman who grasps her value from a philosophical perspective will assert that

The most controversial claim in Holst’s argument is not that women should be educated but that they should become learned. There were a handful of writers in eighteenth-century Germany who advocated the higher education of women. In Rigorous Investigation of the Causes that Obstruct the Female Sex from Study, for instance, Erxleben criticizes the arguments made by men who claim that women are incapable of achieving learnedness. Drawing from Christian Thomasius and Christian Wolff, she defines learnedness as the combination of complex theoretical learning and practical application: learnedness is the ‘rigorous cognition of such necessary and useful truths whereby the understanding and the will are improved and, consequently, the true happiness of the human being is promoted’ (Erxleben Reference Erxleben and Dyck.2019 [1742]: 44). While women were expected to merely feel the true and the good, Erxleben claims that they should also gain practical knowledge to distinguish between truth and falsehood, good and evil, so that they can properly fulfil their duties. Reference HippelHippel (1979 [Reference Hippel1792]: 62) went a step further by arguing that by failing to educate women, the state has fallen short of perfection, for it leaves ‘half of the resources of mankind unknown, unassessed, and unused’. To remedy this oversight, he proposes that the state should ‘open to women its civil chambers, its courts, its lecture halls, commercial establishments, and its places of employment’ (Reference HippelHippel 1979 [Reference Hippel1792]: 165). Esther Gad presented a similar argument in ‘Some Remarks on Herr Campe’s Claims Concerning Female Learnedness’ (1996 [1798]), arguing that women should be permitted to pursue higher education. Reference Gad, Kleinau and MayerGad (1996 [1798]: 62) laments the fact that, if a woman becomes learned, she is seen as a threat and all her other virtues are destroyed. The occasional instance of a learned woman, she claims, cannot be a threat to men.

Reference HolstHolst (1802: 96/41) carries the argument a step further by arguing that all (middle- and upper-class) women should pursue learnedness, for it is ‘the highest duty of all thinking beings’. The human vocation to perfect one’s capacities cannot contradict a woman’s threefold calling, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 96/41) contends, for ‘Nature would have to contradict itself’. If reason and sexuality are both given by nature, a contradiction between them can only arise if contingent social institutions distort their meaning. Of course, a tension may arise if a woman were to dedicate her life exclusively to the pursuit of higher education; if, for instance, she ‘were to become a speculative philosopher’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 94/41). As we see in the celibate lives of Leibniz and Kant, the demands on such a life may prevent a woman from enjoying the pleasures of marriage and motherhood, but only if she rose ‘so high as to create her own philosophical system’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 95/41; see Reference Hippel[Hippel] 1793: 78–9). Yet rather than leave such lofty peaks of the mind to the jurisdiction of men, Holst dares to ask: would that be such a bad thing? Has society lost or gained by the achievements of such men, ‘who enriched the world merely through the immortal works they birthed as children of their minds’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 95/41)? Holst refuses to place a limit on the extent of a woman’s learning. If we accept that Leibniz and Kant legitimately expressed their human vocation through lives dedicated to philosophy, then the same must hold for women. The duties of one’s sex can, in rare circumstances at least, be placed aside for non-reproductive social ends.

Holst’s discussion of the second principle ends on this radical note, which she does not develop any further in the book. In fact, her third principle qualifies the scope of her argument. Higher intellectual education, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 68/32) writes, ‘cannot be extended to all individuals of the female sex’. This concession cuts the scope of education along class lines. Holst asserts that the unrestricted educational opportunities defined in the first two principles extend ‘only to the upper and middle classes’. The reasons behind her qualification are not immediately clear. At one point Holst states that it would be practically inadvisable to demand the higher intellectual education of the wife of a day labourer or tradesman, for learnedness is beyond the practical remit of the lower classes. But is this not another ‘miserable classification and petty exclusion’ of which she is so critical (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 117/49)? What grounds could she offer for this classification?

Contemporary readers will feel the tension between Holst’s defence of women’s access to higher education and the restriction she places on class, which seems to replicate the injustice by which men have held back ‘an entire half of humankind’ by permitting women only to ‘skim the surface’ of the sciences (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 3/10). Her qualification requires some unpacking, for it seems to undermine her claim that the ideal of humanity is logically prior to other non-ideal determinations. Given that the call for women’s higher intellectual education already transgresses the limits of acceptability, one option is to infer that Holst is simply offering a concession to her conservative readers. Here the context of her argument is important. Like other conservative feminists such as Madame de Genlis and Hannah More, Holst aims to extend the educational opportunities available to women against the backdrop of the extensive social unrest instigated by the French Revolution.Footnote ²⁷ Their defence of women’s education is thoroughly intertwined with their class-based politics, and Holst is no exception. It thus seems unlikely that Holst’s views on class are merely strategic and separable from her defence of women’s education. If they were indeed intended to be strategic, one of the book’s early reviews suggests that her strategy was misjudged. After deriding her endorsement of learned women, the reviewer criticizes her condescending remarks about the working classes for being ‘so aristocratic, so dismissive and dictatorial towards the most numerous class of people’ (Anonymous 1802c: 215).

A systematic reading of Holst’s argument suggests that a charitable interpretation of her class-based restriction is difficult to sustain. Consider just a few tensions in her argument. Reference HolstHolst (1802: 117/49) attacks the male writers who place arbitrary restrictions on women’s education, yet she endorses the rural institutes created by Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 252/94), which deploy a homogenized curriculum to align working-class children to their ‘subordinate purposes’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 68/32). She decries the need for single middle-class women to make their living through the ‘intellectually depressing’ industry of handicraft, which merely serves ‘the vanity and luxury of others’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 191–192/74), yet she criticizes the servant class of Hamburg for refusing to work in spinning, ‘one of the most useful jobs for the lower classes’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 255/96). She recommends that teachers offer reasons to their middle-class students for classroom rules, yet she advises educated housewives that their adult servants, who ‘have not developed their understanding beyond childhood’, should be guided by incentives (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 261/98). The tensions in Holst argument are puzzling given that she clearly does not think that lower-class women are less able. How many Kants and Leibnizs remain ‘unnoticed and unused behind the plough’, she asks, for they ‘lacked the opportunity for education’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 90–91/40)? At several points in the text, Holst expresses the belief that class society plays a role in nature’s plan. For instance, she explains that by distributing gifts unevenly, nature promotes the development of culture (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 68/32). Even luxury, a ‘necessary evil’, has its place. As a ‘consequence of culture’, luxury ‘employs a thousand hands and minds by indirectly sharpening the powers of invention’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 223–4/86). Whatever one makes of the tensions in her argument, Holst either does not see or chooses not to pursue the full implications of her claim that higher education must be extended to those who are illegitimately held in a subordinate social position by those in power.

5.3 Extending Woman’s Sphere of Influence

Having laid down her claim that humanity precedes the determinations of sex, Holst then considers how a woman’s higher intellectual education transforms the traditional duties of wife, mother, and housewife. The higher education of woman will not detract from a woman’s calling, she writes, but will rather ‘refine, establish a principle for, and extend women’s sphere of influence’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 96/41). In the next three chapters of the book, Holst outlines how a higher education transforms each aspect of a woman’s calling. A wife is not a helper for her husband but an equal member of a union by which two parties set their own ends together. Motherhood is not simply the instinct for maternal care but also the noble duty of ‘first educator’. And a housewife is not a domestic servant but one who spreads enlightened values throughout her home and community. Holst’s aim is to demonstrate how a higher intellectual education transforms the natural impulse of desire, nurture, and provision into a constitutive part of human culture. Let us consider each chapter in turn.

In the second chapter, ‘Woman Considered as Wife’, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 111/47) advances a radical view of marriage according to which ‘the rights of men and women in marriage are completely equal’. Her argument interjects into the debate unfolding in popular journals in the 1790s concerning the happiness of women in marriage. Recall the letter appearing in The German Mercury that was supposedly left in a drawer until Wieland, the journal’s editor, decided to intervene. In the letter, entitled ‘Some Characteristics and Principles Necessary for Happiness in Marriage’, an unnamed woman (later revealed to be the poet and travel writer Emilie von Berlepsch) examines the effect of misogyny on the happiness of women in marriage:

Berlepsch raises what Claudia Reference HoneggerHonegger (1991: 16) terms ‘the problem of modern marriage’: how can two individual persons realize distinct selves and find individual happiness without one party subjecting the other to their self-interest? In the modern world, Berlepsch notes, the wife is ‘no longer merely the husband’s housekeeper and the bearer of his children; she is also the educator, the partner in his relationships, which are often complicated, and, on occasion, must assert her own not unimportant role in social life’. If she is to undertake her new and expanded roles with confidence and decision, she ‘must be able to think with freedom and her own insight; that is, she must not be a machine that depends only on her husband’s will’. Berlepsch’s solution is to call for women’s independence (Selbständigkeit), which comes about by grasping the significance of her duties. How this independence is supposed to come about, however, is unexplored in the letter.

Holst’s aim in the second chapter is to reimagine the institution of marriage under the conditions of Enlightenment. She begins by repeating the sharp distinction between nature and culture identified in the first chapter. Marriage is not, she claims, the ‘mere animal business of reproduction or the convenience of self-interest’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 112/48). Rather, it is ‘a contract that two equally free beings make with each other to enjoy society in the most intimate and tender bond’. Her egalitarian vision of marriage resonates with the work of several of her contemporaries, who rejected the complementarian ideal upheld by Rousseau. In Letters on Education, for instance, Catherine Reference MacaulayMacaulay (1790: 135) contends that ‘the happiness and perfection of the two sexes are so reciprocally dependent on one another that, till both are reformed, there is no expecting excellence in either’. In the third edition of On Marriage, Hippel sets out a radical vision according to which the ‘ultimate purpose of marriage’ cannot be defined by any subordinate end, such as the rearing of children (Reference Hippel[Hippel] 1793: 93). The end of marriage, he declares, is ‘the closest possible unification of life’. For Holst, the unification involved in marriage can never be formed through hierarchical distinctions or claims to authority. It is established through love alone. ‘I can respect and revere my master’, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 112/47) writes, ‘but I cannot love him in the true sense of the word’. ‘Love makes everything equal’, she explains, allowing each party to maintain their own personality in a ‘true dual unity [Zweieinigkeit]’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 168/67). Thus, an educated wife is not her husband’s servant but his friend. She does not simply maintain lively conversation at the table but knows his financial situation and gives advice on matters of business. Such equality in marriage requires ‘intimate friendship, true respect, unbreakable trust, and unfeigned openness’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 168/67). And not only women but men too will benefit from this change; men will gain an advocate and a partner, women a respectful colleague (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 160/64).

In the third chapter, Holst extends her argument by considering ‘The Educated Woman as Mother’. A husband and wife united by love do not simply execute a biological task of reproduction. With infinitely more importance, they ‘procreate their kind through wise and purposeful education’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 111/47). Building on the argument she began in Observations, Holst presents an account of child development according to which the early years lay the foundation for all future learning. Given the singular constitution of each child, true education for humanity requires a single, dedicated teacher:

The calling of such an educator is intellectually demanding. He requires a mastery of the sciences and sustained time with the child over several years of its development. ‘But who is more adept to be the child’s first teacher and educator’, Holst asks, ‘than a loving and educated mother’? The mother ‘knows and understands the young plant from its first sprouting and growth’ and is thus perfectly positioned to act as the first educator. Yet to do so, she must herself possess ‘knowledge that is properly learned and purposefully applied’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 189–190/74). To properly undertake her calling as first educator, a woman requires a thorough grasp of ‘history, geography, natural history, natural science, and philosophy’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 190/74). ‘Without philosophy’, Holst writes, ‘no single science can be appreciated and taught’. Philosophy ‘is the basis of all the others’, it ‘breathes spirit, life, and a sense of the common good into them all’.

The fourth chapter of On the Vocation of Woman, ‘The Educated Woman as Housewife’, is one of the most intriguing and yet difficult chapters of the book. Holst seeks to show that the sphere of influence appropriate to the educated housewife extends beyond the confines of her immediate family to the workers she employs and the surrounding community in her neighbourhood. The reader is reminded of Wolmar’s estate in Clements, where Julie’s benevolent administration harmonizes the rationality of culture with the humanity of nature. Like Julie, Holst’s portrayal of the educated housewife is marked by composure as she responds to the needs of her family, servants, and nearby estates, producing an atmosphere of virtue rather than reason and sympathy rather than merit. Yet at several points in the chapter Holst’s tone becomes overbearing. The educated housewife attends not simply to the needs of her family, preparing for harsh winters and overseeing the careful maintenance of the house, but also to the spiritual well-being of her servants and working-class neighbours. In every interaction with the lower classes, she seeks to encourage good behaviour and redirect the bad.

While she returns to the issue of working-class education, Holst has a larger axe to grind. Her aim is to convince her readers that if the state truly wants to raise the standards of living among the rural working class, the most effective way is not to construct new industrial schools but to promote the education of middle- and upper-class women who can respond to the needs of those in their sphere of influence. Just as women are best placed to begin the education of their children, so are they best placed to respond to the local needs of the working class, for ‘the small matters of the domestic economy bring us more often together with this class of people’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 262/98). Reference HolstHolst (1802: 251/94) recommends that members of the working class should receive a ‘purposeful education’, that is, a formation ‘with constant regard for the student’s future vocation’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 256/96). Yet once more, she reproduces the argument she attempts to overthrow. As human beings, members of the working class are called to perfect the capacities given to them by nature. As members of a social order produced through nature’s wise intention to promote human culture through inequality, working-class people have a subordinate purpose (see Reference HolstHolst 1802: 251/94). It follows that the education of working-class people should be constrained to subject matters that align with this calling.

Holst’s argument in On the Vocation of Woman is clearly incomplete. Her primary aim is to show that higher education expands the sphere of influence of women as wives, mothers, and housewives. To merely ‘smell the beautiful, the noble, and the good would not make us advising wives, active housewives, and careful educators of our children’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 156–157/63). Nevertheless, the implications of her argument clearly undermine the conventional roles of women. This is especially clear in the final chapter of the book, ‘On the Education of Woman in the Unmarried State’. Earlier in the text, Reference HolstHolst (1802: 99/43) noted that the prevailing view of women as the subordinate sex is based on the idea that women exist ‘for the sake of men’. This view stems from the assumption that a woman’s vocation is decided by what she is to a man: subordinate to his rule and mother of his children. Reference CampeCampe (1796 [1789]: 33), for instance, argued that ‘marriage is really the only … means [for a woman] to obtain a definite condition, sphere of influence, protection, reputation, and a higher level of freedom and independence’. Holst concludes her book by identifying a sphere of influence for women that is not defined by their relation to men. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, civil unrest, the rising cost of living, and the expansion of a mobile, affluent middle class resulted in an increasing number of women who remained unmarried. Even Reference Basedow and GöringBasedow (1880 [1770]: 182) acknowledged that some women ‘will not be sought in marriage’, and thus recommended women’s education should provide a set of skills beyond what is required in the home. Yet Basedow’s admission does not permit a woman to ‘become an expert in this or that art’, nor to pursue an independent career. A woman’s education, he explains, should help her avoid public scorn for the idleness associated with unmarried women. After exploring several opportunities for unmarried women in the craft industries, Holst recommends that the role of educator is most fitting to their human vocation. While the social dangers facing unmarried women are greater than those facing married women, Holst writes, so are the opportunities for the pursuit of higher education. The unmarried woman can give her time and energy to refining her knowledge for the benefit of humanity both as a teacher and a writer. Once more Holst contends that it is not the desire to learn that ails unmarried women but rather the idleness produced by society’s inability to create legitimate opportunities for them to share their reflections on the sciences with the world of readers. She calls on women to ‘refute the writers who think that the higher education of our mind cannot exist together with the fulfilment of our individual duties’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 280/104). The best way to ‘silence those prejudices’ is to demonstrate with one’s life that ‘much – infinitely much – depends on the education of women’ (Reference HolstHolst 1802: 57/28).