Catharine Macaulay: an unsex’d female

In 1978 Richard Polwhele published “The Unsex’d Females: A Poem”, which exemplifies the condemnatory rhetoric that stigmatized several women writers of the late eighteenth-century, including Catharine Macaulay. Female writers of this time were regarded with suspicion, especially if they addressed subjects such as religion or politics, thus breaking out of their proper, private sphere. Recent criticism has even pointed out that the mere act of writing was seen as subversive, as the pen was considered a symbolic phallus, therefore unsexing. The article explores how those female writers, particularly Catharine Macaulay, challenged the traditional political, social and sexual hierarchies and values, and how they were condemned and ostracized on account of their writings and beliefs, by their contemporary society.