[WOMEN].
The House of Peeresses: or, Female Oratory.
A SATIRICAL DEBATE BY WOMEN ON ADULTERY
First published in the same year and reprinted or re-issued on at least five occasions that year (ESTC records a “fifth edition, improved and corrected, with upwards of fifty additional illustrations and explanatory remarks.”)
A satirical attack on an ultimately unsuccessful bill to discourage divorce and particularly make it difficult for women to marry their adulterous partners. This very popular pamphlet imagines a council of notable (and barely disguised) women debating the subject.
The D…ss of B….D informs the committee: “It has been a growing maxim with myself, and, I trust, a well experienced truth with any of your Ladyships, that the subservience of woman should be directed by her convenience. The imposing authority of men is of so gross a nature, and unless duly curbed, is frequently carried to so considerable a length, that a non-resistance on our part, serves only to subjugate us more enormously, and render females the most mechanical, passive ministers of their inimical procedures” (p.23)
