This review is transcluded from Talk:Sophia, a Person of Quality/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Generalissima (talk · contribs)

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 20:00, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments[edit]

This is a clean and fresh article on a fascinating and certainly encyclopedic topic. It is well-written and certainly up to the required standard, so I have only a few comments bordering on suggestions.

• Please wikilink plagiarism in lead and body.
  • Done. - G
• and Glorious Revolution -> "and the Glorious Revolution"
  • Fixed. - G
• greatly increased, with many aristocratic women engaging - suggest "...increased. Many aristocratic women engaged ..."
  • Good suggestion, added. - G
• renown women -> "renowned women"
  • Fixed. - G
• The 'Background' section covers events both before and after the time of the two tracts. I wonder if it wouldn't be best to create subsections for these two periods; after all, what happened afterwards is not exactly "background" for the tracts themselves, though it is interesting as a hint about what may have been happening in women's minds before Astell and Chudleigh et al got going in public. Perhaps the second subsection should be introduced with some words to this effect, if that can be cited; or perhaps you might just lead in to it by saying "Later in the 18th century, ..."
  • ?

• based off Poullain - "based on" or "derived from", or perhaps "adapted from" would be clearest. I note that grammar pedants state that "based off" is incorrect (whatever that might mean) in written English.
  • Good point, changed. - G
• The two positions in 'Works', namely that Woman Not Inferior is "essentially a translation" versus "significantly advancing" are so central to the question of how significant "Sophia" is, that it would be really nice to offer the reader a comparison of a short section of the tract with Poullain (in French and in direct translation) and the tract's version side-by side, i.e. a table with three columns and one row. That would let the reader judge for themselves which position might be more correct.
  • Generalissima – did you miss these two suggestions?

• was initially published - the "initially" seems redundant here.
  • Fixed. - G
• Please provide brief glosses for Nicholas Rowe, Alexander Pope, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, and Anne Finch. A short phrase like "the poet and dramatist" would do fine. (We Brits use "the" in that sort of phrase.)
• Lockean and Cartesian rhetoric - could you please add a brief gloss on each of these, to give readers unfamiliar with the taxonomy of rhetoric a rough idea of what methods are intended here.
  • Added some context. - G
    • The Lockean bit isn't a complete sentence...

• moniker - perhaps "label" would sound less informal, especially to British ears?
  • Fixed. - G
• I don't wish to insist, but this article certainly has a British context (whatever the identity of the tracts' author[s]) and might be best flagged with ((Use British English|date=March 2024)) for that reason.
  • Added this, forgot to say. - G
• A consistent claim levied throughout the text is men's tyranny over and enslavement of women, - um, levying a claim, what's that? Perhaps "A consistent claim made..." would work better. And, is "men's tyranny and enslavement" a claim? You'd need to say "that men exercise tyranny over and enslave women..." for that.
  • Good point, reworded. - G
• identity of Sophia - perhaps "identity of 'Sophia'".
  • Wanted to avoid scare-quotes but I guess this works well-enough in this case. - G
• may have been a pseudonym used by a male author - well, we've been talking about 'Sophia' with no gloss at all up to now, so this lengthy phrase seems a bit unnecessary. Suggest "may have been a man".
  • Good fix. - G
• published in the mid-to-late 18th century were published - maybe lose the first "published".
  • Ooh yeah, that was sloppy phrasing. - G

• The English name Sophia is a transliteration of the Greek σοφία, which is grammatically a feminine noun; it means wisdom. This etymology would seem to be relevant to the article. It may also be that a scholar has commented on the etymology, of course.
  • Since there is a distinct possibility it's just her actual first name, I'd only really add this if there was a source talking about the etymology here. - G

Images[edit]

• All 3 images from Commons are clearly in the public domain.

Sources[edit]

• [4] Leduc: you've copied the date as the page number.
  • Fixed. - G
• Not sure why Nadelhaft is confined to Further reading; his comments on Sophia are mainly limited to brief quotations (so perhaps that's your reason; or perhaps it's because he doesn't mention she's cribbing Poullain), but he does offer some interpretation. For instance, "But the feminists recognized the need to strengthen themselves, to overcome the internalization of society's centuries-old propaganda. The only way for women to force men to be just to them was for women to be just to themselves. If we give in, 'if we think meanly of ourselves', Sophia wrote, men will seize on that self-deprecation as justification for treating us "with the contempt we seem conscious of deserving." p. 562, citing Woman's Superior Excellence p. 87. It's interesting, too, that he says she "continued the religious argument. Sophia acknowledged that women could not hold religious office, but she attributed the prohibition to the fact that women were naturally more religious and men had to be enticed into the church with the prospect of position." p. 564, citing Woman Not Inferior pp. 11, 45–46. Her arguments for education and against men's reasoning from the status quo (what is, is what ought to be...) are cogent, too.

• Arianne Chernock's 2019 The Radicalism of Female Rule in Eighteenth-Century Britain seems a useful source: "in Woman Not Inferior to Man (1739), one “Sophia” insisted that female sovereigns offered prime evidence of men and women’s shared intellectual capacities – and of their shared ability to take on a range of demanding professional positions, including leadership of the military. “[S]ince,” she explained, “this nation has seen many glorious instances of Women, severally qualified to have all public authority center’d in them: why may they not be as qualified at least for the subordinate offices of ministers of state, vice-queens, governesses, secretaries, privy-counsellors, and treasurers? Or why may they not, without oddity, be even generals of armies, and admirals of fleets?”"
  • Added, thank you! - G
• Broad 2019 discusses dignity both as rank in society and as inherent value. Might be worth mentioning?

• Gardner 2006 Historical Dictionary of Feminist Philosophy p. 219 states Sophia's arguments clearly in a one-paragraph entry.
  • Ooh, this was a good reference to one sentence I wanted to write. - G
  • Thank you so much for all the suggestions! I think by the level of detail you've guessed that I intend to take this to FAC eventually. I'll keep polishing this up. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 18:20, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's a pleasure. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:28, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      Apologies for the delay, something came up today. Will get back to this tomorrow. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:23, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      • Generalissima ?

Summary[edit]

Um, this dialogue seems to have fizzled out. Looking at the article again, I don't see any showstoppers, so the open suggestions can be taken as just that, ideas for further development. I shall therefore promote this now. If you feel like taking the time to review one of my GANs, of course that'd be much appreciated. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:21, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]