MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Rhoda F. Cairns Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy ______ Director Dr. Katharine M. Gillespie ______ Reader Dr. Katherine J. Ronald ______ Reader Dr. Frances E. Dolan ______ Graduate School Representative Dr. P. Renee Baernstein ABSTRACT THE EXEGESIS OF EXPERIENCE: TYPOLOGY AND WOMEN’S RHETORICS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND AND NEW ENGLAND by Rhoda F. Cairns This project represents the first major study of the wide-ranging ways in which early modern women’s use of biblical typology as a rhetorical strategy not only authorized their voices in public discourse, but also positioned them as influential actors in the public spheres of church and state. Critics often argue that early modern women’s agency is compromised by male mediators and the patriarchal structures of religion and government, a stance challenged by this study of eleven early modern women, representing eight different confessional affiliations, whose rhetorical performances range in time from 1547 to 1682, in both England and New England. Four significant sites of women’s speech are investigated, moving from the least to the most highly contested. Using texts by Elizabeth Cary’s daughter, Alice Thornton, and Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers to explore domestic sites, Chapter One argues that women erected typological identities on both bed and table, performing typologically-inflected scenarios and tableaux whose significance extended beyond the narrow circle of family and household. Considering Anna Trapnel and Mary Rowlandson, Chapter Two examines their use of typology in the context of the ritual travel genres of pilgrimage and royal progress in order to critique state power. Chapter Three argues that Susannah Parr and Anne Wentworth use typology as a strategy of self-sequestration to establish personal boundaries and resist the claims of local church congregations, while also creating self-liberating typological narratives that establish identity outside the recognized community of faith. Finally, considering the highly conflicted sites of examinations and trials, Chapter Four shows how Anne Askew, Anne Hutchinson, and Elizabeth Cellier deploy typology as a strategy that gives them rhetorical power over their persecutors and authorizes them to critique the motivations that drive the authorities’ desire to suppress and silence. This study establishes the radical way in which women use typological strategies to rewrite and transform spaces that contained them; the narrative power of the typological linking of sacred history and their own lives informs their speech, providing another important way of connecting women’s texts to the broader literary and rhetorical histories that are being (re)written. THE EXEGESIS OF EXPERIENCE: TYPOLOGY AND WOMEN’S RHETORICS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND AND NEW ENGLAND A DISSERTATION Submitted to the faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English by Rhoda F. Cairns Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2008 Dissertation Director: Dr. Katharine Gillespie © Rhoda F. Cairns 2008 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………..……………………………………...... 1 Typology, Allegory, and Early Modern Rhetoric……………………………….8 Typology and Early Modern Women…………………………………….…….16 Chapter I: Domestic Furniture, Typology, and the Householders of Faith..……...23 Introduction…...... 23 “Glorious Household Stuff”: Domestic furniture, rituals, and religion...………27 Exclusions and Transgressions: Male-authored representations of the Domestic………………………………………………………………………..32 A “Mother in faith”: The table, typology, and Elizabeth Cary’s Educational Project…………………………………………………………………………..42 Alice Thornton: Typology, family history, and the deathbed as public space….51 Evans and Chevers: Domestic furniture in “publike view”……………………..64 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………....74 Chapter II: Traveling Performances, Typology, and Community………………….77 Introduction……………………………………………………….…………….77 Pilgrimages and Progresses as Ritualized Travel……………………...... 81 Bunyan’s Christiana and the female pilgrim…………………………………….85 Anna Trapnel: “An extraordinary journey”………………………..….…………91 Mary Rowlandson: Wilderness wanderings…...…………………………….....103 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..……….116 Chapter III: Sequestered Spaces: Typology as Rhetorical Resistance to the Claims of Religious Community…………………………...………………...……….119 Introduction…………………………………………………………..………...119 Sequestered woman: The Duchess of Malfi and two “Remarkable Occurrences” from Magnalia Christi Americana …………………...………….122 Susanna Parr: an unveiled Susanna……...…………………………..……….....135 Anne Wentworth: delivered daughter of Zion…………………………….…....152 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..……….161 Chapter IV: Legal Dramas and the Typological Language of Defense...……..…...163
iii Introduction……………………………………...……………...………………163 The Maid, the Matron, and the Penitent: Women and the law in male-authored texts……………………………………………………...……....165 Anne Askew: “Too wise for a women”…………………………………...….....179 Anne Hutchinson: Entertaining the saints……………….…………………...….189 Elizabeth Cellier: A distressed David and a damsel in distress……….....…..…..208 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….218 Conclusion……………………………………………..…………………………..…....219 Works Cited……………………………………………………………..……..………..223
iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my children, Nicole and Ian, who uncomplainingly shared their mother with this project for much longer than either they or I anticipated.
v Acknowledgements My deep appreciation to my committee for their guidance, support, and patience; to Fran Dolan for ensuring I had a strong prospectus before she left for California and for continuing to serve on my committee from a great distance; and particularly to Katharine Gillespie, for gently prodding me through a potentially daunting task with a judicious mixture of warm encouragement and intellectual challenge. Thanks are due also to my friends and family, who, through their continuing faith in me, made a significant contribution to the completion of this project.
vi The verity of our Lord remaineth forever. It is not veritas hominum , verity of men, nor verity of women, but veritas Domini , and this verity women may have as well as men. If we fail, it is for want of verity and not because we are women. Mary Ward
vii Introduction . . . many things that literally concerned the Jewes were types and figures, signifying the like things concerning the people of God in these latter dayes. Richard Mather, An apologie of the churches (1643) Typology is reading and reading is both a recreation of the text and a recreation of the reader . . . . Typology as a linguistic phenomenon has to be completed in reading. Tibor Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb Writing to their Quaker communities from prison cells on the island of Malta, where they had been detained by the Inquisition in 1659, Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers claim that “the Lord hath wrought as great a Miracle in our preservation, as ever he did in raising Lazarus out of the grave” ( Short Relation 68). 1 While the comparison to Lazarus may seem simply a minor and superficial analogy to twenty-first century readers, it provides an example of the often subtle but very significant rhetorical strategy of typology, a strategy which enables Evans and Chevers to transform a simple narrative of personal hardship and localized religious persecution into a narrative which functions as a sign of hope for their Quaker audience and as a commentary on the current status of that religious community in a nation in political and religious crisis. Evans and Chevers together become a new Lazarus, a type representative of the active power of God, who will bring history to its climactic fulfillment in spite of “a long Winter, and many sharp and terrible storms” (69). It is no coincidence that the Lazarus reference is followed by an extended passage in which the women remind their Quaker family of that promised future, a future in which the two women themselves are even at the present moment playing a preparatory role. In the simplest and most general terms, typology can be defined as a figural strategy by which a person, object, or event in the present is represented as a “type” of a past biblical person,
1 See also 24. In citing from primary sources, either in the original or in editions that duplicate the orthography of the originals, I have regularized the occurrences of “v” and “w.” Also, unless I indicate I have done otherwise, I have not reproduced the frequent italicizations in the primary sources. In all other respects, quotations will follow the orthography and punctuation of the source from which I am citing. However, any quotation of a primary source cited in secondary criticism has been reproduced exactly as printed in the secondary source. 1 group, object, or event, thus mapping the characteristics, contexts, and significations of the latter onto the former. 2 The term itself did not come into use until the nineteenth century, when it was coined to formalize the hermeneutical practice, seen at the time as originating with Christ and the New Testament writers, of interpreting certain figures and events in the Old Testament as types of corresponding figures and events in the New Testament. Thus, in its narrowest theological application, typology is Christological; it describes a method of biblical interpretation that finds “types” (sometimes called “shadows”) of Christ and the central Christ events in persons or events in the Old Testament; Christ is the anti-type, the ultimate fulfillment to which the earlier types point. However, while the term was formally coined to describe “a mode of scriptural hermeneutics . . . [that] disclosed the deep, unifying structure of Old and New Testaments by positing the retrospective figurality of the Christ-event” (Gallagher 210), typology as a writing and reading strategy has been practiced for centuries in texts and contexts beyond the strictly Christological applications of formalized theology. According to The Oxford Companion to the Bible , Old Testament writers themselves were already engaging in typological interpretations, as, for example, when passages in Isaiah interpret the Genesis story of creation and the emancipation of the nation of Israel from Egypt as types of the prophesied return of the nation from captivity and exile (Hanson, “Typology” 783-84). 3 In the post-New Testament era, the practice of typological interpretation continued in the writing of the patristic fathers, who adapted and widened its applications; during the medieval era, typological elements appeared both in religious discourse and in more “secular” texts, from the mystery plays to Dante. 4
2 While my focus in this project is on biblical typology, it is not the only sacred text to use the strategy. Describing significant features of the Quran to be noted by those reading it in its English translation, Devin J. Stewart points out that “prophetic typology” is “a crucial rhetorical strategy in the Quran.” See “Understanding the Quran in English: Notes on Translation, Form, and Prophetic Typology,” Diversity in Language: Contrastive Studies in Arabic and English Theoretical and Applied Linguistics , ed. Zaynab M. Ibrahim, Sabiha T. Aydelott, and Nagwa Kassabgy (Cairo: Cairo U.P., 2000) 31. 3 See also Tibor Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb: Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art, and Literature (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), 2, and Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt, 1982), 83. Robert B. Chisholm Jr. provides several additional examples, pointing out parallels not only in narrative structure, but in the language and phrasing of the passages in the original Hebrew. Chisholm notes that “literary parallelism sometimes involves narrative typology, where earlier characters supply the pattern for a later character in the story. This in turn enables the reader to discern the narrator’s evaluation of the later character’s career.” See Interpreting the Historical Books: An Exegetical Handbook (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006) 78-80, 80. 4 For the use of typology in the church fathers, see, for example, G. W. H. Lampe and K. J. Woollcombe, Essays on Typology (London: SCM Press, 1957), including Woollcombe’s "The Biblical Origins and Patristic 2 Biblical typology has also been put to other cultural uses, both in the past and in the present. Nicholas Howe has argued that long before the renewed interest in typology during the Reformation, “the Anglo-Saxons . . . envisioned their migration from continent to island as a reenactment of the biblical exodus” (qtd. in Boyarin 534). Looking at a much more recent appropriation of typology in his sociological study of African-American religion and culture, Theophus Smith hypothesizes that “Black America’s conjure tradition endures in its religious and political uses of biblical typology, featuring such figures as Exodus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Moses, Promised Land, Captivity, and Diaspora” (148). As Smith suggests, in its broadest application typological rhetoric can function in significant ways to shape cultural identity and to serve political ends. In the early modern era, typological practice exhibits a similarly fluid character, unbound by taxonomies or theological tradition. Typological strategies are frequently deployed for the rhetorical purposes they serve; those who deploy biblical typology do not seem compelled to conform to the “rules” designed to govern its theological uses. Yet, in contrast, some scholars have protested against all critical readings of typology in a text, if the typology identified does not conform to the narrower nineteenth-century definition of the term; frequently, they object to what they see as a frivolous disregard on the part of other scholars for establishing a “proper” chronology. Thus, in his critique of a surge of interest in typology among literary critics during the 1970s, David S. Berkeley characterizes them as caught up in “something of a fad,” and takes them to task for their “inattention to the process of time that must occur in historical typology,” calling that “the most endemic fallacy” of this new school of literary interpretation (3, 11). Berkeley points out that anti-types cannot precede types in historic time, since, by definition, the anti-type is the fulfillment or fullest embodiment of the type. However, to restrict our typological readings of early modern texts within limits that the early modern writers and speakers themselves did not uniformly apply similarly restricts our understanding of the full import of the Development of Typology" (39-75); Jean Daniélou, From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960). For a broader perspective, see John J. O'Keefe and R. R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 2005); James Samuel Preus, From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1969); and James J. Paxson, "A Theory of Biblical Typology in the Middle Ages," Exemplaria 3 (1991): 359-383. For literary uses of typology in the medieval era, see, for example, the collection edited by Hugh T. Keenan, Typology and English Medieval Literature (New York: AMS Press, 1992), and Robert Hollander, “Typology and Secular Literature: Some Medieval Problems and Examples,” Literary Uses of Typology from the Late Middle Ages to the Present , ed. Earl Miner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. P. 1977), 3–19. 3 rhetorical uses of typology in a culture where the exigencies of concrete political issues took precedence over framing typological readings within a “proper” relation of type to anti-type, for example. When writers in Tudor England pronounced Edward a Josiah, or when Samuel Mather preached controversial sermons a century later urging Charles II to be a Hezekiah, such typological readings clearly position the Old Testament kings as the defining anti-types, even though they chronologically precede the contemporary monarchs, who are the (potential) types. We could discount such instances because they do not exhibit the formalized features of typology, and treat the biblical references as surface comparisons. In doing so, however, we also discount many of the uses to which typological rhetoric was put by early modern rhetors, as well as underestimate the ability and readiness of early modern audiences to read typological connections in references that to us seem minor and undeveloped. While, as Christopher Hill observes, “priests and scholars would have liked to keep the interpretation of the Bible the monopoly of an educated élite, as it had been in the days before a vernacular Bible existed” (World Turned Upside Down 95), in a post-Reformation world lay interpreters could claim the authority to engage in typological readings that had previously been considered the territory of theological specialists. Moreover, since typological rhetoric often shaped public conversations about political and social issues, as the representative examples I cite above illustrate, the increasingly democratic ownership of that language countered “the more traditional view that politics was…a matter for the élite, the aristocracy and clergy, only” (Hill, The English Bible 414). For early moderns, then, typology was not simply a surface feature of language; rather, it functioned, like classical invention, as both a hermeneutic and a heuristic, 5 a legitimate means of both inquiry into and intervention in the controversies and questions that drove public dialogue in the early modern world. Thus, my focus in this project will not be on typology as a rigid taxonomy of interpretation bound by certain rules, or as a theological discourse engaged in only by the educated elite. Rather, my interest lies in the function of typology as a rhetorical strategy appropriated by early moderns for their own use in spaces outside the walls of universities or the
5 I am using the terms here as Janice Lauer defines them in her history of the uses of classical invention in composition and rhetoric. Thus, as a hermeneutic, typology can “help speakers and writers to construct discourse and produce knowledge”; as a heuristic, typology can “help writers interpret texts already written.” See Invention in Rhetoric and Composition (West Lafeyette, IN: Parlor Press, 2003) 91. 4 pulpits of churches, and in genres other than the sermon or the doctrinal treatise. It is in such appropriations of typology that it can take on a subversive rhetorical power; in its more populist manifestations, typological rhetoric functions to enact a desired political and social reality within the historic moment. The dynamic of typology in the early modern context revolves around the pervasive sense that the age of miracles has not passed, that indeed Lazarus will once more rise, that—in the prophetic words of Christ about his own ministry of miracles—“the houre is coming, & now is , when the dead shall heare the voice of the Sonne of God: and they that heare, shall live” (John 5.25 KJV; my emphasis). Moreover, this anticipation of the miraculous often goes hand-in-hand with a parallel anticipation of socio-political change, a connection drawn directly from the biblical texts of both Old and New Testament. The writer of Psalm 146, for example, writes: [H]appy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his helpe: whose hope is in the Lord his God . . . which executeth judgement for the oppressed, which giveth food to the hungry: the Lord looseth the prisoners. The Lord openeth the eyes of the blinde, the Lord raiseth them that are bowed downe: the Lord loveth the righteous. The Lord preserveth the strangers, he relieveth the fatherlesse and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside downe. The Lord shall reigne for ever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. (Psalms 146.5, 7-9, KJV) Similarly, in a key passage from the Gospel of Luke describing Jesus’ visit to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, he reads from the Torah scroll words attributed to the prophet Isaiah and proclaims their fulfillment: when [Jesus] had opened the Booke, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon mee, because hee hath anointed mee, to preach the Gospel to the poore, he hath sent mee to heale the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blinde, to set at libertie them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable yeere of the Lord. And he closed the booke, and . . . . began to say unto them, this day is this Scripture fulfilled in your eares. (Luke 4.17-19, 21, KJV) Located at this dynamic intersection of the immanence of the miraculous and the expectation of social change, typological rhetoric becomes much more than a tool for self-fashioning; its
5 prominent function in the early modern rhetorical landscape can only be fully understood if we consider the trope as affect, an exercise of language meant to have a material ripple effect in the speaker’s world. “Typology” is not the only word in the title of this project whose use postdates the early modern period by at least two centuries. According to the OED, “exegesis” as a term used to describe the “explication” or “elucidation” of Scripture occurs for the first time during the same decade in which typology appeared. Like typology, exegesis is often associated with the more formal practice of theologizing; seminary students are usually required to take courses in exegesis as part of their training for the ordained ministry. In the seventeenth century, the growing interest in typology as a means of interpreting the Scriptures resulted in the appearance of various handbooks written to educate the reader in the “proper” way to read the Scriptures through the lens of typology. Emphasizing that one must have an explicit Scriptural rationale for identifying a type, Samuel Mather warns that “it is not safe to make any thing a Type merely upon our own fancies and imaginations; it is Gods Prerogative to make Types” (55). Later in the century, Cotton Mather would create an elaborate, “arbitrary system of parallels and analogies” linking ancient history, the Scriptures, and Puritan history in America (Blumm 45). In contrast to this impetus towards the formalization of typology, the women in this study are engaged in exegesis of a different kind; theirs is a democratic typological rhetoric performed in the home, on journeys, in the church, and even in the courts. The narrative power of the typological connection between sacred history and their own lives informs their thinking and their speech, enabling them to “[imagine] historical process and change as a therapeutic dynamic of repetition with difference” (Gallagher 210). If, as Tibor Fabiny claims, typology is today a “forgotten grammar” (11), for these early modern women it was a grammar that shaped their thinking, permeated their speech, and invested all they did with historical significance. Finally, rhetorically speaking, this study of early modern women’s use of typology offers us another way of “connecting women and history and rhetoric,” a critical “nexus” that, according to Cheryl Glenn, “enables us to (insists that we) write contextualized rather than merely separatist rhetorical histories” (11). Claiming that this study contributes to the project of restoring women rhetors to their places within the broader “mainstream” histories of rhetoric requires a balancing acknowledgment here at the outset that a number of the works I discuss come to us with vexed
6 textual histories that caution us against reading them uncritically as straightforward personal biography or treating them as offering us direct access to the “authentic” voice of a biological woman. For example, both Anne Askew and Mary Rowlandson’s texts come to us through the hands of a male editor; the multiple documents that make up our record of Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers were collected and compiled by Daniel Baker, a sea captain who was their primary link with their Quaker community in England. At an even greater remove, the evidence we have of Anne Hutchinson’s examination comes from the pen of an unnamed observer in the courtroom, almost certainly male. And while Anna Trapnel’s narrative of her journey to Wales is written in first person, we do not know who wrote it; certainly, the material for the brief episodes in which she is singing and prophesying seems to have been provided by members of the listening audience. Even texts that seem clearer in their provenance are written by women whose self-representations are prompted by motivations other than simple self-disclosure. Although we recognize that these factors do, to a greater or lesser degree, complicate our use of the term “woman writer,” we still carry on conversations about early modern women writers. The texts I examine in the following pages do offer us female speaking voices engaging in the rhetorical practice of biblical typology common in early modern public discourse. Combining an analysis of typology with a consideration of the material circumstances out of which the texts arise and to which they give witness does give us a sense of intended audience and purpose. Moreover, these women’s rhetorical performances do add significantly to our understanding of how this singular habit of mind found a variety of expressions that crossed divides of religion, class, and geography. In this project, then, I will investigate some of the multiple ways in which women successfully appropriated this kind of “populist” typology, claiming the right to make their own rhetorical interventions as readers, writers, and actors on the stage of the early modern world. In previous work, typology has been analyzed in the writing of individual women, or as one rhetorical element among others that characterize early modern women’s rhetorics, or as one representative trope in women’s texts from a fairly narrow historical period (e.g., the English civil war). The analysis in which this project engages uncovers a much broader range of typological strategies that cross boundaries of religious belief and class among the women I consider; furthers our understanding of the purposes to which this typological mode of discourse
7 was put by women speakers and writers; and offers new insights into the ways in which these women were understood by their audiences in early modern England and New England. Typology, allegory, and early modern rhetoric As common and deeply rooted as typological rhetoric was in the discourse of the early modern world, typology has been a site of some critical controversy during recent decades. In his article “Typology and Allegory,” Thomas P. Roche objects to the critical validation of the category “Protestant poetics,” which he attributes to the “enormous influence” of Barbara Lewalski’s defining 1979 study, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (1). The establishment of that critical category is not, however, his primary concern: “I am even more worried about the triumph in this ‘protestant poetics’ of another critical term, typology , which seems to devour its parent allegory in much the same way that Error’s offspring devour their parent in the first canto of The Faerie Queene ” (2). Continuing his assessment of this apparently monstrous danger on the critical landscape, Roche lays primary blame for the emergence of typology as a “critical trope” at the door of the “Americanists,” identifying Perry Miller as “the Mr. Badman in this history.” Seemingly unconcerned about mixing his allegories in his campaign against both typology and American studies, Roche does not hesitate to accuse the “Americanists” of hermeneutical heterodoxy for their willingness to “cast typology into the future,” a suspect move justified, he declares with something approaching disdain, only through “a camouflage of erudition” (7). Thomas Luxon, too, has taken issue with the legitimacy of differentiating between allegory and typology. However, he locates the problem not in contemporary critical trends, but in the Reformers themselves, arguing that “what [they] call typology is not simply a re-historicizing of the ancient Hebrews and of their experience, but also a re-fictionalizing of history more generally.” He concludes that the Protestant “effort to locate typology’s difference from allegory in the historicity of its figures and things figured de- historicizes history”; typological interpretations treat history “as God’s fictional representation” of “something that lies outside of history,” making them essentially allegorical in nature (44, 54). 6 Furthermore, according to Luxon, Lewalski is still at fault, this time for her allegedly
6 Jeffrey S. Shoulson presents a similarly flawed opposition, juxtaposing the “allegorical and typological modes of reading” with “the literal reading of scripture.” He argues that “even when Reformation readers seemed to be reading the Hebrew scriptures for historical information, any such reading relied upon a view of this world as a 8 uncritical acceptance of this early modern Protestant attempt to create what Luxon sees as an essentially false distinction between the two modes of allegory and typology (42). 7 Yet Luxon himself seems to be creating a dichotomy between literal and typological history that would have been foreign to the early moderns; even their conceptions of the culmination of history and the return of Christ are often constituted in terms of the social and political realities that would mark the transformation, as even a cursory reading of texts like Mary Cary’s A New and More Exact Mappe of the New Jerusalem (1651) shows. Moreover, Luxon’s criticism of Lewalski in fact dismisses the most essential element of consideration: the ways in which the early moderns themselves conceived of and practiced typology is key to understanding how typological rhetoric shaped their view of the world and empowered them to act in it. In contrast to this critical skepticism, Northrop Frye points out that “typology is a form of rhetoric, and can be studied critically like any other form of rhetoric” (80), a critical belief on which my own study is based. 8 Certainly, typology in early modern texts has been a significant topic of critical discussion for several decades. I have singled out two of the most vocal dissenters, in part because their objections attest to the continuing critical interest in and the complexities of typological approaches to texts; many others in addition to Frye have recognized typology as a legitimate category of rhetorical analysis, neither a parricide nor an imposter, and much of the criticism has moved beyond a strict Christological application of the term. My
mere shadow of the divine realm.” See Milton and the Rabbis: Hebraism, Hellenism, and Christianity (New York: Columbia U.P., 2001) 74. Such a conclusion relies upon reading into early modern texts a Platonism that would, in general, be foreign to their authors’ mode of thinking about the relationship between the earthly and the heavenly worlds. 7 While typology in the early modern era has been discussed almost exclusively in relation to Protestant texts, in an article on Mary Ward, the founder of an order of Catholic lay religious in England, Lowell Gallagher describes Ward as “relying on two related schemes of thought common to Catholic and Protestant reformist cultures: hagiographic exemplarity and a kind of performative typology. These schemes provided [her] with an imaginative screen on which to project a future for providential history by remembering the past strategically.” See “Mary Ward’s ‘Jesuitresses’ and the Construction of a Typological Community,” Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England , ed. Susan Frye and Karen Robertson (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1999) 210. 8 For him, that includes reading the seven successive phases he identifies in the overarching biblical narrative as “another aspect of Biblical typology, each phase being a type of the one following it and an antitype of the one preceding it” (106). Frye identifies the phases as creation, revolution/exodus, law, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, and apocalypse (106). He also differentiates between “typology as a mode of thought and as a figure of speech,” arguing that “a mode of thought does not exist until it has developed its own particular way of arranging words” (80). Since, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have argued in Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1980), we think figurally to begin with, the distinction seems rather artificial. 9 project owes much to the multiple ways in which scholars have (largely) embraced or (more rarely) criticized typology in their ongoing conversations around early modern texts. As Roche rightly points out, the interest in typology owes much to the work of Americanists, beginning with the ground-breaking work of Perry Miller; subsequent critics, whose work collectively has both recognized and revised Miller’s initial formulations, have focused primarily on the ways in which typology was mobilized by the colonial fathers to define the colonial mission and to enforce the authority claimed by the intricately linked institutions of colonial church and state. 9 As valuable as this work has been, it has tended to concentrate attention on typology as a rhetorical strategy practiced by a well-educated male Puritan elite and as a tool of religious and state control. For example, in The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism, Ann Kibbey, in her argument that the Puritan use of figura owes more to classical rhetoric than to biblical traditions of exegesis, at least implies that typology is a strategy exclusive to the classically educated; moreover, Kibbey draws some of her major conclusions on the basis of the writings of John Cotton, who was hardly representative of even orthodox Puritanism. Similarly, Deborah Madsen regards typology as “a formal restriction of the interpretative possibilities opened up by allegorical exegesis”; she argues that “the indeterminacy of allegorical expression and the freedom of thought that encourages are regulated by the practice of typology which draws all signs into a strict pattern of promise and fulfillment” (3). While Kibbey and Madsen have sought to problematize early colonial uses of typology, their work, particularly Kibbey’s study, has not offered any compensating insights into how typology might provide a rhetorical strategy open equally to lay practitioners, particularly women, and to more democratic and even subversive uses. Outside of this well-established critical strand in early American studies, other work on typology has been somewhat more piecemeal and brief, often focusing on individual authors or 9 See Perry Miller’s “Roger Williams: An Essay in Interpretation,” The Complete Writings of Roger Williams , vol. 7 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963) 1-25. In “Essay,” Miller analyzes the debate between John Cotton and Roger Williams in typological terms. Sacvan Bercovitch took issue with Miller’s reading in “Typology in Puritan New England: The Williams-Cotton Controversy Reassessed,” American Quarterly 19 (1967): 166-91. For a recent assessment of the intellectual relationship between Miller and Bercovitch and how it has been read by other critics, see Arne Delfs, “Anxieties of Influence: Perry Miller and Sacvan Bercovitch,” New England Quarterly 70 (1997): 601-16. For other representative Americanist studies, see Ursula Brumm, American Thought and Religious Typology , trans. John Hooglund (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U.P., 1970); Sacvan Bercovitch, ed., Typology and Early American Literature (Amherst: U. of Massachusetts, 1972); Karen E. Rowe, Saint and Singer: Edward Taylor’s Typology and the Poetics of Meditation (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1986); Ann Kibbey, The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism: A study of rhetoric, prejudice, and violence (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1986); and Deborah L. Madsen, Allegory in America (Houndmills, Hampshire: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). 10 addressing typology as a secondary rather than a primary rhetorical ingredient. The former studies are notable for the variety of texts and authors to which a typological approach has been applied, including Restoration drama, in contrast to the more predominant focus on theological or didactic agendas in work on colonial texts. 10 It is my contention in this project that this broader approach to typology can offer further insights, that we have yet to appreciate fully the ways in which this rhetorical strategy structured early modern discourse, particularly in regard to early modern women’s rhetorics. Integral to biblical typology is “the dual historicity, of both the type and antitype,” which remain “two distinct and temporally segregated phenomena (generally categorized as object, person, institution, event, or ceremony)” (Foutz). Unlike allegory, which creates “a correspondence between a tangible model and a transcendent permanent reality” (Foutz), typology is grounded in sacred history. This notion of typology as an historical relationship had significant implications for early modern rhetors and their audiences, since their understanding of the relationship between the biblical narrative and their own historical era was intratextual in nature. For them, biblical people had lived and events had occurred within the same diachronic unfolding of temporal history in which the early moderns themselves were situated. 11 For example, in celebrating her husband in her Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (1670), Lucy Hutchinson figures him as an early modern Moses who has undergone a retirement “in the
10 For general studies of typology in early modern texts see the early collection edited by Earl Minor, Literary Uses of Typology: Typologies in England, 1650-1829 ; Donald R. Dickson, “The Complexities of Biblical Typology in the Seventeenth Century,” Renaissance and Reformation; New Series 11 (1987): 253-72; Tibor Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb ; and Julie Lupton, Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology and Renaissance Literature (Stanford, CA: Stanford U.P., 1996). For studies of individual writers, see, for example, Kate Gartner Frost, Holy Delight: Typology, Numerology, and Autobiography in Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1990); Marie H. Loughlin, “‘Fast ti’d unto them in a golden Chaine’: typology, apocalypse, and women’s genealogy in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum ,” Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 133-79; Daniel Jaeckle, “From witty history to typology: John Cleveland’s The Kings Disguise ,” The English Civil Wars in the Literary Imagination , ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia: U. of Missouri P., 1999) 71-80; Linda Rohrer Paige, “‘A stranger in a strange land:’ biblical typology of the Exodus in Dryden’s The Spanish friar; or The double discovery ,” Papers on Language & Literature 32 (1996): 263-76; William Walker, “Typology and Paradise Lost , Books XI and XII,” Milton Studies 24 (1989): 245-64; and Lowell Gallagher, “Mary Ward’s ‘Jesuitresses’ and the Construction of a Typological Community.” In the first four chapters of Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation (Chicago and London: U. of Chicago P., 1995), a study of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Grace Abounding , Thomas Luxon sketches an overview of allegory and typology both previous to and in the early modern era, as well as an in-depth examination of “problem” Pauline passages central to his argument that Reformation typology is simply allegory in disguise. 11 Auerbach emphasizes this historical grounding: “The two poles of the figures are separate in time, but both, being real events or figures, are within time, within the stream of historical life” (qtd. in Rowe 3). 11 wilderness” and “beheld the burning bush” (qtd. in Pearlman 96-97). Here, the Moses story is offered not as an invented fiction, like the chivalric adventures recounted in The Faerie Queene (1596), but an historic account of an actual person. As Samuel Mather emphasizes in Figures and Types of the Old Testament (1683), 12 the “real types” are “not bare Allegories,” but rather “a true Narration of Things really existent and acted in the World, and are literally and historically to be understood” (qtd. in Brumm 43). Moreover, as theologian George Lindbeck emphasizes, “it is important to note the direction of interpretation. Typology does not make scriptural contents into metaphors for extra-scriptural realities, but the other way around. It does not suggest . . . that believers find their stories in the Bible, but rather that they make the story of the Bible their story” (qtd. in Theophus Smith 251). Lindbeck’s language suggests that using typological rhetoric involves actively constructing one’s story in the shape of the Scriptural narrative. While this may still seem limiting, particularly to us as twenty-first-century readers, given that the repertoire of (mostly male) biblical roles and plots has already been determined, other factors inherent in both early modern culture and in typology itself invest this rhetorical choice with both authority and agency. Not only was the Bible considered the most important textual authority in Christianized Western culture, but typology frequently permeated the language—spoken, written, and visual—of the public sphere throughout the early modern period; moreover, in rhetorical terms, “typological correlations can be of various kinds” (Hays 101). Pointing out that Paul’s use of typology in his New Testament epistles can be either “positive” or “antithetical,” Richard B. Hays elaborates on the mechanism of a typological correlation: “These broad characterizations can only be matters of degree, since all typologies, being metaphorical, spring from a perception of likeness between dissimilar entities.” Thus, antithesis does not eliminate all “elements of likeness,” nor does a positive correlation completely erase difference (101). Building upon Hays’ explanation, I would posit an inherent tension in a typological correlation that gives a rhetor the power to determine where exactly on that spectrum of likeness and difference the parallel to biblical history will be constructed. 13 12 Figures and Types of the Old Testament , preached as a series of sermons, was published in 1683 by Nathaniel Mather, Samuel’s brother. However, Samuel actually delivered the sermons in 1666, while he was minister of the church of St. Nicholas in Dublin. 13 This quality of typology also distinguishes the strategy from allegory. An allegorical comparison functions to illustrate the likeness between two elements or narratives; it does not have the same flexibility as a typological correlation to accommodate effective antithesis or varying degrees of difference/likeness. 12 Hays’ description also carries particular significance for an analysis of early modern women’s rhetorics, since critics like Phyllis Mack and Hilary Hinds, while they have added significantly to our knowledge and understanding of early modern women writers, have also suggested that when these women do represent themselves in a biblical role, their own identity is suppressed, compromised, or erased in the process. 14 Noting that “typology is before all else a trope, an act of imaginative correlation,” Hays emphasizes that the nature of the trope requires that the two poles of a typological correlation remain distinct; in fact, “if one pole . . . annihilates the other, the metaphorical tension disappears, and the trope collapses.” Since the “viability” of a typological relationship relies “on maintaining the separate integrity of both poles” (100), women who represent themselves as biblical types or as enacting biblical roles can do so successfully only through preserving the distinction between self and type, not by succumbing to self-erasure or self-annihilation. Approaching early modern women’s use of typology with this understanding gives us new insight into the agency women exercised simply through making this rhetorical choice, and also opens up the productive tension they create between biblical history and the early modern moment through engaging in this rhetorical act of “imaginative correlation.” 15 As Hays’ explanation suggests, when type and anti-type are considered together, a complexly reciprocal relationship connects the two, resulting in a new constellation of meanings that is “more than” a simple sum of correspondences. This can be seen in the intersection of the biblical past and the early modern present that appears in early modern visual representations. In the Great Bible of 1540, for instance, the woodcut that accompanies the story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven represents the kneeling prophet and those behind him as Old Testament characters, while the altar, the king, and those who accompany him clearly belong to the early modern world. Sometimes the connection is figured even more specifically in visual art in which the primary subject and setting are biblical, but the faces of some characters in the painting or 14 Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: U. of California P., 1992), Ch. 4 and 5; Hilary Hinds, God’s Englishwoman: Seventeenth-century radical sectarian writing and feminist criticism (Manchester: Manchester U.P.; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), Ch. 4. 15 In Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750 (1980; New York: Random/Vintage, 1991), Laurel Thatcher Ulrich organizes her discussion around the types of Bathsheba, Eve, and Jael. Her concern is to excavate the history of women in New England by “[delineating] certain broad patterns within which change occurred” (xiv). However, her primary interest lies in how these three “biblical prototypes,” as they represented cultural expectations, defined the roles of women and how women lived out those roles in their material circumstances. My study focuses on how women exercised agency by self-selecting specific biblical types to enact within their own individual contexts. 13 print are those of specific contemporary persons (Aston 42). This projection of early modern faces onto the biblical subjects reinforces the close correspondence that the early modern Western world believed existed between biblical history, millennia in the past, and their own. The typological strategy of artists and illustrators in such instances underlines the assumption they make that their audience can easily reconstruct the specific biblical event or occasion, bring it together with the contemporary context, and extract the significance of that pairing. In fact, I would argue that the force of this typological approach, in visual or verbal form, depends to a significant degree on the implicit historicity of the biblical precedent, since the connection to the biblical characters, sites, and events of the past positions the present speaker and her or his circumstances within the flow of providential history, giving added authority and significance to both the rhetor and the message. Since particularly the Old Testament biblical narratives presume that territories of religious belief, political authority, and cultural practice intersect and overlap in multiple ways, early modern uses of typological rhetoric transform the text into a potential platform for comment on contested public issues like politics, religion, and gender in both England and New England. According to Frances J. Bremer, in his introduction to the published collection of papers from Puritanism in Old and New England, a 1991 conference, the “mental world” of those who crossed the Atlantic to settle in the American colonies was “not fundamentally changed.” In addition to the settlers “[continuing] to think much as they had before emigration,” “New England letters, books, and even some colonists regularly flowed eastward,” in an ongoing exchange between Old World and New (xi). Typology figured significantly in this common “mental world.” It is a critical commonplace that in both England and the American colonies, subjects imagined themselves as citizens of a new Israel, although the exact makeup of the “chosen nation” might vary; political and religious discourses consistently played upon that theme. Contemporary monarchs were textually and visually represented as Josiahs, Davids, and Solomons (as well as any one of a host of less respectable kings), with the thrust of the comparison often as much politically prescriptive as descriptive. When, for instance, Cranmer called upon Elizabeth to more actively destroy images and break the power of the “bishops of Rome,” he pointed his counsel with the reminder that “[t]hese acts be sign of a second Josiah”; if she is wise, she will make the story of Josiah, the image-breaker, her story (qtd. in Aston 31). For
14 British colonists in North America wanting to distance themselves from the British monarchy, as well as for strongly republican-minded Puritans and more radical sectarians in England, the narratives of Israel under its early leaders and in the days of the judges provided alternative typological lenses through which to read contemporary situations, upon which to base a call for a political structure not centered on a monarch, and through which to identify contemporary figures who might be leaders in such a transformation as Joshuas, Gideons, Samsons, and Deborahs. 16 Furthermore, in spite of a persistent belief to the contrary, the typological imagination was not limited to Protestants. Jorge Canizares-Esguerra notes that “historians have assumed that after the Reformation, typology became a tradition of biblical reading distinctively Protestant, and particularly Calvinist.” Catholics, however, also actively appropriated this interpretive lens: “typological readings circulated widely in the Spanish Empire, affecting architecture, urban design, rituals, political philosophies, and patriotic identities. Simply put, the Bible was everywhere, relentlessly displayed in objects, buildings, images, and sermons” (par. 8). The widespread use of such typological comparisons in early modern public discourses, both Protestant and Catholic, attests not only to the popularity of the strategy, but also to the level of biblical knowledge assumed in the audience, who are clearly expected to understand the significance of the typological correlations. One critically important result of this kind of typological reading of events and people was the space it created for the voices of those who did not possess significant social, economic, or educational capital. The biblical texts are replete with figures of prophets commissioned by God to bring the word of the Lord to the nation and its leaders. Furthermore, in biblical 16 In England’s Petition to their King (1643), the book of Samuel is offered as support for the pamphlet’s critique of absolutism (Gillespie, Domesticity and Dissent 79). Among individual authors, the active sectarian Katharine Chidley frames The Justification of the Independent Churches of Christ with biblical references to the era of judges in Israel’s history, suggesting that England would profit from that more democratic, less legislated form of government (79). Anna Trapnel, too, envisions “a world without kings,” using the days of the judges as a political model and historic precedent (98). During the era of the Commonwealth, Cromwell viewed himself “as a second Joshua or Moses leading God’s chosen English people out of the Egyptian slavery of Charles I’s reign” (Durstan and Eales 17). In America, Thomas Hooker wrote, “God makes account that New England shall be a refuge for his Noahs and his Lots, a rock and shelter for his righteous ones to run unto" (qtd. in Zakai par. 5). While Noah and Lot were not from the days of the Judges, they represent a period in Old Testament history when God spoke directly to people, when not even judges were necessary to deliver God’s messages. John Cotton titled his “proposed legal code, Moses His Judicials ” (Francis Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards [Hanover and London: U. of New England P., 1995] 77). Writing about community governance at the local level, John Davenport argued that “the power of the government…is originally in the people,” who would entrust their representatives “to choose magistrates by their suffrage [who will] follow the counsel of Jethro to Moses…” (Bremer 90; editorial brackets in original). 15 narratives, shepherds become kings, obscure unknowns and social outcasts bring messages from the mouth of God to those in authority, apparently promiscuous women are named in the recorded genealogy of Christ, and uneducated former fishermen travel Asia Minor to spread Christianity in places where Greek philosophers once debated and wrote, all transformations that potentially destabilize any clear boundaries between private and public spheres or between aristocratic privilege and lower-class subservience. Whether through the circulation of manuscripts among social, religious, or family communities; or through the more widespread distribution of printed texts; or through verbal speech to a present, public audience of some kind, early modern speakers repeatedly appropriated a variety of voices and roles taken from biblical texts and narratives not only as a way to authorize themselves with a variety of audiences, but also as a means of investing contemporary events and figures with a significance and purpose that expanded beyond the immediate historical moment, that reached both backwards in history and arced forwards into the future, which for the early moderns represented a destiny as concretely real as their own present existence. Typology and early modern women What, then, is the particular significance of this widely used discourse of typology for early modern women? What can we learn from their use of this strategy about the ways in which women rhetorically navigated their way out of the marginal spaces to which early modern gender stereotypes confined them? And how did this rhetorical strategy authorize them to participate in significant public conversations of the day and enable them to construct themselves as actors with significant roles to play in the public dramas from which they had previously been excluded? Much ground-breaking work has already been done on the strategies early modern women appropriated to negotiate the restrictions imposed by the ingrained cultural belief that a virtuous woman was also a silent woman. 17 Many of those critical studies have examined 17 A few representative monographs and collections among many: Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works , ed. Margaret Patterson Hannay (Kent, OH: Kent State U.P., 1985), an early, defining collection; Elaine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Elaine Hobby, The Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1649-1688 (London: Virago, 1988); Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss, eds., Women, Texts and Histories 1575-1760 (London: Routledge, 1992); Margaret Ezell, Writing Women’s Literary History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1993); Women and Literature in Britain, 1500-1700 , ed. by Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: 16 women’s use of biblical rationales and their appropriation of biblical roles to legitimate public speech in a variety of genres: translations, mother’s legacies, devotional poetry, letters to communities of faith, spiritual autobiographies, prophecies, and “missionary” narratives. 18 At the same time, a number of those studies have found problematic the self-emptying that seems to be inherent in women assuming biblical voices; critics argue that in order to gain the authority invested in biblical roles, particularly the prophetic role, women had to suppress or surrender any specific human, female voice in order to speak as the instrument of God. 19 Additionally, some critics have suggested that since the models to which women had access were those scripted by males, women writers ultimately could speak only as their voices were subsumed in the patriarchal voices of their models. 20 Newer voices to the conversation have taken issue with these readings. Katharine Gillespie, for example, has argued that early modern sectarian women held to a “vision of an equality predicated on androgynous spirituality as opposed to [an] embodied physicality” that traditional views claimed “rendered [women] susceptible to and in
Cambridge University Press, 1996); Kate Chedgzoy, Melanie Hansen, and Suzanne Trill, eds., Voicing Women: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern Writing (1996; Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1997). Susan Wiseman, Conspiracy and Virtue: Women, Writing, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2007). 18 For a general introduction see Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England, 1520-1750 (New York: Routledge, 1996). Since religion was such an integral element in early modern culture, many of the works above also touch on the intersection of religion and women’s writing. Among the more specifically focused studies, again too numerous to detail here, representative works includes Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth Century England ; Diane Watt in Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 1997); Sylvia Brown’s substantial introduction to Women’s Writing in Stuart England: The Mother’s Legacies of Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Joscelin, and Elizabeth Richardson (Stroud: Sutton, 1999); Hilary Hinds, God’s Englishwomen: Seventeenth-century Radical Sectarian Writing and Feminist Criticism (Manchester and New York: Manchester U.P., St. Martin’s, 1999); Katharine Gillespie, Domesticity and dissent in the seventeenth-century: English women writers and the public sphere (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2004); Teresa Feroli, Political speaking justified: women prophets and the English Revolution (Newark : University of Delaware Press, 2006). On women and Catholicism, see Frances E. Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-century Print Culture , 2 nd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: U. of Notre Dame P., 2005). 19 See particularly Hilary Hinds, God’s Englishwomen ; Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England ; Susan Wiseman, “Unsilent Instruments and the Devil’s Cushions: Authority in Seventeenth-Century Women’s Prophetic Discourse,” New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts , ed. Isobel Armstrong (London and New York: Routledge, 1992) 176-96; and Megan Matchinske on Eleanor Davis in Chapter 4 of Gender and State in Early Modern England: Identity Formation and the Female Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1998). 20 Patricia Phillippy, Women, Death, and Literature in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002); Diane Purkiss, “Material Girls: The Seventeenth-century Woman Debate,” Women, Texts, and Histories, 1575-1760 , ed. Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (London and New York: Routledge, 1992) 69-101. 17 need of…patriarchal control” ( Domesticity and Dissent 31). In her more recent but less wide- ranging study of early modern prophecy, Teresa Feroli puts forward similar claims, calling the women she discusses “the first significant group of women to instantiate the political authority of self-consciously female selves” (16). This project both builds on the critical work that has already been done and undertakes a more extensive investigation of the ways in which typology functions as a rhetorical strategy that not only enables women’s public speech, but that also positions them within the larger pattern of history as active agents who have a significant part to play, no matter where they are located. In spite of the many pioneering and impressive studies that have focused on early modern women, we have yet to understand fully the degree to which women drew on their biblical knowledge as a kind of capital that equipped them to engage in public debate, or to appreciate fully the nuanced messages that typological rhetoric enabled these women to send to audiences whose minds had been similarly shaped and informed by what Clement Hawes calls “a Bible-soaked culture” (26), a culture in which–whatever one’s religious orientation–the Bible was still the central text which shaped all other texts. Early modern Christian humanism promoted “the availability of biblical texts for lay piety, [as] part of a larger movement to normalize religion and religious belief while educating males and females of all social classes” (Glenn 125). For those women who were reading literate, the Protestant Reformation had “recognized [their] right to read and interpret the Scriptures and even to disagree with men’s interpretations” (150). In conjunction with that new freedom, women were strongly encouraged to limit their reading to the Bible and to secondary devotional and didactic texts that also drew heavily on Scripture. Even those who were not reading literate would have been very familiar with biblical stories and texts through regular church attendance from childhood, and through the reading aloud of the Bible and devotional texts that often formed a part of regular religious practices in the home at which the whole household would be present. Thus, women were as likely as, or perhaps more likely than men to be intimately acquainted with the scriptures that were often appropriated as an interpretive framework for making sense of contemporary events and political crises. Certainly, this high level of cultural familiarity facilitates the ease and adeptness with which women of differing religious and educational backgrounds employ this strategy of typology. However, they also evidence an ability to go beyond rote parallels, a capacity to comprehend their personal
18 situations as embedded within a broader historical pattern that is set in motion and ultimately controlled by God, investing everything they do with divine significance. Even more importantly, the inherent narrative nature of typological rhetoric assumes and encourages a view of existence that is both performative and dynamic. That these early modern women consistently cast their stories, speeches, and actions in the shape of biblical models suggests that women see themselves as having a crucial role to play in the context of their specific circumstances, which are an integral part of the larger Judaeo-Christian historical narrative to which they subscribe. In my project, I focus on eleven early modern women, representing eight different confessional affiliations, whose rhetorical performances range in time from 1547 to 1680, in both England and New England. This century and a half not only allows me to include English- speaking women from many of the key periods of the early modern era, but also makes it possible to explore how they used typology within a range of geographical, historical, political, and social contexts. I organize my study around significant locations and circumstances that prompted these women to adopt typology as a rhetorical strategy: sites of domestic routines typical for women, sites of both planned and unplanned travel in the outside world, sites of conflict with local religious communities, and sites of legal examinations and court proceedings. Because a significant element of my argument is that women’s appropriation of typology as a rhetorical strategy can be found across a broad expanse of time, genres, confessional affiliations, and classes, I deliberately consider a wide range of texts, including representative texts from New England. The recent emphasis on transatlanticism in literary studies has foregrounded the multiple connections and exchanges between the “old” England and the “new,” and one significant connection is a shared typological rhetoric. This flourishing of the typological imagination on both sides of the Atlantic invites—even mandates—the inclusion of at least some colonial texts in this project. As I will argue, women’s use of typology enabled them to subvert the boundaries of space and behavior established in most male-authored texts; to re-exegete the biblical bases for the constricting and restricting female roles and stereotypes frequently embodied in those texts; and to lay claim, through such rhetorical strategies, to independent and influential roles in history-making in their cultural context, offering compelling evidence through the appropriation of biblical types for women’s active involvement at the intersections of public and private in the inevitably overlapping circles of family, religious community, and state.
19 While the exact definition and application of typology may be a matter of scholarly debate today, a cursory look at early modern texts in English suggests that the term “type” was used in a broad range of contexts and applied to an equally broad range of biblical events and characters. And for early modern women, typology was never primarily about categories or structures, nor was it primarily about the immaterial or even the inanimate, although those, too, played a role. It was about people and events; it was about history; and it was about their belief that they had as much to say as anyone about their own destiny and the shape of the world of religion and politics into which their lives were so tightly woven. I suggest that women were particularly sensitive to the potential of this rhetorical strategy not only to provide a platform for speech, but also to shape a space into which they could insert themselves as agents of more than local significance in the larger framework of providential history. If we consider typology as supplying a kind of foundational grammar for women’s religious discourses in early modern England and the colonies, we not only open up additional ways to understand those discourses, but we also become more aware of the way in which typology functions as a particularly flexible and pervasive rhetorical strategy which can cross confessional boundaries and be adapted to opposing political loyalties and ideologies. Ultimately, I believe, such an investigation powerfully illustrates that women understood their roles not as footnotes to history, private asides to the main conversation, or variations on major themes established and controlled by men. Daniel Jaeckle, in his analysis of typology in Cleveland’s The Kings Disguise , notes that the intersection of typologies, frequently a characteristic of the texts I discuss, works to create “a powerfully ambivalent sense of the historical moment” (79). While it has most commonly garnered critical attention as a means to legitimate political existence and authoritative roles for men, women effectively appropriated typological rhetoric to perform influential roles that they believed were critically and intricately linked to the larger currents of political and religious history-in-the-making, to position themselves as influential actors in the highly public spheres of religion, church, and state in the early modern world. This study begins in the traditionally domestic space of the home, where early modern women were seen to have a “natural” place, and moves through increasingly public spaces, culminating in the most public and conflicted space of all, where women are placed under official examination or on trial in a court of law. In each chapter, I first consider several male-
20 authored texts that represent women in the designated space, looking at the ways in which the writers represent both men and women–their behavior, their comparative agency--in connection with the particular site on which the chapter focuses. Against that background, I examine the radical way in which women use typological strategies to rewrite and transform those same spaces. In the first chapter, I focus on “private” domestic spaces, examining particularly the ways in which domestic furniture functioned as sites upon which women could erect typological identities. Here I examine texts by Catholic, Church of England, and Quaker women: The Lady Falkland: Her Life , the biography of Elizabeth Cary, composed by one of her daughters in the mid-seventeenth century; the Autobiography of Alice Thornton , composed, revised, and expanded between 1660 and 1668; and A Short Relation of Cruel Sufferings, For the Truth’s Sake (1662), a collection of documents written by two Quaker missionaries during their several years’ imprisonment by the Inquisition in Malta. In the second chapter, which moves outside the familiar and domestic spaces of the home, I focus on travel narratives written by women, considering the ways in which the writers appropriate and adapt the templates of pilgrimage and royal progress, two ritual forms of movement, to shape their “traveling performances” and to define their role as representatives of a larger community of faith. Here I look at two primary women’s texts: Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea (1654), the Fifth Monarchist prophet’s recounting of her journey to Wales, undertaken in obedience to God’s command; and The sovereignty and goodness of God, together with the faithfulness of His promises displayed (1682), the well-known account of Mary Rowlandson’s capture by Indians and her forced trek through the wilderness of New England. Continuing the trajectory forward into more conflicted spaces, the third chapter focuses on public, published controversies between women and local church leadership, and the ways in which the women use typological rhetoric to sequester themselves from what they consider the over-reaching demands of their former religious communities. Here I consider two texts by sectarian women in England: Susanna’s Apology Against the Elders (1659), Susannah Parr’s pre- Restoration account of her conflict with her church, which forms the final (as far as we know) entry in a protracted pamphlet debate over her eventual excommunication; and A Vindication of Anne Wentworth (1677), Wentworth’s account of her resistance to the censoring imposed on her by her husband and by the Baptist congregation of which she had been a member.
21 Finally, to complete the project, I focus in my fourth chapter on women’s encounters with authority and the law in the more formal contexts and highly contested spaces of legal examinations and court trials, looking at the typological strategies that these women used to gain rhetorical power and use it to their own advantage. Here I examine three texts in which women in quite different contexts actively engage with their examiners: The Examinations of Anne Askew (1547), which contain Askew’s recounting of her questioning for heresy by the authorities during the last year of Henry VIII’s reign; “The Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newtown,” an anonymous transcription of Hutchinson’s trial for her radical Antinomian views, held in New England in 1646; and Malice Defeated (1680), the self-published account by Elizabeth Cellier, a Catholic midwife, of her trial for her alleged involvement in the Popish Plot. My analysis of these narratives emphasizes the ways in which these women put typology to powerful uses, mobilizing it as a rhetorical strategy that functions not only in their defense, but also proactively, as an offensive strategy that enables them to, in effect, put the examiners themselves on trial.
22 Chapter One: Domestic Furniture, Typology, and the Householders of Faith [W]ere [women] admitted to co-equal sway in a Domestick Kingdome, [they] would presently begin to aspire at Absolute monarchy, then to challenge an equall Autority in State, to make Laws, bear Offices, vote as Members in Parliament, and afterwards presume to sit in Moses his Chair pretending they have power to TEACH as well as RULE…. Robert Whitehall, The Womans Right Proved False (c. 1674-1680) [F]or you will see that all women, or the vast majority, are so very attentive, careful, and diligent in governing their households and in providing everything for them, according to their capacities, that sometimes some of their negligent husbands are annoyed…. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) Introduction In early modern culture, the domestic space of the home served both to define and to confine women. Expressing a common anxiety, Thomas Salter, in The Mirror of Modesty (1579), cautions against allowing women any influence outside the domestic domain; he warns males in his audience to “[see] then that the governement of estates and publike weales are not committed into the handes of women (n.p.). 21 Writing a century later, Robert Whitehall, quoted above, vehemently warns against placing too much authority in the hands of women even in the “Domestick Kingdome,” prophesying that this seemingly minor concession would unleash a frightening (to men) series of seismic tremors in society, culminating in the collapse of the very foundations of patriarchal power. His dire prediction represents women as so hungry for power that they would not be satisfied even with monarchical privilege or parliamentary influence, but would seek to assume the all-encompassing role of Moses: deliverer, miracle worker, God’s mouthpiece, and leader of the Jewish nation for over forty years. 22 While Whitehall’s rant may be
21 Salter’s text is largely a translation of Giovanni Bruto's La institutione di una fanciulla nata nobilmente (Antwerp, 1555). 22 Whitehall’s use of Moses may have had added political allusions. When the Puritans came to power in England under Oliver Cromwell, one of the major typologies invoked read the nation as the Israelites and Cromwell as Moses. In 1653, Colonel John Spittlehouse published a tract whose title explicitly makes that parallel : A 23 in part rhetorical performance for its own sake, his words underline both the need males felt to contain women within a secured space and their fear that early modern women had both the desire and the ability to escape the constraints of the role they were expected to fill. In that world, the lives of most women “were indeed largely filled with homely business” (Wilcox, “Private Writing” 56). In her recent article offering productive ways in which to analyze “trace” texts left by early modern women, Susan Frye argues that the domestic household “formed the conceptual space from which so many of women’s published texts emanated and whose occurrence in manuscript or print provides the most visible means to assess how women worked within and reworked the place of women” (234-35). My project begins with women’s “reworking” of this “conceptual space” of domesticity as they invest the familiar, static trappings of the household with dynamic typological meaning. In particular, I will focus on the significant ways in which early modern women appropriated the domestic furniture of bed and table as sites on which to erect their typological identity. Through creating, directing, and acting in typologically-inflected scenarios and tableaux, women transform these material objects most commonly associated with “homely” activities into public stages on which they can perform typological identities that position them to speak to audiences extending beyond the immediate members of their families and households. In choosing to foreground beds and tables, women could draw upon the typological and sociological meanings with which these items of domestic furniture were already heavily imprinted in early modern England, meanings that went well beyond purely domestic and practical concerns and that made seemingly innocuous household furnishing into potential objects of public attention and significance. Thus, the domestic space, at once mundane and invested with multiple religious and cultural associations, presented women with an opportunity Warning-Piece Discharged: Or, Certain Intelligence Communicated to His Excellencie the Lord General Cromwell . . . As also, A brief and full Parallel betwixt the History of Israel and our late and present Series of Affairs. In which Simile, Our present General is compar'd with Moses, as he was their Deliverer, Judge, and General…. In 1653, Cromwell himself declared before Parliament that the Exodus story was “the only parallel of God’s dealing with us that I know” (qtd. in John K. Hale, “England as Israel in Milton’s Writings,” Early Modern Literary Studies 2.2 [1996]: 3.1-54, par. 6). Hale points out that the typology was invoked by others as a means of both “leverage” (e.g., Winstanley) and “deflation” (par. 7). Thus, Whitehall’s comparison, made at a time when England was once more under a king, could possibly have carried an added layer of ironic disapproval, suggesting that women, not satisfied with playing monarch or parliamentarian, would not hesitate to rebel against the “natural” leader and create chaos far beyond the “Domestick Kingdome.” If his text was written closer to 1680, the height of the Exclusion Crisis, Whitehall’s reference to “Absolute monarchy” could also be calculated to raise the triple specters of Louis XIV, Charles I, and Henrietta Maria, the latter the object of criticism for exercising considerably more influence in the political arena than was considered appropriate for a female consort, particularly a Catholic one. 24 to appropriate these material fixtures and routine activities of their daily lives for purposes other than those inculcated and approved by their upbringings, religious teachings, and a multitude of conduct manuals. While the “reputation and credit” of women in charge of households “was strongly associated with housewifely accomplishments and matronly honour” (Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death 288), general critical opinion has established that “the household was [also] the crucial site of both observance and resistance” (Dolan, “Spaces” 652). In the Life , Cary’s biographer remarks on her mother’s facility with the needle, one of the defining abilities of the gentlewoman; although “never having been helped by anybody,” Cary can produce needlework that proves herself “skilful and curious in working” (186). Yet, the biographer adds, “those that knew her would never have believed she knew how to hold a needle unless they had seen it” (186), that cryptic comment a potential allusion to Cary’s lack of adeptness in other kinds of household tasks; a potential compliment on the impressive quality of the work done by a self- taught needlewoman; or—most apropos to my purpose here—a veiled suggestion that Cary chose to give most of her time and attention to work that had greater significance in her mind than providing superficial ornamentation for the household. 23 In his Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex (1529), Cornelius Agrippa laments that “as soon as she is born a woman is confined in idleness at home from her earliest years, and, as if incapable of functions more important, she has no other prospect than needle and thread” (95). The women discussed in this chapter proved quite capable of creating much larger prospects for themselves, as they used everyday household furniture to stage typological performances that allowed them as actors and directors to participate in much larger, ongoing, public dramas. In order to highlight the uniqueness of the typological strategies these early modern women practiced, I first examine some of the ways in which male authors appropriated domestic spaces and furniture to give public significance to male actions, while at the same time critiquing and marginalizing women by associating them with those same spaces and objects. I look at several bed scenes in Shakespeare’s Henriad and at table scenes in Arden of Feversham (1592) 23 While both Cary and her biographer seem to have minimal interest in the traditional accomplishments of the average gentlewoman, the products of such seemingly “silent” tasks like needlework also “constitute a distinct feminine textual tradition, however difficult it may be to recover,” as Susan Frye has argued in her recent article “Maternal Textualities,” Maternal Measures: Figuring caregiving in the early modern period , ed. Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000) 225. Unlike Cornelius Agrippa, Frye sees a continuity rather than disjunction between needle and pen; she views “women’s taking up the pen as inseparable from their creating a variety of texts, all of which represent a recontouring of masculinist categories” (226). 25 and Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590), examining both as sites that represented women’s duty to maintain their husbands’ name, lineage, and social reputation. Against the background of these male-authored representations of women in the domestic space, I examine three women’s texts. First, I discuss The Lady Falkland: Her Life , a biography of Elizabeth Cary written in the later 1640s by one of Cary’s daughters. 24 Although the text never appeared in print, the hagiographic elements in the narrative suggest that the writer intended this manuscript memorial to her mother for circulation among the communities of the order to which she belonged, as was common with such manuscript lives, and perhaps beyond, to a wider Catholic audience. While Cary’s class, marriage, and geographical location initially placed her at the social and political center of early Stuart England, the Life represents the typological strategies in which Cary engaged as one means of resisting the marginalization she subsequently experienced because of her conversion to Catholicism in the early 1630s. Secondly, I look at the Autobiography of Alice Thornton .25 While Thornton’s class, marriage, and geographical location in northern England placed her, unlike the younger Elizabeth Cary, well outside the central political and social milieu of London, Thornton’s diaries provide us with a unique perspective on the life of a woman of the minor gentry whose Royalist sympathies nevertheless positioned her and her family in the midst of the political and economic upheavals of the English civil war. Through her use of typological rhetoric, Thornton interweaves biblical history with family history, claiming for family chronicle a level of shared importance with national history. Finally, I consider A Short Relation of Cruel Sufferings (1662), quite a different text, a collection of letters and personal accounts written by Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers, Quaker missionaries imprisoned by the Inquisition for a number of months on the isle of Malta, just after the Restoration. In their multi-genre collaborative narrative, Evans and Chevers mobilize the typological associations of bed and table to authorize their messages to both church and nation. As I will show, women laid claim to these sites for their own purposes, purposes which often reinterpreted and expanded the roles that cultural expectations had firmly imprinted on
24 According to Heather Wolfe, based on the handwriting, the primary authorship seems to belong to Lucy, although the manuscript bears additional notations and changes in three other hands. See “Introduction,” Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland: Life and Letters , ed. Heather Wolfe (Cambridge, UK: RTM Publications; Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Renaissance and Medieval Studies/Arizona State U.; Ithaca: North American Distributors CUPS, 2001) 87. 25 I will base my discussion on the Surtees Society collated edition of the three journals that Thornton wrote, enlarged, and revised between 1660 and 1668.
26 such household spaces. Refusing to limit themselves to the culturally approved role of serving men with their bodies and hands in beds and at tables, women engaged in typological strategies that appropriated these household furnishings as productive sites upon which to enact typological dramas centered on women playing roles that invested them with a spiritual authority birthed in domesticity, but extending far beyond the contained space of the household. In her recently study of early modern domesticity and dissent, Katharine Gillespie argues that, in spite of the tendency of postmodern feminist criticism to represent the home as “an unremittingly repressive space for women,” sectarian women frequently “portrayed the exercise of their own domestic agency as positive, non-transgressive, conducive to order, disruptive to some forms of property but protective of others, obedient (to God anyway), endowed with communal sanction, and respectful of the self-sovereignty of others” ( Domesticity and Dissent 44, 47). This chapter shows that not only sectarian women like Evans and Chevers, but also gentry women with more traditional confessional allegiances, practiced typological strategies that enabled them to use “domestic agency” as a means of engaging in the public discourses and concerns of their culture.
“Glorious household stuff”: Domestic furniture, rituals, and religion To fully appreciate the significance and range of the typological strategies practiced by the women I discuss, we must first understand the kinds of meanings with which the bed and the table were already heavily imprinted in early modern culture, meanings that to the early modern audience would have been immediately and patently obvious. First, this domestic furniture performs typological functions rooted in key biblical narratives, narratives into which the women I discuss inserted themselves, becoming the biblical characters on whom the stories centered. The bed plays one of its most significant roles in its association with Old Testament patriarchs whose deathbed scenes provide critical moments in the scriptural narrative that functioned to sanction the spiritual authority of the patriarch and to reinforce the continuity of the family (the future nation of Israel, in utero, so to speak). While the development of the ars moriendi tradition in England owed much to the historic circumstances of the plague, 26 the significance invested in 26 In their introduction to the early 17 th -century funeral sermon for Frances, Lady Robartes, Bettie Anne Doebler and Retha Warnicke attribute the rise of the tradition to the realities of outbreaks of the plague in England, particularly during the fourteenth century. See “Introduction,” Hannibal Gamon, The Praise of a godly woman , ed. Bettie Anne Doebler and Retha Warnicke (Ann Arbor: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 2001) 34. Because many of those dying were not able to receive the sacrament, the ars moriendi tradition grew out of the resulting emphasis on “a pattern of dying by which the prayers of the one who was ill, assisted by her family, gave both her and the family
27 the deathbed had as much to do with such representations in biblical history as with the material circumstances of recent history. Thus, embedded in the English memory were familiar scriptural meanings attached to the scene of dying that made it a moment of significant import. The typological template appears most clearly in the narrative of the death of Jacob, a key Old Testament patriarch as the father of the twelve sons whose descendants would eventually be named as the twelve tribes of Israel. 27 As he lies on his deathbed, he summons his sons: “Gather your selves together, that I may tell you what shal come to you in the last dayes” (Gen. 49.1 Geneva). Addressing each son in turn, Jacob prophesies not only personal, but political destiny, declaring that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a Lawegiver from betweene his feete, until Shiloh [Jesus, according to the Geneva’s marginal note] come, and the people shall be gathered unto him” (Gen. 49.10). This biblical act of “blessing” functions to reaffirm the family identity and to predict future successes and failures, the latter as bluntly declared as the former; while Judah’s destiny is “the obedience of the nations” (49.10), Simeon and Levi’s history of violence leads Jacob to vow that he will “scatter” and “disperse” them (49.7). 28 The Geneva editors conclude by rendering Jacob as a model of the art of dying well, noting that the intriguing scriptural detail of the patriarch “[plucking] up his feete into the bed” shows “howe quietly he dyed” (49.33). The ritual of the deathbed scene encompasses the past (the lived life of the
the assurance of a good death” when priests could not attend at the bedsides of all those succumbing to the plague. Since “this practice of taking responsibility for one’s own dying” could be adapted to Protestant practices and beliefs surrounding death, “the art of dying . . . [remained] rooted in English consciousness during the Reformation” (34). 27 Other important but more abbreviated representations of the deathbed blessing are Isaac’s giving of his blessing to his son Jacob, believing him to be Esau, the firstborn of his twin sons and thus Isaac’s rightful heir (Genesis 27). In this instance, Isaac does not die until some time later, but gives his blessing because of his age and his concern that he may die at any time. This narrative underlines the power invested in this final blessing. Later, when Esau comes to Isaac for his rightful blessing only to find that Jacob has stolen it, he begs his father to bless him, too. Isaac’s response casts the blessing almost as a fiat: “…..So what can I possibly do for you, my son?” A second important deathbed moment is David’s charge to his son Solomon as death is imminent, final words that not only predict the potential future of Solomon and his descendants, but also warn him of potential political troublemakers in the kingdom (I Kings 2). In both these narratives, the words are spoken from father to son, apparently without others present, although servants may certainly have been there. Jacob’s blessing of his sons makes concrete the larger significance of this act, since they form not only a household, but also a nation in the making. 28 While the fate of Simeon and Levi, along with that predicted for several other sons, may not seem much like a “blessing,” the term is emphatically repeated at the end of the ritual: “this is what their father said to them when he blessed them, giving each the blessing appropriate to him” (49.28 KJV; my emphasis). The Geneva Bible’s wording of the text is even more emphatic: “their father spake unto them, and blessed them: every one of them blessed hee with a severall blessing ” (my emphasis).
28 patriarch), the present (the children), and the future (the nation to come), investing the moment with a significance both spiritual and historical. Even more so than the bed, the table carried well-established biblical associations in early modern culture. While there are significant stories centered on the table throughout the Bible, the defining narrative is the account of the last meal Jesus had with his disciples before his crucifixion, which itself was a celebration of the central meal of the Old Testament, the feast of the Passover, which was instituted by God on the eve of the exodus of the Jewish nation from their Egyptian captivity and reenacted yearly among practicing Jews (Exodus 12.1-10). The New Testament event, of course, was eventually ceremonialized by the church into what Margaret Visser calls “undoubtedly the most significance-charged dinner ritual ever devised” (36). While the Reformation displaced the mass as the central worship event, in the English church, the Eucharist still remained a very predominant ritual meal in practice and in the popular imagination. In the 1559 edition of the Book of Common Prayer , the communion table is referred to as “the Lord’s table” and “God’s board”; in the Thirty-nine Articles (1563), the Eucharistic rite is called “the supper of the Lord” (Cressy and Ferrell 45, 46, 66). George Herbert, whose phrase from “Affliction I” heads the title of this section, captures the intimate interconnection between the domestic act of table hospitality and its religious counterpart in another poem from The Temple , “Love III,” in which the poet figures God as the host-servant to the speaker’s sinner-guest: “And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?” / “My dear, then I will serve.” / “You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.” So I did sit and eat (15-18; qtd. Heal 292). According to Felicity Heal, “Herbert firmly believed that the winning of souls could be linked closely to the giving of dinner” (292). As some of the women’s texts discussed in this chapter will show, Herbert was not the only one to dramatize the table as the center of both social and spiritual life. While “Love III” represents the communion table as a scene of simple, peaceful domesticity, in reality the Eucharist was also a site of continued political and religious contention in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, giving any allusions to this site added weight. Showing the common early modern hermeneutic of reading the parallels between event and typological significance quite literally, A View of Popish Abuses (1572) criticizes the tradition of kneeling to receive the elements: “For as in the Old Testament, eating the paschal lamb standing signified a readiness to pass, even so in receiving it now sitting, according to the example of
29 Christ, we signify rest, that is a full finishing through Christ of all the ceremonial law, and a perfect work of redemption wrought that giveth rest forever” (Cressy and Ferrell 84). 29 Along with the debate over the “proper” position for receiving, the physical placement of the table also prompted controversy. Conformists and nonconformists argued over the latter, their opposing positions reflecting differing views on ecclesiastical hierarchy and attitudes toward congregants. In a complaint heard by one of Laud’s representatives, a Leicestershire parson was condemned for “[causing] the communion table to be removed out of the chancel into the body of the church at the time of administration of the communion”; the minister was given direction that forthwith the elements were to be administered only from the chancel (157). As to how the table should look, in his Injunctions (1571), intended to bring churches into line with Protestant practice, Archbishop Grindal maintains that one of the “necessary and requisite” things is “a comely and decent table, standing on a frame, for the holy communion, with a fair linen cloth to lay upon the same, and some covering of silk, buckram, or other such like for the clean keeping thereof” (Cressy and Ferrell 91). More general, but similar directions appear in the 1604 Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical , which directs that “convenient and decent tables” should be “kept and repaired in a sufficient and seemly manner” (131-32). Later in the century, the Roots and Branches Petition (1640), addressing concerns of both appearance and placement, condemned “the turning of the communion table altar-wise, setting images, crucifixes, and conceits over them [sic], and tapers and books upon them, and bowing or adoring to or before them . . . and forcing people to come up thither to receive, or else denying the sacrament to them; terming the altar to be the mercy-seat, or the place of God Almighty in the church, which is a plain device to usher in the mass” (177). Reflecting a similar anxiety over the specter of Catholicism, Bishop Richard Montague goes so far as to claim in his articles of Enquiry for the diocese of Norwich (1638) that the state of the communion elements themselves has actually contributed to people’s decision to convert to Catholicism. Asking if the bread and wine are “of the best sort, fine, clean, sweet, not musty or unsavoury,” he claims that the latter state of the elements, “beside the profanation, of my knowledge hath been occasion to some of turning Papists, who could not swallow it in disrelishment” (168). While Montague may seem to be exaggerating the potential negative effect of stale bread or sour wine, his concern reminds us
29 At the Hampton Court conference in 1604, the “correct” posture of the congregants for receiving the Eucharist was still a debated question.
30 that taking communion was at once a spiritual and a physical act, and that the table provided the material focus of an event that, for early modern participants, embodied God’s hospitable welcome in the same form they themselves used to welcome guests into their own homes. In addition to the roles bed and table played in defining biblical narratives, these domestic furnishings also played a significant role in cultural traditions and understandings. Concluding his extensive study of birth, marriage, and death in early modern England, David Cressy points out that “ritual was crucial to English social life…. Whether rooted in custom or scripted and scrutinized by religion, ritual activity helped to remind people of what they had in common” (475). Beds and tables in particular provided the material focal point for traditional cultural and religious rituals that were at the center of both life and death in early modern England. 30 For the majority of women, the “normal” progression of life could be defined in terms of the bed: the marriage bed, the childbed, and the deathbed, with the latter two sometimes present simultaneously. Even for the greater part of women for whom a period of domestic service during adolescence and early adulthood often delayed marriage, that service provided the primary means to accumulate or augment the dowry necessary to secure a husband (Mendelson and Crawford 107). Maternity was expected to follow marriage, with more pressure on upper class women to produce children, especially sons to succeed to the father’s name and estate. With the bed as the central stage property, dramas of birth and death were “semi-public”; women bore children surrounded by other women and often died encircled by family and friends (195). The latter event would be, “according to Christian counsel,…attended by ministers and friends, neighbours and kin, who would share godly comfort and bear witness to a satisfactory passing” (Cressy 390). For women, the intersection between the bedroom and their roles as mothers provided a platform for speech that was otherwise denied them; they seized the opportunity to write advice to children and make wills that, like Alice Thornton’s, offer a glimpse into the intersection between the relationships and the possessions that women most valued. 31
30 Legal records of early modern wills support the importance of beds as material possessions. According to Jane Cox, “a specialist in old legal documents” at London’s Public Records Office, research has shown that “beds and bedsteads were without doubt valuable and prized items, and they were normally carefully bequeathed.” See Marjorie Garber, “Second-Best Bed,” Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture , ed. Carla Mazzio and Douglas Trevor (New York: Routledge, 2000) 377. 31 Crawford and Gowing point out that “the careful division of household goods is typical of [seventeenth- century] women’s wills.” See Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook , ed. Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing (London and New York: Routledge, 2000) 120. For example, rather than grouping
31 While the bed functioned as the locus for the momentous occasions of birth and death, the table represented the rhythm of daily life and provided a gathering point at which the identity of the household could be established and renewed. 32 The degree to which mealtime was enacted as a ritual varied according to class; upper-class and aristocratic households engaged in an involved, carefully scripted “dining ceremony” centered on the carving of the meat and the presentation of the various dishes in their proper sequence (Caton 81). While the conception of charity as “mutual amity,” with a focus on community, lost currency between 1400 and 1700, there was still a correlation between the table and the practice of hospitality (Heal 15). As the country house poems by Jonson, Marvell, and others show, the “shared ritual of eating” functioned to represent “a community not only well ordered, but powerfully integrated” (111). In The Gentile Sinner , published in 1660, Clement Ellis was still paying homage to the typology of the table in his definition of a gentleman as one whose “Table is moderate, that so his Charity and Hospitality may exceed” (qtd. in Heal 16). Thus the table functions as a marker of social status, community responsibility, and personal character. Exclusions and Transgressions: Male-authored representations of the domestic In Paradise Lost , Milton stages a tableau that subtly underlines both male expectation and male privilege in the domestic realm. When Raphael arrives in Eden to fortify Adam and Eve against potential attack by Satan, the angel finds a hospitable welcome in the form of a meal, an offering of the best of the garden’s produce. While an actual table does not appear in this prelapsarian paradise, its function as a center of interactions between family and guest clearly shapes both the scene and the roles played (at least in Milton’s imagination) by “our Grand possessions according to their relative monetary value, Isabel Wharton wrote a will that inventoried her goods according to who was to receive them when she died (120). 32 The household, as I will use the term, subsumes family members, any other residents, and household staff and servants. According to Felicity Heal’s study on hospitality, in the early sixteenth century the word “stranger” referred to any individual “who was not attached to a particular familia ” (9). Heal also points out that the larger household itself was considered an expression of the head of the household (i.e., the husband/father), “its behavior the physical presentation of the attributes of the man” (17). In records of guests kept by family stewards, the determining factor was not people’s acquaintance with the family, but whether or not they were residents of the household. As the “Epistle Dedicatory” to John Allington’s A Review of a Brief Apology (1666) suggests, the table could play a role in defining the makeup of the household. Outlining the spiritual responsibilities of the head of the household, Allington advises the use of set prayers to “any worthy and devout person [who] would that all who lodge under his Roof, or come ordinarily to his Table should joyn with him at his hours of Prayer” (n.p.; my emphasis). Auto/biographies of women like Elizabeth Cary, Alice Thornton, and Ann Clifford show that “family” business was often “household” business and that servants and staff often played critical roles in determining the relational dynamics of the household.
32 parents” (I.29). Eve acts the traditional domestic role to perfection; “on hospitable thoughts intent” (V.332), she prepares the food, serves it, and then quietly effaces herself, physically and intellectually removing herself from the lengthy conversation between the two men, present as a listener but not as a participant. Her behavior embodies the approved conduct set out clearly in William Gouge’s Domesticall Duties : “a wives reverence is manifested by the speech, both in her husbands presence, and also in his absence. For this end in his presence her words must be few, reverend and meeke . . . . [T]oo much speech implieth an usurpation of authoritie” (qtd. in Raber 324). In general, male representations of domestic furniture reinforce the view of the household as “a kind of private princedom” 33 ; women functioned in beds to bear heirs and at tables as decorative, submissive supports to the male head of the household. Conversely, representations emphasize the betrayal of the marriage bed, with the threat of bastards born to steal the benefits of birth from legitimate children, the irritation (to the husband) of wifely “curtain lectures” (Lamb xxii), and the challenge to male authority of a woman who engages in immodest table talk or whose unseemly behavior makes her a topic of conversation at other men’s boards. Shakespeare’s Henriad contains several scenarios that dramatize this patriarchal perspective on the intersection between the domestic furniture of the bed and gender among those in the highest levels of society. In early modern aristocratic culture, once marriages have been brokered, women’s most significant function was to bear sons who would both secure the dynastic succession and prove to be successful military leaders. Thus, in I Henry VI , Suffolk argues for the marriage between Henry and Margaret of Anjou on the basis of her ability to produce future kings who will expand England’s holdings: “Her valiant courage and undaunted spirit / . . . / Will answer our hope in issue of a king; / For Henry, son unto a conqueror, / Is likely to beget more conquerors / If with a lady of so high resolve / As is fair Margaret he be link’d in love” (5.5.70,72-76). Voicing a similar attitude, Henry V assures Katherine that, since “I get thee with scambling[,] . . . thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-breeder” ( H5 5.2.202- 03). 34 In spite of these constructions of the position of aristocratic women in the bedroom as one of potential public influence through childbirth, their role remains that of passive conduits of 33 Henry Wotton, Elements of Architecture , 1624 (qtd. in Heal 6). 34 For the audience, the irony of these assurances, in both cases, must have been fairly obvious, since Margaret’s son never came to the throne, and Katherine’s had already been represented to them as a lover of books and religious devotion rather than of soldierly exploits.
33 power from one generation to the next. The project of establishing royal dynasty and aristocratic lineage generally has the male as its locus and aims to “authenticate the relationships between fathers and sons . . . and to suppress and supplant the role of the mother” (Rackin, Stages 161). In these plays, Edward III is looked upon as the “root” and source of the descendants who will establish England as a political entity. Urging Gaunt to recall his parentage, the Duchess of Gloucester thus reminds her husband of his pedigree: “Edward’s seven sons, whereof thyself art one, / Were as seven vials of his sacred blood, / Or seven fair branches springing from one root” (R2 1.2.11-13). Henry V is another “stem / Of that victorious stock” ( H5 2.4.62-63). Again, in 2 Henry VI , after York’s lengthy recitation of the genealogical line of succession from Edward III, Warwick reminds York that Edward’s blood through his third son “flourishes in thee / And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock” (2.2.57-58). In such discussions of dynastic identity, women are largely absent, not only “politically invisible” (Montrose 188), but biologically elided as well. 35 At times in Shakespeare’s histories, male concerns and speech function to appropriate even the bed, displacing women from one of the few spaces allotted to them in early modern culture. When political matters invade the bedchamber, women are exiled even from this domestic site. As an aghast John of Gaunt reminds his wife when Eleanor tries to discuss his political future, “These are no women’s matters” ( R2 1.3.115). In 1 Henry IV , Hotspur’s frustrated wife declares herself a “banished woman from my Harry’s bed,” barred from her “natural” domestic space because of the dangerous political plots her husband is bringing into the bedroom with him, plans to which she is not privy (2.3.29). Lady Percy’s only access to information is through a furtive watching and listening, as she carefully observes her restlessly slumbering husband, whose sleep talk is full of muttered “tales of iron wars” (37). 36 In a more
35 In this particular discussion, two women do appear: Phillipa, daughter of the third son of Edward III, and Anne, her granddaughter and mother to the Duke of York. The descent is still traced primarily through the fathers in the wording of the passage; Phillipa and Anne have importance only in so far as they are the means to connect York’s constructed rationale for claiming the crown back to the “issue of the elder son,” Clarence ( 2 H6 2.2.43ff.). In his recitation of the genealogy, York also masculinizes Phillipa’s name to “Philip.” 36 While it is beyond the scope of my purpose here, I would propose that a nuanced reading of the Hotspur- Kate relationship gives us a representation of an aristocratic wife who does display some influence and spirit without being demonized, as Margaret is in the Henry VI plays. As a result, Lady Percy’s unhappiness at the wedge that politics and war drives between her and her husband seems almost a reproof to the male pursuit of glory and power. Martha A. Kurtz questions the general critical acceptance of “a generic opposition to women in the history plays,” and suggests that female characters like Kate, dramatically “highlighted” by their costumes on a stage largely peopled by male characters, function to draw attention to “the senseless suffering these masculine activities create.” “Rethinking gender and genre in the history play,” SEL 36 (1996): 269-70.
34 consciously staged performance in Richard II , John of Gaunt claims the bed as his stage, asserting to York that “the tongues of dying men / Enforce attention like deep harmony” (2.5-6). Declaiming from his deathbed as a self-authorized “prophet new inspired” (2.31), Gaunt predicts political unrest and doom for an England now “leased out” and “bound in with shame” (2.59, 63). It is Gaunt’s last moment of glory, and the site of his dying speech gives added authority and resonance to his words; the bed is transformed into a political platform by male presence and discourse, displacing the “female culture” typically associated with this piece of domestic furniture (Mendelson and Crawford 152). Male texts also display an anxiety over the bed as a site of betrayal, and dissatisfaction with the behavior of children is immediately read as a sign of a wife’s marital unfaithfulness. Marcus Norland, stating a general critical assessment, observes that an “obsession with cuckoldry . . . characterized early modern England” (154). Again, the history plays provide evidence of such readings and assumptions, perhaps particularly so since, Othello claims, wifely infidelity is “the plague of great ones” ( Othello 3.3.277). In his rhetorical project of animating the tired English troops before the Battle of Agincourt, Henry V reminds the “noble English” among them to “dishonour not your mothers; now attest / That those whom you called fathers did beget you” ( H5 3.1.17,22-23). Here, the assumption is that legitimate paternity is founded in “fathers of war-proof” (18); if progeny does not behave up to the standards of chivalric bravery in war, the only plausible explanation is that they are bastards begotten on the mother’s body from another, less noble source of blood. Even women give voice to this automatic attribution of blame. Thus the Duchess of York, as she pleads frantically with the Duke not to report Aumerle’s political treachery to Bolingbroke: But now I know thy mind; thou dost suspect That I have been disloyal to thy bed, And that he is a bastard, not thy son; Sweet York, sweet husband, be not of that mind; He is as like thee as a man may be, Not like to me, or any of my kin . . . . ( R2 5.2.104-09) As Peter Stallybrass argues, if the “signs” of the “normative ‘woman’” in early modern England are “the enclosed body” and “the locked house” (127), there is the concomitant danger of the body being breached and the house being forcibly entered. In this scene from Richard II ,
35 the stereotypical connection between beds and unfaithful wives is voiced by a female character, giving dramatic force to this gender construction as a “natural” fact of life. While the absolutism of Stallybrass’s claim, I think, must be reconsidered in light of much of the work that has been done recently on the agency women exercise even in the domestic domain, certainly many male texts, such as Shakespeare’s histories, frequently support that representation of women. The table, too, is a domestic territory in which men exercised their prerogatives as heads of households, particularly when it became the site of any discourse or behavior that had public implications, either because of the position of the speaker(s) or the content of the conversation, or both. An example of the former is a text published during the political tumultuousness of the early 1640s by a royalist. Titled King James, his apopthegmes, or table-talke as they were by him delivered occasionally , the publication claims that “these were heedfully observed, and carefully taken from the sacred mouth of the first Speaker, King James of famous memory, accidentally falling long time since upon discourse, and Table-talke at open meales, in his Majesties royall presence or privy Chamber” (title page). The sayings of the former ruler were, the writer claims, “assiduously collected” thanks to the “perfect remembrance of divers of his Majesties neere servitures and attendants yet living” (t.p.). Table conversations around intellectual issues or theological concerns were clearly represented as the purview of males. A classic example comes from Foxe’s account of the life of William Tyndale, the Oxford-educated tutor to Master Welsh, an account that clearly represents the table as the center of the intellectual life of the Welsh household, whose host, in this case, had a well-established reputation for his hospitable and well- supplied board. Over meals, the visitors to the household—abbots, deans, doctors, beneficed clergy—“did use many times to enter communication, and talk of learned men . . . also divers other controversies and questions upon the Scripture” (“William Tyndale” par. 4). 37 Here, the table acts as a catalyst for intellectual exchange among men, in this instance particularly focused on contemporary religious debates and concerns. In The English gentlewoman , Richard Braithwait reminds women that such topics of conversation are beyond the parameters of proper conversation for them: “Touching the subject of your discourse . . . make choice of such arguments as may best improve your knowledge in household affairs and other private 37 John N. King attributes the recounting of this frequent occurrence to one Richard Webb, “a natural tale- teller with an eye for colorful detail,” whose first person manuscript account Foxe transcribed seemingly directly in the 1563 edition of his Acts and Monuments , and later depersonalized by rewriting it in third person for the second edition of 1570. See “‘The Light of Printing’: William Tyndale, John Foxe, John Day, and Early Modern Print Culture,” Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 57.
36 employments. To discourse of state matters will not become your auditory, nor to dispute high points of divinity, will it sort well with women of your quality” (qtd. in Aughterson 84). Braithwait goes on to deride those “she-clerks [who] many times broach strange opinions” that they themselves do not understand (84). Such constrictions on conversation point to the (desired) authority of men to control women’s words; within the domestic space of the table, males erected conversational boundaries that limited or silenced the contributions of women as active participants and speakers. In addition to reinforcing male prerogative within table space, male-authored texts represent women in relation to the table in ways that construct them either as a threat to male authority or as an immoral influence on guests to whom the hospitality of the board has been offered. In the anonymous, late sixteenth-century drama Arden of Feversham , Arden complains to Mosby that his over-familiarity with Arden’s wife has caused “all the knights and gentlemen of Kent / [to] make common table-talk of her and thee” (I.333-34). In this representation, the table acts as the hub of local gossip, a site at which community and household, “public” and “private,” intersect and interpenetrate; 38 Alice becomes common conversational property in a way that damages her (and consequently her husband’s) reputation. Even before the audience hears Arden’s complaint, the audience watches as Alice betrays Arden’s table, which several times becomes the site of schemes to kill him. Early in the play, after she has sought out and purchased a poison “such as might be put into his broth, / And yet in taste not be found at all” (I.280-81), Alice slips it into Arden’s breakfast, where it takes almost immediate effect, resulting in Arden’s cry that “there’s something in this broth / That is not wholesome . . .” (I.365-66). Here, not only does Alice abdicate her role as household nurturer, 39 but she also literally and
38 As Lena Cowen Orlin notes in her comprehensive study, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post- Reformation England (Ithaca and London: Cornell U.P., 1994), “the private was, after all, public in consequence,” and, on the other hand, “the public was private” (73). 39 Women were not only expected to feed the household, but to nurse its members as well. For example, in The English Hus-wife, conteyning, The inward and outward virtues which ought to be in a compleat woman (1615), Gervase Markham places “a great deal of emphasis on the housewife’s occupation as caregiver—as provider of medical care and food—to adult members of her household and surrounding community” (Mary Thomas Crane, “‘Players in your huswifery, and huswives in your beds’: Conflicting Identities of Early Modern English Women,” Miller and Yavneh, 219). In Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002), Wendy Wall points out that Markham’s purpose was to affirm housewifery as “a productive and altruistic enterprise,” albeit one that was to be practiced within a “closed home economy” (52). Margaret Visser points out that early modern recipe books frequently included medicinal remedies, reflecting the responsibility of the wife/mother to tend to the needs of the sick within the household. See Much depends on dinner:
37 morally opens her home to her husband’s enemies, as she does when she casually grants Bradshaw access to the household and its supplies: “Go in, Bradshaw; call for a cup of beer. / ‘Tis almost suppertime; thou shalt stay with us” (VIII.155-56). Furthermore, in economic terms, Alice betrays Arden by expending his resources to entertain the conspirators; she orders Michael to “bid him [the cook] lay it on; spare for no cost,” as she welcomes Black Will and Dick Greene to the household’s table (XIV.46). Critics have generally agreed that, in early modern terms, Arden bears a certain responsibility for having failed to control and manage his household; in fact, Lena Cowen Orlin argues that “Alice’s rebellion itself validates her charge against Arden of ‘misgovernment’ (13.113)” (91). 40 The violence that erupts at the table signals the degree to which Arden has “misgoverned”—or failed to govern—his household. 41 In the final act of that rebellion before her dramatic emotional collapse, after Arden is murdered Alice invites Mosby to take her husband’s place at the table, thus symbolically giving him the rule of the household and all who are in it. Ironically, she has overthrown the authority of one man, only to install another in the same position. Turning from popular stage drama, we find a similar representation of wifely betrayal centered on the table in Canto IX of Book III of Spenser’s Faerie Queene , a book whose theme is the often-interrupted quest of the female knight Britomart for her destined male counterpart, Artegal. 42 While this scene does not involve Britomart herself directly in the interaction I want to examine in some detail, she is the primary focus in a much earlier table scene that helps prepare for the later, more involved, table drama. Dressed in armor which hides the hair and bodily shape that would mark her as a woman, Britomart is a somewhat reluctant guest at Castle Joyeous (Venusburg, Richard Lanham calls it), which is ruled by Malcasta, the “Lady of delight” (I.31.9). The delights of this particular household are of the decidedly sensual variety; Malcasta herself has, the narrator tells us, “wanton eyes, ill signes of womanhed” (41.7). Predictably, since she the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos, of an ordinary meal (New York: Grove Press, 1987) 99. 40 See, for example, Garrett A. Sullivan, “‘Arden lay murdered in that plot of ground’: Surveying, Land, and Arden of Feversham,” ELH 61 (1994): 231-252; and Julie R. Schutzman, “Alice Arden’s Freedom and the Suspended Moment of Arden of Feversham ,” SEL 36 (1996): 289-315. 41 On both bed and table as sites of petty treason, see Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550-1700 (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1994) 29-31; and “Introduction,” The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s) 20. 42 Britomart appears in later books of Spenser’s epic, but critics generally speak of Book III as “her” book.
38 appears to those who do not know her secret as a strikingly beautiful male knight, Britomart becomes the object of Malcasta’s desire, and the table becomes the scene of a seduction manqué, as Malcasta’s eyes shoot “secret darts” that Britomart ignores. When she loses patience with this strange knight’s seeming obtuseness, Malcasta decides “in plainer wise to tell her [grievance],” threatening that she “mote algates dye” if Britomart spurns her attentions (52.9; 53.6). Britomart is represented as unable to understand this purely physical lust for what it is; believing that Malcasta’s plaint arises from the same kind of honorable love that Britomart herself feels for Artegal, she is “beguiled” like a bird tricked into the “hidden net” of the fowler (54.6,9). This is not a failure of chastity, but rather a failure to read correctly this offer that goes beyond the hospitality of the dinner table and to take measures to protect herself. The climax of this table encounter, which takes place in Britomart’s bedchamber, adds further significance to her misinterpretation of Malcasta’s intentions. When her hostess surprises Britomart in her bedroom, she reacts to protect herself, and subsequently sustains a spear wound from one of Malcasta’s knights, who respond to their lady’s call for help at finding a spear- wielding woman rather than the amorous knight she was expecting. As Mary Villeponteaux points out, there is a clear contrast between the power Britomart displays at the beginning of Book III, where she “initially embodies a complete authority” (54), easily knocking Sir Guyon off his horse, and the vulnerable naiveté with which she is represented in this episode, where she has, in a sense, unknowingly laid herself open to attack, both morally and physically. 43 That juxtaposition suggests an uneasiness with the idea of a strong, proactive woman warrior, a concept that was “problematic in an age like Spenser’s, which was so anxiously concerned with outward, distinguishing signs that were believed to reveal the innate qualities of an individual, such as station and gender” (59). In terms of the table, while Britomart at the beginning of Book III initially shows herself to be highly capable of dealing with potential threats to her person, she has not yet learned to read correctly and negotiate the dangerous subtleties of table talk. Through this exchange over a meal, the table becomes the means to further a sexually aggressive and
43 Joanne Craig sees Britomart as one of “a company of virtuous and faithful women” in The Faerie Queene “whose virtue exposes them to the threat of violation, or violation itself.” See “‘All Flesh doth Frailtie Breed’: Mothers and Children in The Faerie Queene ,” TSLL 42 (2000): 22. In a much earlier essay, Richard Lanham challenges critical approaches that, in his view, argued a consistency in her representation and its interpretation not supportable from the text, “an edifice of meaning that even she cannot bear.” See “The Literal Britomart,” MLQ 28 (1967): 429. Lanham’s solution is to read Britomart as a “hermaphroditic figure,” an approach he believes better fits the “literal” Britomart by accommodating “the conflicts in Britomart’s character between male and female attributes and roles” (445).
39 ultimately dishonorable agenda on the part of one woman and to expose another woman’s moral and sexual vulnerability. The second table drama, in which Britomart has only a minor role, reverses the dynamics of the Castle Joyous scene; the interaction takes place between a male and female, rather than between two women, and the guest, rather than the host, initiates the engagement. The encounter in Canto IX takes place in the household of Malbecco, who is known both for his miserliness and for the much younger “lovely lasse” who is his wife (IX.4.4). Because of his hoarding nature, represented in his withdrawal from society as a way to keep his property—gold and bride— under close guard, Malbecco “ne cares, what men say of him ill or well,” and shows “no skill of Court nor courtesie” (3.6-7). Here, over a meal grudgingly provided by a host who “[subordinates] hospitality to egregious suspicion” (Gregerson 6), 44 Paridell, one of the guests, makes the sexual overture and Hellenore accepts the invitation. Like Malcasta, she is represented as led by lust, and unlike Britomart, she knows when she has been propositioned: “Ne was she ignoraunt of that lewd lore, / But in his eye his meaning wisely red, / And with the like him answerd evermore: / She sent at him one firie dart, whose hed / Empoisned was with privy lust, and gealous dred” (28.5-9). While Hellenore does not initiate this table transaction, she seems to bear the responsibility for the exchange; in keeping with the courtly love tradition, the narrator represents her as the deadly archer, and Paridell as the victim. She lets fly the initial arrow and “he from that deadly throw [makes] no defence, / But to the wound his weake hart [opens] wyde” (29.1-2). Not only does she, like Alice, betray her husband at the household’s table, but she is later represented as an inattentive listener to the tales of “deeds of armes” the knights share (32.4), a woman of “fraile wit” and “weake hart” who can focus only on Paridell and the “worlds of fancies” he sparks in her mind (52.5,7,4). The role of the table in this sexual exchange, which is a betrayal of the host’s hospitality by both Paridell as guest and Hellenore as wife, takes on added intensity through the very clear metaphorizing of the transaction as a blasphemy of the Eucharistic feast. Exploiting the language of typological signification, the narrator suggests that Paridell deliberately overfills or spills the cup that he passes to Hellenore. In what Linda Gregerson aptly calls “a cunning exegesis” of
44 Lisa Celovsky categorizes Malbecco, along with Busirane and Proteus, as “bad householders who lack the qualities culturally deemed necessary to their status: to provide, to guide, and to protect. They are tyrannical masters and hostile, selfish hosts.” See her article, “Early Modern Masculinities and The Faerie Queene , ELR 35 (2005) 233.
40 “artful looks and overturned cups” (11), the splash of wine on the table becomes a text of expressed love whose trangressiveness is heightened by the comparison to the sacred “love feast” of Herbert’s poem: “and by the dauncing bubbles [he] did divine, / Or therein write to let his love be showne; / Which well she red out of the learned line, / A sacrament prophane in mistery of wine” (30.6-9). Completing the sacrilegious exchange, Hellenore in turn spills “the guilty cup” in her lap, showing her “desire her inward flame to slake” in a sexual encounter with Paridell (31.2,4). The intersection of the religious typology of the table with this drama of illicit desire underlines the significance of the table as the site of both public and private transactions, and provides evidence of the ready cultural association that existed between rituals of faith and rituals of food. In the 1641 tract A Discoverie of six women preachers , the writer associates food and the table with women’s appropriation of the minister’s role, which, as Gillespie points out, was “a proactive role even more associated with masculine authority than that of the female prophetess” (“Hammer in Her Hand” 216). At the home of one so-called Mary Bilbrowe, she begins to preach to the assembled group of women, only to desert them for what the narrator suggests is an adulterous assignation with an unnamed “Gentleman” (3). Before she leaves, however, Mary “[spreads] the cloth, and [brings] her Gossipes in a pig, according to her promise, who fed heartily” (4). Although this image is painted in the broad strokes of popular press satiric discourse, it plays upon and cartoonishly exaggerates the themes of the male texts I have just discussed. In the tract, women are associated with the bed and the table in ways that play upon existing stereotypes of female behavior and that suggest an intersection between women’s uncontrollable appetite for power or for sexual gratification, and a gluttonous hunger for food. 45 While the male-authored texts I have discussed may not caricature women’s behavior as A Discoverie does, the writers do represent the physical spaces of the bed and table in ways that emphasize the threat women represent to the orderly functioning of the household, and, consequently, to the stability of the society at large. 46 45 In Ehud’s Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution (London and New York: Verso, 2000), James Holstun sees the element of class as an important factor here, noting that the author connects the desire for spiritual authority to “a monstrously oral plebeian desire for base material food and drink” (258). 46 Gillespie has previously made a similar point about the “stool” or “tub” upon which one of the women stands to deliver her message: “the tools of domesticity, the very accoutrements of female silence and submission, have been literally turned on their heads and used as the foundation for public speech” ( Domesticity and Dissent 73).
41 A “Mother in faith”: The table, typology, and Elizabeth Cary’s educational project Unlike the writer of A Discoverie , Elizabeth Cary’s biographer represents the household as a legitimate space for intellectual inquiry and religious education for women, preparing the audience for her mother’s typologically-centered education of her own children. While Tyndale had, by virtue of his employment, discovered a site of intellectual engagement at the table of the Welch household, Elizabeth Cary actively pursued her own, more deliberate inquiry into issues of theology and religion by “going much to the house of a Protestant bishop, which was frequented by many of the learnedest of their divines,” as she wrestled with her uncertainties about the legitimacy of the faith in which she had been raised ( Life 191). 47 In fact, Cary’s biographer-daughter emphasizes this intersection between the space of the household and the figures and discourses that played a significant role in public life. It is within the bishop’s household that Cary, not once, but several times witnesses theological “examination[s] of such beginners, or receivers, of new opinions” who were “esteemed heretics” by the clerical authorities of the Church of England. The unorthodox nature of this exposure is attested to by the surprise of some present, unknown to Cary, who “[ask] the bishop how he durst trust that young lady to be there” (191). 48 When she returns from spending some time in Ireland after her husband takes up a crown post there, Cary resumes her habit, continuing to “[frequent] the house of the bishop” and, in turn, “her house [is] frequented by the same divines” (203). At the same time, in a kind of theological counterpoint, her visits to the Earl of Ormond’s London residence give Cary access to Catholic priests who can provide the theological and spiritual guidance that
47 Wolfe identifies this unnamed churchman as the Bishop of Durham. The “Durham House group” held to an “‘Arminian’ version of the Church of England,” rejecting strict Calvinism. Initially, Cary was “convinced by their argument that one could be catholic without having to be Roman Catholic” (4). 48 The biographer’s relation of this comment points to a condition of the writing that makes the representation of Cary particularly intriguing. While the biographer certainly imposes her own perspective and evaluations throughout, she must also have been the recipient of family stories and anecdotes told to her by her mother or faithful family retainers like Bessie Poulter. Given that her daughters spent a good part of their lives not living with Cary, and were in their mid- to late teens when they converted, they would have had to depend on others for the kind of information included in incidents like this one. Thus, in one sense Cary had an important hand in the writing of her own biography, even though she was dead; certain aspects of her representation in the Life must be to some extent--and perhaps to a significant extent--sympathetic to what Cary herself might have wanted. Certainly, she must have been the primary (if not the only) source for some of the episodes and events in her childhood and early married life, although it is difficult to determine the line between the shaping power of genre and Cary’s actual experiences. (For a discussion of the unresolved tension between those elements that are conventions of Catholic women’s lives and those that reflect the writer’s ambiguous attitude towards her mother, see Dolan, “Reading, Writing and Other Crimes,” Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects , ed. Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, Dympna Callaghan (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U.P., 1996) 142-67.
42 confirms her growing desire to convert (206). The public import of these household interactions becomes obvious when Cary finally does convert and Charles, upon hearing the news, immediately puts her under a six-week house arrest, effectively cutting her off from her new faith community, “no Catholic daring to come near her, her household being wholly Protestant” (205). Recounting her mother’s hardships immediately following her conversion, the biographer reinforces the larger significance of the table in particular, noting that when Cary’s husband cuts off her allowance, she has to send her children “abroad to their friends to dinners and suppers”; she herself, during the time of her house arrest, is “daily sent . . . dishes of meat” from the Earl of Ormond’s kitchen (207). Playing on the symbiotic relationship among table, hospitality, and community in early modern culture that I noted earlier, the biographer establishes the domestic space as intimately connected with issues of politics and religion both inside and outside the family. The length to which Cary’s biographer goes to foreground the household as a site in which her mother’s identity is constituted as both a seeker of and a host to theological conversations conducted primarily among males complicates any easy gendering of space. According to Mendelson and Crawford, such gendering, from the perspective of women in early modern England, was often both imposed and voluntary, and certainly unstable. Most commonly, the childbed formed the center of their world, with the midwife, “the woman with knowledge, . . . who was herself a mother” as the central authority (203). In addition, however, women also found ways to “exercise spatial and cultural dominance in spheres which were under men’s nominal authority, such as household or market” (205; see also 210-11). What is notable about the Life ’s comment, noted earlier, on Cary’s needlework is that the writer seems to show relatively little interest in the domestic space as a place of “female culture” (see 201ff.); in fact, Cary is characterized largely in opposition to the interests that might be expected to occupy many women, such as dress and “housewifely” pursuits. As I argued earlier, Cary’s biographer suggests that, although accomplished at expected skills like needlework, her mother took little interest in them for their own sake. Rather, she spends time deconstructing the arguments of Calvin and Hooker, translating Peron, and reading the church fathers ( Life 188,190,212). Dolan points out that the biographer’s emphasis on Cary’s devotion to reading and her corresponding inattention to dress connects the Life to an established “tradition of saintly or holy Catholic women” who were valued “for just these rebellions” (“Reading” 348). The Life , however, will
43 use these conventions of the genre of Catholic biography to emphasize one domestic location that Cary exploits for purposes that have a closer connection to her intellectual interests than to her desire to fulfill her domestic responsibilities. While Cary’s reading practices in the Life certainly function as “a means of self-definition and a form of private devotion” (354), that “solitary” occupation also becomes the foundation for her project of creating a practicing Catholic community within her household, a literal house church of which she is the spiritual head. The representation of Cary as a reader particularly of theological texts fits well with the writer’s construction of the space of the household early in the biography as a significant site for religious debate and investigation. The account of Cary’s pursuit of theological inquiry creates a curious inversion, placing her among a houseful of Protestant bishops and well-known “divines,” seemingly a lone woman in a domestic space, although other women must surely have been present, given the social conventions of the culture. Then, in reciprocating the bishop’s hospitality Cary becomes host to, not a social gala, but an intellectual gathering of highly regarded religious authorities, as they, in turn, congregate in her home. This initial framing is critical to the larger project of the writer in the remainder of the biography because it provides the referential context for what might otherwise be read as simply domestic scenes of a mother carrying out the expected spiritual education of her children. Because of the strong typological associations I have pointed out, the table, in particular, becomes both the site and the content of an educational project invested with very public and political meanings. The particular period in the Life that I want to examine begins after the death of Cary’s husband, who had removed the children from contact with their mother in his anger at her conversion to Catholicism. This event puts her in the position to regain custody of her children, and, according to her biographer, Cary was eager to do so: “her first thoughts were to get her children . . . to live with her (which she desired in order to their being Catholics)” (221). The parenthetical comment carries significant meaning, for it seems to suggest that Cary, although she was a member of the upper classes, who were predisposed to privilege dynastic concerns, valued biological lineal heritage less than spiritual heritage. Despite her lack of financial resources to provide for her children, Cary pursues her objective in the face of opposition from friends “more ready to blame her than help her” for taking on “so unnecessary a charge” (223). For Cary, however, concern for the spiritual welfare of her children outweighs all else: “She then
44 only sought to have her children with her, where they might have more occasion to come to the knowledge of the truth, and better means to follow it, trusting wholly in God for the rest, as well for their conversion as means to maintain them” (223). While the prescriptive texts of the day gave mothers a significant role in the spiritual training of children, 49 the writer’s stress on Cary’s desire for her children to follow her into the Catholic fold only emphasizes the transgressive nature of her project. Cary had already been publicly censored by the king for her own conversion, and any attempt on her part to influence her children could provide reason to remove them yet again from the sphere of her influence, an intervention that does take place when her older son takes in his two younger brothers to protect them from Catholic proselytism (243). While the queen might be Catholic and hold mass in her royal chapels, encouraging the conversion of children to Catholicism, even if they were not being formally catechized, could potentially be framed as resistance to the state and the authority of the sovereign. With her conversion and its consequences already having made her life a matter of public consumption and debate, 50 Cary accepts that, particularly for her as a Catholic, practicing her religion will make whatever space she occupies a contested space, whether it is the royal chapel or a secreted altar in a home. However, according to The Life , Cary refused to be immobilized as an object of attention. In the biographer’s representation of her mother, Cary deliberately engages in a strategic appropriation of domestic space through her use of the table, a use freighted with typological associations that this common item of domestic furniture carried in early modern culture, associations the biographer has already alluded to earlier in the Life . Thus, while she entices her daughters to live with her by promising “not to speak of religion to them till they should desire it” (223), Cary, in effect, allows her behavior at the table to speak for her. One way she does this is through following the Catholic mandated observances during Lent; she “[observed] most exactly the fasts of the Church,” her biographer-daughter writes, “never eating butter nor milk in Lent, as long as she was Catholic,” except when she was “in a consumption” 49 In Thomas Bentley’s The sixt lampe of virginitie conteining a mirrour for maidens and matrons (1582), he advises that “the master or mistres ought both to know both gods judgements & lawes, & also to declare them unto their familie: & to bee in their houses as Preachers to their children & families, that from the highest to the lowest, they may all obey the will of God: so did Abraham” (47). 50 From her analysis of primary sources, Wolfe concludes that “Lady Falkland’s wayward actions instigated more than just a family drama, and in fact were a source of concern, frustration, and fascination for a considerable number of Stuart nobility and clergy. The conversion of an outspoken viscountess was no small matter— theoretically, it was treasonable, and could potentially open the floodgates for further conversions if it were condoned” (2).
45 the last two years of her life (216). At the same time, Cary seeks to keep her children eating at her table, inquiring of her confessor “whether a Catholic might not have flesh dressed on fasting days for a Protestant to keep him in a place where he were likely to be converted, where he would not stay without it” (223). In spite of the priest’s cynicism that it is not worth “burdening” her conscience for the sake of her children, “of whose [conversion] there was not any [likelihood],” Cary chooses, even during Lent, to have “her table filled with flesh for her Protestant children,” while she “[forbids] herself anything with sugar in it,” as an additional abstinence for that particular season (223, 216). In fact, Cary plays it both ways; at the same time as she provides meat, she ensures that there is fish at the table not only for herself or for any “stranger Catholics that might come,” but also in case “any of [her children] would leave flesh and eat it [i.e., fish]” (224). Going even further, for those children who do have a taste for fish, Cary “[endeavours] to have them have what they loved most of that kind, to invite them to it, using all the means she durst venture on to draw them to forbear flesh” (224). As the table provides the material and typological center for the Catholic mass, so Cary’s biographer represents her mother as turning her household table into a material marker that also performs the work of making a typological statement about the Catholic faith to all who are at the meal. At the same time, the table functions as a tool in her strategy to keep her children within a space where they are continually exposed to and subtly encouraged to embrace Catholic beliefs and practice. Cary’s biographer, however, does not stop here. In her description of Cary “inviting” her children to partake of a meal of fish, the writer makes an even more daring typological move, one that plays upon her Catholic audience’s certain knowledge of the biblical passage that, in Catholic theology, provides the evidence for the divine institution of the papacy. In the same chapter of John in which, according to the headnote in the Rheims Douai translation of the Latin Vulgate, Jesus “maketh Peter his Vicar,” this unexpected post-Resurrection appearance initially has Jesus appearing in the role of both cook and host, as he prepares a meal of fish over the coals of a fire lit on the shore of the Lake of Galilee: Therfore after [the disciples] came downe to land, they saw hote coles lying, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith to them, Bring hither of the fishes that you tooke now. Sim[on] Peter went up, and drew the nette to the land, ful of great fishes, an hundred fiftie three. And although they were so many, the nette was not
46 broken. Jesus saith to them, Come, dine. And none of them that sate at meate, durst aske him, Who art thou? knowing that it is our Lord. And Jesus commeth and taketh the bread and giveth them, and the fish in like maner. (John 21.9-14, Rheims Douai 51 ) The physical meal is followed by Jesus’ command to Peter to “FEEDE MY LAMBES” (21.15; capitalization in original), a directive that, again according to the chapter headnote, “[expresses] what this fishing signified.” The translation itself explicitly notes that the fish has a significant typological function; Jesus is both literally and typologically the “Host,” feeding his disciples, a function which he passes on to Peter, who as the Vicar of the Church, will feed the Church the literal body of Christ, their spiritual sustenance, during the Eucharistic mass. To an audience of Catholic nuns (primarily) and priests, including those in higher-level administrative positions, along with at least some educated Catholic lay readers with access to the manuscript or its potential copies, the biographer’s stress on the table, on fish, and on her mother’s role in offering it to her children could not help but echo this significant biblical account, with its subsequent connection to the establishment of the papacy and to the foundational theological understanding of the role of the priest in the ritual of the Catholic Mass. Thus, in the Life ’s clear rhetorical emphasis on Cary’s invitation to her children to partake of the fish she goes to great lengths to provide, Cary, a mother who has borne children in an earthly marriage, becomes simultaneously a type of Christ; of Peter, the originary Church Father; and of an early modern Catholic “father” carrying out the typological function that, in the Catholic faith, belongs only to an ordained and celibate male priest. In addition to performing this mute, yet radical and typologically inflected table drama, in the Life Cary deliberately cultivates family meals; herself preferring to eat at her own table rather than to “dine and sup abroad” frequently, she “[endeavours] much to have her children at home at those times, . . . chiefly because at her table she only hoped to have them hear of religion ” (224-25; my emphasis). In spite of her financial straits, Cary practices a generous hospitality. During the first winter that she has her children living with her again, her two older sons, now at university, visit frequently, bringing “many of their friends (Oxford scholars and others),” who are “exceedingly welcome to her” and who she tries to make feel comfortable so that nothing 51 Since Cary’s daughter wrote this account after she had joined a convent on the continent, her greatest familiarity would have been with the authorized Catholic translation of the Bible in English that was readily available at the time. The Rheims Douai Bible had appeared in Europe in its fourth edition in 1633.
47 “might hinder any from conversing freely” (225). At her table, where Cary welcomes an array of both Catholics and Protestants, “their discourse [is] frequently religion” (225). For Cary, this “table talk” provides her with an opportunity to communicate her Catholic beliefs verbally; while she “never durst speak to [her children] of religion,” the biographer clarifies that her mother “many times spoke of it afore them, as not of set purpose” (218). Moreover, Cary believes that exposure to “this discourse,” in the context of informal mealtime conversation, “would draw her daughters’ attentions, whose conversion she sought in all” (225). 52 In the biographer’s representation of Cary deliberately encouraging and facilitating this theological table talk, she exhibits a degree of agency that goes far beyond the woman’s prescribed domestic role of self- effacing host. Here, too, Cary becomes a type of Christ in her pedagogical methods. Like Christ, who is often represented in the Gospels as engaging with his disciples or with Jewish intellectuals over food, Cary makes use of mealtime as a space for teaching; like Christ, who teaches indirectly through parables, Cary communicates her beliefs in the same understated way, “as not of set purpose.” To emphasize the effectiveness of Cary’s strategy of quiet but deliberate indirection, the biographer sets up a contrast between her mother’s approach and the aggressive behavior of Chillingworth, a Protestant cleric who continually initiates theological arguments and makes bold assertions “at the table, before all” (252), and actively tries to get Cary’s daughters to abandon their new allegiance to Catholicism after they formally convert. 53 In fact, the “falsehood . . . and dissimulation” that characterize his conversation and behavior are so offensive to Cary
52 Even her eldest son benefits, according to his sister, although he does not convert to Catholicism (perhaps because he was already at university by the time Cary regained custody of her children). The biographer attributes Lucius’ “good inclination towards religion [which] he had had for some years” directly to having “received it from the conversation of this mother and . . . the company he met at her house, having before believed but little” (225). In fact, the writer claims, her brother actually took a “Catholic” stance on issues, in spite of his claim that he would not “change his profession . . . till he was forty year old” (225). 53 Chillingworth briefly converted to Catholicism himself in 1628, while at Oxford, although the author of the Life appears somewhat cynical of the authenticity of his profession. However, having allied himself once again with Protestantism in 1631, Chillingworth made it his special project to persuade Cary’s daughters to do the same. It is worthwhile to note here that the emphasis on Cary’s subtle and non-confrontational strategy with her daughters does not fully represent her advocacy for the Catholic faith. Wolfe points out that Cary had a “reputation as both outspoken Catholic and writer” in England and in Catholic circles on the Continent (9ff). Her “proselytizing energy” led her also to write an aggressive retaliatory address (a text now lost) to her own son’s written reproof when Walter Montague, a personal friend and distant relative, converted to Catholicism (7-8). Moreover, Cary engaged in an active letter-writing campaign to resist “her husband’s smear campaign, lift his financial embargo, and regain control over the future of herself and her children,” including an extensive 1200-word letter to the king himself (32, 36).
48 that she absents herself from her own table to avoid his company, although she decides not to deny him the hospitality of her board while her daughters still regard him with favor (240-41). The writer suggests that one of Chillingworth’s mistakes is to underestimate the understanding of children, which Cary does not. By the time her two younger sons are taken to live with Lucius, Cary’s eldest son, they have already “received great inclinations to Catholic religion (though they were very young),” simply through their informal education, such as the “table talk” to which their mother ensures that they are exposed. Chillingworth, however, makes light of engaging in religious discourse with children: “he had always laughed at their [Cary and others frequenting her household] talking to the children of religion” (244). Unfortunately for him, Cary’s strategy proves to be more effective, since even with the attempts of both Chillingworth and Lucius to indoctrinate the two youngest Cary boys in Protestantism, “that inclination [to the Catholic religion] left them not wholly till it [their conversion] was accomplished” (244). For Cary, the education of her children in the Catholic faith is of primary importance; the deliberate way she goes about creating a “school of the table,” so to speak, makes that space the site of a subversive public and political act. The outcome of this early mealtime training is not only the conversion of her children, but the orchestration of the kidnapping and removal (at their alleged wish) of her two youngest sons to the Continent, where they both enter monastic orders. 54 That successful scheme ultimately brings Cary to a much higher and more overtly political table; she is called for questioning before the Lords of the Council Table in London, 55 where the representation of her solitary female voice in debate with the male justices rewrites her initial search for religious enlightenment, as a young woman among the bishops in a household in the same city, as a drama in which she is now the one in rhetorical control of this “official” table talk. In the Life , the biographer represents her mother’s life as a series of confinements, 56 all of which build towards the project of constructing a remarkable woman who ultimately becomes 54 According to the account of the King’s Bench examination of Cary, she declared that she had “[appointed] horses to bee sente” to fetch them, “they both havinge beene verie desirous to bee sente far awaye” (Wolfe 395). 55 “Table” is the biographer’s term of choice, although none of the primary source records of Cary’s examination included in Wolfe’s edition of the Life use this term to identify the bodies before which she was called to testify. 56 The biographer’s use of the term “confine” in its various forms is insistent; it appears eight times between pages 205 and 209 of the Weller and Ferguson edition of the Life .
49 an emblematic saint, “the Elizabeth Cary appropriated and celebrated by English Catholics as a recusant heroine” (Stephanie Wright 64). In her analysis of the shifting definition of heroism in Jacobean tragedy, Mary Beth Rose describes an increasing “exploration of heroic endurance, self-denial and suffering,” with a focus on constructing “a heroics of private life” ( Expense 114- 115). The biographer’s representation of Cary’s isolation, both imposed and voluntary, does function to construct her as a domestic saint, enduring suffering patiently, even with good humor. 57 However, as Wolfe points out, to many of her contemporaries, both Protestant and Catholic, Cary was not known for reticence or a retiring nature; rather, she was regarded as an “outspoken Catholic” marked by her “proselytizing energy” (Wolfe 9, 7). If we read the table tales of the Life as a kind of subversive counter-plot within the larger narrative, the biographer’s representation of Cary also becomes more multi-dimensional, particularly given the context of a culture in which that piece of “glorious household stuffe” had a significant typological meaning, both in terms of the Eucharist and in the Gospel writers’ frequent linking of Christ with the table. As I noted earlier, the Passover/Last Supper event carries the most significance for theology and liturgical practice, but other key Jesus stories in the Gospels, in addition to those I have already mentioned, center on food, eating, and tables. In fact, tables were often the site of significant controversies or discoveries. 58 One of the latter that seems particularly apropos to the role given to the table in Cary’s biography is Christ’s first post-resurrection appearance to the disciples, which predates the meal served on the seashore. In this gospel narrative the moment of recognition for the disciples comes at a meal, when Jesus performs the ritual act of breaking bread.
57 In her description of one such period of isolation, when Cary and her maid are living a Spartan existence in a small, dilapidated house, the biographer notes that the two women agree that “they were never more merry nor better content in their lives” ( Life 212). This description also echoes a common element in Catholic martyrdom accounts. Arthur F. Marotti offers the example of one John Finch, who friends and family find on the night before his execution “so merry in God and so joyfull of the next dayes banket . . . that they were all mervelously comforted” (“Manuscript Transmission and the Catholic Martyrdom Account in Early Modern England,” Print, Manuscript, & Performance: the Changing Relations of the Media in Early Modern England , ed. Arthur F. Marotti and Michael D. Bristol [Columbus, Ohio State U.P., 1998] 184). 58 For example, the legendary story (in several varying versions) of a dinner at which a woman pours perfume on Jesus’ feet sparks controversy among the disciples, who object to the economic waste represented by the expenditure of the perfume, an asset costly enough in that culture to be part of a woman’s dowry (Matt. 26.8-10). Another incident involves Jesus’ recognition of a Jewish tax collector, an occupation that generally made its holder an anathema among other Jews, since he was seen as a collaborator with the oppressive Roman government. Jesus not only speaks to the man, but invites himself for dinner at the man’s home (Luke 19.4-6). One of the prevalent recorded criticisms of Jesus among the religious authorities of the day was that he ate with “publicans [i.e. tax collectors] and sinner” (Matt. 9.11 KJV).
50 In a similar way, Cary’s daughter positions the table as a site of discovery, with her mother as a type of Christ in roles both sacramental and pedagogical, herself both the content and the facilitator of the moments of illumination that eventually will culminate in her children’s conversions. While a significant part of the biographer’s project depends on her representation of her mother during those periods of her life when she is “confined, alone, and in . . . necessity” (Life 207), 59 the table plays an equally significant role; the domestic table talk seeds the future events that justify Archbishop Laud’s warning to Charles I of the public and political damage that might be done if Cary’s “dangerous disposition” and “[her mischievious] practicing” are not contained (Wolfe 387). The daughters who were once less than affectionate and sometimes outrightly scornful of their mother not only convert, but take a major role in Cary’s successful scheme to remove her two youngest sons from Lucius’s household and send them covertly to the continent, in breach of English law that required the approval of the king and at least six Privy Councilors before any woman or any child under twenty-one could travel across the Channel. Eventually, the four daughters follow their brothers to enter into orders at Cambrai, where the Life was eventually written to memorialize Cary’s life and piety. The manorial chapel, established during the medieval era and appropriated by recusant gentry in England as a base for “dissident devotions” (Kaplan 1050), provided for Catholic faithful the table as the focus of liturgical practice and sacred ceremony. But through the biographer’s emphasis on Cary’s hospitable board, the Life also represents the domestic table in an equally important role as a site of subversive education and dissemination of Catholic doctrine and teaching. Alice Thornton: Typology, family history, and the deathbed as public space Two decades after Elizabeth Cary’s daughter wrote the Life to memorialize her mother’s life and to provide spiritual reading for a community of Catholic nuns on the continent, in the north of England Alice Thornton began recording the events of her life for a different community of readers; the family history was written, she declares, in order to provide a memorial to the “deliverances” that she experienced, an account that would eventually form the content of the three lengthy (over 800 pages) “Books of my owne Meditations and Transactions of my life”
59 Being “alone” usually refers to times when Cary is stripped of a normally functioning gentry household of both family and domestics, although she seems never to be without an attendant, and except for the period of household confinement, seems to have visitors anywhere from occasionally to regularly.
51 bequeathed to her daughter in Thornton’s will (Thornton, Appendix 338). 60 Like Cary’s biographer, Thornton, too, uses biblical typology to create public and political resonance in the space of domesticity, as she does when she represents herself as a Hannah, the mother of one of Israel’s most powerful judges, and even as Mary, the mother of Christ. And also like the writer of the Life , Thornton uses common household furniture—the bed, in this case—on which to erect both an individual and a familial typological identity that participates in national history. In order to fully appreciate the significance of Thornton’s representations of the site of the deathbed, we must first establish the Autobiography as the kind of history-making site that creates the potential for Thornton’s strategy of typology to establish family chronicle on an equal level with national events and political concerns. In the survey of historiography with which he opens History as an Art of Memory , Patrick Hutton describes the emergence of a “new genre” of historical scholarship in the1980's, “a history of the politics of commemoration” (1). Much of this work has inevitably concentrated on the fashioning of national histories and traditions and on the role of the state in shaping a “national memory” through the “interpretation, celebration, and control of remembered historical events” (Cressy, “National Memory” 61). But as Hutton points out, “collective memory is lodged in more places than historians have previously imagined. What is called history is no more than the official memory a society chooses to honor” (9); the sites of collective memory within a society or nation extend far beyond those located in the approved monuments of national history. As a potential site of collective memory, with its typological strategies that structure the connections between past and present and between public and private, Alice Thornton’s Autobiography offers a promising model for applying this perspective on history-making to other life writing by women in early modern England, whose texts have been discussed primarily in
60 I would note here that the autobiography is as much Thornton’s vindication of herself as it is a memorial to God’s “deliverances” in her and her family’s life. While it is not an aspect of the autobiography that I will emphasize in this particular discussion, the main factor prompting Thornton to begin the narrative is the desire to vindicate herself and her family from public criticism for marrying her young daughter to a much older clergyman in an effort (as her detractors claimed) to forestall her family’s fall into financial ruin. From his research on two of the three subsequent journals to which he has had access, Anselment found that the Surtees edition excluded “the long and complicated genesis of the alleged scandal involving the Thorntons and the local minister Comber that assumed, over time, almost crisis proportions in the autobiography’s representation” (142). According to Anselment, the nineteenth-century editor, in an effort to streamline chronology and minimize repetitions, masks “a growing obsession with reputation much less apparent in the [Surtees] edition” (146).
52 terms of the genre of autobiography and the growth of female self-expression. 61 In addition, texts like Thornton’s can also offer alternative sites for exploring the creation of collectivity, with the writers engaged in strategies of commemoration and memorial that parallel those used to produce similar histories for national consumption. As a critical rhetorical tool in Thornton’s project, typology provides the lens through which to read personal and family history as a reenactment of sacred history, thus allowing Thornton to lay claim to the public significance of the family chronicle she writes. Two important factors contribute to and heighten the significance of Thornton’s typological strategies, while at the same time establishing her memorialization of family history as a site of collective memory. The first is the history of the text of the Autobiography . Written over a period of some years after her husband’s death in 1668, Thornton’s text, at first glance, represents a seemingly unlikely site for the creation of collective memory; she is a singular voice, recounting an obscure, localized story. In manuscript form until collated in an 1875 edition by the Surtees Society, her narratives achieved minimal circulation, remaining within the enclosed circle of the family for two centuries. When Thornton first began her autobiographical project after her husband’s death, it was in the form of a tiny notebook, appropriately titled A Book of Remembrances . In several later versions, Thornton reworked and considerably amplified her initial recorded recollections, adding an enlarged and reshaped version of her courtship and marriage; an account of her father’s death; details of her childbirths; expressions of her political views; and descriptions of the political upheavals of the time as they affected her and her family. 62 Elspeth Graham suggests that rather than rejecting the conflated, “artificial” edition of 61 See, for example, Mary Beth Rose, “Gender, Genre, and History: Seventeenth-Century English Women and the Art of Autobiography,” Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives , ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse: Syracuse U.P., 1986) 245-78; Elspeth Graham, “Women’s Writing and the Self,” Women and Literature in Britain, 1500-1700 , ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1996) 209- 33; Helen Wilcox, “Private Writing and Public Function: Autobiographical Texts by Renaissance Englishwomen,” Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance , ed. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne- Davies (Detroit: Wayne State U.P., 1992) 47-62. 62 The excerpts in Her Own Life come from this first notebook. Citations from that source will be indicated as HOL , in order to distinguish them from quotations from other versions of the autobiography. At the time that anthology was published, the whereabouts of the succeeding three volumes was not known. More recently, Raymond A. Anselment gained access to two of the three volumes (the middle one has not been recovered), which are in the possession of a private collector. In his recent article, he discusses the differences among the representations of Thornton in the individual volumes, concluding that the collated Surtees version “[minimizes] . . . the complex sense of social and spiritual self fashioned in the different manuscripts, a search and struggle for self- validation unique among other seventeenth-century lives dependent upon traditional familial and religious sources of identity” (“Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Sources of Alice Thornton’s Life,” SEL 45 [2005]: 135-36).
53 Thornton’s manuscripts published by the Surtees Society, we could regard it as the “writing of multiple versions of the self as a crucial part of the autobiographical impulse” (211). However, I would argue that we could see the constantly evolving text as participating in the kind of process Halbwachs identifies as necessary to the formation of collective memory, a process of “interplay between repetition and recollection” that results in “a reduction of particular memories into an idealized image, or imago” (Hutton 7). The repetition of memories evidenced by Thornton’s multiple texts does result in certain characters, places, and experiences gaining heightened importance with reiteration, as the diverse details resolve into the clarified images of Thornton’s typological reading of the personal and public events which, to her, constitute the central concerns of her life that must be recorded. In addition to this multiple layering of memories that creates the collective memory of the Autobiography , Thornton, both in the language and organization of her texts, presents family history as public history. However circumscribed the actual readership for Thornton’s text, the fact remains that her Autobiography displays a constant, even persistent sense of audience, opening with a preface establishing her rationale for recording the “particular remembrances” and “remarkable deliverances” of her life for “perpetuall memmorie” (1,2), a typical rhetorical feature of an early modern published text. 63 Stressing its public importance, Thornton repeatedly constructs the purpose of her autobiography as “the cleare satisfaction of my owne conscience, the world , and my owne family” (257; my emphasis). 64 In fact, she deliberately opened her writing to public view when, in 1668, she took the initiative to show some friends and relatives what she called “my owne Booke of my Life, the collections of God’s dealings and mercys to me and all mine till my widowed condition” (259). This evidence in Thornton’s own words gives credence to Graham’s conclusion that the various versions of Thornton’s autobiography were
63 According to the editors of Her Own Life , the earliest manuscript and the only one still openly accessible to researchers, opens also with dedicatory prayers and poems, another feature of published texts by both men and women. In fact, such features “show an author closely engaged with the world of print texts, its conventions and readership[,] . . . consciously shaping her own manuscript writings for a print readership rather than a manuscript one,” as Margaret Ezell has concluded regarding Ann Halkett’s unpublished manuscript texts. Perhaps in even more striking ways, Thornton’s writings also “conform to the expectations of print . . . while still remaining in manuscript” (“Anne Halkett’s Morning Devotions: Posthumous Publication and the Culture of Writing in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain,” Marotti and Bristol, 217, 220). 64 Her reference here is to the scandalous rumors circulating about her daughter’s marriage to Rev. Comber, but the concern with leaving a record for her family and “the world” is reiterated elsewhere in the Autobiography as well.
54 probably intended for circulation within the family, giving them a kind of “limited public status” (Graham 211), and making them the communal property of a distinctive social group. In addition to the preface inviting a consideration of Thornton’s text as a more public performance than the genre of personal diary would suggest, other aspects of her writing support this initial impression. While her text is written primarily in first person, Thornton occasionally writes in third person, in the style of public records such as annals and chronicles. Thus, for example, the personal preface is followed by a brief formal “announcement” in third person, giving the details of Thornton’s birth and parentage (2). Similarly, the heading to the section which culminates in her wedding reads “The mariage of Alice Wandesforde” (75), and the final paragraph of that section opens in the more distant voice of a third-person report before switching back to first person: “Alice Wandesforde, the daughter of Christopher Wandesford, Esq., late Lord Deputy of Ireland, was married to William Thornton, esquire, of Easte Newton, at my mother’s house in Hipswell” (81). The editors of Her Own Life point out that the spare, early version of the autobiography contains more of these chronicle-like entries in juxtaposition with passages of personal reflection, creating a more obvious interplay between personal and public history that is lost in the later, more expanded version (148). However, in the latter, these vestigial traces of the initial structure add hints of a mediatory quality when they occur, a rhetorical “frame” through which the readers view “a central figure presented to the reader by some anonymous, intervening person,” as Elizabeth Skerpan Wheeler points out (124). Wheeler, however, is discussing not Thornton’s Autobiography , but the structure of a different, very public text that represents itself as private devotion, the Eikon Basilike of Charles I and John Gauden. The resemblance between the two texts suggests that Thornton saw her family history as integrally bound up in the much larger history of the nation. 65 As Wheeler points out, the Eikon was already shaped to two existing models of English Protestant writing: Protestant historiography and spiritual autobiography (129). The intriguing aspect of the Autobiography is
65 Thornton was clearly familiar with she calls that “admirable book” written by “the best of kings” (56), making it at least strongly probable that she was consciously or unconsciously imitating the structure of the Eikon . Like the latter text, Thornton’s Autobiography is broken up into sections, each one with a heading, a number of them, especially in the earlier part of her text, following an identical grammatical structure to those of the Eikon : “Uppon my deliverance from death,” “Uppon the beheading of King Charles the Martyr,” “Uppon our comeing to live at Newton affter the house was built.” Moreover, a significant number of these sections conclude with a prayer, a pattern followed in the Eikon as well. Other parallels include a section devoted to the Earl of Strafford, and a brief but direct address to “my deare children and grandchildren” (191), written in the same style of “deliberative discourse” as the address to the Prince of Wales in the Eikon (Wheeler 131).
55 the way in which Thornton shapes her text to participate in both these genres, a strategy that shows a clear desire to resist what “was deemed through most of this period to be a past unworthy of the title of true history: the past of place, family, and material environment” (Woolf 677). In her life writing Thornton pursues specific typological strategies with which to construct this collective memory, strategies that function to create an imagined community which will be the bearer and transmitter of that memory both in the present and in the future, while at the same time remaining firmly connected through Thornton’s use of typology to the foundational sacred history which, in early modern culture, was the urtext of meaning for all subsequent histories. While the chronological space of the writer’s life is the central location for the history represented in the Autobiography , Thornton seeks to anchor her account in the continuation between past and present. One of her primary strategies for establishing this continuum is her enactment of her own history as a typological narrative rooted in and shaped to defining biblical narratives. While concern over her reputation and her family’s name form a consistent subtext, an equal motivation for her writing is her desire to create a memorial to the “deliverances” which she has experienced as an “unworthy” or “weake handmaide” of the Lord (1). 66 This figuring of herself connects Thornton to Mary, the mother of Jesus, the self-described “handmaid of the Lord,” who still locates herself at an initiating moment in history in her song: “from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For [God] that is mighty hath done to mee great things, and holy is his Name” (Luke 2.48-49). More explicitly, Thornton represents herself as a type of the Old Testament character of Hannah, who begs a son of God and bears Samuel, the future prophet of Israel and anointer of Israel’s first two kings. 67 In her prayer, Hannah repeatedly calls herself a “handmayd”: “And she vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of hostes, if thou wilt indeed looke on the affliction of thine handmayd , and remember me, and not forget thine handmayd , but wilt give unto thine handmayd a man childe, then I will give him unto the Lord all the dayes of his life” (1 Samuel 1.11, KJV). While she does not share Hannah’s barrenness, Thornton, grieving the loss of a second infant son, writes, “I was then resolved in my mind, if it should please the Lord to grant me that blessing of a son . . . that I would freely give 66 See also 96, 165, 233, and her letter to her son, 305. 67 The connection between the two women and their roles and their roles is suggested in the pattern of the songs attributed to them, which are strikingly similar in their openings and in the themes they address. See 1 Samuel 2.1-10 and Luke 1.46-55.
56 him unto the Lord as Hannah did to Samwell” (126). When her next son is born, Thornton describes him as “a sweete son of my vowes, beeing obtained from God, as Samuell was” (143). 68 Not only does Thornton emphasize this connection in her diary, but she also draws on this typological connection in a letter to her son, written while he was studying at Oxford to encourage him in his plans to enter the ministry: “[B]lessed are they who are called young to His service, as Samuel was, and as I designed you” (305). Her words not only give shape to her own and her son’s life in the pattern of an authorized, scriptural past, but the model she chooses, in a culture where married women were expected to take on the identity of their husbands, also allows her to foreground her own role in birth and parenting in a way that cannot be challenged. 69 Moreover, envisioning herself and her family as present types of the biblical past enables Thornton to construct critical events in a way that interweaves biblical, familial and national histories. Thus Charles I is another Hezekiah, a “good Josiah,” and “our Solomon” (56). The nation then, is Israel, without an upright king. As part of that Israel, the inhabitants of Hipswell, Alice Wandesford’s jointure home, are spared from the plague that decimates nearby Richmond, a “deliverance” that Thornton reads as God’s arrest of the “destroying angell,” paralleling her family’s experience to the account in I Chronicles 21 (50). 70 But the family itself can also be the nation of Israel, as when Thornton describes their escape on the eve of the Irish rebellion: “O this is a night worthy to be observed in all our generations after us . . . when the Lord did bring us (as He had don to the children to [sic] Israell) out of the land of Egipt” (31, note). 71 It is
68 See also 144, 171. 69 In The Lawes Resolutions of Women’s Rights (1632), a woman is described as a tributary who, through marriage, “hath lost her stream” (qtd. in Hinds 29). Hinds elaborates: “marriage for [an early modern] woman involves dissolution of her own identity, as she is subsumed in her husband’s.... As well as losing her identity, she loses any sense of tracking her own course: from now on, she will go in the direction determined by ‘her superior’, as she has ‘lost her stream’” (29-30). While she doesn’t use biblical typology as Thornton does, Anne Clifford, earlier in the century, reflects on her deliberate refusal to be subsumed into the identities of either of her husbands. She records a striking simile applied by a friend, who, she says, has described her as “[living] in both these my lords’ great familys as the river of Roan...runs through the lake of Geneva, without mingling any part of its streams with that lake; for I gave myself wholly to retiredness, as much as I could, in both those great families” (qtd. in Barbara Keifer Lewalski, “Claiming Patrimony and Constructing a Self: Anne Clifford and Her Diary ,” Writing Women in Jacobean England [Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1993] 132). 70 “And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand” (I Chronicles 21.15). 71 In another referenced, not included in the Surtees edition, Thornton compares her life to the exodus journey of the nation of Israel “through [the] Red Sea of this World, into the Land or Promisse” (1:2-3; qtd. in
57 noteworthy that, in taking up this typology of Israel, she participates retroactively in the public dialogues surrounding the civil war, for this particular parallel was invoked by all sides, often for quite different purposes. 72 As one of the domestic sites that function in the narrative to develop this conflation of past and present, the deathbed provides an opportunity for Thornton to invoke typological connections that merge private, biblical, and public history. At first, Thornton’s focus on her father seems to support the pattern of the patriarchal appropriation of the domestic space of the bed. Reading his public function in biblical terms, Thornton represents her father, a Lord Chief Justice and Lord Deputy of Ireland, as a “true labourer in God’s vineyard” (21) in the faithful fulfillment of his public duties. Like John of Gaunt, Wandesford plays the role of deathbed prophet of the chaotic era ahead; Thornton even positions his demise in 1640 as a historical “hinge-point,” to borrow Cressy’s term (65), since her father was, she emphasizes, the last Lord Deputy of Ireland until the Restoration, “the warres following affter his death” (25). These ensuing disruptions take on epic historic proportions in Thornton’s diary, as she draws a parallel with a passage from Isaiah, reading it in the register of the political moment recreated in her text: Well might this be applied to our very case, in my deare father’s deliverance [i.e. by death]. For his eyes did not see those great and terrible evills, which we did that survived him, even bitter ones, that fell uppon the whole English and Irish nations, such as was never heard of the like; such horrid treasons, tretcheries, bloodsheds, burnings, fammins, desolattions, and distructions, which fell so heavily uppon our holy, good, and pieous king, whom the world was not worthy of; and that excelent, pure, and glorious church then established, for soundness in faith and doctrine none could parrellel since the Apostles’ time. And surely these things was foreseene severall yeares before by him . . . . (26) While familial concerns obviously provide the controlling register in this account, the personal becomes inseparably imbricated with the historical, the biblical and the political.
Anselment 138). Citations from the primary journals follow Anselment’s designation of them by volume number (1 st or 3 rd ) and page within the indicated volume. 72 For example, Loewenstein quotes George Wither’s comparison to the nation after the death of the king as Israel in the wilderness, seeking the Promised Land. See “The king among the radicals,” In the Royal Image: Representations of Charles I , ed. Thomas N. Corns (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1999) 100. Another prominent spokesperson, Anna Trapnel, chose to position the nation as Israel at a quite different moment of biblical history, the time of Gideon, before Israel demanded that God give them a king.
58 With her father’s death as her model, Thornton follows a similar pattern, but replays the deathbed scene with women and children as the central figures. In the earliest of Thornton’s diaries, the event of her sister’s death in 1645 exists only as an abbreviated chronological detail: “my sister Danby died at Thorpe, September, 1645 of her sixteenth child, being a son named Frances, whom I baptized” (Her Own Life 152). In a later expanded version, the event becomes a more complete dramatic spectacle, accompanied by the same pious manifestations Thornton represents her father as expressing as he confronts his death. While her sister’s final prayers may fit the conventions of “dying well,” they also take on a range well beyond familial concerns; along with requests for “her owne soule . . . and then for her husband, children, mother, and all her other relations and myselfe,” she voices petitions for “the restoration of the king, the church, and the kingdom’s peace” (51). The pattern follows the staging of the father’s death, even to the point of predictions for the nation’s future: “[S]he [i.e. the sister] did in a manner prophesie that God would humble the kingdome by afflictions for there sin and security; but after that when we were humbled and reformed, whosoever should live to see it . . . should injoy happie daies for church and state” (51). Not only does her sister perform the male role of both patriarch and prophet, but she also sings. This combination of bed, prophecy and singing parallels similar performances staged in very public spaces by Anna Trapnel, a Fifth Monarchist and sectarian, a group that Thornton believes to be as misguided as the Catholics. 73 Thornton’s appropriation of what had been a very public sectarian act further underlines her desire to locate her family’s narrative within a more public space. Patricia Phillippy has attributed the tendency to “subordinate women’s actions and words to larger spiritual, political, and cultural goals” to male author’s representations of “women’s godly deaths” (87). Thornton, at least, proves an exception to this gendering of deathbed representations. In both cases of family loss, Thornton shapes the typical deathbed scene to participate in national concerns; the telling of family history becomes inseparable from the telling of national history. Through her appropriation of the biblical type of the patriarch, Thornton subverts the accepted hierarchy of importance that marginalizes “personal” history as incidental to public history; rather, with her typological argument, she claims that the two are mutual and interdependent, as the Jacob story is at once the story of a father and his sons and the narrative of the infancy of the nation of Israel.
73 Trapnel, whose journey to Wales I will discuss in Chapter 2, narrates several occasions when she was laid on a bed in a trance, during which she prophesied and sang while people looked on.
59 Perhaps the most fully developed example of these overlapping registers is the cluster of associations invoked in Thornton’s account of the effects of the sequestration of her eldest brother’s income from the family properties, and, consequently, those proceeds of the estate due to the rest of the family, a narrative line that comes to an abrupt and tragic climax in his accidental death. Again, typology functions as the controlling rhetorical strategy. In Thornton’s version of history, her brother George becomes a type of Naboth, the small landowner whose vineyard was annexed by the wicked King Ahab, 74 while those in power become the Philistines, the Old Testament arch-rivals of the nation of Israel (59, 70). Of course, Thornton’s future is to a large degree determined as a result of the sequestration, since she becomes the pawn in a game of influence, with her marriage the condition upon which an uncle promises to use his connections to clear the state’s order. Yet, when George is accidentally drowned in 1651, just as all the arrangements have been completed, Thornton mourns the tragedy of the event not in purely personal, but rather in familial and national terms. Here there is no actual “deathbed” scene and no final words attributed to the brother who would have filled the father’s place in the family; rather, Thornton takes upon herself the role of speaking on behalf of both her family and the nation. In her “lamentation and prayer” on her brother’s death, she opens by assuming an integral connection between the two spheres: “[W]hat shall I say or doe unto Thy glorious majestie, Who hast looked downe uppon us with a mighty breach, adding great sorrowes to our publicke calamitys? Thou hast a controversey with this whole nation, and allsoe with this poore familie (68).” 75 The family has lost its “maine piller” and “the head of our number” in the death of the eldest son; the nation has lost its pillar and head through the “horrible murder” of Charles. An echo of the Eikon surfaces here as well, when Thornton refers to her brother’s death as “the fall of this stately ceader of our wood” (67), wording that parallels the closing epitaph on Charles in the Eikon : “So falls that stately cedar, while it stood / That was the only glory of the wood” (195). In effect, the rhetoric of the lament functions on both levels to the extent that the two registers become a counterpoint to one another. Thornton petitions God to “put an end . . . to our confutions and distractions, publicke and private,” and almost presumptuously asks that God regard this familial “judgment” as his final punishment on England: “Lett it suffice, O Lord, that this blow is given, and stay Thy sword of vengeance against this nation in generall.” Once again, 74 1 Kings 21.1-16. 75 Other quotes in this section are from 68-71, unless otherwise indicated.
60 Thornton uses death to claim a place in public space; rhetorically, if not in reality, the fate of the family potentially shapes the fate of the nation. 76 Reinforcing her chronicles as a shared version of a collective past for her imagined audience, Thornton frequently invokes her mother, who functions as a past site of recollection. Thornton makes frequent references to her mother’s “vertuous provision and caire” in the upbringing of her children to the point of providing for them even in adulthood, praises her “wise and prudential government” of the household, and generally enshrines her as an ideal wife, mother, and Christian, noted for “doeing much good to all people in each spheare wherein she actted,” both in “private and publick” (8,101-03). Again emphasizing the connection to the biblical past through typology, Thornton refers to her mother’s widowhood home, Hipswell, as “a Zoar, a sanctuary for us all.” In the midst of the upheavals of the war, with the Scots allegedly “[devouring] all her patrimony,” the elder Alice Wandesford provides a refuge for her extended family as God provided a refuge for Lot, enabling him to escape the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (74).77 The persistent references Thornton makes to her “deare mother” establish her as a central image, Halbwach’s “imago” (Hutton 7), in which past and present are inseparably mixed. Continuing in the pattern of the family deaths and female voices from the deathbed so far represented, Thornton’s mother spends her last days giving “pieous and Christian instructions and holy admonitions” to her gathered children and servants (110). Thornton, of course, was not the only one to invest the role of the dying mother with spiritual significance. In his 1627 funeral sermon preached for Frances, Lady Robartes, Hannibal Gammon reads her in quasi-typological fashion as a Rachel, a Ruth, an Esther, and a Dorcas, finally representing this wife and mother as the male patriarch Jacob giving his dying blessing to his household: “She spake to the Hearts of Her Children, Friends, and Servants, that were then about her (like Jacob ) by putting them in remembrance of Her Departure and their Duties” (27, 31; original emphasis). Gammon,
76 Phillippy sees a “dichotomy of masculine moderation and feminine excess” evident in Thornton’s “performance of maternity and its particular grief” (153). This observation needs to be weighed against Thornton’s extended mediation on her brother’s death, to which she gives more prominence and commentary than any of the deaths of her children. This is not to minimize Thornton’s expressions of loss at the deaths of her babies and children, but rather to suggest that it is important to consider the full range of Thornton’s representations of death in order to appreciate that some of those representations speak to a project larger than her own maternal grief, as significant as those maternal losses are to her. 77 For Zoar, see Gen 13.10; Gen. 14.2,8; Gen. 19:20-23; Is. 15.5; Jer. 48.34.
61 however, makes the Jacob comparison a passing parenthetical note, not Robartes’ primary identity on her deathbed. Moreover, “Duties” strongly suggests a recital of well-known cultural and religious expectations, not a prophesying of future achievement or political destiny. Thus, although the biblical type of Jacob has the potential to invest the dying woman’s words with both present and future public import, Gammon’s representation of Lady Robartes reminding the gathered household of “their Duties” carries little of the spiritual authority or insight into the political future that marks the original Jacob story. His sermon provides an example of the way in which women were often accorded influence as spiritual advisors, while at the same time kept safely under the umbrella of male authority. In Thornton’s narrative, however, her mother uses her deathbed moments to accomplish more than a traditional reminder to her household of “their Duties.” Her “performance” closes with yet another dying commentary on the national situation in which she urges her offspring “not to dishonour that great God Whom [they] served by renounceing that faith and profession which was taught [them] by the holy cleargy and bushopps of England; [and] never to listen to the insinuations of any factious, new doctrines whatever” (110). The elder Alice Wandesford delivers her belief that “if we humbled our selves for the abominable sins of this nation, God would returne in mercy and restore His decaied church in England, and His servant’s son, blessed King Charles the First’s posterity” (110-111). 78 Here Thornton’s use of the plural “we” seems deliberately to overlap and blur the boundary between family and nation. Her mother’s deathbed commentary on national affairs culminates in her “praing heartily [that] we might be delivered form popery, which these devissions and schisms might tend to, if not prevented by the all wise providence of Almighty God” (111). Thornton’s final positioning of her mother at her death is crucial, as the elder Alice takes on the role of a biblical patriarch in the narrative: “she imbraced us all severally in her armes, and kissed us, powring out many prayers and blessings for us all; like good old Jacob, when he gave his last blessing to his children” (112). Although this deathbed is reminiscent of Gammon’s brief comparison of the dying Lady Robartes as Jacob, the latter account makes no explicit mention of politics or public responsibilities. In contrast, Alice Wandesford’s final instructions to her family go well beyond the purely personal
78 Of course, when Thornton writes these words, sometime after 1668, the monarchy has been fully reestablished. However, while that may diminish the prophetic effect of these deathbed pronouncements, Thornton’s deliberate staging of such declarations underlines her desire to represent her family history as having meaning and significance beyond the immediate family or local community.
62 and moral duties within the family and domestic household to larger responsibilities on the public and political level. In her study of Clarendon, Martine Watson Brownley attributes the “success” of his history to his “relentless subordination of personal concerns to public ones” (xiv). According to Brownley, the “peculiar merging of public and private concerns . . . characteristic of the English civil wars” resulted in history “[becoming] reduced not only to personal polemical views, but also to individual experiences” (7; my emphasis). Certainly, Thornton’s Autobiography exhibits this same kind of “peculiar merging of public and private concerns” that Brownley sees as “[reversing] historiographical patterns” on a broader level by “plunging historical writing into the present” (6). While she may not fit Brownley’s definition of “literary historiographer” (xii), the “official” definition of history, the way in which Thornton frequently constructs correspondences between familial, personal events and national, political events suggests that she is not only seeking “to discover the meaning of [her own] life,” in the manner of spiritual autobiography, but is also working to “recast public events as providential history,” the goal of Protestant historiography. 79 At times this intersection becomes even more marked when she recreates a past moment as if it were occurring in the moment of writing. For example, Thornton reflects that George’s tragic and untimely death may be providential in preserving him from witnessing and experiencing “those evils to come when there was noe king in Israell, [when] every one did what was right in his owne eyes.” 80 Once again she picks up the parallel with Israel, taking what the radicals championed as a biblical era of individual liberty and re-reading it as a time of chaos and license. As part of her larger rhetorical strategy, the deathbed functions as a key site at which biblical typology, political events, and family history intersect to create multiple registers in the text. Whether it is through the ventriloquized voice of a dying family member or Thornton’s own dramatic reflections on the death of her brother, the domestic stage with its real or implied (death)bed, becomes a place on which to enact a family history that through its typological rhetorical valences allows Thornton to position that narrative as a legitimate chapter in the collective history of the nation. 79 The definitions of the two genres are, again, from Skerpan Wheeler’s article on the Eikon Basilike , 131. 80 Cf. Judges 17.6 and 21.25.
63 Evans and Chevers: Domestic furniture in “publike view” In both the Life of Elizabeth Cary and the Autobiography of Alice Thornton, the scenes of table and bed are played out within the domestic space of the family home, even as the significance of that space is refigured rhetorically through typological associations. In This is a short Relation , the final text I examine in this chapter, domestic furniture functions in a space outside the family home, as two sectarian women (re)define “family” yet again; and by virtue of publication, the potential audience expands beyond the limited readership that Cary’s daughter and Thornton could hope to garner from the circulation of their manuscripts. The editor of the writings Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers smuggled out of their Malta prison cells foregrounds the public significance of their texts: “the Wisdom of God is seen meet that the[se] . . . writings which came from their hands, might appear to publike view , that thereby every Member of the one Body [may?] have a right understanding, and . . . a sensible feeling of the trials and consolations of each other” (66; my emphasis). By staging both their suffering and the agency the two women exercise in the midst of it, those writings represent Evans and Chevers as both a comfort and a call to action to a Quaker community under siege in the oppressive climate of early post-Restoration England. “My dearly beloved Yoke-Mate,” writes one woman of the other (77). 81 Her language appropriates a metaphor most usually associated with the marriage relationship in early modern culture. In the Geneva Bible’s translation of Genesis 2:6, the phrase “which God hath coupled together” carries the following gloss: “Hath made them yoke folowes [sic], as the marriage it selfe is by a borrowed kind of speech called a yoke” (facsimile of 1560 ed.). Similarly, Lancelot Andrewes picks up the figure in The pattern of catechistical doctrine at large . Because of the need for help in overcoming sin and in facing “the imperfections of old age, diseases, and infirmities,” he writes, “It was very convenient there should be a yoke fellow” (372). The concept of the “yoke-mate,” with its agricultural origin in the yoking together of oxen to carry out fieldwork, places the emphasis on labor, shared purposes, and collaboration. “There is,” Andrewes goes on to elaborate, “a league between them [husband and wife], wherein they 81 This particular reference seems to be written by Katharine about Sarah. However, one of the defining features of this text is the collaborative method of its writing. At times, the identity of the writer is clear, perhaps most clearly so near the end of the text, where there are specific letters from each woman to their families and faith communities back in England. By my reckoning from a close reading, fairly large chunks of the text seem attributable to Katharine. However, the composition of the text also creates an ambiguity of individual authorship, since it is a compilation of individual texts by an editor (presumably Daniel Baker), without any indication as to how the fragments were selected or ordered.
64 promise mutual help” (372). Notably, during the initial questioning, inquisitors attempt to define Evans and Chevers in terms of their familial relationships; the authorities want to know the names of husbands, fathers, and mothers, and ask how many children the women have (4). Yet, while they write letters that address their family members back in England with love and affection, the two women insistently define their yoke-mate relationship as primary to their task: “the Lord hath joined us together, and wo be to them that should part us” (16). Separated from their biological families and their Quaker community, Evans and Chevers construct their resistance to the authorities around the stage props of domestic relationships: food, laundry, needles, and beds. Both the editor and the women themselves create typological connections to invest the women’s narrative with authority. Their experience is framed on the title page by their editor as a contrasting counterpoint to the biblical narrative of Paul’s shipwreck on the island of Malta as he is being transported to Rome, a political prisoner who has appealed to the Roman emperor (Acts 27.14-28.10). According to the biblical account, Baker points out on the same title page, even though the residents of Malta were a “barbarous people,” they showed Paul hospitality, unlike the treatment meted out to Evans and Chevers, who were not “refreshed . . . with necessary things” (title page). The women also situate themselves in relation to Paul’s experience in an early reference to the location of the city of Malta as “in the Island of Malta where Paul suffered shipwreck” (3), a comment which would have evoked the biblical story for their Quaker audience. They also claim authority on an equal basis with the biblical writers through rhetorical patterning. Following closely the vocabulary and rhythms of the opening of the New Testament epistle of I John, one of the women declares: “in obedience to the Lord I have written the things which I did hear, see, tasted, and handled of the good Word of God” (12). 82 Given that the Quakers shared with other sectarians a belief that direct revelation from God had not ceased with the finalizing of the biblical canon, her language claims for her and her partner equal status with the biblical writer, one of Jesus’ disciples; the women see themselves as contemporary apostles both in their evangelizing mission and in their role as recorders and deliverers of God’s divine revelation to the church and the world at large.
82 Compare the opening of I John in the Geneva Bible: “That which was from the beginning, which wee have heard, which wee have seene with these our eyes, which wee have looked upon, and these handes of ours have handled of that Word of life….”
65 Within this framework of apostolic authority, the women stage a drama that revolves around a complex relationship with food (or the lack of it) and beds. In direct communication with family, both women invoke the same biblical table metaphor, portraying the table as a place of nourishment and refreshment. In a letter to her husband and children, Evans writes that she and her companion “are Witnesses [that] he can provide a Table in the Wilderness both spiritual and temporal”; she goes on to elaborate: “he did nourish our souls with the choicest of his mercies, and doth feed our bodies with his good Creatures” (54-55). Expressing a similar assurance, Chevers writes to her family that “the Lord did deck our Table richly in the Wilderness” (57). In a note marked “to Friends,” Chevers claims that she “[wants] nothing,” that God “hath deck’t [her] Table richly” (60). This cluster of references to a “Table” specifically is unique in the text; while the theme of food recurs frequently, the presence of a material table remains a conjecture, rather than a point of emphasis. This could be due to the absence of an actual table in the women’s prison cells, although their references to writing and the existence of the papers themselves presuppose some kind of readily available writing surface for pen and inkpot. However, there could well be a theological reason for the table’s absence throughout most of the narrative. Since the Quakers did not recognize the traditional sacraments of the church, the table did not have the same typological significance for them as it held for Catholics particularly and, only somewhat less so, for moderate Protestants, either Presbyterian or Church of England. In spite of these positive references to the table Evans and Chevers make in their direct addresses to family and friends, in the rest of the narrative they represent their relationship with food as considerably more vexed. Food, particularly meat, becomes a type of resistance, a kind of language of spiritual independence and agency. The issue of eating meat comes up very early in the narrative, when Evans writes that the consul’s wife brings them meat which Evans cannot bring herself to consume, having been “smote with an Arrow to the heart” with the conviction that the woman is their enemy (5). Similarly, when one of the friars later offers a hen separately to each of the women, both refuse him: “We did not dare to take them, the Lord did forbid us” (19). Echoing the words of Paul in the epistle to the Thessalonians, Evans tells that friar that she “could not take his Hens, for it was not the practice of the servants of the Lord to be chargeable
66 to any while they have of their own” (18). 83 When they eventually do run out of financial resources, the women hesitate to take food for which they have not paid or worked, until they receive leave from God to eat “as feely as if thou hadst laboured for it with thy hands” (78). The women’s abstinence from meat causes some consternation among their jailers, as well as suspicious puzzlement, according to the narrative. Surprised by the women’s ability to survive “with so little meat,” the friars are “much troubled” and send the women meat, “pretending the English consul sent it,” thinking the women more likely to partake (23). In fact, the women are seemingly inundated by “many good things” that they interpret as a seductive temptation and potential threat to their spiritual integrity: “We were afraid to eat, and cryed to the Lord, and said, ‘We had rather dye, than eat any thing that is polluted and unclean” (24). Those last words function to situate the women typologically in relation to both the Old and the New Testament. The words “unclean” and “polluted” occur most frequently in the Old Testament, where they are tied most closely with the dietary and cleansing laws imposed on the nation of Israel, found primarily in the book of Leviticus; the terms also are used in some of God’s judgments against nations in the prophetic books.84 In the prophetic texts of the Old Testament, the terms take on a less individual and literal application and a more social and collective significance. In the one passage where the two terms occur in close proximity, as in the women’s words, the emphasis is on the social responsibility of the people of Israel: Ye offer uncleane bread upon mine altar, and you say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say the table of the Lord is not to be regarded. And if yee offer the blinde for sacrifice, it is not evill: and if ye offer the lame and sicke, it is not evill: offer it nowe unto thy prince: will he be content with thee, or accept thy person, saieth the Lord of hostes? (Malachi 1:7-8, Geneva; my emphasis)
83 Compare I Thessalonians 2:9 (KJV), in which Paul reminds his audience that he and his companions spent their time “labouring day and night, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you.” On this biblical passage, the Quakers based one of their most insistent critiques of an institutional church, particularly the Church of England. Particular 44 in George Fox’s text cited above declares: “Let all these things for money, preaching for money, and singing for money be laid aside. Let not preaching be a trade, nor the Word of God made Merchandize of, and let not the Law be sold nor bought.” A similar and much extended condemnation is found in Edward Burrough’s “Epistle to the Reader,” the preface to Fox’s The Great Mystery and the Great Whore of Babylon Unfolded (1658). 84 The word “unclean” (or “vncleane”) occurs 240 times in the Geneva Bible; over three quarters of those occurrences are in the Old Testament. Many of the appearances of “unclean” in the New Testament are not actually in the biblical text itself, but in the extra-biblical notations added by the editors of the Geneva.
67 In this context, the “unclean bread” is associated with social injustice, and those that offer it are guilty of sacrificing to their own interests the blind, the lame, and the sick. The theme of this biblical passage appears in strikingly similar terms in Particular 33 of George Fox’s “fifty nine particulars,” written in the same year that Evans and Chevers set out on their mission and addressed to “the Parliament of the Comon-Wealth of England”: Let all the poor people, blinde and lame, and creeples be provided for in the Nation, that there may not be a beggar in England nor England's Dominions, that you may say you come to be equal with the Jewes, that had the law that made provision for widows, strangers and fatherless. He that turns his ears from hearing the poor, turns his ears from the Law, which says to provide for them, for ye have read the practice of the Church, the Saints which were in the Gospel, which doth condemn this Nation's practice. (8) In their insistent concern that they not eat anything that is “polluted and unclean,” the women identify themselves as types of the nation of Israel, and at the same time, set themselves apart from a corrupt Israel, the kind of Israel that is the subject both of God’s rebuke in the Malachi passage and of Fox’s rebuke to the nation of England. While Old Testament associations allow the women to identify themselves as types of an obedient Israel, the only New Testament passage in which “polluted” and “unclean” occur in proximity invests them with additional apostolic authority. That passage recounts a significant episode from the life of Peter, represented in Acts as one of the most influential leaders in the early formation of the Christian church. As the apostle sleeps on a rooftop, he has a vision in which a sheet is let down from heaven, filled with animals whose meat was forbidden to the devout Jew following the Old Testament dietary prohibitions: And there came a voyce to him, Arise, Peter: kill, and eate. But Peter sayd, Not so, Lord: for I have never eaten any thing that is polluted, or uncleane. And the voyce spake unto him againe the second time, The things that God hath purified, pollute thou not. 85 (Acts 10:13-14; my emphasis)
85 In parallel language, Peter himself recounts his experience: “I heard a voyce, saying unto me, Arise, Peter: slay and eate. And I said, God forbid, Lord: for nothing polluted or uncleane hath at any time entred into my mouth. But the voyce answered me the seconde time from heaven, The things that God hath purified, pollute thou not. And this was done three times, and all were taken up againe into heaven” (Acts 11:7-10).
68 In the Acts narrative, this pivotal episode functions primarily to authorize the entrance of non- Jews into a faith that has previously been open only to Jewish believers. The latter focus, however, becomes secondary in the context in which Evans and Chevers appropriate Peter’s language. Here, the food is not clearly barred to them through any dietary law; rather, they consider the food potentially unclean because of its association with the people imprisoning them. Recounting a friar’s complaint that the women “would not accept of the Inquisitor’s Dyet,” they write that they “did not know who did prepare for us” (29). Like Peter, they will eat only what they believe God has authorized them to eat: “we did receive our meat as we had freedom in the Lord” (29). While part of their hesitation arises from the dilemma of accepting food for which they cannot pay (77-78), their reluctance to eat sets them off as separate and distinct from those around them and underlines their direct communication with God, their access to the “mind of the Lord” (77). Their stance puts the women in a position of power; rather than their jailors withholding food as a means of control, Evans and Chevers reverse the terms of the relationship so that their “mortal Enemies” ply them “with the choicest of their meat, and would gladly give us whole Bottles of Wine, if we would receive it” (29). Thus, while explicitly mentioned only a few times in the texts that make up A Short Relation , the table is present through the constant references to food and eating, particularly since the noun in seventeenth-century usage still referred both to the actual piece of furniture and the food served on it (OED). Through their use of the biblical terms “polluted and unclean” to embody their vexed relationship with food during their imprisonment, Evans and Chevers appropriate the types of both the nation of Israel and the apostle Peter for a purpose larger than the publication of the trials of their imprisonment. The associations which would be invoked in the reading audience of Quakers back in England would have significance beyond the prison in Malta. By representing themselves as types both of the chosen nation, the pure Israel, and of Peter, who gives precedence to the direct word of God over the legalistic prohibitions of a religious system, Chevers and Evans speak through their own experience to the embattled state of the Quakers in England in the late 1650s and early 1660s. Like the two women, the Quakers were a persecuted minority, accused of plans to overthrow the established government; through the example of the two women, the community is encouraged to remain firm, not to be tempted by the “unclean and polluted” figurative food offered by the English authorities to tempt them to betray their convictions. Those who offer the Quakers such incentives to abandon their beliefs
69 and principles are, like the Catholic priests and friars in the Malta prison, “mortal Enemies,” opponents of the true Israel and false emissaries of God, tempting the faithful to listen to the voice of (literally) men, rather than the directions from God. The second major object of domesticity that takes on special significance in A Short Relation is the bed. Using the bed as a stage was certainly not a novel strategy for sectarian women; Anna Trapnel and Sarah Wight are among the more celebrated practitioners of such stagings earlier in the 1650s. As appropriated by Trapnel and Wight, the bed became a space that authorized their speech and a setting that drew attention to their liberation from the demands of their bodies, both of them seemingly going significant periods of time with little or no nourishment and with few ill effects. 86 In contrast, Evans and Chevers represent the bed as a place of suffering and potential death; like Trapnel and Wight, they do fast, but that discipline is a much more conscious one, not a seemingly effortless corollary of prophetic or ecstatic trances. In her analysis of Trapnel, Hind generalizes to some extent about the connection between the call to write and “the negative experience of illness and physical suffering, and the consequent threat to life and safety” ( God’s Englishwoman 91). Based on this “nexus” of factors, Hind identifies what she describes as “a kind of pathologisation of the act of writing, the manifestation of a bodily sickness somehow paralleling or representing the ‘sickness’ of being a woman writer” (91). The text of A Short Relation , however, does not seem to suggest a “patholigisation” of writing; Evans and Chevers see writing as part of their work, and it could even be argued that their freedom to write correlates more closely with their periods of health, as opposed to being inextricably linked with their “experiences of illness and physical suffering.” 87 Nor does their authority come through the “achievement of complete self-transcendence” (Mack 5). Rather,
86 More attention has been focused on the way in which Trapnel and Wight dramatize their “bed scenes.” On the body, women, and prophecy in general as both empowering and limiting, see, for example, Diane Purkiss, “Producing the voice, consuming the body: Women prophets of the seventeenth century,” Women, Writing, History, 1640-1740 , ed. Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman (Athens, GA: U. of Georgia Press, 1992) 139-58. On Quaker women and the body, see Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women . See Hilary Hind on Trapnel in God’s Englishwoman (1996), and, more recently, “Sectarian spaces: The politics of place and gender in seventeenth-century prophetic writing,” Literature and History 13 (2004): 1-25. On both Trapnel (Ch. 2) and Wight (Ch. 5), see Katharine Gillespie, Domesticity and Dissent in the Seventeenth Century . 87 I would also argue that the cause-effect relationship Hind establishes between bodily condition and writing is not as convincing as she makes it out to be. While Trapnel is not my subject in this chapter, I would briefly suggest that the role of “sicknesses” in her texts cannot be reduced to the one-to-one correspondence that Hind makes the basis of her argument.
70 through their practice of typology, the two women rewrite the physical conditions of their surroundings and their own bodies into a rhetorical occasion to claim a space for public speech. One of the first episodes in the narrative, chronicled in detail, focuses on the sickbed; it becomes a stage on which Evans’ physical suffering becomes a powerful spectacle both to the women’s jailers and to the reading audience. Initially confined in a small “inner Room . . . which had but two little holes in it for light or air,” the two women are forced to “lie down at a chink of [the] door to fetch breath” (13). Shortly after their imprisonment, Evans takes to her bed, remaining there “night and day for 12 days together, fasting and sweating,” the bed “wet” beneath her. Near the end of her fast, the women are visited by friars, prison officials, and a doctor. In a scene reminiscent of Trapnel’s experience in Cornwall, one friar “[pulls Evans’] hand out of the bed” in an attempt to get her to respond to her visitors (10). 88 Unlike Trapnel, however, Evans does respond, and with a cutting condemnation, impervious to the threats the friar makes against the women’s lives. In this episode, the bed becomes not the site of family blessing, but rather of indictment; when the friar, in his anger, makes to strike Evans with his crucifix, she declares, “Thou art out of the Apostles Doctrine, they were no strikers; I deny thee to be any of them who went in the Name of the Lord” (10). The narrative clearly places the bedridden Evans in the position of authority, even more so than in the scenes represented by Thornton, given the adversarial nature of the encounter and the more literally public nature of the prison setting. In spite of her physical weakness, Evans confounds the six men, reversing her role from the confronted to the confronter; while she has been the one in danger of being silenced by death, her visitors are the ones who leave wordless, “all smitten as dead men” (10). At times, the bed seems to be both a sickbed and a deathbed. Just after the episode noted above, Evans recalls God calling her to get up in the middle of the night, telling her to “Arise out of thy Grave-Clothes” (10). Sometime later, when the women are led by God to fast, it appears this time that Chevers is the one most affected; her companion, Evans writes, “was so weak, that she put on such linen upon her head, as she thought to lie in her Grave” (77). After some months in prison, as the women use up their financial resources paying for their food, they “eat but little in a Month together,” waiting on the Lord to know if it is permissible for them to eat food offered to them by their jailers. Kept in separate cells, the women both “lie in clothes, because 88 Compare to Trapnel, Report and Plea 20. Both scenes can be seen as parodies or reversals of the scene described in the New Testament, in which Jesus takes a dead girl by the hand and raises her to life. See Mark 5.21- 24, 35-43, and Luke 8.41-42, 49-56.
71 [they have] no strength to put them off, nor one to make [their] bed” (77). Again, this behavior places the women in a position where they are in control at the same time as they create a “profound confusion” around them (Mack 79), even though they are essentially prisoners in a foreign land. As the women fast, those around them react with frantic haste to persuade them to eat. Evans describes the furious activity their stillness on their beds causes among their jailers: “Then they did run to and fro like mad men, and the Fryars did come and say, the Inquisitor sent them to tell us, we might have any thing we would eat; and they did say, it was not possible that ever creatures could live with so little meat for so long a time together” (77). Rather than their weakness and immobility on their beds placing them in a position of vulnerability, the women are, they write, “kept a top of all the Mountains, so that they could not make us shrink or bow one jot or tittle to any of their Precepts of Commands” (78). They are brought back from close to death, raised from their “graves” like Lazarus, a biblical role the women explicitly identify with after one period of fasting, writing that “the Lord did work as great a Miracle by our preservation, as he did by raising Lazarus out of the Grave” (24). Shut up within prison cells, strangers in a foreign country, Evans and Chevers create a domestic setting in which they can stage their drama of resistance. Through their use of the beds and boards that were most often expressive of the woman’s role as a servant to the needs and desires of others, Evans and Chevers represent the common objects and acts of domestic living as vehicles for engaging on an equal footing with the male authorities who find themselves frustrated in their frequent attempts to use rhetoric to intimidate and dominate the two women. They enact a spiritual agency that positions them not only as narrators of their own experience, but also as types of other victims of the widespread persecution of the Quaker community during the late 1650s and the early 1660s. 89 Given the Quakers’ belief that the English church was riddled with “popery,” those who read the text could easily draw the connection between the behavior of the Inquisition and the behavior of the clerics of the institutional English church. 90 89 While the women were in prison for three years, the text suggests that they had communication with Baker and perhaps others who were able to visit them. It is likely that the women were aware of at least some of what Quakers in England and perhaps even the colonies were experiencing. Mack points out the foundational importance of relationships of spiritual kinship and friendship to the Quaker movement, both for the practical purpose of effective organization and for the emotional and spiritual support especially important to a relatively new movement (157ff). 90 There may be an additional association with England suggested through the prominent reference to the “Isle of Malta” on the title page, since Evans makes specific reference later to her experience on “the Isle of Man,” where “a Souldier came to my bedside with a naked Sword, and took me by the Arm, and [hal’d?] me out of the Bed
72 Writing a preface to George Fox’s The great mistery of the great whore unfolded (1659), Edward Burrough made explicit that parallel: And what difference between the defence of the church of Rome and your church of Protestants? They have their inquisitions, and you have your houses of correction; they have their slavery in the gallies, and you have whips and stocks; they have their divers torments, and cruel dealings towards persons that oppose them, in one manner, and you have your torments and cruel dealings towards us in another manner; though not in the same measure, yet in the same nature: what difference between you and them? And herein doth the hypocrisy of the Protestant church and their ministers appear, in that they cry against and deny the church of Rome and their persecution and cruelty acted against others, and yet in nature and manner practice the very same upon us, as in England this day is witnessed. (n.p.) But Burrough’s “Preface,” in its rather repetitive diatribe, lacks the impact and drama of the scenes Evans and Chevers structure around the simple props of food and bed, charged as they are with the typologies of both religious tradition and scripture. In a poem Evans includes in one of the closing letters to family and spiritual community, she does not hesitate to place herself (and any who share her mission) in the position of challenging even the authority of a human monarch. Claiming the authority of “our KING” (79; original capitalization), Evans declares that this king “maketh Cedars to bow, and Oaks to bend / To him that’s sent to the same end [of turning ‘darknesse into Light’]” (79-80). With the cedar and oak well-established as types of royalty, Evans clearly suggests that human rulers must submit to the authority invested in the messengers of the “KING” she and her companion serve. In A new and More Exact Mappe , Mary Cary laments the lack of “Saints” that “have the spirit of Prophecie” that “[carries] them forth to publish the Gospel” (237). Particularly, she notes, “how few are the women,” since “they are generally very unable to communicate to others, though they would do it many times in their families, among their children and servants” (237-38). These domestic responsibilities, she infers, prevent them from experiencing more than “some sprinklings” of prophesy to communicate to those outside their families; at other times, “they finde themselves dry and barren” (238). Evans and Chevers were among those “few
at the tenth hour of the night, and carried me on Ship board” (80). Evans goes on to comment that she did not dare offer resistance at that time, and since then “that place lies upon me yet” (80).
73 women,” relatively speaking, who left behind the daily routines of housekeeping and childcare (both had families) to follow the call of God to prophesy in alien territories, far beyond their English homes. 91 However, they appropriated that very domesticity as a site for resistance on the public stage of a foreign prison, when they were objects of fascination, frustration, and ridicule. While they did on several occasions engage in the highly dramatic street behavior typical of Quaker women prophets (Mack 166-67), the drama in which the two women most consistently cast themselves is centered on the table and the bed. Speaking of the ability of Quaker female prophets to integrate the mundane and the prophetic, Mack notes that they were “able to balance states of spiritual ecstasy and self-annihilation with a concern for . . . the practical and emotional elements of everyday life” (246). In A Short Relation , Chevers and Evans do more than this; the domestic becomes a site that produces the actions and multiple discourses, with the typological associations investing those discourses with public meanings for the text’s potential audiences of the Quaker community and the wider English reading public. Conclusion Milton’s Edenic “table tableau” in Paradise Lost illustrates well the way in which early modern domestic spaces were represented as the “natural” site of women’s activities, and, at the same time redefined as a site devoted to male activity and/or discourse, marginalizing or completely erasing women in the process. As the one who creates and furnishes the scene of the meal as a welcoming and cordial space, Eve exercises a certain agency as the primary facilitator of the “cheerful and friendly” hospitality that Christopher Wandesford, Alice Thornton’s father, advised his son to cultivate so that his guests would “look upon you often and at all Times with Contentment” (qtd. in Heal 20). However, once the conversation between Adam and Raphael turns to intellectual matters and takes on “the quality of ‘public’ debate” (Magro 107), Eve willingly removes herself to role of a passive observer on the margins. 92 Speaking on the use of
91 Cary was a Fifth Monarchist prophet, not a Quaker. However, sectarian groups in general offered similar kinds of spaces for women to exercise prophetic gifts, although the methods and the messages might differ from group to group. 92 Magro goes on to argue that Eve’s reason for removing herself—that she would rather hear what Raphael has to say from Adam later, when he will mix his retelling with “conjugal Caresses” (VIII.56)—functions to position Adam as a raconteur , a “ public man in the making,” in the Habermasian sense. In Adam, Milton dramatizes the “audience oriented subjectivity which Habermas argues is the training ground for interaction in the emerging public sphere” (108).
74 contemporaneous and set prayers, John Allington, in the “Epistle Dedicatory” to A Review of a Brief Apology (1666), clearly differentiates the space for the expression of religious devotion in the home based on similar distinctions. He advises that in “Privacies, as Closets[,]” members of the household should feel at liberty “to pour out their Souls by such expressions as may best hear Devotion, and best fix the Spirit.” However, he goes on to counsel, “when the religious Master in his Parlour shall call in his Family to publick Duty , then the Prayer, be it what it may, it would be set” (n.p.; my emphasis). The space of the domestic parlor becomes a site for the performance of “publick Duty” when the male head of the household leads his family in formal prayers. 93 In the examples I have discussed from male-authored epic poetry and popular drama, the representations of bed and table, material markers of the early modern domestic sphere, often function to locate women in relation to that space in a way that silences, excludes, and stereotypes them. The women I have discussed in this chapter, whether they are Catholic, Church of England, or Quaker, all engage in the project of redefining domestic space through their appropriation of typology, rooting their own typological identities on the typological significance embedded in chairs and tables in early modern culture. Thus, Elizabeth Cary is represented as drawing on typological associations to figure the table as a center of Catholic religious education and as a means to build religious community, both transgressive public acts of resistance to mandated state religion. As a loyal adherent of that religion, on the other hand, Thornton stages dramatic deathbed tableaus and meditations that situate women in roles that parallel the authority wielded by Old Testament patriarchs to predict family destiny and political futures, claiming a place for family narrative in the annals of public history. Finally, in an account which combines aspects of both Thornton and Cary’s strategies, Evans and Cheever bring bed and table together to claim apostolic authority that strengthens the ties of spiritual kinship and that condemns the repressive acts of the English political authorities. Through their rhetorical strategy of typology, all of these women position themselves as actors who take on active roles in building and sustaining communities of family and faith, claiming for themselves and for those communities a 93 See also Richard Allestree’s guidelines in The Whole Duty of Prayer (London, 1692): “The second Duty of publick Prayer, is that in a family, and that indeed ought to be the Masters Care to provide for the Souls of those that belong to him, as to provide food for their Temporal Nourishment: Now if he neglects this Duty and takes no care of his Household in this important affair that Man cannot well be esteemed a Christian, but a Heathen” (5). While Allestree’s text was published in 1692, its writing likely dates to between 1660, when he was appointed as canon of Christ Church, and his death in 1681.
75 public and political significance and agency. This chapter provides a foundation for and first step in my argument that typology offers a powerful rhetorical instrument to early modern women, enabling them to locate both speech and action in both physical and discursive public spaces. Next, I turn my attention to women who, while still connected to communities of faith, find themselves moving outside the geographical bounds of those communities. 94 Like medieval traveling players, these women appropriate their journeys as opportunities to shape performances that at once position them within communities and on very public stages, where they can enact their own commentaries on the public affairs of their own day.
94 This was definitely the case for Evans and Chevers as well. However, during the time covered by A Short Relation they were in a fixed location, albeit in a foreign country. We do not see them as travelers on the road in the same way that we do the women I discuss in the next chapter.
76 Chapter Two: Traveling Performances, Typology, and Community The evil of a wandring and a gossiping spirit: this is evil in the Church, and is evil also in a wife, who is the figure of a Church. Christ loveth to have his Spouse keep at home; that is, to be with him in the Faith and practice of his things, not ranging and medling with the things of Satan: no more should wives be given to wander and gossop abroad . . . . John Bunyan, Christian Behavior (1674; written 1663) It had seemed to me that, considering what St. Paul says about women keeping at home . . . , this might be God’s will. He said to me: “Tell them they are not to be guided by one part of the Scripture alone, but to look at others; ask them if they suppose they will be able to tie My hands.” Teresa of Avila, Spiritual Relations (1588) Introduction As the comments of both Teresa of Avila and John Bunyan clearly suggest, early modern culture often responded with both anxiety and criticism when women did not “keep at home,” and stepped beyond enclosed domestic spaces. Such “wanderings,” as Bunyan puts it, not only put a woman into a more open physical space, but were also frequently read as indicative of dangerous spiritual “wandering,” or, at the very least, a questionable willingness to make oneself vulnerable to the influence of “the things of Satan.” Of course, before the push to enclosure of even lay religious orders that followed the counter-Reformational moves of the Council of Trent, many women religious not in enclosed orders actively pursued work among the sick and poor, while those in positions of leadership might engage in travel for a variety of reasons. In the sixteenth century, Teresa of Avila, best known today for her contemplative writings, also founded seventeen religious houses for women and four for men (Ranft 111). Between 1617 and 1631, the English-born Mary Ward traveled actively back and forth between England and the Continent, as well as all over Europe, establishing the foundations of her Institute. 95 Even before
95 In 1631, Urban VIII signed a Bull of Suppression, effectively disbanding all the houses of Ward’s order. See Orchard 101-102. This move is representative of the hierarchy’s push for enclosure during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. However, while women religious may have experienced more limitations on their
77 the early modern era, women not in religious orders could still engage in acceptable forms of more extended travel as an expression of their religious beliefs. For the most part, such expeditions took the shape of traditional communal journeys, such as the pilgrimages that the fictitious Wife of Bath and the real-life Margery Kempe made to Canterbury and Jerusalem respectively. However, while women viewed religious life as “an all-encompassing lifestyle . . . that transformed every facet of existence,” they most typically practiced their faith within the boundaries of “daily activities, social and familial relationships, and the space in which they lived and worked” (Mendelson and Crawford 226). With the exception of the well-established pilgrimages, societal approval of women’s movement outside the enclosed space of the home even for religious purposes often came with limitations on both company and distance. The anxiety excited by women’s excursions outside their designated domestic territories was hardly new. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath infers a male desire to keep women safely enclosed when she informs her pilgrimage companions that women “love no man tha taketh keep or charge / Wher that we goon: we wol been at oure large” (327-28). However, as Mendelson and Crawford point out, by the early modern era public space had been “feminized” to a certain extent, particularly by lower class women, as they increasingly “colonized” typically male economic hubs such as the marketplace (210). Yet female activities outside the home could easily be rewritten as acts of unruly independence. Not surprisingly, then, in writing of Anne Askew in Three Conversions of England , Robert Parsons’ Catholic response to the heroizing of Askew in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments , the Jesuit priest reframes her desertion of her husband as a tale of wayward “wandering” and religious opportunism. Askew, Parsons alleges, left her husband in order to “follow the liberty of the new ghospell, goinge up and downe at her pleasure, to make new ghospellers and proselits of her religion, untill [King] Henry restrayned her by imprisonment” (492). While women may have established more of a presence in public spaces like the marketplace, their position remained an ambiguous and potentially dangerous one. This chapter examines the texts of women who wrote autobiographically on their own experience of moving into the more conflicted territory of the world outside the home and who also published that account for an audience beyond the circle of family and close friends. Indeed,
movement during that time, the climate was temporary, according to Patricia Ranft, and by the end of the seventeenth century, active and contemplative orders were considered equally acceptable (97).
78 while Askew was not likely guilty of Parsons’ charge of itinerant proselytizing, when she journeyed to Lincoln Cathedral where she staged a deliberate and confident performance of Bible-reading in English ( Examinations 56), she was truly engaging in audacious female behavior, particularly since Henry VIII had banned even women of the upper classes from reading the English Bible in public. 96 What might have been an anomaly during the sixteenth century became much more common during the seventeenth century, with a corresponding rise in anxiety evident among men who described this new exercise of freedom, inevitably suggesting connections among travel, sexual license, and religious error. As Patricia Parker notes, women exposed in public spaces were considered to be offering the “private” up for “common” use (105). Such concerns are invoked by John Brinsley, a Church of England minister, when he addresses himself to the growing number of women who were, in his belief, “turning from the way of the Church of Christ in Old England, to the refined Error of separation.” In response, Brinsley offers his tract, A looking-glasse for good women (1645), as an antidote to help them “see the error of these your wandrings ” (preface n.p.; my emphasis). In a more satirical vein, the anonymous pamphlet Tub-preachers overturn’d (1647) concludes its mockery of sectarians and “your women-Tubbers” with a ballad about a female lacemaker turned preacher who eventually leaves her husband to escape “over Sea” with her new convert-lover (16). Women might perform the role of spiritual educator of children and servants in the home, but any woman who felt a spiritual call to travel beyond the traditional boundaries of both behavior and locality risked being labeled mentally unstable, spiritually deluded, and morally loose. My analysis in this chapter, which will focus on texts by Anna Trapnel and Mary Rowlandson, will explore the integral connections among biblical typology, community, and individual in the context of travel, particularly when the act of the journey itself functions as a “performative genre,” as Victor Turner describes it, a staged drama that can be “a critique, direct or veiled, of the social life it grows out of, an evaluation (with lively possibilities of rejection) of
96 In 1543, Henry approved a law restricting the reading of the English Bible according to rank. Males of the aristocracy and the gentry were allowed to read it aloud to their households; women of those classes and merchants could read it only privately, to themselves; and the rest of the population was prohibited from reading it at all. The new law was a reaction against the spread of popular literacy, for the Coverdale and Tyndale translations, as well as the Great Bible, had been publicly available in print after 1535. See Gerry Knowles, A Cultural History of the English Language (London, New York, and Sydney: Arnold, 1997) 73; and Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1993) 125. While the law, like the sumptuary laws, may not have been strictly or even frequently enforced, it did reflect an anxiety about the lay reading of the scripture, particularly among women, as a public act.
79 the way society handles history” (“Images and Reflections” 22). First, I look at a familiar male- authored canonical text in which a journey plays a significant role in defining the dynamics between individual and community, especially the degree to which the individual’s experience is singular, or representative of shared communal identity and goals, or both. In the allegory of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), a sectarian text that had lasting popular appeal, 97 the separate journeys of Christian and Christiana represent a marked contrast between the lone figure of the male traveler on his spiritual journey in part one and the highly communal, family- centered, and male-directed progress of Christian’s female counterpart to the same destination in part two. In contrast to Bunyan’s representation of a journeying woman, both Trapnel and Rowlandson represent themselves typologically as central figures from key biblical stories, creating powerful narratives that center on their movement well outside the common domestic spaces and routines, where even tasks and locations which have typically domestic associations take on entirely new and significant resonance. In her Report and Plea (1654), Anna Trapnel, a Fifth Monarchist woman, casts herself as both Paul and Christ in chronicling her journey from London into Cornwall as a spiritual emissary and her return as a prisoner of a government that was in power partially due to the support of her own Fifth Monarchist community. Three decades later, in The sovereignty and goodness of God (1682), Mary Rowlandson represents herself as a type of the nation of Israel as she recounts her capture by Indians and her forced treks about New England in their company in a narrative framed for the audience by Cotton Mather’s preface, in which he offers her experience as a parable and warning to readers, especially those of the colonial New England Puritan community. These two texts provide a fascinating counterpart to Bunyan, since all the texts can be discussed as alternative versions of the “progress,” a deliberately shaped journey which, depending on the context, carries with it significant and sometimes intersecting religious and political meanings. The “progress” of the pilgrim, with its lengthy and rich history, and the politically motivated and staged “progress” of the monarch, especially as definitively enacted by Elizabeth I during her reign, invites comparison. Given the inevitable contradictions of the two kinds of journeys and the political and religious context of
97 For almost two centuries, Pilgrim’s Progress was second only to the Bible as the best-selling book in print, and was a staple volume in many homes, including those of colonial Americans.
80 these particular writers, the “progresses” represented in their texts may well be critiques at some level, perhaps even “anti-progresses,” as I will argue in the case of Trapnel. 98 Thus, the central part of this chapter examines the ways in which Trapnel and Rowlandson interweave elements from the established templates of both the pilgrimage (the Christian’s progress) and the royal progress with their use of typology to create a unique rhetorical strategy that shapes the narratives of their memorable “traveling performances,” dramas that these two very different women pattern after several significant biblical journeys that define community and individual identity. Unlike Bunyan’s more straightforward allegory in The Pilgrim’s Progress , Trapnel and Rowlandson’s use of typology in their narratives of travel links this rhetorical strategy more closely to what Turner calls “comparative symbology,” in which “the ritual symbol becomes a factor in social action, a positive force in an activity field” ( From Ritual 22). By building on the cultural understanding of the individual both as a citizen of the “chosen nation” (whether England or New England) and as a member of the “true Church,” women could establish themselves in various ways as representatives of those larger communities. Through taking on typological identities, both Trapnel and Rowlandson represent their journeys as having critical significance in the larger communities of nation and church; at the same time, they appropriate biblical narrative in a way that makes it uniquely their own. They act on the stage of the present moment as types of the larger community even as they cast themselves as types of particular figures from the formative biblical history that has shaped their respective community and its religious discourses. For both Trapnel and Rowlandson, typology functions as an enabling rhetorical strategy that allows them to establish an individual identity that participates in both present and past communities, and to negotiate a significant position for themselves in the interstices between the two locations. Pilgrimages and Progresses as Ritualized Travel As a preface to discussing specific texts, I want to look briefly at the performative aspects of the travel traditions on which several of these texts draw heavily. As a ritual of travel, the pilgrimage
98 Trapnel’s text is written at a time when the radical dissenting communities of England were feeling distinctly betrayed by both Cromwell and Parliament. Since Bunyan’s vocation as a “mechanic” preacher already put him at odds with the establishment church, his use of “progress” in conjunction with “pilgrim” in the title of his best-known work hints at a challenge to monarchical privilege. Rowlandson was part of a community that still had contact with many dissenting clergy and groups in England, and that had an interest in defining itself as different from its “motherland.”
81 has a much longer and more diverse history in Christianized Europe than the progress, its beginnings dating back to around the fourth century C.E. 99 The frequency of pilgrimages peaked during the late medieval era, from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, when holy sites (and marketing venues near them) multiplied; churches vied for the attention of potential pilgrims through advertising the miraculous healings witnessed at the various sites; and priests and even law courts resorted to the “sentence” of pilgrimage as a means of restitution for some crimes (Turner, Dramas 175). Pilgrims set off with ritual blessings given by the church, followed well- established routes, and pinned scallop shells to their hats as an identifying symbol. 100 Margery Kempe’s account of her early fifteenth-century pilgrimage to Jerusalem both encapsulates some of the generics of that travel ritual and foregrounds the strategies by which one medieval woman traveler makes her own personalized appropriation of its dramatic possibilities. As The Booke of Margery Kempe recounts, the beginning of her pilgrimage is ritualized by the parish priest’s announcement that anyone claiming a debt against either herself or her husband should speak with her so that she can make settlement before she departs. In addition, she makes an “offering” at “the Trinity” in Norwich, as well as at an image of Mary at Yarmouth, before boarding her ship (in Longman Anthology 514). From that point, however, she defines her journey in contrast to the more typical one of those pilgrims with whom she travels. Unlike the biographer’s representation of Cary’s dietary practices and use of the table in The Life as a strategy that eventually unites most of the family in a shared faith, Kempe foregrounds her habit of forgoing meat and of “[speaking] all the time about the love and goodness of our Lord, as much at table as in other places” as a source of conflict with the other pilgrims, who respond with “anger and unkindness.” In retaliation, they cut off her gown and force her to “sit at the end of the table below all the others” as a means of silencing her by intimidation. Throughout the journey to Jerusalem, she juxtaposes their attitude and behavior with that of others she encounters along the way, among whom she is “held in more esteem than [the other pilgrims] 99 For the purposes of my discussion here, I am focusing on the history and traditions of Christian pilgrimage. However, the form itself is not indigenous to Christianity, with both Jews and Muslims, for example, having pilgrimage practices that predate by centuries those of specifically Christian origin. In Image and Pilgrimage (New York: Columbia U. P., 1978), Victor and Edith Turner note that pilgrimages were also practiced by people groups “classed by some anthropologists as ‘tribal,’” but “pilgrimage as an institutional form does not attain real prominence until the emergence of the major historical religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” (1). 100 Medieval England alone had seventy-five “well-attended” pilgrimage sites or shrines, medieval Scotland an additional thirty-two (Turner, Dramas 179).
82 were, wherever they went” (515). At the same time as she stages this “difference,” Kempe also appropriates traditional religious ritual to shape the description of her own pilgrimage. During her time in Jerusalem, she constructs her movements as an imitatio Christi , even to the point of noting that she enters the city on an ass, a parallel to Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem a week before his death. Along with the other pilgrims, she goes from place to place, visiting the holy sites “where our Lord . . . suffered his pains and his Passion” (516). When they arrive at the “Mount of Calvary,” she dramatically reenacts the crucifixion, falling to the ground and “spreading her arms out wide as if she would have died” (517-18). Kempe’s narrative of her journey provides evidence of the pilgrimage as an established “traveling performance” whose ritualized form drew on tradition at the same time as it provided a template that could be appropriated by Kempe and later women to shape their own distinctive dramas. While the pilgrimage was a centuries-old form of travel, the royal progress was a newer ritual, although one which drew on the typological significance of the former ritual for more political purposes. In Christian tradition, pilgrimage was often seen as an imitatio Christi , an enactment of Christ’s journey to his crucifixion, as Kempe’s behavior illustrates. However, in the biblical narrative, that event is preceded by an equally significant typological performance, this one of kingship, as Christ enters Jerusalem on a donkey to the crowd’s shouts of “Blessed bee the King that commeth in the Name of the Lord!” (Luke 19.38 KJV). The royal progress positions itself at the intersection of the two contrasting journeys, enabling the monarch to enact simultaneously both self-sacrifice and sovereignty in a ritual primarily political rather than religious in purpose. 101 Such a purpose was enacted in the spring of 1603, a time that marked a critical shift in English political history. In March, Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor monarchs, died after nearly half a century on the throne. A month later, James VI of Scotland arrived in London to become James I of England, beginning almost a century of Stuart rule. With a desire to establish represent this change visually and imprint the “new” dynasty in the minds of the English public, James arranged for his queen, Anne of Denmark, to follow him to London in a month-long, carefully staged journey “intended as a memorable pageant and spectacle to be witnessed by the provincial gentry and common people,” a deliberate strategy to “bind Crown
101 According to the OED, the word “progress” could be used to describe other kinds of official travel, such as journeys made by church dignitaries or the circuits made by judges to conduct court in various locations.
83 and country” (Brayshay 17). 102 Of course, the English people had been well prepared for such a show by the regular progresses Elizabeth herself made each summer throughout most of her long reign, processing on horseback rather than in a coach as Anne did. Although those journeys were short in comparison to the distance traveled by Anne, they were an intrinsic part of Elizabeth’s statecraft, providing a stage that “gave [her] moments of self-display and interaction with her subjects that became intrinsic to her rule” (Cole 4). In her study of the Elizabethan progress, Cole takes issue with Jonathan Goldberg to argue that central to the form was the “ceremonial dialogue” that took place between the monarch and civic authorities of the towns the queen visited. 103 While Elizabeth used those interactions as “a background for her display of prerogative powers” (121), the civic authorities saw the public exchange as an opportunity to “[validate] the sense of community within the town and spread its civic reputation beyond the liberties” (98). This “conversation of ceremony,” with its meticulously scripted interplay of verbal and physical elements--movements, speeches, presentations, clothing, and shows--allowed the monarch and her people “an opportunity to speak across the divides of status without challenging the hierarchy” (133). In spite of its shorter history, the royal progress was a much more highly ritualized and carefully choreographed form of travel. Seen in terms of Victor Turner’s definitions of structure and anti-structure, the progress and the pilgrimage seem to fall in opposite categories. Designed specifically as a “public expression of hierarchies” (Cole 6), the progress reinforces the social and political structures that define the static positions of the ruler and the ruled. As a populist form of ritual travel that removes people from the normal social patterns and institutions that structure their daily lives, the pilgrimage functions as a “form of institutionalized or symbolic anti-structure” that Turner sees as evolving out of initiation rites ( Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors 182). As anti-structure, the pilgrimage occupies that liminal space where, “in an interval between their incumbency of specific fixed positions, members of that society may obtain an approximation, however limited, 102 While this particular progress is notable for its sustained length and the elaborate orchestration required (see Brayshay’s article for details of the latter), the progress was not a form of travel that the Stuarts would engage in regularly as a political tool. Rather, with James and Charles, the “ceremonial conversation turned inward,” replacing the progress with the elite and enclosed ceremony of the royal masque (Cole 134). Cole notes that no subsequent monarchs would again use progresses “as essential parts of their monarchy in the way that Elizabeth had done” (11). 103 See Jonathan Goldberg, James I and the Politics of Literature (Stanford: Stanford U.P., 1989) 28-32, for his argument that the entry ceremony was completely controlled by Elizabeth, a one-way monologue rather than a conversation.
84 to a global view of man’s [sic] place in the cosmos and his relations with other classes of visible entities” (Turner qtd. in Nichols 403). Yet, as Kempe’s account shows us, pilgrimages are not immune to creating their own internal daily rituals and hierarchies of position. And, as Cole argues, Elizabeth found a way to use the “turmoil of an itinerant court” on progress to her political advantage, as she “regularly created disorder through travel and used that chaos to facilitate her ability to rule” (5-6). Moreover, both pilgrimage and progress foreground the individual in the context of a surrounding community and offer representations of how that relationship can be defined. Such divergences and overlaps underline the value of considering these forms together and exploring how the texts I will discuss participate in these traditions as part of their strategy for constructing their traveling performances. Bunyan’s Christiana and the female pilgrimage The title of Bunyan’s work, The Pilgrim’s Progress , foregrounds the intersection of the two forms of ritual travel, playing upon the multiple levels of association generated when pilgrimage and progress are considered together. In his study of typology, Christ Revealed , Thomas Taylor expresses the difference between the processions of earthly kings and of Christ: “When they ride in progresse , they shew their state, pompe, and worldly glory . . . . But while he [Christ] was in the world (to shew that his kingdome had no similitude nor correspondency with the pomps of earthly kingdoms) in his progresse hee gets on an asse, and instead of a saddle of state he had poore mens clothes spread under him” (72; my emphasis). Kathleen M. Swaim connects the “progress” of Bunyan’s title to the genre of the progress of the soul, “a highly personalized literary form reflecting Protestantism’s emphasis on applying the self to Scripture and Scripture to the self, and discovering scriptural paradigms and providential workings” (16). While Pilgrim’s Progress undoubtedly has roots in that genre, Taylor’s comparison suggests an assumption on his part that the term “progress” would simultaneously prompt in readers’ minds both the biblical narrative of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem and the tradition of the royal progress, along with its attendant political symbolism. The contrast that is explicit in Taylor’s comment is implicit in the very structure of Bunyan’s text. Instead of a monarch riding in state, we see a lowly working-class man and (later) his wife and children, along with other pilgrims, making their progress on foot along “the King’s highway” (281) to the Celestial City, where they
85 are welcomed with the same degree of pomp and ceremony accorded to royal personages entering a city of their realm. 104 Within this multi-genre framework that draws on the devotional, the didactic, and the political, Bunyan represents two versions of the same journey. While the almost identical frontispieces of the two parts both promise to “set forth the manner of setting out . . . [the] dangerous journey, and [the] safe arrival at the desired country,” the two accounts differ significantly. In the first part, Christian undertakes an urgent and often solitary pilgrimage from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City; in the second part of Pilgrim’s Progress , Christiana, her children, and their companions perform an extended, communal pilgrimage whose difference is more marked because of the common road the two journeys share. Swaim reads the difference primarily in terms of gender, describing part two of Bunyan’s allegory as the “masculine narrative” recreated in a “feminine and family mode”; Christiana is “a heroine not a hero, and her context is comedic, social, and communal at base rather than desperate or individual” (161). More bluntly, Louise A. Breen labels Christiana “the sexed pilgrim”; unlike Christian, who travels mostly alone through a landscape inhabited primarily by male characters, Christiana remains situated firmly within “heterosocial contexts,” dependent on male leadership throughout her passage to the Celestial City (448). There is, however, justification for reading many of the differences as at least partially the result of Bunyan’s changed circumstances and priorities, and not solely a view of spirituality rooted in gender binaries. 105 When the second part was published in 1684, twelve years had passed since Bunyan had been appointed as minister of the separatist 104 The descriptions of the entrances to the Celestial City echo the celebratory rituals of a city greeting a monarch on progress. At the end of the first part, “a company of the heavenly host,” along with “several of the King’s trumpeters,” meets Christian and Hopeful to escort them into the City. The welcome delegation surrounds them completely, “so that the very sight [is] to them that [can] behold it as if Heaven itself [is coming] down to meet them,” and when the two pilgrims enter, “all the bells of the City [ring] again for joy” (213-15). In addition, the clothing they receive at the gates “[shines] like gold,” a detail that suggests the gifts of gold that monarchs often received during ceremonial welcomes. At the end of the second part, a number of those who have made the “progress” receive their invitation to cross the River and enter the City. While the description is less detailed than the first part, the narrator still represents the event in similar terms: “But glorious it was, to see how the open region was filled with horses and chariots, with trumpeters and pipers, with singers, and players on stringed instruments, to welcome the pilgrims as they went up and followed one another in at the beautiful Gate of the City” (385). 105 In his “Introduction” to John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), Roger Sharrock describes it as a “[shift] from the lonely epic of the individual to the problems of the small urban community” (xx). Swaim later concludes that Bunyan is not limited to generic simplifications, and uses Mercy as an example, noting that she goes “well beyond what is usually defined as the female role” (191). However, she does so in the context of offering Mercy as an example of “female hero,” a role that “[subsumes] the mode of masculine achievement within a fully realized, empowered, comprehensive, and multiplying feminine heroism” (191). This approach still seems to center on defining differences primarily on the basis of gender.
86 Bedford congregation, with the account of Christiana’s pilgrimage written probably during the last half of that time span. Many recurring themes of the second part reflect the typical concerns of someone with pastoral responsibilities: the emphasis on community and spiritual guides, the diversity of age and spiritual experience, and the issues of marriage and child rearing. As a traveling woman, Christiana embodies both the potential and limitation of a woman’s role in the spiritual community represented in part two. On one hand, Bunyan figured the pastoral role as that of a woman-mother. In Grace Abounding , he explains his understanding of his vocation: “in my preaching, I have really been in pain, and have as it were travailed to bring forth children to God” (72). That image of a laboring woman finds a counterpart in part one of Pilgrim’s Progress , where the Interpreter, showing Christian a picture of Evangelist, describes him as “a very grave person” who can “beget children, travail in birth with children, and nurse them himself when they are born” (72). In the second part, the primary mother figure is Christiana herself, functioning not only as caretaker, but also as primary spiritual educator of her children. The emphasis on childbearing and rearing runs throughout the second part. Noting this, Swaim argues that “himself a follower of Christ’s example, Christian’s proper function is to multiply by generation and regeneration the community of the blessed” (63). This he does, of course, by providing a model of pilgrimage that will guide those who follow him. However, the locus of actual (re)generation is Christiana and, eventually, her daughters-in-law. During the extended stay at Gaius’s inn, that host advises Christiana to “look out some damsels for her sons, so that the line of Christian “may never be forgotten in the world” (327). On the course of the journey, her sons do find wives who prove “all of them very fruitful,” ensuring, as the pilgrims settle in the Land of Beulah, “the increase of the Church in that place where they were for a time” (346, 385). Breen, citing the Interpreter’s comment to Christiana that “women’s travel . . . entails the travail of her sex: childbearing and, by extension childrearing” (446), reads this emphasis primarily on the literal biological level, as a restrictive gendering of the journey. However, Christiana becomes more than the essentialized woman or even the archetypal Christian self; her role parallels that of a pastor as she literally generates the Church from her own seed. While this parallel between Bunyan’s own metaphor for the vocation of the preacher and the role that Christiana performs in the second part of Pilgrim’s Progress should prevent us from easily dichotomizing the two parts as the “masculine” and “feminine” varieties of spiritual
87 experience, Christiana’s journey also represents an uneasy tension between her potential and her limitations, limitations which originate in the traditional gender roles of the day. On one hand, women are given their own spiritual identity and, as Christiana finds out, must make their own pilgrimage (237-38); there is even a childcare facility provided to support journeying mothers, a “house built for the nourishing and bringing up of those lambs, the babes of those women that go on pilgrimage” (349). 106 Christiana is characterized as “a woman quick of apprehension,” Mercy discourages a suitor who sees her only in terms of her economic value (260, 290), and Gaius enumerates the significant roles that women played in the Gospel narratives, concluding that they are “highly favored, and . . . sharers with us [men] in the grace of life” (328). Yet, Christiana and Mercy embark upon a journey that follows a predetermined pattern laid out by Christian’s trailblazing in the first part and that requires them to seek the assistance of a male guide. In a sense, Bunyan’s allegorical strategy makes it inevitable that the basic structure of the pilgrimage remains unchanged; if the path represents the desired spiritual progress for any Christian to follow, then the allegory must remain consistent throughout the second part. The fact remains, however, that Mercy and Christiana are followers rather than leaders, far enough behind Christian that the tales of his journey have already made their way into print. As Mr. Sagacity tells the Dreamer, “There are but few houses that have heard of [Christian] and his doings, but have sought after and got the records of his pilgrimage” (232). As spiritually receptive and dedicated as women are represented to be, the presence of a guide also invites the conclusion that they require male mentorship and advice as they make their pilgrimage. Yet, the need for guidance is not a completely gendered concept in Pilgrim’s Progress . In the first part Christian receives guidance from Evangelist, falls prey to untrustworthy guides such as Vain-confidence, and reminds Hopeful, his companion, that no one is completely immune to enemies along the way, that “ ‘tis good also that we desire of the King a convoy” (183). In the second part, Great-heart, the guide figure, wonders why “men are so foolishly venturous, as to set out lightly on pilgrimage, and to come without a guide” (308).
106 Breen argues that “Christiana’s progress is determined by her receptivity to her husband’s words and her capacity to allow those words to resonate throughout her relations to other, potential interpreters of the Bible” (446). However, while the memory of Christian’s words play a significant role in Christiana’s desire to go on pilgrimage, the deciding factor arrives in the form of a personal invitation from Christ, delivered to her hand by a special messenger (237). Furthermore, when they enter at the Wicket Gate, they meet not a gatekeeper called Goodwill, as Christian does, but rather someone who grants them forgiveness and washes their feet, actions which suggest the keeper here may be Christ himself. Neither of these instances represents women as spiritually inferior or as completely dependent on male intermediaries for access to spiritual truth, as Breen suggests (449).
88 However, Mercy and Christiana come to realize their need of a guide in a context that is highly gendered and plays on the predominant fear of the vulnerability of unescorted women in public places. Very early in their journey, the women encounter “two very ill-favoured ones” who make as if to “embrace” Mercy and Christiana, persisting in spite of their resistance and promising “that if you will but grant one small request which we shall ask, we will make women of you for ever” (253). When the two women are finally rescued out of “a very great scuffle” by the Reliever, he expresses surprise that “when you was entertained at the Gate above, being ye knew that ye were but weak women, that you petitioned not the Lord there for a conductor” (254-55). The incident is curiously anomalous in the larger pattern of the allegory. The attackers bear no allegorical names, as other enemies along the Way do, and the danger represented can’t be translated into any obvious spiritual danger or test, such as those represented by the Castle of Despair or the Valley of Humiliation. As a result, rather than the allegory imposing a pattern on reality, the opposite occurs; the episode takes on the quality of a slice of social realism inserted into the allegory. 107 Reality momentarily interrupts, creating the same connection between sexual and spiritual danger on which texts I mentioned earlier also capitalized. While elsewhere in the text the need for a guide is not necessarily tied to gender, the threatening experience that initially prompts Christiana and Mercy to seek a conductor occurs solely because of their female identity, and the unallegorical quality of the text at that point only throws that fact into sharper relief. Early in the journey in the second part, the pilgrims encounter Grim or Bloodyman, one of the “race of giants” who, along with two lions, bars the way. To Grim’s refusal to let them pass, Christiana issues an assured challenge: “Though the highways have been unoccupied heretofore, and though travelers have been made in time past to walk through by-paths, it must not be so now I am risen, now I am risen a mother in Israel” (280). Earlier in the century women like sectarian prophet Mary Pope, Quaker leader Margaret Fell, and the itinerant Quaker missionary pair, Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers, laid claim to the same title, invoking as they did the prototype “mother in Israel,” the biblical character Deborah, who acted as both a
107 Breen concludes that “by not having acquired a male guide to accompany her, Christiana has endangered her salvation” (451). However, in her reading of the episode as an allegory of female spiritual inferiority and as proof that “Christiana’s election cannot lie in her own hands” (451), Breen may be over-theologizing an incident that may simply reflect Bunyan’s anxieties about the potential problems and improprieties of sectarian congregational life, when the majority of congregants were often women.
89 prophet and political leader. 108 Given its religious and even political significance, that title frequently functions in women’s writing of the time as a way not only to authorize their speaking voice(s), but also to enable them to embody the interconnectedness of their concerns as they range from the domestic to the theological to the political. The latter concerns may be particularly involved here, since Grim has been read as an allegorical representation of the civil authorities that enforced the restrictions placed on the Nonconformists with renewed effort between 1681 and 1684, when this part of Pilgrim’s Progress was initially written. 109 Thus, Bunyan’s use of the term in this context would have raised a number of significant associations for his readers. Yet, although Christiana boldly claims the role of a “mother in Israel,” Bunyan does not represent her as acting on it in any significant way. In a real-life account of the actions of Dorothy Kelly, given the same title by her biographer, we can see the emphasis on her initiative, action, and controversial religious practice: “like a Deborah she arose, with the strength of holy resolution in her soul from God, even a mother in Israel. And so she proved, because she was the first woman in this city of Bristol that practiced that truth of the Lord (which was then hated and odious), namely, separation .” 110 (60). Christiana, however, in spite of her boast, cannot vanquish Grim, and must wait for Great-heart, their guide, to accomplish that task; moreover, she is “frighted” by Grim’s roar and “[trembles]” as she passes by the lions, even though they are chained (281). The scene represents the incongruence in the representation of this traveling woman. While Christiana embodies the birth-giving and nurturing that Bunyan attributes to the pastoral calling and while her pilgrimage produces a microcosm of the church in its communal aspects, her gender seems to make a guide necessary and her claim to be “a mother in Israel” is not accompanied by any significant action or behavior that would fulfill its promise. 108 In Visionary Women , Phyllis Mack argues that Quaker women after the Restoration used their identity as “mothers in Israel” to make a transition from their public prophetic role during the 1650s to a leadership role within the growing bureaucracy of the movement in the last half of the seventeenth century (see Chapter 8). Swaim believes that Christiana’s naming of herself a “mother in Israel” “[suppresses] the name of the biblical figure (Deborah) entirely,” an example of the way Bunyan’s typology is “shorn of numinous resonance and flattened or domesticated” in part two (271). Yet, as Swaim herself notes earlier in her study, Bunyan often uses partial references and subtle allusions to scripture, “[expecting] his readers to apply the whole verse and context” (97). Given the established significance of the term, Bunyan could have assumed his readers would immediately bring the biblical type and story into the text as they read. 109 See Sharrock’s comment on this passage in note 39 (403). 110 From The Records of a Church of Christ in Bristol, 1640-1687 , ed. Roger Hayden, Bristol Record Society, Bristol, 1974, 85. Excerpted in Crawford and Gowing, 60.
90 Anna Trapnel: “An Extraordinary Journey” Unlike Christiana, who goes on pilgrimage for her own spiritual benefit, Anna Trapnel journeys into Cornwall to be of spiritual benefit to others. Trapnel has previously drawn critical attention for another kind of performance, one in which her physical body lies prone, in a static position. 111 For example, during the almost two-week period narrated in Strange and wonderful newes from White-Hall , Trapnel remains stationary in a bed, singing and prophesying, while spectators gather about her. On the occasion recounted in Report and Plea , she takes her performance on the road, traveling to Cornwall at the “invitation” of those who believe, as one of her travel companions puts it, that the “dispensation of the Lord on [her], [is] not to be concealed” (1, 10). In the typology-inflected narrative of that experience, Trapnel casts her journey into Cornwall as both a missionary and pastoral calling, representing herself as a type of Paul, called like him to go into another country where she will be persecuted for her obedience to God. Then, in recounting her journey back in the company of Cromwell’s soldiers, Trapnel figures herself both as Christ traveling to Jerusalem to face his death and as Paul on his final journey to Rome to present his case to Caesar; at the same time she stages her return as an anti- hierarchical revision of the monarchical “progress.” The text is a mixture of genres: narrative, spiritual autobiography, drama, political argument, and defense ( Her Own Life 73). Tying all these together is Trapnel’s fluid typological strategy, which shapes the whole journey and positions her rhetorically both as a member of an established community and as a critic of the political policies that have been used to repress the voice of that community. From the outset of her report, Trapnel constructs herself as Paul, receiving an “extraordinary call” from God: “But as sure as his was a vision from the Lord to go to Macedonia, so as sure had I a call and true vision to go to Cornwall” (3). When Trapnel initially mentions the apostle, it is to point out what she claims is the contrast between “a weak handmaid and a strong Paul” (A3). Yet, even earlier in the text, Trapnel appropriates without direct 111 Among the critics who have noted and explored the connection between Trapnel’s self-proclaimed prophetic role and the frequent delivery of that message while she lay in a bed, singing and praying “in the spirit,” are: Hilary Hinds, God’s Englishwoman ; Katharine Gillespie, Domesticity and Dissent ; Diane Purkiss, “Producing the Voice, Consuming the Body: Women Prophets of the Seventeenth Century”; David Loewenstein, Representing Revolution in Milton and His Contemporaries: Religion, Politics, and Polemics in Radical Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2001); Nigel Smith, Perfection proclaimed: Language and literature in English Radical Religion, 1640-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford U.P., 1989). Trapnel was not the only sectarian woman to engage in this kind of “bedroom” performance. Recently, critical attention has thrown the spotlight on one of Trapnel’s sectarian contemporaries, Sarah Wight, who also drew public attention with her fasts and accompanying pronouncements.
91 attribution Paul’s own words to define her weakness: “truly I do not herein boast, neither would I glory in any thing, save in my infirmities” (A3). 112 Later, she makes more explicit this rhetorical strategy of simultaneously denying and claiming equality with the apostle: “And though I am a poor inferiour, unworthy to be compared with any of the holy men and women reported of in the Scripture; yet I can say with Paul, Through grace I am what I am” (A3). 113 Even the binary Trapnel creates between the “weak handmaid” and the “strong Paul” helps to collapse the very difference she ostensibly constructs, since her language echoes Paul’s declaration that “when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12.10). Thus, rhetorically she merges herself with the apostle; in her weakness, she simultaneously becomes a type of the “strong Paul.” The choice of Paul is significant in several ways. First, casting her calling to Cornwall as a type of Paul’s call to Macedonia provides her with a framework that enables her to foreground the community she is leaving against the strange country to which she goes. A major part of the book of Acts focuses on Paul’s lengthy journeys in the Middle East to establish churches, often among non-Jewish populations, and his was the pattern for many later “missionary” efforts of the Christian church. Moreover, the call to Macedonia comes in the midst of a shared journey commissioned by the leaders of the church in Jerusalem, rather than an independent venture Paul undertakes on his own. While she notes that the “invitation” to Cornwall comes from “friends” and while she herself makes the decision to accept the invitation, Trapnel repeatedly emphasizes her connection to a community, devoting significant time at the opening of her narrative to establish herself and her mission in the context of a larger group entity. She expresses an initial reluctance to leave her “London-friends,” with whom she is in “Church-order,” asking God “why should I go so far, and among strangers ?” (2; my emphasis). The community also questions her decision; “some of the Church I walk with,” Trapnel relates, “are much against it,” wondering why she would “leave [them] in such a time as this” (2). Even Satan’s temptation, as she recounts it, plays upon this theme: “They are but strangers to thee; Acquaintance with them hath been but a little while: therefore don’t go” (3; my emphasis). This lack of connections in Cornwall is corroborated more prosaically by Justice Lobb, when he asks why she would travel
112 Compare Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 11.30: “If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities” (KJV). See also 2 Corinthians 12.9b-10: “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (KJV). 113 See 2 Corinthians 15.10, KJV.
92 there, since “you have…no acquaintance to come to in this Country” (26). When her decision remains firm, Trapnel and her community enact the rituals of leave-taking common in the descriptions of Paul’s journeys. Many offer “exhortations with counsel and prayer for [her] well- doing”; the night before her departure, ten of her “sisters” spend the night in prayer with Trapnel; as she sets out with her companions, “many friends [come] to bid . . . farewell” (6-7). Even during her journey, Trapnel reiterates her connection to the London group, “praying with them at Alhallows in the Spirit, though I was absent from them in body” and actually meeting friends formerly from London when she spends a day of her journey with a community that meets at Exeter castle (7-8). In the latter situation, the bonds of community are again stressed, as Trapnel gives these Exeter friends news of “London-friends” and those in prison at Windsor (9); she in turn receives further affirmation of her calling, the Exeter friends anticipating “something more then [sic] ordinary to be brought forth” from Trapnel being “carried so far a journey, and having so little acquaintance with them I went with” (9). This juxtaposition of friends and strangers, which is created in geographical terms at the beginning of the narrative (friends in London; strangers in Wales), continues during Trapnel’s stay in Wales, when the enemies implicit in London become explicit, and there is a sustained tension between those who come to see her “out of good-will, and love to what they [have] heard [is] of God in me” and those who come “to catch at my words, so as to reproach me” (15). 114 Even as opposition against her increases, she finds a new community in a strange place. The friends she traveled with to Wales, who she knew only slightly, show her “a great deal of tenderness,” acting “as a tender Father and Mother to me at all times” (15). Others participate in her life and cause through prayer even though they never see her: “the poore who are rich in faith, prayed for me in those parts, and some I never saw, [ . . . ] who hearing of my trouble, improved their interest with the Lord for me; their faith and prayer, did me more good than all the gold, or silver, or favours of great men could have done me” (26a). Certainly Trapnel stands out as an individual figure; both her friends and her enemies show their keen awareness of the public attention she commands with her performances, “that extraordinary dispensation of prayer and singing,” as she says Satan calls her gift (3). But 114 Trapnel makes only two references to potential opposition to her journey. When she is still feeling reluctant to accept the call, she imagines possible escapes, one being that “some would hear of my going, that would stop it” (6). The second instance, although more explicit and concrete, is also less immediate, as she reports an unnamed person supposedly saying later that had he known she was going to Wales, “he would have procured the Councels Order to have stopt my journey” (7).
93 focusing on Trapnel as “a gazing-stock” (24) must be done with a corresponding consideration of the way in which she positions herself consistently within a community and a communal vision. 115 Her first experience of “divine rapture” recounted in Report and Plea begins in the private garden of the home of a friend, before Trapnel sets out on her journey, and “her singing speech [is] directed to the whole family, and those belonging to it at the time.” Even her description of later being “put to bed…between two friends” can be seen as a metaphor for her embeddedness within a community (5-6). In his summary of the four phases he sees as making up the “public action” of social dramas, Turner points out that even though an individual may undertake a singular action that creates “a dramatic breach” of socially recognizable norms, the individual “always acts, or believes [she] acts, on behalf of other parties, whether they are aware of it or not. [She] sees [herself] as a representative, not as a lone hand” ( Dramas 38). Thus, Trapnel’s more public displays during her journey and her stay in Cornwall need to be seen through this lens, as an expression that she believes to be furthering the goals of the community to which she is allied. Given this positioning of herself, Trapnel’s choice of Paul takes on an additional significance because of the overtly political element in the apostle’s story in the New Testament book of Acts. While Paul was not the only one to undertake journeys to establish and oversee new churches, nor the only one to be brought before political authorities, he was the only one to claim political rights as a Jew who was also a freeborn Roman citizen. 116 Facing unfounded accusations from the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem, Paul makes his defense to Festus, the Roman governor. When Festus asks Paul to submit to a trial in Jerusalem, he claims the right to be tried in a Roman court, appeals to Caesar, and eventually makes his final journey as a prisoner sent to Rome (Acts 25.10-11). Before Paul leaves, Festus consults the visiting King Agrippa 115 Trapnel briefly summarizes the original principles and vision of the London community, specifically noting their desire to be like the church “in primitive times,” with “one heart and one minde,” and their hope for change in the political system, “that Judges and Rulers might be as at the beginning” (14-15). Holstun sees Trapnel’s “membership in a gathered church and her public role as a prophet” functioning as “an intensely affective substitute for or equivalent to sex and marriage” (272). While the affective certainly is present in Trapnel’s stress on her ties with her community, I do not think it needs to be read primarily as a substitute for “sex and marriage.” She is as likely to read herself as a child experiencing the nurture of parental figures, and she treats the connection not as a substitute or an end in itself, but as a foundation out of which political action inevitably grows. 116 The first instance occurs in Acts 16.37-38 when Paul demands that the magistrates escort him and his companion (also a Roman citizen) out of jail in recompense for publicly beating them without a trial. In the second instance recorded, Paul, about to be flogged, asks the Roman officer in charge whether it is legal to flog a Roman citizen without a trial and then tells the commander, who had to purchase his own citizenship, that he [Paul] was actually born a Roman citizen (Acts 22.25-29).
94 about the case, and brings Paul before the king, his queen, and a court full of military and civic authorities, where Agrippa gives Paul the opportunity to speak on his own behalf. Knowing that her audience would be familiar with this narrative, Trapnel deliberately positions herself within the story when she recounts her visit to Truro, where she holds forth to a crowd of people in a private home: “then I took up Paul’s speech he used before Agrippa , having been falsly [sic] accused by many, he declares the manner of his life from his youth” (16; my emphasis). Notably, she first mentions this biblical event here, rather than delay the initial reference to what might seem the most relevant context: her appearance before the Cornwall justices to answer the indictment against her. Trapnel’s typological equation of Paul’s discourse in a public space to an audience of politically powerful people with her own speech in an enclosed domestic space to an audience of commoners creates a dynamic intersection both of the public and private and of the religious and political. Through her rhetorical strategy, Trapnel not only destabilizes any easy categorization of space and speech, but also implicitly allies herself with Paul’s insistence that he be heard at the highest level of government. She takes up this parallel again when she recounts her appearance before the Cornwall justices, this time to point out that, although she has been acting Paul’s part, she has not been treated with equal seriousness. When Justice Lobb questions her about her book, which he describes as “written from something said at White-Hall,” Trapnel takes issue with his right to interrogate her, claiming that she is not accountable to the justices for words spoken “at a place of concourse of people, and neer a Counsel, I suppose wise enough to call me into question if I offended.” As Paul did, Trapnel refuses to grant the right of judgment to a lower court: “unto them [the Counsel] I appeal; but though it was said, I appealed unto Caesar, and unto Caesar should I go; yet I have not been brought before him which is called Caesar” (25). Trapnel continues to read the situation in the context of Paul’s story, comparing the justices unfavorably with the “heathen” Agrippa (27). As she puts the issue to Justice Lobb, those authorities who are responsible for giving her a fair hearing are not listening: “you have judged me, and never heard me speak: you have not dealt so well by me as Agrippa dealt by Paul: though Agrippa was an Heathen, he would have Paul speak before he gave in his judgement concerning him” (27). For her reading audience, previously reminded of the Paul/Agrippa story in a very different context, Trapnel’s words to the justice invite them to compare her hearing in the court to her hearing in the Truro house, where she had freedom to speak even though there were cynics in the audience.
95 As the official opposition to Trapnel mounts in Cornwall, she begins to draw upon the Passion narrative in the New Testament gospels, as well as continuing to represent herself as a type of Paul. As she foregrounds the resistance of both religious and civic leaders, Trapnel implicitly constructs herself as a type of Christ during his last days on earth, when the hostility of the Jewish religious leaders peaked. Like Christ, she impresses her audiences, who wonder when they hear “convincing Scriptures [come] with such authority” and ask themselves “which of all our Ministers can hold out thus many hours without a cordial?” (18). 117 Also, like Christ, Trapnel draws a crowd wherever she goes (19). In response, the clergy take up active opposition; they “[call] to the rulers to take [her] up,” and according to Trapnel, the “Rulers” in turn, like the Jewish leaders, “[send] some to watch for what could be had further against me” (18, 22). As she walks through the streets with the officer to the Sessions House, Trapnel emphasizes the “abundance” of people that “crowded after me,” her experience of being “mocked and derided,” and her meditation throughout on “Christ’s sufferings” (23). The most dramatic reliving of the Christ narrative occurs when the soldiers come to take her back to London. Before their arrival, which she sees in a vision, Trapnel recounts her feeling of heaviness, explicitly noting that “Christ was heavy before the hour; before they came to take him he was in an Agony” (26a). To the officer in charge, she speaks the words Christ spoke in the Garden of Gethsemane when the Roman soldiers came to take him: “Friend, whom do you seek?” 118 Underscoring her appropriation of the role, Trapnel repeats the question twice, just as Jesus does in the John narrative of the Passion events. In recreating that high point of the Passion drama, Trapnel also implicitly foregrounds the political in the same way that she does when she casts herself as a type of Paul, using Christ typology here to underline her innocence and, by contrast, heighten her condemnation of Cromwell. Like the writer of Acts narrating the story of the apostle, the New Testament writers
117 As Holstun points in his comments on the attitude of the anonymous writer of A Discoverie of Women Preachers , women like Trapnel “are not base aliens but dangerous competitors, occupying the same material plain with the clerics” (259). Trapnel does not hesitate to raise this issue throughout her text, most explicitly here, but also in other descriptions of her reception in Cornwall. 118 The term of address comes from Matthew’s gospel, in which Jesus says to Judas, after the betraying kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane, “ Friend , wherefore art thou come?” (Matt. 26.50). The question itself comes from John’s gospel, where Jesus twice asks the soldiers, “Whome seke ye?” (John 18.4, 7). Also, while the soldiers take her from the home, not the garden, the day before her apprehension, Trapnel makes a point of noting that she went “into the garden alone,” where she is “perswaded, my work was done in Cornwall,” a loose parallel to Christ praying alone in the garden while his disciples sleep.
96 of the four gospels represent Jesus at the center of a political controversy that involved a power struggle between religious and secular authorities, as the Jewish authorities pressured a reluctant Pilate, the Roman governor, to condemn Jesus to death after he was arrested. In Trapnel’s case, her arrest, ordered by the Council of State, is executed by the deputy governor of Pendennis Castle, Captain Fox. During her account of her arrest, Trapnel makes reference to “the Fox” several times, most notably when she relates that “Souldiers of the Fox came to take me” (25a). On the literal level, the name “Fox” refers to the deputy governor. However, according to the writer of Luke’s gospel, Jesus applied this particular name to Herod Antipas, a Roman tetrarch who imprisoned and beheaded John the Baptist, as well as mocked Jesus by dressing him in royal robes before sending him back to Pilate to be sentenced. 119 Thus, through the typological strategy of casting herself as Jesus and Cromwell as Herod to an audience who would be well acquainted with the details of the biblical story, Trapnel invites her readers to draw a fairly obvious connection between “the Fox” and Cromwell himself. On the typological level, then, Trapnel makes a clear political statement, condemning the newly titled Lord Protector by associating him with a despotic authority who was a symbol of the oppression of Roman rule, a striking contrast to her earlier readings of Cromwell as a Gideon, come to free his people from the Philistines, the “pagan” oppressors of the Old Testament nation of Israel. 120 Trapnel’s narrative of her return journey to London in the company of the soldiers stages the same key themes and tensions I have outlined so far, laying special stress on her connection to community. As well as continuing to maintain her spiritual connection with her friends in London, 121 Trapnel represents herself within the context of friends and supporters who welcome her at stops along the way, much as Paul was welcomed at the places he visited on his various journeys. Early on her journey, she encounters “some dear friends,” as she did on first setting out
119 In the context of her account of the soldiers’ arrival to arrest her, Trapnel refers to “the Fox” three more times (26a, 27a). See Luke 13.31-32 for the context of Jesus’ reference. John had gained Herod’s ire for condemning him for marrying his brother’s wife, and Herod is remembered not so much for the minor role he plays in the Lucan account of Christ’s trials as for delivering the head of John the Baptist on a platter to Salome as a reward for her dancing. 120 Over a year before, in Strange Newes from White-Hall , Trapnel calls on Cromwell to fulfill this role: “And then, oh Gideon, who art in the highest place, thou art not onely to do justice thy self, but thou art to see justice done in all Places, Courts, or councels, and Committees, that they may not feed upon the Poor” (8). 121 Trapnel writes that on the eighth day of the return journey, “ I that day at night, [following] after the hours spent with my friends at London, which I knew kept that day in part, in prayer, so did I, though absent in body from them” (32).
97 for Wales (27a). At the first stop, where visitors crowd into her lodgings, among the simply curious are some who “[come] in love to the Lord Jesus, to hear experiences, and some tempted souls [who are] much refreshed” by her ministry (28a). At Lew, Trapnel finds herself “full of joy in the sight of . . . dear friends” (29), and at Plymouth she counsels those who come to see her, “that they might be more in love with Christ” (31). Here, too, the experience she had in Wales of discovering community among strangers repeats itself: “he [God] made kindness flow from strangers in the Family , and in the Fort: these were strangers , and yet they were fellow Citizens, and I blesse the Lord, they are not now strangers , but acquaintance, and they are a company that are written in my heart ” (33; my emphasis). When the time comes for her to board the ship for the final leg of her journey, she does so accompanied by those who have shown her “much kindnesse” during her stay and are now “sory to have me go from their Quarters,” the manner of the farewell another parallel to Paul’s experience (34). 122 Even her note of “the wind being against us” echoes the Acts account of the contrary winds and stormy weather that plagued Paul’s voyage to Rome to appear before Caesar.123 Given Trapnel’s typological strategy of representing herself as both Paul and Jesus and the attendant political implications of those appropriations, the structure of her return journey in Report and Plea takes on particular significance. By reading the event of her journey through the lens of these particular biblical narratives, Trapnel has already constructed herself in opposition to Cromwell, who, as I have noted, ends up playing the role of both Caesar and Herod in her drama. Since both those figures represent the power of a repressive political empire, by typological association Trapnel plays the role of challenger to what she sees as the authoritarian, secular exercise of power by Cromwell and his government. Given that “by the early modern period a sovereign’s travel was an essential tool of governance and a key element in the art of statecraft in England,” Trapnel could depend on the familiarity of her audience with the rituals of royal travel (Brayshay 1). Thus, at the same time that she becomes Paul on his final journey to Rome to appeal to Caesar and Jesus on his journey to the crucifixion, she also constructs herself as an anti-monarchical figure performing an anti-progress. 122 The writer of Acts records a similar farewell given Paul and Barnabas at Tyre: “But when the daies were ended, we departed, and went our way, and thei all accompanied us with their wives and children, even out of the sitie: & we kneling downe on the shore, prayed. Then when we had embraced one another, we toke ship, & their returned home” (Acts 21.5-6, Geneva). 123 For example, the writer of Acts mentions that “the winds were contrary” (27.4, KJV) and refers to the “tempestuous wind” that resulted a shipwreck (27.14ff.). See also Acts 27.4.
98 The parallels between the progress and Trapnel’s journey begin earlier in the narrative, on her journey into Wales. While much has been written about Trapnel’s use of the bed, as I have noted, I would like to argue that in this particular text, her use of the chair as an emblem of her connection to God plays an equally important role. The first significant mention she makes of a chair occurs the last night of what Trapnel herself calls, later in the same paragraph, her “journey-progress” to Wales (11): My heart . . . was taken up much with the apprehension of the vanity of outward enjoyments, and great attendances, and brave houses: and my thoughts were much upon the Rocks I passed by in my journey, & the dangerous rocky places I rode over. And whereas I used to be very fearful, when I rode on smooth ground, now I feared not, but was very cheerfully carried on, beholding my Rock, Christ, through those emblems of Rocks: and I sate as in a chair upon the high steep hills , without any weariness at all; and the thoughts of the Lords kindeness to me in these things, drunk up my thoughts that night. (10; my emphasis) The deliberate mention of the elevated chair as a key element of her night vision suggests that Trapnel was appropriating the chair as a symbol of royalty, with the attendant visual enforcement of the ruler’s position above the common people and closer to God. In early modern visual representations of royalty, chairs of state and thrones played central roles. Moreover, they had also been associated with the progress. For example, records of Elizabeth’s progress of 1578 describe particular instances of the use of such symbols; in preparation for receiving the queen during that summer’s journey, thrones were constructed at both Norwich Cathedral and Kimberley Tower, and a sumptuously covered chair was provided for Elizabeth’s reception at Lady Jerningham’s estate at Costessey (Dovey 72, 95, 76). In this passage from Report and Plea , Trapnel bookends a seemingly minor tableau centered on a chair with opening references to major elements associated with royal travel—entertainments, crowds, and aristocratic residences—and with a concluding reference actually naming her journey as a progress. These allusions to the form of travel associated with royalty, as well as the rhetorical effect of positioning this visually arresting vignette immediately before a major section break in the text, 124 prepare the reader to apply those associations to Trapnel’s future use of the chair.
124 There are three major divisions in the text of the pamphlet, each marked by a decorative border or borders. The first division occurs between the preface (“To the Reader”) and the first major section of the text, titled
99 Another significant “chair event” occurs after Trapnel arrives in Wales, during her visit to Truro. Here the chair of the vision takes on materiality before a “great company of people” (16), all crowded into Mrs. Hill’s home. After Trapnel has recounted her spiritual autobiography and has spent “a great part of that night” in spontaneous speech and song, friends carry her, still in her chair, into her “chamber” and put her to bed, where Trapnel stays for “the remaining part of the night” (17-18). Her account of this episode not only builds on the initial vision by reiterating the image of Trapnel seated on a chair, but also deconstructs the royal associations by locating the event in a common household and structuring it to culminate in a bedchamber, not a monarch’s throne room. As Kathleen Kalpin notes, the bed was one of the few places—if not the only place—in the home that constituted “relative” private space for a husband and wife, a space whose “proper use” was, at least theoretically, for sexual rather than verbal exchange (133). Trapnel’s “progress” to the bedchamber not only reverses the expected pattern of movement, but also replaces the “enclosed” sexual encounter between husband and wife with an “open” verbal address by a single woman to God, witnessed by those in the room and the window watchers looking in from the outside. 125 Both of these incidents, in which Trapnel in her chair becomes a
“Here begins the Narrative or Relation.” The vision of the chair falls immediately before the second section of the text (“Here follows a Relation”), with the division marked by a single line of decorative border. This part of the text details not only her stay in Wales, but also her return journey and subsequent imprisonment, which are not set apart as the initial journey is. The third division comes just before the final section of the pamphlet (“A Defiance”). 125 Holstun also notes this dissolving of clear public/private spaces, and sees Trapnel as “[creating] a sort of fragmented Fifth Monarchist Household by allowing the spirit to move her from one domestic space to another” (280). In her analysis of Trapnel, Hind reads Trapnel’s statement that she will eventually return to “the closet” in the context of two key occurrences of the term in the New Testament, concluding that they invest the term with “two conflicting understandings of privacy, public utterance and hypocrisy, neither of which can be claimed as definitive or final” (101). However, Gillespie points out that sectarians like the Fifth Monarchists already regarded such spaces within homes as public, “in that they were composed of speakers and audiences and held together though what James Holstun, in a sustained analysis of Anna Trapnel, refers to as ‘public spiritedness’—the ‘public testimony to acts of indwelling grace which help to culture a new collective existence’” (63; Holstun qtd. from Ehud’s Dagger 270). I would point out here that sectarian women were not the first to appropriate bedroom space for purposes other than performing “conjugal duties.” Earlier in the century, Anne Clifford in her diary recounts her resistance to her husband’s pressure on her to resign any claim to her father’s estate in favor of her uncles. During an illness, Clifford confines herself to her chamber, and while she cannot prohibit her husband from entering to eat with her, she remains “determined to keep to my chamber and . . . not so much as go over the threshold of the door” (qtd. in Lewalski, “Claiming Patrimony” 148). In recounting her mother’s death, Clifford notes that the Countess of Cumberland died “in the same chamber where my father was born” ( Her Own Life 43), thus highlighting both her maternal and paternal lineage, as well as the history of female childbearing which has produced both her father and herself. Likewise, in April of 1617, Clifford records making a change in her sleeping quarters, moving to the chamber “where I lay when my lord was in France, in the green cloth-of-gold bed where the child was born” (47). Here the history is of her own body’s production, her daughter, with a possible allusion to Clifford’s birth, which, Lewalski notes, also took place in the absence of the father (126). Of course, the large spaces of an aristocratic household and the custom of separate bedrooms afforded women like Clifford opportunities to claim space, options not available to most middle and lower class women.
100 focal point, prepare the reader to read her return journey, in which the chair figures more publicly and prominently, as a deliberately staged anti-progress that furthers her political critique of Cromwell and his government. On the trip back to London, Trapnel twice more places herself in a chair, as all eyes at that point in the journey focus on her, “the worlds wonder, and gazing stock” (49). One of those occasions occurs at Plymouth, where a prayer meeting takes place in her chamber in the lieutenant’s house where she is under guard. There she spends three hours on her knees, praying and singing, before friends place her in a chair, where she continues to sing for several more hours before “some women put [her] to bed,” where Trapnel carries on her audible dialogue with God throughout the night (31). While this incident takes place once again in the household space, although with a smaller audience of supporters, an earlier and more striking episode marks the beginning of the journey with the soldiers. After spending the first day in “spiritual communion,” Trapnel remains unaware of her surroundings even after they stop for the night. As a result, the soldiers physically remove her from her horse and then set her in a chair, where she remains without “[her] capacity to speak for a great while.” When her trance ends, Trapnel looks around her to find “many men, women and children about me, and sitting on a high wall, right over where I sate” (28a). In this position, Trapnel plays upon a familiar image characteristic of a royal progress: the monarch arriving at a town to be seated on a specially prepared and suitably elevated throne or ornate chair. However, Trapnel draws on these associations only to upend them. Unlike a sovereign, she occupies a plain chair in a position below the level of the crowd and surrounded by commoners who have complete access to her in her vulnerable position. From her chair, in the manner of a king or queen, Trapnel makes an address to the gathered onlookers. But this is not a formally contrived speech, full of rhetoric intended to reinforce existing hierarchies, but rather a speech “in Scripture language,” to which the crowd attends. 126 When she
126 Another potential element in this parallel could be the association common in sixteenth-century prints between the monarch and the Bible. In her analysis of the iconography of the painting Edward VI and the Pope , Margaret Aston highlights that connection in John Foxe’s The Acts and Monuments , the 1570 edition of which was placed in every church, by order of Elizabeth I. In a prominent new woodcut in the 1570 edition, Henry VIII sits in a throne, his foot on the neck of Pope Clement VII and his hand on a large Bible in his lap (Figure 102, Aston 151). Similar woodcuts had appeared earlier in the century on Holbien’s title page for the 1535 Coverdale Bible and on the title page of the 1539 Great Bible (Figures 106 and 107, Aston 156-57). The frontispiece to Cranmer’s 1548 Catechism pictured Edward VI handing the Bible to several archbishops. A similar tableau was enacted during Elizabeth’s coronation entry (itself a mini-progress), during which she was ceremonially presented with a Bible, an episode given rhetorical prominence in Mulcaster’s account of the event as a key element in his emphasis on “the display and development of Elizabeth’s monarchical identity in the interactions along the route” (Sandra Logan,
101 leaves, her audience “[gives] a great shout,” which Trapnel explains is the local custom at seeing “some strange sight,” but which also clearly suggests the shouts that would typically greet the address of a ruler to her people. These parallels to a royal progress, which Trapnel invites and then deconstructs, are further emphasized by the way in which she represents her return, as she stages herself as the focus of attention, both supportive and inimical, at each stop along the way. As she “plays” to both those audiences within the text, so she also “plays” to the multiple audiences of her printed text: her community, the curious onlookers, and those enemies who have named her witch, whore, and vagabond. In Tub-preachers Overturn’d , the anonymous writer warns against separatist groups who meet in homes rather than official churches: “Sathan may be truly said to have his Throne there” (5). In performing her chair drama, Trapnel herself overturns the writer’s accusations, preaching from her “anti-throne” as a typological amalgam of Jesus, who (Thomas Taylor writes) carries the church “in his armes as a nurse” (119), and Paul, whose New Testament letters represent him as a planter and nurturer of the infant Christian church. Throughout A Report and Plea , then, Trapnel engages in a complex rhetorical strategy that combines typology with the structure of ritual travel in order to condemn the increasing hostility of Cromwell and his government toward the Fifth Monarchists (among others) who had contributed to the establishment of the commonwealth. Staging herself as a type of both Paul and Jesus enables her to underline the contrast between the “communitas” of the Fifth Monarchists, who sought to be of “one heart and one minde” like the church “in the primitive times,” and the oppressive hierarchy of government and clergy that attempts to disrupt and silence Trapnel and other leading voices in the movement (14). Those biblical types also provide for her audience a clear reading of Cromwell as both Caesar and Herod, an association that inevitably condemns him for an assumption of a power that is not only imperial and dictatorial, but also antithetical to the eschatological vision of the Fifth Monarchists, who believed that “the Kingdom” was about to be “restored to this old Israel” and “that Judges and Rulers might be as at the beginning” (14- 15). Trapnel’s anti-progress appropriates a travel ritual created by and for royalty and democratizes it; hers is truly a progress for the people, replacing the elaborate material “making History: The Rhetorical and Historical Occasion of Elizabeth Tudor’s Coronation Entry,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 [2001]: 253). Such a well-established visual connection linking monarch, Bible, and often chair, of which these are only a few examples, blurred the line between God’s Word and the sovereign’s word, an equation which Trapnel challenges as she, a commoner in a pose modeled on such symbolic images, becomes the direct mouthpiece of God, erasing the intermediary book from the equation.
102 preparations and carefully choreographed exchanges with a sparse retinue, direct contact with commoners, and messages from God that, while they are not pre-scripted, “[want] not word composed and orderly, and learning for the learned” (5). Mary Rowlandson: Wilderness wanderings Most often discussed as a “classic of the captivity genre,” Mary White Rowlandson’s account of her forced trek through the wilderness of colonial New England may seem dramatically different from Trapnel’s narrative, with its focus on nurturing spiritual community and brash confrontations with political authority (Sayre 127). The wilderness typically has been seen as a marginal location, representing isolation from community and disconnection from centers of power like Trapnel’s London. Milton’s Satan, in Paradise Regained , expresses such a view. Frustrated by Christ’s complete disinterest in the offer of political authority, the tempter somewhat peevishly asks, “What does thou in this World? the Wilderness / For thee is fittest place” (4.172-73). Rowlandson’s wilderness journey, however, while it represents a removal from her usual colonial context and community, becomes a very public event, both in its dissemination through publication and in its subversive typological commentary on government policy and potential political crises. Appearing in printed form on both sides of the Atlantic in 1682, The sovereignty and goodness of God (or The true history of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson , as it was titled in England) recounts an experience that dated back some half dozen years to King Philip’s War, when Rowlandson was taken prisoner during an Indian raid on the settlement of Lancaster, where her husband was the local minister. The author of the preface offers Rowlandson’s story as “a dispensation of publick note and of Universal concernment” that is “not to be forgotten, but worthy to be exhibited to, and viewed and pondered by all, that disdain not to consider the operation of [God’s] hands” (23, 22). Her text has certainly not been forgotten, and has provided ample material for critics to ponder, although not in a manner that her seventeenth-century editor would have approved. In contrast to Trapnel’s unmediated text, The Soveraignty and Goodness of God comes to us enclosed within the interpretive framework of a male-authored preface, usually assumed to have been written by Cotton Mather, and the printed version of a sermon preached by Rowlandson’s husband, which follows her narrative (Sayre 128). Critics have generally agreed on the central role of typology both in the editorial preface and in Rowlandson’s account itself.
103 For both her editor and Rowlandson herself, in her captivity she becomes “a microcosm of colonial history,” and her narrative becomes a means to live out “[the Puritan] community’s spiritual vulnerability through the biblical type” (Bercovitch 177; Kolodny qtd. in Madsen 60). While there has been no doubt about the intentional appropriation of Rowlandson as an object lesson for the Puritans of New England, critical debate has centered on the extent “to which Rowlandson’s writing may have been influenced, coerced, or edited by the powerful Puritan ministers who managed and interpreted the war effort” (Sayre 130). Representing one end of the spectrum of opinion, Deborah Madsen argues in Allegory in America that Rowlandson’s autobiographical text clearly supports the interpretation of her editor, “[claiming] for her experience an exemplary significance as an indication of the special destiny reserved for God’s chosen people of New England” (59). Similarly, in her critique of colonial public discourse, Patricia Roberts-Miller uses Rowlandson to illustrate the argument that Puritans unproblematically translated their “desire to be for God into assuming the position of being a representative of God.” According to Roberts-Miller, “Rowlandson was so secure that she was being chastened for entry into the elect that the various moving ironies in her captivity never occurred to her” (145). Seeing at least some disjunction between preface and narrative, Sayre asserts in his editorial introduction to the text that while Rowlandson did read her journey typologically, she “did not concur with Mather’s interpretation,” constructing her account “[to suggest] that although the Indians may [have been] inspired by the devil, it was God who allowed them to successfully attack the English” (129). At the opposite end of the critical spectrum, Michael Breitwieser reads the narrative as Rowlandson’s sustained resistance to the appropriation of her experience for public purposes that deny her necessary mourning for her personal losses. 127 While I agree with Sayre and Breitwieser in reading resistance in the text to Mather’s political and spiritual agenda, I will argue that she shapes her typological strategies to much more significant and deliberately political ends. Drawing her typological vocabulary largely from the Old Testament histories of the nation, Rowlandson stages a traveling performance that 127 In turn, in Providence Tales and the birth of American literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1999), James D. Hartman takes issue with Breitwieser’s reading of Rowlandson, arguing that the very characteristics the latter interprets as evidence of resistance were actually typical traits of the providence tale, out of which the captivity narrative arises as a particularly American inflection of the genre. For example, where Breitwieser sees Rowlandson’s tears for her child as a sign of subversion, Hartman argues that “mourning adds a sensational, sentimental note to Rowlandson’s praise for another captive’s stoicism under torture. Such ascetic suffering, in the context of the providence tale, is a sign of rationality and objectivity” (36).
104 foregrounds some of the same issues found in Trapnel’s Report and Plea . Marilyn C. Wesley, focusing on Rowlandson’s narrative as “the first travel book by a woman published in North America,” reads the text as a counterpoint between “travel text and religious digression.” As a “woman’s travel narrative,” it is “a peripatetic record which, like the course of her journey, crosses and double-crosses the straight path of her story of salvation,” and Wesley makes much of what she calls “a dominant figure of haphazard movement” (21). However, that movement forms what I would argue is not a separate strand in the narrative, but an integral part of Rowlandson’s typology: her representation of her trek through the “vast and desolate Wilderness” of New England and its surrounding environs as the wilderness travels of the children of Israel on their way to the Promised Land, a journey which was anything but a “straight path” (32; Wesley 21). During their forty years of wandering, their travel pattern involved as much backtracking and circularity as did the Indians’ movements about New England. While some of Rowlandson’s editorial comments do seem like “religious interpolation” (Wesley 21), the significance of her narrative is inextricably bound up in the typology of travel and the way in which she uses this rhetorical strategy to propose an alternative to the approved typology of the Puritan authorities. Rather than settling for unambiguous, straightforward parallels within that larger typological framework of the colonists as the chosen nation (however erring), Rowlandson, casting herself as a type of the nation of Israel, engages in some rhetorical maneuvering that destabilizes clear boundaries between wilderness and civilization, between civilized Puritans and “pagan” Indians, and between personal reflection and political commentary. Rowlandson specifically explains to her audience that she intends to structure the narrative in terms of “the several Removes we had up and down the Wilderness” in order to “better declare what happened to me during that grievous Captivity” (28). 128 This emphasis on
128 Pamela Lougheed identifies the term as conventional Puritan vocabulary for “the spiritual and physical removal from God that characterizes life in this world,” a removal that Lougheed argues that Rowlandson attempts to reverse mainly through “[confronting] human agency as the first step toward routing it in order to move closer to God” (“‘Then Began He to Rant and Threaten’: Indian Malice and Individual Liberty in Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative,” American Literature 74 [2002]: 293). However, the word is a strangely slippery one, perhaps not to be tied down so easily. “Remove” can as easily mean the action of removing, as it can mean the distance, position, or space of removal (in fact, according to the OED, that is the more common use of the word). In addition, the act of removing can be simply a shift from one position or place to another, or a more final act of removal like a dismissal or a murder. And a rare but potentially relevant early modern meaning is a military signal for departure. The use of “remove,” it seems to me, is part of Rowlandson’s strategy of ambiguity, as the term immediately raises the question for the reader of who is the agent and who is the object in the particular context.
105 physical movement and on the geographical setting in which it takes place allies the typology of her narrative most closely with the Israelites’ forty years of wilderness wanderings after they escaped from Egypt and before they entered Canaan, the Promised Land. As one recurring element, the episodes associated with crossing water particularly underline that parallel. In the biblical account, the children of Israel make two momentous crossings of bodies of water: the crossing of the Red Sea, just after they have escaped Egypt, with Pharaoh’s troops in pursuit, and the crossing of the Jordan River, which marks their entry into the land of Canaan. Significantly, in both these accounts, which were defining moments of Israelite history, God causes the water to part, allowing the Israelites to cross on dry ground. 129 In Rowlandson’s account of the fifth remove, during which the Indians cross a river as they flee from the English army, she makes a point of telling her readers that “I did not wet my foot,” although many others were “mid-leg deep” by the time they reached the other side (36). Similarly, during the sixth remove, they must cross “a great Brook with Ice in it.” Describing how she finds passage across by walking on top of a beaver dam, Rowlandson again repeats, “I did not wet my foot” (37). While other water crossings during her captivity are not so remarkable, the placement of these two incidents back- to-back early in her account certainly invites the audience to read Rowlandson as a type of the Israelite nation during its exodus. 130 This identification, however, is less interesting in itself than in the connections and disjunctions it creates with other elements of Rowlandson’s rhetorical strategy. Typologically, her captivity invites comparison to two other episodes in Old Testament history: the Egyptian and the Babylonian captivities, the former immediately preceding the rootless decades before entry into Canaan and the latter coming centuries later as a result of the corruption of both the Israelite kings and their people. Madsen points out that Puritan captivity narratives depended on typology to create a connection between the Israelites finding freedom from the captivity of Egypt and their validation of the “ordeal of captivity as a necessary part of God’s redemptive mission in the New World” (58). Referring to the second biblical episode, Rowlandson herself
129 See Exodus 14.21-22 and Joshua 3.14-17. 130 Breitwieser notes Rowlandson’s fixation with crossing rivers without getting her feet wet, but argues that her invocation of scripture is “inadequate” to the meaning and intensity of the experience. The Israelites, he says, were allowed to sit by the edge of the river, while Rowlandson is forced to cross it. Breitwieser later quotes Bercovitch on the Puritan reading of themselves as the nation of Israel (175); however, Breitwieser does not explore the possible resonances of the Israelites’ experiences of crossing on dry ground for interpreting Rowlandson’s emphasis on similar experiences.
106 quotes from the well-known Psalm 137, written in the collective voice of the Israelites in captivity in Babylon (40). This complex of typological associations plays a subtle countertheme against the conventional wilderness/civilization binary of Rowlandson’s narrative. For example, both the Egyptian and the Babylonian captivities took place within the cities of highly civilized societies (however “pagan” the Israelites might have considered them), certainly a contrast to the representation of the Indians as wild savages. In fact, at one point Rowlandson recalls a gathering of Indians that appears to her as a “great Indian Town” in which “the Indians were as thick as the Trees” (37). In turn, she suggests that the seemingly safe space of the colonial settlement can easily take on the threatening aspect of the wilderness. Emphasizing the repetition of “walking from one place to another” like the Israelites on their circuitous travels, Rowlandson represents herself during her captivity as “going up and down mourning and lamenting my condition,” suggesting a ritualized pattern of movement (33). 131 Later, she uses the same language as she recounts seeing an Indian who once threatened her with a sword during her captivity now “walking up and down in Boston” (44). Equally troubling is the psychological trauma she and her husband endure as they are “hurried up and down in [their] thoughts,” hearing conflicting reports on the location of their children still in captivity (65). The parallelism in the language suggests that although she herself has safely returned to “civilization,” her Puritan readers should not assume that they are in an inviolable citadel, either physically or spiritually. Not only do these additional typological associations make problematic any conventional application of exodus typology, but other elements in the narrative also introduce ambiguity into a straightforward dualistic reading of Rowlandson as a type of the children of Israel and the Indians as types of Israel’s various Old Testament enemies and captors. In her narrative of the fifth remove, the first of the river crossings I noted earlier, she attributes the failure of the
131 See also “I went up and down moaning and lamenting” (42). Breitwieser characterizes this as an “unholy restlessness” (77); he suggests Rowlandson’s use of the phrase is a deliberate appropriation of Satan’s activity as described in the book of Job. Later he points again to the same “satanic motif” (121) in Rowlandson’s description of her and her husband’s search for their living children, leaving the impression that the phrase occurs only in that instance in the Bible. However, according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance , the same expression or very close variations of it can be found in at least eight other places in the Old Testament, none of them having to do with Satan and one of them particularly having to do with lament (Judges 11:37), which seems to have more logical connection to Rowlandson’s situation. See also: Lev. 19.16; 2 Sam. 15.20; Psalm 59.15; Ezekiel 1.13, 19.6, 28.14; Zech. 10.12. Also, Breitwieser sees her description of the Praying Indian in Boston as a way to focus her underlying anxiety that the war is not really over, as well as a figure of Rowlandson’s suspended condition, desiring reintegration into the Puritan community, but not able to achieve it (186ff).
107 “English Army” to follow the Indians across the river to “the strange providence of God in preserving the Heathen” and to the spiritual unreadiness of the captives to receive “so great a mercy as victory and deliverance” (37). However, given the established typological framework, Rowlandson’s stress on the inability of the army to negotiate the river in contrast to the success of the Indians, in spite of having to transport their old and sick, cannot help but suggest an alternative reading in which the Indians themselves act the part of the children of Israel and the English play the role of Pharaoh’s army, barred by the waters of the Red Sea from returning the Hebrews to captivity in Egypt. Later in her narrative, Rowlandson returns to this incident, recalling again how the English army found the river “impassable,” while the Indians “went over safely . . . . in great numbers” (61-62). In the same passage she also emphasizes God’s provision of food for the Indians: “I cannot but stand in admiration to see the wonderful power of God, in providing for such a vast number of our Enemies in the Wilderness, where there was nothing to be seen but from hand to mouth. Many times in the morning the generality of them would eat up all they had, and yet have some farther supply against they wanted” (62). 132 Rowlandson’s description recalls the pattern of the Israelites’ life during their forty years in the wilderness, when God provided manna for them each morning, commanded that they eat all they had gathered, and then provided more food for them each evening. In fact, she emphasizes, “I did not see (all the time I was among them) one Man, or Woman, or Child, die with Hunger” (62). While Rowlandson concludes (conventionally) that the colonists’ “perverse and evil” behavior explains why God “feeds and nourishes [the Indians] up to be a scourge to the whole land,” her retreat into an acceptable interpretation cannot completely erase those moments when she seems to cast the nomadic Indians in the role of the wandering Israelites, who were themselves a scourge to the nations they encountered (62-63). 133
132 In this same passage and almost in the same breath in which she comments on the appalling nature of the food that kept the Indians alive, Rowlandson also notes that the Indian diet includes “all sorts of creatures and provision which they plundered from the English” (62). There is at least a linguistic echo of the account of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt, during which they “plundered” the Egyptians at Moses’ command, asking for and receiving clothing, gold, and silver from their frightened masters and mistresses (Exodus 12.36). 133 While Breitwieser sees Rowlandson’s reference to Job’s wife as a use of typology to resist and partially subvert prevailing typological interpretations of experience (90ff), he argues that the disintegration of the solace of Puritan typology provides the fracture in Rowlandson’s thinking through which she can glimpse the Indians as something more than a “blind force” or as well-ingrained stereotypes of barbarity (130ff). However, Rowlandson’s representation of the Indians here achieves its rhetorical effect primarily through her use of typological strategies to read them in a more ambiguous light.
108 Rowlandson’s reiteration of God’s providence shown to the Indians throws into sharp relief the successive failures of the English, in spite of the fact that, like Pharaoh’s forces, “our English Army was so numerous” (61). In this passage, she directly addresses their failure to protect the colonists at Lancaster, making the spiritual application in rather ambivalent language: “But what can I say? God seemed to leave his People to themselves , and ordered all things for his own holy ends” (61; my emphasis). She follows this comment up with a biblical quotation that fuses two significant passages seamlessly: “shall there be evil in the City and the Lord hath not done it? [Amos 3.6] They are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph, therefore they shall go captive with the first that go Captive [Amos 6.6]. 134 It is the Lord’s doing, and it should be marvelous in our Eyes” (61). Both Amos passages announce God’s judgment on Israel, but while the first Amos passage is addressed to “the whole familie which I brought up from the land of Egypt” (Amos 3.1), the second passage is prefaced in the Geneva Bible by the subheading “Against the princes of Israel living in pleasure,” who, the prophet goes on to say, “lie upon beddes of yvorie, . . . eat the lambes of the flocke, . . . drinke wine in bowles, and anoynt themselves with the chiefe ointments” (Amos 6.4, 6). This second Amos passage is the only place in the Bible where the phrase “the affliction of Joseph” occurs. Given that Joseph is the name both of Jacob’s son, sold by his own brothers into slavery, 135 and of Rowlandson’s husband, she seems to be issuing a more than subtle invitation to her audience to make the typological connections between the princes of Israel and the colony’s leaders. Not only does the context of this second quotation shift the source of the “evil in the City” from the Puritan colonists in general to those in authority particularly, but it also allows Rowlandson to lay the responsibility for her own fate at their feet, since those authorities, with their delay in providing adequate protection to the colonists at Lancaster, are the ones who have been indifferent to “the affliction of Joseph.” 136
134 The actual wording in the Geneva Bible is “no man is sorry for the affliction of Joseph.” Her substitution of the plural pronoun, used throughout the actual biblical passage except at this particular juncture, ensures a strong connection between the “they” and the implied authorities, rather than the people of Israel (or their equivalent, the colonists) in general. 135 Genesis 37.12-36. 136 Ironically, at the time of the Indian attack on Lancaster, Joseph Rowlandson was (not for the first time) in Boston begging the Massachusetts General Assembly for increased military protection to lessen the likelihood of just such an attack.
109 Along with these multiple valences within Rowlandson’s typology, she also represents herself in her narrative as a singular individual, not exclusively as a type of the collective of New England colonists. In his preface, Mather initially identifies Rowlandson in terms of her husband, as “his precious yoke-fellow,” “the dear Consort of the said Reverend Mr Rowlandson” (22). Publishing her account is even more important, the editor claims, because of “how much nearer this Gentlewoman stood related to that faithful Servant of God, whose capacity and employment was publick, in the House of God, and his Name on that account of a very sweet savour in the Churches of Christ” (23). 137 When, however, she does tell her story, Rowlandson makes a point of rhetorically positioning herself in her drama of captivity as a distinctive, single focal center. While the Indians took other captives from Lancaster and while Rowlandson recounts various interactions with other captive colonists, including two of her children, she emphasizes her aloneness, lamenting that she has “no Christian Friend near me, either to comfort or help me” (30). That theme returns later, when she represents the gathering of the Indians as a “great Indian Town,” with herself “in the midst, and no Christian Soul near me” (37-38; see also 42). Again, following an unhappier (and wetter) river crossing, Rowlandson becomes the visual center of attention with the Indians “gathered all about me, I sitting alone in the midst” (39). And although she would have been accompanied home by those who came to arrange her ransom, Rowlandson constructs even her departure as a dramatic tableau of herself as a singular figure alone among the Indians. It is, she writes, God’s redemption “especially that I should come away in the midst of so many hundreds of Enemies quietly and peaceably, and not a Dog moving his tongue” (64; my emphasis). Through representing herself as the object of the gaze of both the Indians and her readers, Rowlandson resists being read only as “the minister’s wife,” or being erased as an individual for the editorial purpose of objectifying her as simply a generalized type of the Puritan colonists, an “ideological tool” in Mather’s “project of providential explication” (Breitwieser 53, 9). While her editor’s project in publishing her account rested on offering her as a type of the erring colonial community, Rowlandson finds in typology a means to insist on her status as an
137 As I noted, the postlude to Rowlandson’s narrative is a sermon by Joseph Rowlandson, one that was preached just three days before his death in 1678. Ironically, for centuries, critics also unknowingly perpetrated Mather’s reading of Rowlandson’s identity in terms of her husband, assuming that she died at the same time as he did. As recently as 1984, Kolodny cites the probable date of her death as 1678. See The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860 (Chapel Hill and London: U. of North Carolina Press, 1984) 246, n.2). More recent research has established that Rowlandson remarried and lived until 1711.
110 individual subject with an identity of her own, refusing to allow Mather to generalize her out of existence. This intersection of community and individual provides a position from which Rowlandson can claim authority and at the same time claim her right as an individual subject to question both English and colonial institutions and assumptions. Her textual authority lies in the potential public meaning of her forced sojourn with the Indians, for which she takes up the accepted and familiar typology of the colonists as the nation of Israel. At the same time, her rhetorical strategy destabilizes the fixed positions assumed by the “official” reading of her captivity. Not only does she create a typological drama in which the English forces sometimes slip into the role of often-stymied Egyptian pursuers, but she also occasionally shifts her own typological identity onto the Indians, reading them as the wandering Israelites literally fed by God. Adding to these typological ambiguities is Rowlandson’s representation of her experience as an alien individual who finds hospitality among the Indians, an experience she describes in language surprisingly similar to that which Trapnel uses to describe finding community during her Wales experience. While Rowlandson recounts a number of incidents in which the Indians treat her with civility, even kindness, two specific incidents stand out. In particular, she is impressed by one Indian woman who offers Rowlandson a place by the family’s fire, gives her a skin on which to sit, and invites her to return. This the woman did, Rowlandson emphasizes, even though “ these were Strangers to me that I never knew before” (43; my emphasis). Again, in an even more striking context, she recalls the hospitality offered “five or six times” by an Indian who (another Indian points out) had killed “Englishmen.” When Rowlandson visited their wigwam, she writes, this Indian and “his Squaw” “would always give me something[,] and yet, they were strangers that I never saw before ” (57; my emphasis). Lougheed cites this incident, with its initial implicit threat of violence, as an example of Rowlandson “[treating] an Indian’s boast of malice as an idle threat,” and thus evidence for her conclusion that the rhetorical emphasis privileges “malicious intention” over “the warrior’s agency” (295-96). However, the rhetorical stress of the passage seems to be located in the paradoxical contrast between two actions: the Indian’s activity of killing and his activity of showing hospitality. To argue, as Lougheed does, that the rhetorical strategy here is to locate “both captors and captive outside the theater of action” seems to deny Rowlandson’s emphasis on the Indian’s surprising and repeated concrete actions of hospitality towards her (296). Near the end of her narrative, Rowlandson
111 describes her experience when she returns to her place in the colonial community. Here, she says, she is not “hemm’d in with the merciless and cruel Heathen,” but rather with “pitiful, tender-hearted, and compassionate Christians” (65). Yet, the Christians are simply behaving as Christians ought to behave; however “compassionate” these friends, old and new, prove to be, their actions are not nearly so remarkable as the hospitality Rowlandson experiences from those alien “strangers” in the wilderness who share neither language nor culture with her. As I have noted, Rowlandson resists a reading of her narrative that would interpret her experience only as “an indication of the special destiny reserved for God’s chosen people of New England” (Madsen 59); moreover, she uses the rhetorical strategy of typology itself to problematize the conventional typology of her day that relied on a simple binary reading of the roles of the English (Israel) and the Indians (Israel’s enemies). But Rowlandson does not stop her foray into political commentary here. Through one unusual typological self-representation, she reminds her readers not only of the failure of the English in America, but also of the dangers embodied in the monarchy to which the colony still remained subject. In spite of the critical attention to Mary Rowlandson’s act of mourning, little has been said about the potential significance of the iconic way in which she represents herself at the beginning of the narrative as a living pieta, Mary mourning over her dead son, an image enshrined in hundreds of Renaissance canvases and sculptures, and now literally brought to life in the wilds of New England. 138 As I have observed previously, while other colonists were taken captive at the same time as she was, Rowlandson often writes almost as if she were the only one to survive the attack. “All was gone, (except my life),” she declares, and “there remained nothing to me but one poor wounded Babe” (29). During the days when her child remains alive, Rowlandson represents the two of them in a consistent pose at center stage: the mother with her child in her arms. Rowlandson rides a horse with “my sick Child in my lap”; she carries the child on foot; she sits in the snow “with my sick Child in my arms, looking that every hour would be the last of its life” (30). The repetitions of the fusion between the mother and child are insistent: “I sate much alone with a poor wounded Child in my lap and mourned”; “nine dayes I sat upon my knees, with my babe in my lap”; and
138 For example, although she argues that Rowlandson’s narrative defines “sexual purity” and “maternity” as two “universal determining qualities of true and valuable femininity,” Tiffany Potter does not investigate any potential linkages to Madonna images or pieta iconography. See “Writing Indigenous Femininity: Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of Captivity,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (2003): 156.
112 (in even more arresting language) “down I sate with the picture of death in my lap” (31). 139 Even after Sarah dies, Rowlandson rises the next morning fully intending to “take up my dead Child in my arms to carry it with me” (32). Notably, she never once uses a gendered pronoun or a name to refer to her young daughter, although Rowlandson immediately names her older daughter (also Mary) when they first meet in captivity (32). This rhetorical elision of the child’s name and biological sex strengthens the parallel, since there is no reminder of a contradictory gender to detract from the pieta image that Rowlandson literally etches into her readers’ imaginations to match the familiar cultural icon already implanted there. With Rowlandson’s own name being Mary, her enactment of a culturally embedded representation of the mother of Jesus holding her son would carry additional typological force. It seems highly unusual to find a Puritan woman invoking what to her readers would have been a very Catholic image, one that the Puritans in England had gone to some lengths to erase from churches only a few decades earlier. 140 However, the impact of this representation would be significant in terms of the impact on Rowlandson’s audience, since it seems to belong to the class of what Turner calls “root paradigms,” “higher-order [concepts] than symbols [that] are certain consciously recognized (though not consciously grasped) cultural models for behavior that exist in the heads of the main actors in a social drama, whether in a small group or on the stage of history” ( Image and Pilgrimage 248). 141 For Rowlandson’s audience, the Mary likeness would awaken memories of the iconoclasm that played a central role in the political and religious turmoil of the 1640’s and 1650’s in England, an era which would have been part of the personal history of many of the colonists and their families. Perhaps even more troubling would be the threat of Catholicism awakened by reminders of two other Marys: the staunchly Catholic Mary Tudor, whose brief sixteenth-century reign provided John Foxe with considerable anti-Catholic 139 This last phrase provides further evidence of the iconographic nature of Rowlandson’s self- representation, since “the picture of death” had been a common visual representation in religious art and other kinds of illustrations for centuries. For example, in Ancient funerall monuments (1631), John Weever offers the following detail in his description of St. Paul’s Cathedral: “Above the Cloyster, was richly painted the dance of Death, commonly called, the dance of Pauls, the picture of Death leading all estates” (378; my emphasis). 140 Even earlier, in The Mother’s Blessing published in 1616, Dorothy Leigh warns specifically against making a “God” of Mary, as well as generally against the making of images, since children will learn little of spiritual value “by looking upon a painted piece of Paper, or a carved stone” (30). 141 Turner gives the Way of the Cross as a “prime example” of a root paradigm, giving Trapnel’s return journey to London a connection to this concept as well. Of particular interest in connection to both Trapnel and Rowlandson is Turner’s comment that root paradigms “emerge at life crises, whether of groups or individuals, whether institutionalized or compelled by unforeseen events” ( Image and Pilgrimage 248-49).
113 material for his Acts and Monuments ; and the present-day Mary of Modena, wife to the Duke of York (later James II), whose Italian connections renewed fears of a future monarch raised by two loyal adherents of the Catholic faith. 142 In addition, these Catholic Marys would also suggest a more favorable Mary, the daughter of the Duke of York by his first wife. Not only was this Mary raised Protestant, and thus more palatable as a successor, but she had also, in 1677, married the solidly Protestant William of Orange. In representing this trinity of Marys, with the past and two potential futures embodied within the image of Rowlandson with her dying child in her arms, herself a mourning Mary, she issues a warning to her audience about the transatlantic symbiosis that continues to define the colony’s identity. The favorable economic assets represented by the American colonies made control of their trade a desirable goal, although the government in London had “a limited capacity to intervene directly” in their economic affairs (Swales 302). However, beginning in 1675, London moved to tighten its hold on the colonies, a process that continued to accelerate into the 1680s. 143 Since Rowlandson and her husband spent a year in Boston after she was ransomed, she would have had direct access to information and opinions
142 Mary of Modena’s mother founded the Order of the Visitation, which Mary herself wished to join until she was chosen to marry James II. In England, she was viewed with suspicion as an agent of the Pope, who had indeed intervened to persuade Mary to give up her desired vocation as a nun in order to wed James. As a mother, Mary had only two children who survived; five were stillborn, one in January of 1675, a year before the events described in Rowlandson’s text. As a Catholic and a woman, Mary provided a material nexus for many of the anxieties of the 1670’s and 80’s: the threats to Protestantism in Europe; the associations from earlier in the century between Catholicism and arbitrary rule, again around a Catholic consort, Henrietta Maria; and the (alleged) Popish Plot as an indication of the vulnerability of English sovereignty and security. 143 The distractions of the civil war in the 1640s allowed the New England colonies to gain a significant degree of independence, including forming their own military alliance and determining their own foreign policy. In the 1650s and 60s, the English government turned their attention to regaining some control of the colonies and their trade, with Parliament passing a series of Navigation Acts. However, due to Charles II’s habit of allowing favored members of the aristocracy to set up proprietary colonies, by the mid-1670s the Crown had direct control of only seven of the twenty English colonies in America. In New England, the Puritans made no effort to conform to the Navigation Acts and waged the war against King Philip without any consultation with British authorities. This nose- thumbing, along with other incidents of colonial unruliness (e.g., Bacon’s rebellion in Virginia), prompted the Crown to take serious measures to “regulate the American colonies and establish an imperial system” from 1675 onward, with the government creating a colonial office and sending official agents to America to enforce compliance with the Navigation Acts. The momentum toward greater British control only increased in the 1680s (Massachusetts’ power of self-government was revoked, for example), and when James II came to the throne in 1685, he pursued an active “Spanish style of viceregal colonial administration.” One of his most notable moves to reestablish the authority of the Crown was the creation of the Dominion of New England, formed of seven previously separate colonies. Until the year after the Glorious Revolution, this amalgamation of colonies was ruled by a royal governor supported by British troops and not subject to any colonial representative assembly. (The foregoing is a summary of the situation as described by Richard Dunn in “America in the British Empire,” from The Reader’s Companion to American History , Houghton Mifflin Resource Centers: U.S. History, at
114 about increased regulations and controls imposed by Britain. 144 While the Puritans may have separated themselves geographically from an England beset by renewed fears of Catholic plots, Rowlandson’s pieta reminds her colonial audience that their fate is still inextricably and dangerously bound up with that of the “mother” country. 145 “Shall a trumpet be blowen in the citie, and the people be not afraide? Or shall there be evil in a citie, and the Lord hath not done it?” writes the prophet in the Amos passage from which Rowlandson cites (Amos 3.6). Answering his own question, he immediately insists, “Surely the Lord God will doe nothing, but [i.e., unless] he reveileth his secrete unto his servants the Prophets” (Amos 3.7). The critical placement of the passage in which Rowlandson quotes excerpts from these Amos passages, knowing that her readers’ familiarity with scripture will enable them to place the excerpts within the immediate biblical context, suggests that Rowlandson sees her text as significantly more than a private “Memorandum of God’s dealing with her,” as Mather claims in his preface to the writing of this “precious Servant” (23, 22). While he attempts to appropriate her narrative for his own purposes, immobilizing it to be “exhibited” within the framework of his imposed hermeneutic, 146 Rowlandson’s typological strategy allows her to position herself to speak as God’s trumpet, the “handmaid” as prophet rather than submissive wife (22), revealing the secret of the evil in the city as she implicitly criticizes those who are “at ease in Zion” for their indifference to the fate of their people, both in
144 There is no evidence to pinpoint exactly when Rowlandson actually wrote her narrative. Critics generally date the writing somewhere between 1676 and 1678, but differ in locating its composition; some, such as Frances Roe Kestler, place its composition in Boston, while others, like Richard Diebold, believe it to have been written later, in Wethersfield (Wesley n.11). Internal evidence shows that Rowlandson wrote it not long after she returned from captivity, but her references to uncomplimentary “talk” about her captivity and her behavior during it suggests that at least enough time had passed to give her access to the colonial rumor mill. 145 As I noted earlier, Rowlandson’s text was published in Massachusetts and London simultaneously. The London edition bore a different title, but both titles included the phrase “captivity and restoration,” the latter term carrying significant political associations, and potential contemporary application. In fact, Rowlandson’s narrative, aside from its attractions as an American variant of the sensationalist providence tale, could easily have been read by Nonconformist ministers and their wives as a representation of their own hardships during the “great persecution” of 1660-89 (Crawford, Women and Religion in England 187). During this time, wives of imprisoned Nonconformist clergy and leaders often tirelessly pursued the release of their husbands (189-90). 146 Even the original title of the first and second American editions displaces Rowlandson to the position of an accessory to the larger message, a means to an end: The Soveraignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson . (Wesley attributes this title to Rowlandson herself, but I have found no other critic who makes that particular assertion.) The work has become best known under the title that appeared on the British edition: A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, A minister’s Wife in New-England .
115 regard to the immediate threat of the Indians and to the political and religious threat that hangs over their future as a colony of Puritans. Conclusion In early modern texts, women are frequently left behind—by chance, design, or the alleged frailties and vagaries of femaleness—while men, unencumbered by the social expectations that wedded women to domestic responsibilities and child rearing, play the role of traveling adventurers. Early in Mary Wroth’s Urania , for example, the romance’s namesake finds herself confined within the Tower of Desire on the island of Cyrus. There she remains immured for the next hundred and fifty pages, “not seen or thought on” by her male companions (Wroth 61), who in their own enchanted confusion rush off to other countries to carry out their acts of heroism. While the image of the maiden in the tower is standard in early modern romances, the fictional trope does clearly represent the binary of traditional roles in the culture: women protected and enclosed within domestic spaces and men on the move as they pursued their various work, callings, and interests. Like the addressee in Donne’s famous sonnet, “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” early modern women were expected to play the role of the “fixed foot” (27), the point of stability and stasis, while the men were the travelers, moving about the world free from the constraints of domestic tasks and responsibilities. When women did move beyond the protected confines of the home, they were often subject to the moral censures of men like Parsons, who, over a half century after her death, condemned Anne Askew: “she was a coy dame, and of very evill fame for wantonnesse: in that she left the company of her husband Maister Kyme, to gad up & downe the countrey a ghospelling & ghossipinge where she might, & ought not” (495). Trapnel and Rowlandson faced the same kind of criticism when they passed beyond socially acceptable geographical boundaries. Criticized for not maintaining a fixed residence, Trapnel was defamed as a “vagabond” by her critics. Rowlandson, too, faced detractors who read her as simply another woman tainted by contact with the Indians and interpreted her claim of immunity from the “least abuse or unchastity” at their hands as a gratuitous bid to “speak . . . for [her] own credit” (Rowlandson 64). At the same time, she was at the mercy of an editor who represented her written narrative as a private staging of her experience, “family theatre,” as it were, claiming the paternalistic right to determine the public meaning of her narrative.
116 Yet in the face of those slanders and attempts to appropriate and presume what they say, both Trapnel and Rowlandson publicly stage their traveling experiences in textual performances that speak to the public and political concerns of the communities to which they still saw themselves as deeply attached. Their early modern “road shows” evidence some of the characteristics Turner attributes to “social drama,” which depends to a great extent on “the power of symbols in human communication,” a power which “inheres not only in the shared lexicons and grammars of spoken and written languages, but also in the artful or poetic individual crafting of speech through persuasive tropes [such as] metaphors” ( From Ritual 9). Moreover, Turner goes on to point out, the process of “communication through symbols . . . uses the entire sensory repertoire to convey messages,” including “bodily postures,” various kinds of breathing, and tears (9). While the travel narratives staged by Trapnel and Rowlandson may not explicitly exhibit the full breach-crisis-redress progression Turner defines as the core of the social drama, they certainly perform some of the critical functions that Turner attributes to the modern genre of theatre, in its various forms from stage dramas to puppetry and “professional story-telling” (Turner, From Ritual 11). According to Turner, the “modes of redress, which always contained at least the germ of self-reflexivity, a public way of assessing our social behavior, [have] moved out of the domains of law and religion into those of the various arts.” However, these seventeenth-century women’s texts fuse theatre with religious belief and biblical typology as a way to accomplish similar purposes: to “call [the community’s] leaders to account, . . . portray its characteristic conflicts and suggest remedies for them, and generally take stock of its current situation in the known ‘world’” (11). Seeing herself as a voice for the Fifth Monarchist community, Trapnel redefined the taint of being labeled a “vagabond” by her critics. Through a strategy of typology that validates her movement on the road, from house to house, and from room to room, she represents her journey to Wales as not only justified, but required of one who has been called to the stage to play a part patterned after the defining performances of both the Head of the Church and its most prominent New Testament advocate and leader. On one hand, Trapnel seeks to detach the concept of “church” from humanly constructed buildings or “[edifices] of state power” (Gillespie, Domesticity and Dissent 100); on the other, she reestablishes the church as it is defined in the New Testament, when it had no fixed or specially sanctioned material space, but existed as a body of people, a communitas that met “from house to house” in a liminal space between Roman
117 temple on one hand and Jewish synagogue on the other (Acts 2.46, KJV). In her performance, Trapnel not only represents herself as a singular individual, with her own right to freedom of movement, but also claims a public voice for her community, condemning those who came to power in partnership with the Fifth Monarchists, only to persecute them as individuals and betray the community’s social and political vision for England. Rowlandson, too, finds in typology a rhetorical strategy that enables her to take her captivity narrative beyond the “Private Use” claimed by its published title page. Rather than “the spiritual and the physical journeys [getting] progressively sorted out,” as Kolodny asserts (18), the spiritual remains deeply embedded in the physical through the typology of the wandering children of Israel, as Rowlandson uses her editor’s own hermeneutical tools to upset the typological binaries he attempts to impose on her account, offering her own critique of both the English and the colonial authorities themselves. In an even more unusual typological move, she offers a prophetic warning about the potential future of a colonial community still vulnerable, in spite of an intervening ocean, to the religious threats troubling the motherland and its monarchy. Unlike Christiana, whose potential for action remains just that, Rowlandson and Trapnel fulfill their promise, finding in their connection to their respective communities a framework in which to do their typological work as they address the dramas of power around them through their own traveling performances. The typologies embedded in those performances make it clear that these two women believed themselves to be both authorized and uniquely positioned to play their role on the broad stage of their world. In her spiritual autobiography, Agnes Beaumont recounts her brother’s words of encouragement to her to defend her reputation: “Sister,” said he, “you are now brought upon the stage to act for Christ and his ways.” The Fifth Monarchist prophet and the New England minister’s wife clearly saw themselves as “brought upon the stage to act for Christ and his ways” as representatives of clearly defined communities to whose welfare they were committed. In the next chapter, I will consider texts by women who, unlike Trapnel and Rowlandson, find it necessary to resist the communities to which they have bound themselves. As a means to their own spiritual peace, they seek to establish their right to act as individuals subject only to God, who, they believe, is the best keeper of their spiritual welfare, not the human community.
118 Chapter Three: Sequestered Spaces: Typology as Rhetorical Resistance to the Claims of Local Religious Community He tooke to wife . . . Augusta, yet soone after divorced her, and . . . sequestred her to a pruate Life. Herodian of Alexandria his History , trans. James Maxwell, 1629 We therefore do reprove certen assertions & opinio[n]s in some false teachers, from whom we sequester our selves of very necessitie . . . . The Pope Confuted , John Fox, 1580 Introduction In Chapter Two, I examined the ways in which Trapnel and Rowlandson rhetorically reclaim the typological narratives of biblical history in order to represent their physical journeys as having critical significance in the broader context of nation and church. For these two women, connection to community remained strong; while they might engage with their relationship to their communities, they did so while remaining rooted within them. In this chapter I will continue my consideration of the relationship between women and their religious communities by examining a more contested issue: the power of the communal group to mandate, control, and censure the words and actions of the individual. I will explore the way in which two sectarian women, Susannah Parr and Anne Wentworth, claiming the identities of the apocryphal Susanna and the redeemed daughter of Zion respectively, used typology as a rhetorical strategy to establish personal boundaries and, through this self-generated act of sequestration, to resist the claims of religious community that these women saw as trespassing upon their individual liberties of speech and association. Early modern women often experienced sequestration in a form similar to that imposed upon the Roman emperor’s wife, whose exile to “a [private] Life” Herodian notes briefly and matter-of-factly in the excerpt from his History above. Anne Clifford, for example, frequently focuses in her early diary (1616-19) on her physical sequestration in the country by her husband, the Earl of Dorset, in his attempt to force her to relinquish her claim to her father’s Westmoreland properties. While Dorset spends his time in London going “much abroad to cocking, to bowling alleys, to plays and horse races . . . [where he is] commended by all the
119 world,” Clifford remains, with the bare minimum of retainers, on a country estate where she feels “like an owl in the desert” ( Her Own Life 42). Similarly, the Elizabeth Cary of her daughter’s biography finds herself sequestered in her bedroom by a cantankerous mother-in-law; in her London residence by Charles I during six weeks of house arrest; and in a barren house stripped of children, servants, and almost all material goods by a husband furious at her conversion and subsequent unshakeable loyalty to the Catholic faith. In this last circumstance, the biographer describes her mother as “deprived of liberty” and “forgotten by all the world, and all the friends she ever had had” (208, 207). Clifford and Cary represent the position of the early modern woman: material to be managed through sequestration by parents, by husbands, by sovereigns, and by the agent with which this chapter is most concerned: the church. The word “sequester” in its various early modern senses provides a helpful lens through which to consider the position in which women were placed—or in which they more proactively chose to place themselves. The OED notes the meaning of the Latin root of the word as “to place in safekeeping, to remove, to separate,” and lists definitions that encompass material property, religion, public roles, and law, all contested areas for early modern women. Especially during the mid-century upheavals in England, when sequestrations gave parliament access to much-needed assets, the term conflated person and property, an economic reading of identity with which early modern women were well-acquainted. 147 Of particular significance for this chapter is the ecclesiastical use of the term in the context of excommunication. In The reliques of Rome (1563), his summary of long-held church doctrines and rites, Thomas Becon recites the traditional imposition of this ultimate form of church discipline: “We sequester them from the thresholdes and all the goodes of the Churche and we [give] them [over] to the [Devill]. And let [us] quenche their soules in the paynes of hell, as this candle is now quenched and put out, except they amende, and come [unto] satisfaction” (242). But while these various versions of sequestration often resulted in curtailing the liberty of women, as Cary and Clifford and many others experienced, “sequester” can also be used to describe a self-reflexive move; subjects can, as John
147 According to Christopher Hill, “the driving motive to sequestration” during the interregnum “was always fiscal,” providing “the means by which money income and personal estate, forcibly confiscated from the royalists, went to finance the force that expropriated them” (143, 146). Sequestering a person was equivalent to sequestering any property or income that he or she possessed. Trapnel suggests such a conflation when she describes the behavior of the enemies of “those that are for Christ’s reign,” crying, “Raze them; raze, even to the ground, their Persons, Estates, and what ever is theirs” (55). See Christopher Hill, “Agrarian Legislation of the Revolution,” Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17 th Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997).
120 Fox points out in the epigraph above, exercise their agency by sequestering themselves from people and situations that they believe may be harmful to them in some way. This use of the word allows us not only to think in terms of these women as objects upon which sequestration is enacted, but also to understand them as subjects with the potential to choose sequestration as an emancipatory act of self-enclosure. In this chapter, I will look first at John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1613/14) and at two captivity narratives Cotton Mather included in his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), texts in which male authors represent women as sequestered through the exercise of male authority, and as suffering the “natural” consequences of attempting to act independently by sequestering themselves from the demands and restrictions of political, familial, and religious communities. Then I will examine Susannah Parr’s pre-Restoration Apology Against the Elders (1659), in which she clearly rejects the right of her previous congregation to excommunicate her and justifies her right to sequester herself from them in order to “keep and preserve mine own peace” (107), as she says. I will show that through her use of typology, Parr engages in a rhetorical strategy that allows her to occupy multiple positions and to represent her self-sequestration as liberating rather than constricting. Finally, I will consider Anne Wentworth’s post-Restoration Vindication (1677), in which she resists the attempt of her husband and her former local Baptist congregation first to censor her speech and then to silence her voice. As I will demonstrate, her use of typology not only provides a way for Wentworth to assume the mantle of the prophet, but also becomes a strategy of resistance through which she can very publicly stage a very private sequestration of herself with God in an impenetrable community of two, at the same time as she constructs her former community as a false Babylon intent on containing and suppressing the voice of God speaking through her to the nation. My examination of these two texts uncovers the way in which typological rhetoric allows Parr and Wentworth to transform themselves from objects on which sequestration is enacted by their congregations in order to contain female non- conformity, into agents who actively sequester themselves from the controlling demands of religious community and who stage that sequestration in print to “out” their resistance as a matter of public import.
121 Sequestered woman: The Duchess of Malfi and two “Remarkable Occurrences” from Magnalia Christi Americana While many texts represent the confinement of early modern women, the texts by John Webster and Cotton Mather focus particularly on women who either choose to sequester themselves or are involuntarily sequestered from the primary community or social context that has defined them and their relationships. What the texts share is a representation of women who have acted in ways that take them outside the boundaries of their communities and who are subsequently reincorporated in order to contain the agency with which they have acted. In Webster’s tragedy The Duchess of Malfi , the Duchess asks, “Why should only I, / Of all the other princes of the world / Be cas’d up . . . ?” (3.2.137-39). While her confinement to private spaces is not that imposed by a specific religious community, like those to which Parr and Wentworth belonged, Webster’s tragedy represents the dilemma of a woman who chooses to sequester a significant part of her life in order to live in a way that flouts the expectations and desires of males who represent the authority of family, state, and church. 148 Much has been written about the family dynamics in the drama, about the social and religious acceptability of the widowed Duchess’s decision to remarry, and about the relative success or failure of the Duchess’s attempt to control her destiny and identity even in her imprisonment. 149 I particularly
148 Between them, the Duchess’s two brothers represent all three authorities. While we know the Cardinal is her brother, he is designated “the Cardinal” in the list of characters at the beginning of the play, and is not called by any other name during the drama. With his soldiering background, Ferdinand, the Duchess’s other brother, represents the military power of the state. At the end of the play, they have enough influence with the pope and secular rulers to gain their cooperation in preventing the Duchess from finding any safe haven. 149 While earlier criticism generally viewed the Duchess’s remarriage as contravening legal and ecclesiastical standards, Frank W. Wadsworth detailed primary sources that consider a widow’s remarriage allowable in “Webster’s Duchess of Malfi in the Light of Some Contemporary Ideas on Marriage and Remarriage,” Philological Quarterly 35 (1956): 394-407. More recently, Lisa Jardine has shown that families’ desires to maintain control of money and property led to widows being “married off …with quite undignified haste” ( Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare [Brighton and Sussex: Harvester and Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1983] 83). Critical discussions frequently center on the relationship of the Duchess’s “public” role as ruler to her “private” role as sister, wife, and mother. In Curs’d Example: The Duchess of Malfi and Commonweal Tragedy (Columbia and London: U. of Missouri P., 1973), Joyce E. Peterson faults the Duchess for placing “private” desires above “public” responsibilities. Although less critical, Elizabeth Oakes has more recently argued that the Duchess’s final claim to be Duchess of Malfi “still,” “negates her relationship with Antonio” (“ The Duchess of Malfi as a Tragedy of Identity,” Studies in Philology 96.1 [1999], 52). Representative of recent positive readings of the Duchess is Theodora A. Jankowski’s “Defining/Confining the Duchess: Negotiating the Female Body in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi ,” Studies in Philology 87 (1990): 221-45. Using the “two bodies of the monarch” metaphor, Jankowski does a more integrated reading of the Duchess, arguing that while she is eventually contained by Webster, she understands that her public and private identities are inextricably connected. The Duchess’s final declaration, Emily C. Bartels maintains, is “neither vacuous nor defeating,” since the Duchess “gets the last word,” in “Strategies of Submission: Desdemona, The Duchess , and the Assertion of Desire,” SEL 36 (1996): 423.
122 want to examine the Duchess’s perspective on her decision to remarry in secret, and to show that the familial-political community to which she belongs ultimately recontains her, underlining the inefficacy of her attempt to draw boundaries beyond which the representatives of that community cannot impose their will on her. At the beginning of the play, there is a clear conflict between the way in which the Duchess understands her choice and the way in which her brothers represent her potential remarriage. Although her marriage to Antonio does not require a geographical change of location, the Duchess imagines that decision in terms of movement. She figures her decision to marry as the aggression of a soldier, avowing to herself that she “will assay / This dangerous venture” (1.2.267). More significantly, she also metaphorizes that choice as a journey beyond the known boundaries of her world: “For I am going into a wilderness, / Where I shall find nor path, nor friendly clew / To be my guide” (1.2.278-80). This representation of a self-initiated outward migration seems somewhat at odds with her subsequent withdrawal to some private physical space within the boundaries of the realm. However, the Duchess believes that she has the power to create an impermeable boundary, as much of a separating barrier as if she had physically migrated to another place, and she assures Antonio that “[a]ll discord, without this circumference, / Is only to be pitied, and not fear’d “(1.2.384-85). 150 In these images, she claims a personal and political agency that makes even her seclusion subversive and proactive. Certainly, the Duchess’s economic means and social position facilitate her chosen course of action; unlike Anne Clifford, she has control of her own financial resources and does not have to bow to a husband’s imperatives. As Emily Bartels points out, the Duchess is “an aristocratic widow with claims on a duchy and with autonomy so legitimate that her brothers must use Similarly, Dympna Callaghan argues that rather than passive victim, the Duchess, through transgression, eventually becomes the tragic hero of the drama ( Woman and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy , Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989). Focusing more on the dramatic affect of the Duchess’s confinement, Philip D. Collington concludes that Webster does not resolve the tension between “the disconcerting specter of an assertive widow who defies her male kinsmen, and the sad spectacle of a young duchess imprisoned and tortured for marrying a steward beneath her station,” leaving the audience with “little direction on whether they should weep or wonder at the Duchess’s final moments” (172, 174). See “Pent-up Emotions: Pity and the Imprisonment of Women in Renaissance Drama,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 16 (2003):162-91. 150 Elizabeth M. Brennan, in her introduction to the play, comments that typical dramatic interpretations reference the circle image with the Duchess’s wedding ring or an implied embrace of Antonio or both. However, she also notes one 1980 production in which the actor playing the Duchess held her arms wide in a gesture suggestive of the emblematic Renaissance symbol of a man inside the world. See xxii, n.16. That image is a neat inversion of the speaker-listener dyad in Donne’s “Sun Rising,” where it is the man who promises that he will make of one room “an everywhere.” See John Donne, The Major Works: Including Songs and Sonnets and Sermons , ed. John Carey (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2000) 11.
123 clandestine means to restrain her” (420). Moreover, in asserting the right to control her choice of a marriage partner and to enter into a marriage contract without legitimizing it through the usual public religious rite, the Duchess is engaging in a “strategy [which] must be recognized as a political one made by a sovereign who is conscious of the political implications of all activities she engages in” (Jankowski 235). 151 When Ferdinand condemns her for marrying, it is her political status that she invokes, asking why only she “of all the other princes of the world” should be “cas’d up” (3.2.138-89). In spite of the pressure exerted on her, the Duchess refuses to be confined by the names of “celibate” or “whore” as the only identities her brothers deem it possible for her to hold, asserts her right to construct a life of her own choosing, and sequesters a space in which she can actively pursue and enjoy that life. 152 In contrast to the Duchess, her brothers clearly desire to sequester her from any potential objects of desire and figure any potential marriage as confinement rather than liberty. The Cardinal warns that while she may “flatter” herself that she can “take [her] own choice” and “privately be married,” the Duchess will find that her “marriage night / Is the entrance into some prison” (1.2.237-38l,243-44). In response to the Duchess’s announcement that she has married, Ferdinand warns his sister that she must keep her lover “cas’d up”; if she wants him alive, he must remain invisible, shut away from the world in “[s]uch a room . . . as our anchorites / To holier use inhabit” (3.2.103-04). In her brothers’ terms, the Duchess’s marriage will result not in the realization of legitimate desire, but rather in forcible confinement, punishment, and isolation from any contact with the world. In one sense, the first half of the play is a kind of linguistic contest to see whose definition of the Duchess’s marriage will dictate her destiny: Will it be the liberating space in which to fulfill desire and raise the children, who are the fruit of that desire? Or, as Bosola claims, has she been, like the birds, deceptively “[allured] . . . / To the nets” in presuming she can create a barrier against the restrictive prescriptions of patriarchal family and
151 According to Jankowski, the private exchange of vows, referred to as a sponsalia per verba de praesenti , was considered binding by the church and in law. However, the procedure was uncommon and the subsequent physical consummation between the Duchess and Antonio would have made them subject to ecclesiastical penalties. They would also have been expected to publicly ratify their marriage in a church ceremony (Jankowski 233). 152 Bartels argues that the existence of not just one, but three children, emphasizes the “unprecedented freedom” the Duchess is able to gain, in spite of her brothers’ vehement opposition to any remarriage (422). Adding to this is the fact that although Bosola has been a spy on the household during those years, he still (if he is to be believed) cannot identify the father of the children until the Duchess names Antonio as her husband.
124 censorious society (3.5.100-01)? 153 While the images of confinement and entrapment in the play have long been remarked by readers, students, and critics, the Duchess does not seem to be intimidated by her brothers’ threats, and I would argue that her unhesitating creation of a space in which she can act out her desires gives her definition the predominance in the first part of the drama. However, as foreshadowed by the “tragedy” of the title, the brothers’ crusade to rewrite the Duchess’s marriage as a forerunner to imprisonment and punishment gives their definition the ascendancy as the play progresses. From the moment that Ferdinand penetrates the Duchess’s chamber, the confident agency that initially characterized her actions begins to disintegrate, as she laments the “masks and curtains” (3.2.159) necessary to hide her marriage and her husband’s identity. The return of the Duchess as a prisoner to her own palace, where she had been living for several years as “a secretly autonomous” woman (Bartels 422), emphasizes her transition from a woman who sequesters herself as a means of achieving liberty to a woman who is sequestered by patriarchal authority in order to contain that agency and regain control over her. While the Duchess maintains her dignity throughout, she cannot maintain her liberty. To the servant who announces that he has brought “several sorts of madmen” as a “cure” for her melancholy, the Duchess responds resignedly: “I am chain’d to endure all your tyranny” (4.2. 42,44,61). Her words emphasize the inversion of her position; once with the authority to command servants in this very space, she now has even less freedom than they do. Her final declaration to Bosola that “I am the Duchess of Malfi still” (4.2.139), while clearly an assertion of authority, also suggests that she dies “inscripted in Ferdinand’s vision of her as the Duke’s widow . . . not Antonio’s,” ultimately “netted in a construct conferred by the society, not one she won but one she was given” (Oakes 66). Jankowski identifies a more ambivalent irony, in that this final assertion of the Duchess’s political self “occurs within a context that more completely validates her private self as wife and mother”; the Duchess’s noble, unprotesting self in the face of undeserved death affirms her in the socially approved role of “idealized suffering wife/mother/woman” (243). Either way, the representation of the Duchess before her execution, while it wins the sympathy of the audience, also reinforces her utter loss of the agency we see her exercising in the first part 153 Notably, the Duchess first responds to Bosola’s comment with a metaphor of military weaponry to describe herself (“a rusty o’ercharge’d cannon,” 3.5.102), and then switches to a bird metaphor, comparing herself to pheasants and quails kept alive until they are “fat enough / To be eaten” (3.5.110-11). While the cannon figure communicates less agency than the previous explorer-soldier figure, it suggests a potential for power and action; the vulnerability inferred in the bird metaphor is a significant contrast.
125 of the play, where she successfully maintains a public political identity at the same time as she plays an active role as wife and mother. The juxtaposition of her maternal concern in her final words to Cariola juxtaposed against the almost immediate strangling of her children underlines the fate of a woman who believed it within her power to put herself beyond the reach of patriarchal authority and social expectations, but subsequently ends her life prematurely, stripped even of the power to care for and protect her children. In this sense, the Duchess in her final moments is as much an admonitory figure for women as she is a model of dignity in the midst of suffering. Almost a century after Webster wrote his play, on another continent an ocean away, Cotton Mather offered the stories of the Magnalia Christi Americana as demonstrations of the wonderful and marvelous power of God. In the sections entitled “Hosaea; Relating Remarkable Salvations, experienced by others besides the sea-faring” and “Decennium Luctuosum: An History of Remarkable Occurrences in the Long War,” Mather includes the accounts of Hannah Swarton and Hannah Dustan. Both were taken captive by American natives and forcibly sequestered within an alien society, but eventually returned, Mather stresses, to be safely (re)sequestered once more within the fold of the Puritan community in New England. 154 While the Duchess imagined herself as “going into a wilderness,” these two colonial women made that journey in actuality, experiencing a geographical separation from the established colonial footholds in the New World. Although both accounts are captivity narratives, they differ somewhat in content and rhetorical structure. Swarton’s story is told in first person, recounting an initially voluntary exodus from the Puritan stronghold that ultimately results in the capture of her family; Dustan’s story is told in third person, perhaps to underline the involuntary nature of her removal from the community and perhaps also to control a tale that was potentially destabilizing (as I will point out later), maybe even “inherently intractable” to his purposes in the original sermon, as Kolodny argues (25). In both cases, however, the two women act in ways that assume an agency at least partly incompatible with the role of a colonial Puritan woman, an agency that is associated with removal from sequestration within the boundaries of settlement society. Unlike Rowlandson’s narrative, however, in which her typological rhetoric resists the 154 Dustin’s story appeared first in Mather’s sermon, “Humiliations, follow’d with Deliverances,” given in Boston in 1697. Later that year it was released in printed form, with “some Improvement of that Narrative,” and with “A Narrative of Hannah Swarton” appended. The Decennium Luctuosum was published separately in a slightly different form in 1699 (detail on textual history from Kolodny 247, notes 8, 14). Eventually, both stories appeared, although in different sections, in the Magnalia in 1702. I am using the narratives in their final form in the latter text.
126 containment attempted by her editor, in both these cases, Mather directs the impetus of their stories clearly toward reabsorption by the community and reassertion of the authority of the community over the individual. In contrast to the “safe” sequestration within Puritan colonial society, Mather represents captivity as sequestration of a different kind. In The Land Before Her , Annette Kolodny has discussed both these narratives as examples of the use of “the languishing figure of a Puritan woman held captive in the rugged wilderness retreats of the Indian” to embody an “affecting image of New England as Judea capta ” (21). In the context of the original sermon that incorporated Dustin’s story, Mather builds on the typology of the New England Puritans as transplanted Israel in an alien and “Americanized Babylon.” In order to emphasize both communal and individual “spiritual vulnerability,” he describes a figure engraved on a Roman coin at the time of the conquest of Israel: “ A Silent Woman sitting on the Ground, and leaning against a Palm-tree, with this Inscription JUDEAEA CAPTA.” 155 Re-imaging this figure to fit the colonial context, Mather asks his audience to see New England as a woman on a similar coin, “Leaning against her Thunderstruck Pine tree, Desolate, sitting upon the Ground ” (Kolodny 20- 21). According to Kolodny, Mather’s primary interest in stories such as those of Swarton and Dustin was their “utility as dramatic [exempla] through which to call the larger community to a renewed sense of its original covenantal obligations” (26). Without arguing with Kolodny’s conclusion here, I would suggest that these two stories, while they do represent a larger gendering of the encounter with the American wilderness and its many threats, also suggest a specific concern about the effect of the colonial experience on women in particular, especially as that encounter with the challenges of colonial living inherently demanded more independence and adaptation of them than the well-entrenched and more clearly defined women’s roles in the “mother” country. That anxiety surfaces, in part, in Mather’s representation of captivity as a version of sequestration that can both instruct and threaten at the same time. Mather allows the moral of Hannah Swarton’s tale to be voiced by the teller herself, who admits that “I . . . left the publick worship and ordinances of God . . . to remove to the north part
155 While I have chosen not to replicate italics in my own quotations from primary sources, I will leave the italics in quotations from primary sources used in other secondary sources and criticism.
127 of Casco bay, where there was no church or minister of the gospel.” 156 Moreover, she confesses that the move was made for material benefits that were diametrically at odds with the spiritual welfare of her family: “And this we did for large accommodations in the world, thereby exposing our children to be bred ignorantly like Indians and ourselves to forget what we had been formerly instructed in, and so we turned our backs upon God’s ordinances to get this world’s goods” (188). While Swarton’s story functions as one of Mather’s strategies to “discourage the growing atomism of the Puritan settlements” in general (Kolodny 24), in his Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion , published five years earlier, Mather had already made explicit the connection between the virtue of a Christian woman and her regular attendance at corporate worship, to which “she counts her self most indispensable [sic] obliged. She cannot bear to be shut out from the Church of God, any more than Miriam from the Camp of old” (28). The invoking of the Miriam story from Numbers 12 is particularly relevant to the women discussed in this chapter for several reasons. First, Miriam was temporarily banished from the camp because God had struck her with leprosy, a disease that was one of the major early modern metaphors used in discourses about excommunication. Secondly, the leprosy was visited on Miriam as a punishment for joining her brother Aaron in publicly questioning Moses’ authority: “Hathe the Lord spoken but onely by Moses? Hathe he not spoken also by us?” (Num. 12.2 Geneva). Notably, Aaron suffered no similar penalty for his rebellion, which adds to the import of the passage for women in particular. Along with this implicit warning against separation from the corporate life of the community, Mather also adds that while women of “barbarian” nations like the Turks do not attend corporate worship, “Christian Women would count it Hell upon Earth to be so debar’d” ( Ornaments 29). Thus, when Swarton notes that the wife of her captor is a convert to Catholicism, the inversion-- “barbarian” Indian woman turned devout Catholic; Puritan woman turned lapsed saint—can be seen as another way of enforcing the transgressive nature of Swarton’s departure from her sheltered sequestration within the established Puritan community. To make this implied comparison even more pointed, the woman performs the function of an Old Testament prophet, telling Swarton that her captivity is God’s punishment for her sins. Swarton’s story may indeed rebuke the colony in general, but her sequestration among the Indians and French Catholics also serves an admonitory function directed at women in particular, a reminder that their spiritual 156 The lesson is reinforced when Swarton restates the nature of her sin in almost exactly the same words: “I left the public ministry and ordinances of God to go live in a remote placed without the public ministry, depriving ourselves and our children of so great a benefit for our souls, and all this for worldly advantages” (192).
128 security, as well as physical protection, lies within the boundaries of the colonial community. Of course, Swarton’s “iniquities” (188) result in the death of her husband and the loss of her children, her capture by the Indians, and the subsequent testing of her faith during her secondary captivity among the proselytizing French Catholics, all of which she sees as God’s just punishments (“less than my iniquities deserved”) for her tendency to independence. She and the rest of the captives she meets in Quebec are an Israel “scattered for their sins,” in captivity and awaiting deliverance (193). The cycle from departure to return emphasizes the dire consequences of removing oneself from community and the subsequent providential and gradual restoration of the individual to the community. During her captivity among the Indians, Swarton has no Bible or spiritual books to read and no “Christian friend” (185) to advise her, but she does take comfort in her memory of the scriptures which have been inculcated in her and which are a reminder of the language and shape of the community in which she has been raised. Once in Quebec and surrounded by Catholics who constantly pressure her to attend their services, Swarton is beset by doubts about her salvation, brought at one point “to the very pit of despair about what would become of my soul” (192). Help comes from her contact with other captive Puritans; they function as a microcosm of the larger Puritan community, and Swarton gains new spiritual strength from “the conference that some of us captives had together about things of God and prayer together sometimes” (192). Even the hierarchy of Puritan community is reinstituted, as two of the men seem to take spiritual leadership and “speak to [the other captives] to confirm and strengthen [them] in the ways of the Lord” (192-93). Eventually Swarton is ransomed from the French, as the Lord gives her “the desire of my soul in bringing me to His house and my relations again” (193). She returns to the religious community, chastened and submissive, desiring only to “enjoy communion with [God] in His churches and public ordinances” (193). A sequestration that had once chafed has been made desirable through Swarton’s experience; her sequestration in native society has inoculated her again any desire to leave the community. Mather refers to Swarton’s story as “a narrative of a woman celebrating the wonderful dispensations of Heaven” (356), and her account clearly contains elements of the providence tale, the genre that James Hartman has argued is the forerunner to the Indian captivity narrative. 157 That genre’s combination of the plain-speaking, credible teller; the fusion of naturalism and melodrama in elements like the drops of blood falling from Swarton’s sores onto 157 See Chapter 5 of Hartman’s Providence Tales and the Birth of American Literature .
129 the snow; 158 and the afflictions which themselves become an emblem of God’s presence (Hartman 136) functioned to present incontrovertible evidence that “God and his supernatural hosts both existed and were still actively managing mankind’s daily affairs on earth” (2). However, while Swarton’s account is presented by Mather as a miraculous deliverance and fits Hartman’s definition of a providence tale, the story also functions as a cautionary tale to women. Following Kolodny, Gordon M. Sayre, the editor of a recent anthology that includes the Swarton text, attributes the story to Mather’s concerns over the potential weakening of the centrally-held spiritual authority of the original colony at Plymouth (179). But Mather’s choice to foreground Swarton herself suggests an additional motive. Surprisingly, Swarton’s husband is largely absent from her account of their move to Casco Bay, with only one sentence employing the plural pronoun to indicate his involvement in the decision, although it is difficult to imagine a Puritan household in which the wife would provide the chief impetus for such a major relocation. Yet Swarton, with her persistent “I” language in explaining that disastrous step, takes the primary responsibility upon herself. Whether we see her (or Mather in his editing) as minimizing her husband’s responsibility out of respect for his memory or as implicitly acknowledging that her own desire for material gain led her to exert some pressure on her husband to make the move, the tale as Mather offers it consistently emphasizes her agency in moving outside the community and the consequences for that sin function as a warning particularly to women who might think that the greater material challenges of colonial life bring with them a correspondingly greater degree of liberty for women to remove themselves with impunity from their position of sequestration within the community. While Mather can turn Swarton’s captivity into a rehabilitative sequestration, Hannah Dustan’s “notable exploit” presents him with a greater challenge. The two stories do share some general similarities. Like Swarton, Dustan and her dead infant’s nurse are forced to endure long, difficult marches; they also find “unexpected Favour” from their Indian “Master” as Swarton finds to some extent among the French; he reminds the two women of God’s sovereign providence as Swarton’s Indian mistress reminds her of God’s punishments; and the Indians in 158 Kolodny sees the drops of blood as an imitatio Christi allusion and a foreshadowing of the coming testing among the French Catholics, as well as Swarton’s comment that she can be tracked by her blood as a representation of herself as “vulnerable and hunted prey” (25). Kolodny also notes that “the landscape is quite literally marked by the sign of her suffering,” but reads the staining of the snow’s whiteness as an indication of “how inappropriate is [Swarton’s] presence here” (25-26). Alternately, in Hartman’s reading of Swarton’s account in relation to the providence tale, the drops of blood function as a reminder of the physical realities of her experience and a longer-lasting and more vivid sign of her material presence than her footprints in the snow.
130 their assiduous “Obedience to the Instructions which the French [Catholics] have given them” function as a rebuke to those Puritan families with a “character of prayerlessness” (184) . However, there is no suggestion that Dustan has done anything to precipitate her capture by Indians or that the brutal killing of her infant and her own captivity are chastisements for some iniquity. Moreover, unlike Swarton, Dustan deliberately engineers her escape (along with that of the nurse and another young male captive), she instigates both the killing and the scalping of their captors, and she returns as a hero for her daring. Whereas Swarton reenters the community chastened and humbled, Dustan is feted and materially rewarded for her bravery. It is not difficult to agree with Kolodny that Dustan’s story was hardly the most fitting exemplum of “God’s chastening followed by His merciful deliverance” (23) and that Mather must have been hard-pressed to wrest the narrative to his purpose in the sermon of inculcating in his audience the need for both individual and communal humility. The manner in which Mather describes Dustan’s return suggests that part of his project is to repatriate and re-sequester a woman whose violent actions might otherwise be read as a result of living among “savages” and whose initiative might be taken as a paradigm of female resistance that could influence other women to exercise the same kind of agency in less approvable ways. To control Dustan’s representation to the community, Mather engages in a typological reading of her exploits as those of an American Jael. Significantly, he suggests that Dustan deliberately cast herself in a role with a biblical precedent, describing her as “[ taking ] up a Resolution to intimate the Action of Jael upon Sisera” (185; my emphasis). This parallel is reinforced by Mather’s loose imitation of the biblical song of Deborah that celebrates Jael’s act: “they [the Indian captors] bow’d, they fell, they lay down; at their Feet they bowed, they fell, where they bowed, there they fell down Dead” (185).159 At first glance, Jael seems a somewhat curious choice of anti-type because of her marginal status, since she is a Kenite, not an Israelite. 160 In fact, Sisera seeks refuge from her, the text says, because her husband’s household 159 The parallel section of Deborah’s song in the Geneva Bible reads: “He bowed him downe at her fete, he fel downe, & lay stil: at her fete he bowed him downe, and fel: and when he had sonke downe, he lay there dead” (Judges 5.27). Kolodny identifies the Jael references, but does not note either the stressed consciousness of Dustan’s imitation or Mather’s deliberate rhetorical echoing of the original biblical passage. Nor does she explore the implications of Jael’s marginal status (see note 14 below). 160 The Kenites were a biblical people group who maintained close ties with Israel and adhered to Yahwism. According to the biblical account, during his desert exile Moses served Jethro, a Kenite priest, and eventually married Jethro’s daughter. See Paula McNutt, “Kenites,” The Oxford Companion to the Bible , ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Koogan (Oxford and New York: Oxford U.P., 1993) 407. Judges 4 mentions this
131 is known to be at peace with the king of Hazor, whose army Sisera leads. Yet Jael’s singular action, which is, in effect, a betrayal of her husband’s hospitality and a conscious declaration of her sympathies for Israel, has already been placed within the much larger context of the story of the nation of Israel taking ownership of the “Promised Land.” As Deborah prophesies to Barak: “[the] Lord shal sel Sisera into the ha[n]d of a woma[n]” (Judges 4.9 Geneva). While Mather certainly played upon the Babylonian captivity theme in his writing, this particular biblical story seems to have less to do with invoking “images of Israelite captivity,” as Kolodny suggests (23), than with stressing the significance of an unusual and highly dramatic individual act as—more importantly—a contribution to a communal destiny. 161 Through his association of Dustan with Jael, Mather accomplishes a significant part of his project to safely sequester the celebrated ex-captive once again within both the geographical and spiritual locale of the Puritan community. According to Kolodny, Mather’s typological strategy fails to sufficiently explain Dustan’s voluntary slaughter of her captors: “Finally, though, Mather has to mediate the sheer brutality of the act—an act almost unseemly for a Puritan woman.” This he does by claiming that “she thought she was not forbidden by any Law , to take away the Life , of the Murderers , by whom her Child had been butchered” (23). Mather’s rationale for Dustan’s actions, however, seems more like an extension of, rather than a departure from, his typological strategy here, and serves to illustrate the rhetorical complexity possible with an audience who would have been very familiar with the biblical story. In her quotation of Mather above, Kolodny omits an earlier part of the sentence: “and being where she had not her own Life secured by any Law unto her , she thought she was not forbidden . . . .” (185; my emphasis). Moreover, Mather makes the initial Jael comparison in the opening of the same sentence, thus grammatically linking the two statements. His description of Dustan could well have applied to Jael’s own tenuous, marginal position: separated from her people; living an isolated nomadic life; caught in a chaotic war zone where, in her husband’s apparent absence,
connection and also notes that Jael’s husband Heber had separated himself from the other Kenites, apparently moving into Hazor’s territory as an indication of his allegiance (see verse 17). 161 Kolodny argues that the Jael story would suggest “images of Israelite captivity” (23), thus reinforcing Mather’s focus on the Judea capta type. Kolodny rightly points out that at the time of the Jael story, the Israelites were vulnerable to attacks of the Canaanite nations that surrounded them. However, at that point in Israel’s history, they were not yet in full possession of the land of Canaan and at least several hundred years away from the Babylonian captivity. Any connection between the Jael story and the displacement of the later diaspora in the biblically literate minds of many in Mather’s audience would likely be tenuous, at best.
132 her own life would likely have been in danger. These particular parallels help solidify the connection between the two women, as well as make Mather’s typological apologia for Dustan’s actions even more convincing to his audience. Earlier in his narrative, Mather plays on Dustan’s name to read her and the nurse as Hannahs engaged in “Fervent Prayers” (184) during their captivity, evoking yet another typological representation that adds an alternative but equally significant dimension to the bold and violent actions of Hannah-Jael. 162 Thus, as Deborah’s earlier prophecy frames Jael’s brutal act from the perspective of God’s larger plan for the Israelites, so Mather’s typological strategy functions effectively to contain Dustan’s violence within the providential framework of New England history. When Mather first recounted this colonial captivity/escape drama, he did so in the presence of the newly returned captives themselves, in itself a situation in which “authority reasserts itself” (Hartman 139). By the time the story appeared in the Magnalia , Dustan and her companions had not only applied to and been paid by the General Assembly for the delivered scalps “as a Recompence of their Action,” but had also received both “Presents of Congratulation from their more private friends” and (most importantly, according to Mather) “a very generous Token of his Favour” from the Governor of Maryland himself (185). Mather’s inclusion of these material rewards the returning captives receive has no parallel in the Jael story and at first may seem curiously at odds with the biblical allusions. This information certainly supports Mather’s project in Book VII (to which the Decennium is appended), his claim to present a history of “The Wars of the Lord” (Bk. VII title) that is both providential and factual, unmarred by “the Fault of an Untruth” (qtd. in Hartman 132). These seemingly minor details help to temper the sensationalism of the story and to show that its truth has been credited both privately and publicly. More importantly for my point here, the financial compensations function as another reassertion of the community’s control; the returning captives’ actions are a tacit acknowledgement of the authority of the community as a whole. Dustan and her companions actually apply for the monetary payment for the scalps, a remunerative process instituted by the government of New England. That application signals a return to the community and functions to
162 The story of Hannah, the mother of the future judge of Israel who was to anoint both Saul and David for kingship, is told in I Samuel 1-2. During an annual trip with her husband to Shiloh, where the tabernacle that housed the ark was located, Hannah “praied unto the Lord, and wept sore,” asking God to take away her barrenness and give her a “manchilde,” who she promises to dedicate to God’s service (I Samuel 1.10-11). Significantly, in her song of praise that “the Lord hathe given me my desire” (1.27), Hannah declares: “The bowe & the mightie men are broken, and the weake have girde them selves with strength” (2.4).
133 eliminate any doubt about the returnees’ loyalties and sympathies. 163 The material gifts from both personal friends and the governor provide a seal of approval that is at once a reward and a reminder of social and political expectations. By combining the Jael story and these material details, Mather represents Dustan’s act of violence, which might be read both as a dangerously assertive act for a woman and as an act of personal revenge, as a commendable act of service to the community. Despite the dramatic differences in place, time, genre, and audience, both Webster and Mather give us representations of women who enact an identity that resists, either willingly or by necessity, a sequestration imposed upon their decisions and behaviors by the larger communities to which they are bound by circumstance or by obligation. In the case of the Duchess of Malfi and Hannah Swarton, their acts of deliberate self-sequestration in resistance to the restraints community obligations place upon their personal desires are represented as containing the seeds of their future sufferings; an aristocratic character on stage and a historical Puritan colonial woman share a similar fate in that they lose the very families that prompt them to resist a socially acceptable sequestration within the community and the limitations it imposes.164 While Dustan does not seek escape from the community, her behavior once outside its confines transgresses acceptable behavior for a Puritan woman. While Dustan’s actions paradoxically provide the means for her to return to her family and community, those actions make her return problematic. To negotiate that difficulty, Mather appropriates her story to divert attention from the reality that “during captivity women . . . make do without men, and at times even surpass them” (Hartman 138), and to enclose Dustan’s independence within a call for individual and communal humility. But while the texts by Webster and Mather represent the eventually successful re-sequestration of all three women as they ultimately submit to the exercise of patriarchal authority that brings them once more under the authority of the community, other early modern women more 163 Hartman calls the Dustan account the “most spectacular example of the synthesis of science and sensationalism,” and sees the inclusion of the scalps both as a kind of evidence and as a “ghoulish” element, common to early modern natural histories. The assurance that the captives returned unambiguously “English” was important at a time when other captivity tales, often oral and “unauthorized” (Hartman 154), told of those who had failed to return or—even worse—refused to return. The fear of becoming de-Anglicized in captivity was a real one; Hartman tells of an English maid who eventually reappeared in Indian dress, unable to remember her name or the place from which she was taken (151). In this context, the ability to tell one’s tale in the spiritual language of the community, as Swarton and Rowlandson do, becomes an important affirmation of identity. 164 Swarton returns without three of her four children, an ending that according to Kolodny is uncommon among captivity narratives (247, n.13). Her husband and son are killed, another son and daughter remain in captivity, and Swarton comes back accompanied only by her “youngest son” (194).
134 effectively resisted the attempts of their communities to make them objects of sequestration, exercising their own rhetorical strategies of typology to claim the right to sequester themselves, an act they saw as embodying their God-given individual liberties. Both Susannah Parr and Anne Wentworth invoke typological associations to justify their resistance to the claims of religious community and the right of the individual to establish such boundaries as a personal and spiritual freedom. Because of the proliferation of multiple kinds of dissenting religious communities in England during the seventeenth century and the consequent rise in power of the local church body and its minister(s), 165 sectarian groups such as the ones to which these two women belonged provide fertile grounds for investigating the problematic issue of the leeway for individual expression and opinion within the community, especially since many of these groups viewed complete consensus as the most “biblical” way to make decisions. 166 As an additional advantage, treating the texts together allows us to consider the continuities of experience among writing women in locally governed dissenting communities, in spite of the usually emphasized rupture of the Restoration in 1660. Susanna Parr: An unveiled Susanna In titling her text Susanna’s apologie to the elders , Susanna Parr makes use of her own name to declare her typological connection to the title character of the Historie of Susanna , an 165 The rise in the power of the local church or assembly was not limited to the sects. With the abolishing of the Episcopal hierarchy through an act of Parliament in 1646, the Church of England was reorganized, at least in principle, along Presbyterian lines, a system of church government that emphasized the authority of local elders and ministers. See Allan Brockett, Nonconformity in Exeter 1650-1875 (Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1962) 8. However, sectarian congregations had even more independence, although attempts were made to come to some mutual agreement on church practices, one such effort being the Savoy Declaration of 1658, formally titled A Declaration of the faith and order owned and practiced in the Congregational churches in England . 166 As I will discuss in more detail later, the issue of decision-making in the local church is central to all of the pamphlets in the debate. In Diotrephes detected , the writer accuses the church leadership of transgressing their responsibilities as leaders because they have acted “without the Full and Free consent, Concurrence and Satisfaction of the whole Church.” This model of decision-making, the writer says, is “not to be found [in any church] in the Old or New Testament,” but is instead more characteristic of “Civill or Worldly Corporations as doe Transact and carry things by Majority of voices” (3). In her discussion of Parr, Karen L. Edwards argues that “under the pressure of Susanna Parr’s contentiousness about new members, [Stucley] increasingly [came] to define ‘Union in judgment’ and ‘unanimity.’” See “ Susannas Apologie and the politics of privity,” Literature and History (Third Series) 6 (1): 8. However, the writer of Diotrephes , Parr, and Allein would have seen complete consensus as the goal, and were more concerned about the way in which Stucley manipulated the process to achieve that agreement. A more clerically- oriented view of consensus is voiced by Samuel Mather in The figures or types of the Old Testament (Dublin, 1683) who declares that as there was no sound of axes and hammers during the building of the temple, so “there should be no noise of Strife, no Contention, no Collision of Mens Spirits in Church-Society.” However, he locates the cause of “contention” in the individual congregant’s lack of spiritual preparedness to be part of the church body, not allowing for any spiritual error or pride on the part of the clergy (343).
135 Apocryphal narrative that, in the seventeenth century, still appeared in the Geneva Bible. In early modern culture, naming carried much more weight than it does now; in Protestant culture, giving a child a biblical name reflected a belief that the name might influence the child to follow in the footsteps of the biblical character. For example, when she explains her reasons for “[changing] the usuall order of women” by writing and publishing The Mother’s Blessing in 1616 (24), Dorothy Leigh lists as her seventh rationale the desire to remind her sons of the value of giving their children strong biblical names. In spite of her clearly Puritan leanings, she also offers Susannah as a name of choice, despite its Apocryphal source, 167 since her story “may bee true, and of good use” (27). Leigh values the Susannah story for its representation of the exemplary “chaste” woman, a theme in the narrative that she uses as a text for a mini-sermon on the qualities of such a woman, who should always be “reading, meditating, or practicing some…good thing which she hath learned in the Scripture” (27). Concluding her article on Parr’s Apologie , Karen L. Edward writes: “How much had Susanna Parr, perhaps since childhood, allowed the story of Susanna to shape her ways of thinking and acting? How much had her parents expected her to do so, even taught her to do so? We need perhaps to think more about what is in a seventeenth-century name—that name not lost upon a woman’s marriage” (14). Leigh’s emphasis on the spiritual importance of naming children and her particular attention to the Susannah narrative provide an early modern answer to Edwards’ closing questions. Parr’s mother may well have been influenced by reading Leigh, and Parr’s own obvious familiarity with the story behind her name (as we shall see) makes her a virtual case study in support of Leigh’s argument. But while both Leigh and Edwards point to the potential of biblical names and stories as powerful shaping influences as early modern children grew to adulthood, Parr’s identification of Susannah’s tale in her own story is only one part of this “typological conception of identity” (Edwards 13). As Rowlandson types herself as a grieving Mary-Madonna as an act of warning rather than Catholic devotion, so Parr, in the very act of writing her Apologie , clearly
167 Unlike Catholics, Protestants did not give the Apocrypha canonical status, although the Apocryphal books did appear in the Geneva Bible. The headnote in the Geneva explains that although the contents do not have the same authority as the rest of scripture, the books were to be seen as “proceding from godlie men, [and] were received to be red for the advancement and furtherance of the knowledge of the historie, & for the instruction of godlie maners” (386). While Leigh sees value in the Susanna story, her text does not lack for anti-Catholic sentiments in other places. Only a few pages later, she deplores what she sees as the deification of Mary and warns against the making of images. It is better, Leigh advises, for children to bear saints’ names (as long as they are biblical) so that the children can grow up hearing and reading the stories of those for whom they have been named, rather than come to know them only “by looking upon a painted piece of paper, or a carved stone” (30).
136 claims the Susanna parallel, only to significantly depart from it. Before I look more closely at Parr’s text, I want to sketch briefly the cultural context and local situation out of which it arose, since her narrative remains marginal in critical discussions to date (see note 28), and since understanding the full significance of her typological strategy requires a knowledge of the events to which and the people to whom she was responding in her Apologie . In the late 1640s, Parr was part of a small group of people who joined together to begin what would later become an established Independent church in the city of Exeter in Devon. By her own account, it was some time before the group was large enough to consider “calling” a minister to provide regular teaching and administer the sacraments. 168 Sometime around 1650 Lewis Stucley accepted that post; at some later point, the church moved their meetings to Exeter cathedral, where they shared the space with a Presbyterian congregation led by Thomas Ford, each congregation meeting in its own “half” of the nave. 169 While Parr represents her initial relationship with Stucley as friendly, even suggesting that he initially encouraged her to voice her opinion, 170 over the next few years a tension developed between them, and as a result of her
168 Patricia Crawford notes that Parr “joined Stucley’s secret weekly meetings” in 1650 (153), but Parr’s account clearly indicates that she was part of the group for some time before Stucley became their minister. Also, there is no suggestion in Parr’s account that the early meetings were clandestine in any way. If Crawford’s reference to secrecy relates to the process of application and approval potential members had to go through in order to join the group, that practice was common to many sectarian congregations. 169 While this might seem a strange practice, it reflects a national situation in which the spheres of the two groups often overlapped. According to Derek Hirst, “significant numbers of Independent clergy participated in the national church.” See “the Failure of Godly Rule in the English Republic,” Past and Present 132 (1991): 35, n.12. Brockett chronicles a loose connection between Presbyterians and Independents in Exeter. The Devon County Assembly, first convened in 1655 by Ford and George Hughes, was primarily an association of Devon Presbyterian ministers. However, at a second meeting in 1656, the inaugural Articles were also signed “with slight reservations” by Stucley and Thomas Mall , two of the leading Independents in the Exeter area (10). The two also presented a plea to the Assembly calling for “mutual toleration” (10), an appeal that was accepted in spirit, if not in all its particular points. Earlier, in 1654, Ford and Stucley were also both appointed as assistants to the Devon Triers, whose role it was to determine the suitability of candidates for positions as ministers or lecturers (8-11). Presumably, these documented connections suggest that casual relationships between the two men for the first part of the decade were amicable, or at least not hostile. Stucley’s application to the City Chamber in late 1656 to have a wall built to divide the cathedral, a move which Ford opposed (12), suggests a breakdown of their relationship and may also indicate an increasingly separatist stance on Stucley’s part that would have made him particularly sensitive to the loss of any of his followers to a Presbyterian congregation, thus setting the stage for his decision to prosecute Parr in 1658. 170 Parr recounts how she gave testimony to “the change of [her] condition,” along with others, through M. Stucleys perswasion” (3); he would also send for her when she was absent from any “meeting about Church affaires,” then, she writes, “constraine me to speak my opinion of things proposed” (4). See also 9-10, 77. Parr’s account of Stucley’s behavior is supported by the writer of Diotrephes detected , who chastises him for his new conservatism: “yea, you were formerly very free, and also practiced it, to have Women praying in your company, and your selfe Joyning with them in spirit only, whilest they were the Mouth in the Duty; as amongst the Good Women in Cornwall, which so exceedingly tooke your Heart that you were very much ashamed to think how short
137 subsequent dissatisfaction with both his teaching and his leadership practices, Parr began attending the meetings of Ford’s congregation to sit under his preaching, as well as continuing as a member of Stucley’s congregation. According to Parr, this habit was frowned on by Stucley and at least some others in the church, although they cited other spiritual causes for their disapprobation. Eventually, in the face of increasing criticism of her habit, Parr decided to leave Stucley’s congregation and subsequently joined Ford’s. It was at least five or six years later (according to Parr), after another married woman came into conflict with Stucley and left the group, that he preached a sermon in March, 1658, publicly excommunicating both Parr and Marie Allein for various alleged sins, 171 claiming the prerogative of the church to discipline its members. 172 That action prompted a series of pamphlets, as the debate was carried on in print for over a year. First to appear and presumably in response to at least some negative public reaction was the “official” version offered by Thomas Mall, Stucley’s associate, claiming to be A True Account of What was done by a Church of Christ in Exon . Two responses followed: an anonymous pamphlet titled Diotrephes detected, corrected, and rejected, and Archippus admonished 173 and a defense of his wife by Toby Allein, called Truths Manifest . At this point
you came of them in the Gift or Spirit of prayer: and you Hoped that this Practise of their Praying with the men would come hereafter to be more in use” (5). 171 Crawford refers to the excommunications being based on the ministers’ charges of disorderliness, “because [the two women] went to hear other ministers” (153). While this is Parr’s contention, it is important to note that both Mall and Stucley were at pains to deny publicly that this practice provoked the excommunication. In a postscript to Mall’s text, framed as a question-and-answer session with Stucley, the latter makes a point of stating that the excommunication was for “lying, disorderly walking, and neglecting Church admonition,” and not for “hearing Godly Minister [sic]” (91). On the other hand, Allein and Parr both maintained that the other charges were made to act as a kind of smoke screen to cover up the true cause. 172 Stucley’s use of excommunication may have also been a statement about the Presbyterians in general, since the absence of any “overarching” disciplinary structure in the national church and the government’s “refusal to provide guidance” left ministers without the necessary authority to excommunicate members of their congregations (Hirst 39). In fact, in 1656,the Devon ministers’ association voiced an official but tentative “protest to the Lord Protector . . . that members’ means to discipline were simply doctrine and ‘the leading of [parishioners] to a peaceable and brotherly Conversacion, by our exemplary practise’” (Hirst 40; latter quote in Hirst taken from R. N. Worth, “Puritanism in Devon, and the Exeter Assembly,” Reports and Trans. Devon. Assoc ., ix [1877]: 284-5). In A Scripture-Rale to the Lords Table (1654), Anthony Palmer declared that “we never heard that either the Presbyterians or Congregational Brethren do excommunicate such as submit not” (10; quoted in Hirst 40, n. 37). This context helps to explain the sharp reaction to and prolonged debate about the excommunications and suggests that Stucley’s assumption of the authority to excommunicate was as much of a political statement as it was a spiritual one. 173 Neither Edwards nor the editors of Her Own Life mention this entry into the debate. Crawford does cite the pamphlet, suggesting it was authored by a woman, because of its use of scriptural examples of women acting as advisors/admonishers of men (156).
138 Stucley took up his own cause, publishing Manifest Truth: or an inversion of Truth’s Manifest, only to have Allein counter again with Truths Manifest Revived , which was essentially a reprint of his earlier pamphlet, prefaced by an addition in which he disputes various details and charges in Stucley’s account. Parr had the proverbial last word (as far as we know) in her pamphlet Susanna’s Apologie Against the Elders .174 The proliferation of sects in England during the 1640s and 50s created a multiplicity of religious choices for women, while a Protestant theology of spirituality that had already opened the Pandora’s box of individual accountability before God gave them spiritual justification for not simply submissively (and silently) following their husbands to church on Sundays. As the Savoy Declaration of 1658 175 aptly summarized: God alone is Lord of the Conscience, and hath left it free from the Doctrines and Commandments of men, which are in any thing [sic; many things?] contrary to his Word, or not contained in it, so that to believe such Doctrines, or to obey such Commands out of conscience, is to betray true Liberty of Conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blinde obedience, is to destroy Liberty of Conscience, and Reason also. (36) The anxiety created among men as women in increasing numbers exercised that right to choose their place of worship is clearly reflected in John Brinsley’s much earlier sermon to his church at Yarmouth, published as A looking-glasse for good women in 1645. Expressing his concern at the number of women who were “turning from the way of the Church of Christ in Old England , to the refined Error of separation,” Brinsley contends that for a woman to desert her husband’s church, even with his consent, is like a betrayal of the marriage bed, since it is an “absurdity” that “they who lie in the same bed . . . should yet be of two Churches” (preface; 41). 176 Of
174 Edwards is the only critic I have found who lays out a detailed chronology (1), although she (somewhat strangely) omits the anonymous pamphlet. She dates Mall’s account to within three weeks of the excommunication sermon. Allein’s and Stucley’s pamphlets, according to her, appeared two months later, in May. She then dates Allein’s revised and expanded version of his first response to a year later, although the date on the title page reads 1658. Parr’s published text is the only one that bears a cover date of 1659. 175 Published as A declaration of the faith and order owned and practiced in the Congregational churches of England . London, 1659. The statement was drawn up by a committee appointed by the Assembly of Congregational churches and the formal document is believed to have been written by two of the ministers, John Owen and Philip Nye. 176 It was not uncommon for women to form the majority in separatist groups, and Brinsley’s concern was particularly understandable. Richard L. Greaves, in noting the significant role of women “in strengthening the
139 course, the same right of conscience that women claimed in order to leave the Church of England could also provide grounds for moving from one sectarian congregation or group to another. 177 Parr specifically notes one conversation with Stucley and Mr. Stoneham in which they summon the same metaphor to show disapproval of her practice of hearing Mr. Ford; they tell her that “there was as much reason for a woman to goe after another man because of fruitfulnesse, as to make use of another Ministry because of more benefit” (25). Appropriated by both Church of England and sectarian ministers, this sexualizing of spirituality as a weapon against women’s independence was a common strategy. Not surprisingly then, while critical attention to Parr’s text has been limited, analysis has focused on the role of gender politics in sectarian congregations, particularly addressing controversies surrounding women’s speech, conflicting definitions of public and private space as they related to the individual woman in such communities, and creative strategies women used both to resist and to claim authority. 178 Crawford uses Parr’s narrative to support her claim that “[s]exual politics, which involved women’s desires to play a part in the decision-making of the congregation, and men’s desires to keep them under control, were central to the life of the separatist congregations” (159). While the editors of Her Own Life place Parr at “the conservative end of the Independent spectrum” (102 ), and Marilyn J. Westerkamp groups her with radical sectarians like Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson, these critics agree on her “strongly argumentative” confrontation of “the patriarchal structure as well as…specific men in authority” (584). 179 In the most extensive analysis of the Apologie , Edwards argues that the controversy Nonconformist churches, especially those of a Separatist persuasion,” cites in his examples the population of Separatists in Great Yarmouth fifteen years earlier, in 1630: at least twenty of the twenty-eight were women (76). See “‘Foundation builders’: The Role of Women in Early English Non-Conformity,” in Greaves’ Triumph Over Silence: women in Protestant History (London and Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985) 75-92. 177 Certainly, moving from one group to another was not limited to women, and women as well as men condemned the shifting of allegiances. Parr herself defends her opposition to admitting one man to the church, claiming that “[t]hey were not all godly whom I opposed, as is evident in Ganicle, who after his Admission . . . turned Quaker” (70b). (Several page numbers in the printed text are duplicated, and I will differentiate with the use of “a” and “b” after the relevant page number.) 178 See Crawford’s discussion in Women and Religion in England 1500-1720 , 153-59; the brief introduction to Parr in Her Own Life , 101-03; Marilyn J. Westerkamp’s “Puritan Patriarchy and the Problem of Revelation,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993): 571-95; and Karen L. Edwards’ “ Susanna’s Apologie and the Politics of Privity.” 179 Westerkamp includes Parr in this group on the basis of her involvement in the founding of a separatist congregation and her hope for “a greater effusion of the Spirit” (Parr’s words, qtd. 583). However, Parr seems somewhat out of place in this grouping of women. She expresses more concern about the purity of the ordinances
140 between Parr and Stucley is rooted in the definition of public space and who controls that definition, concluding that Parr publishes because “the private, as a space in which she may exert control over her life . . . is defined by those in power and therefore . . . is not independent” (13). As these critics have emphasized, the controversy that developed out of the official expulsion of both Parr and Allein was framed in terms of sexual (mis)behavior. It is important to note that this was not the only or even the primary metaphor used in excommunication discourse. In a sermon entitled “The Gospel of Leprosy,” preached by Samuel Mather in Dublin in 1665 and later included by his nephew in the posthumously published Figures or Types , Mather represents the excommunicate repeatedly as a leper who must be put out of the camp (293ff.). 180 In Mall’s preface of multiple definitions and theological explanations of excommunication, he, too, cites a reference to the “leaprous person” [sic], as well as quotes another common figuring of the excommunicate as “a Heathen and a Publican” (A3-A4). 181 However, according to Mall’s purportedly verbatim account of Stucley’s sermon, the latter chooses to use the more explicitly sexual metaphor of the “incestuous person” (22ff.), a reference to Paul’s advice in I Corinthians on how to deal with a sexually immoral relationship in the church. 182 Although Parr herself perpetuates the sexual associations deliberately through her title, she shifts the grounds of debate by “[claiming] the right to define the quarrel as one about sexual power” (Crawford 158), rather than one simply about sexual immorality. Parr’s choice of the Historie of Susanna as the frame of reference for her “apologie” underlines this theme, for the story is as much about the “Elders” failing the test of their fitness to be “governors” as it is about Susanna passing the test of her purity of character and truthfulness. Mall and particularly Stucley make the typical contemporary
than about manifestations of the spirit, and speaks disparagingly about the “strange fire, both in prayer and exposition of the Scriptures” that was coming from newer members who were “mere Novices . . . and many of them scare well principled” (8). 180 As I noted earlier, the leper figure has strong connections to Miriam. However, there are other male leper figures in the Bible, the most prominent of whom would likely be Naaman in the Old Testament (2 Kings 5) and the ten lepers healed by Jesus in a New Testament story (Luke 17). As well, the Old Testament directives on dealing with leprosy assume that lepers can be male or female. Although the metaphor can certainly take on gender associations, depending on the context, I do not see it as a figure that is automatically or even primarily gendered female. 181 The latter seems to be a stock phrase. In Thomas Taylor’s Christ Revealed , he warns that “[I]f a man be an incorrigible sinner, let him be to thee as an heathen or Publicane” (200). Taylor also uses the leprosy metaphor, but treats it more simply, as a metaphor for general sinfulness: “So in our sinne unrepented, we are out of the campe, aliens from God” (166). He does advise that a final step to being cured of one’s own leprosy “is to avoid the company of lepers” (200); however, he does not represent this action as a specific rite of church discipline. 182 According to Edwards, “incestuous” can also be read as “adulterous” (4), a connotation that fits with Stucley’s use of the adultery metaphor in his rebuke to Parr for hearing other ministers.
141 accusations against women—contentiousness, lying, divisiveness, rebellion, unseemly speech— and Parr does respond to specific accusations. But her rhetorical strategy enables her to do more than that; in casting herself as a type of Susanna, Parr claims the right of a public stage to speak to issues that she believes go beyond the personal in their relevance to the larger concerns of church and state: “my undertaking is not so much for myselfe, as for the Lord, for his servants and for his people” (A4 L). Her representation of herself as a martyr, comparing her enemies to the “Papists” who burned John Huss (A5 R), is more than a dramatic gesture; martyrs such as Huss would not be seen by Parr as dying for their own individual, idiosyncratic beliefs, but rather in the service of the “true” Church. Westerkamp argues that “neither Parr nor Wentworth were prosecuted by the government . . . because they did not pursue confrontation beyond the boundaries of their congregations,” and thus “never threatened the security of either church or political establishments” (581). However, while Parr may not represent herself as God’s mouthpiece, the prophetic stance assumed by Wentworth, but rather seeks “to represent herself, to speak in her own voice” (Edwards 3), she clearly does believe her speech to be of import beyond the circumstances of her particular case in a local church. The previous critical discussions of Parr’s text I noted earlier have addressed in greater or lesser detail the various charges and countercharges made in print as the pamphlet debate persisted, using them to build an understanding of the life of a sectarian congregation and the role of women within it. With that valuable analysis as a background, I would like to take a somewhat different approach and center my analysis on one particular issue in the controversy that has not, I believe, received sufficient attention: Stucley’s claim that the church had a right to excommunicate the two women and Parr’s counterclaim that the church had no right to excommunicate her because she had already, of her own volition, severed her connection with the congregation. In her preface, Parr promises that she will set out “the grounds of the difference between us, and of my leaving them, and also how I left them ” (A4; my emphasis). Her purpose in challenging Stucley’s charges and his version of the circumstances is not an end in itself, but rather part of her larger project to show that the “right and true grounds” (A4 L) of her excommunication were, in effect, not matters of any “scandalous” behavior on her part (Mall 5), but rather matters of personal choice and entirely outside her former congregation’s provenance and authority. At the same time, Parr offers her individual case as representative of the problem with separatist churches, who she sees “hindering . . . [the] Reformation , for which
142 so much precious blood had been spilt in the late Warre” ( Apologie 29). Like the biblical Susanna, who in her public prayer daringly accuses the two elders of “maliciously [inventing]” the story of her sexually scandalous behavior to disguise their attempts to coerce her into satisfying their own unbridled lusts (Historie of Susanna 43, Geneva), Parr argues that the charges brought against her by Stucley and some of the elders mask their attempts to maintain an authoritarian, oppressive, and biblically unsupported level of control over individuals in the church. While the issue of the freedom (or lack of it) for women to speak in the local assembly is critical to the debate, placing that issue within the larger context of the process of decision- making in Parr’s congregation sharpens our perspective on two equally important factors: first, her understanding of “private” and “public” as determined primarily by function rather than more simply by gender or physical space; and secondly, her belief that the opposition to women speaking was not an isolated issue, but part of broader problems with the exercise of leadership in the church. Arguing that Parr “satisfied her own conscience on the issue by conceiving of meetings about church affairs as ‘private,’” Edwards concludes that “the same occasions which Susanna Parr saw as ‘private’ and hence as an appropriate space for her speaking were regarded by Stucley as ‘public’ and hence inappropriate for it” (10). However, even outsiders earlier in the century recognized that separatist groups had already complicated any easy identification of space as it related to the church. In An anatomy of the separatists (1641), John Taylor notes that sectarians “account their own houses as holy as the Church” (Crawford 140). Expanding on Taylor’s observation, the Savoy Declaration asserts that churches “gathered and assembling for the Worship of God, are thereby visible and publique, and their Assemblies ( in what place soever they are , according as they have liberty or opportunity) are therefore Church or Publique Assemblies” (37-38; my emphasis). The familiarity with church issues of the day exhibited by Parr in her text make it unlikely that she would understand church meetings to be necessarily or generally “private” in nature. Moreover, in Parr’s text, a few pages after the passage on which Edwards bases her argument, Parr herself calls a meeting “publique” that has to do with church affairs. At this gathering, where she is “accused . . . first of Contention, and secondly for . . . hearing Mr. Ford,” Parr specifically speaks “to the Article of Contention,” before she withdraws to allow the congregation to debate the charges (18). Further complicating any clear categorization, Toby Allein, too, makes reference to the “private meetings” of the church in both
143 Truths Manifest (11) and Truths Manifest Revived (92-93), his use of the term suggesting that whatever distinction is being drawn between public and private, gender is not inevitably the main factor in determining how the distinction is made. Indeed, the larger passage in Parr’s text from which Edwards quotes shows that Parr’s reference to a “private meeting” has to do, in this case, with a specific kind of gathering. For several pages previous, Parr has been reiterating her concerns about the “disorders and miscarriages very frequent at our meetings,” gatherings at which she has been encouraged to speak, although she believed “it was more fit for me to be in private meditation” (9). The context suggests that these meetings were likely for the primary purpose of worship, prayer, and spiritual encouragement, a function different from that of the “private” meetings she goes on to describe. According to Parr, the latter gatherings were ones at which the church members first heard those wishing to join the church “speake what experience they had of the worke of grace upon their Soules,” after which, Parr explains, “we were every one of us both men and women to declare our thoughts of what was spoken” (10). 183 Clearly, she had been speaking at both kinds of meetings, yet uses the term “private” in reference to only one context of her speech in the church. Moreover, the criticism of her “Carriage at the Admission of members” (10), which it is her concern to address in reference to these “private” meetings, lies not in her speaking, per se, but rather in her voicing an opinion different from the rest of those present, both men and women. It is her belief that she has the right to dissent in speech from the rest of the church on the suitability of applicants for membership, as well as the responsibility to “reprove [other members] for their indifferency of Spirit” (12). Diotrephes detected, corrected, and rejected , the first of the pamphlets written defending the two women, reads the issue similarly. Addressing Stucley’s complaint that Parr voiced her dissatisfaction with a prospective new member only 183 The context of Allein’s reference to “private meetings” supports this distinction. He writes that he ceased to attend the “private meetings” of the congregation after he heard that the church intended to excommunicate his wife, presumably because he was reluctant to be present at meetings where her conduct might be discussed among the members. Both he and Parr seem to suggest that these “private” meetings were for the purposes of discussing individuals, in this case disciplinary cases and applications for membership. Admittedly, Stucley takes issue with that definition, responding to Allein’s use of the term: “I know not how to call it a private meeting , any more then [sic] the meetings of the Saints in the primitive times, when though they met in houses, their meetings were publick . . .” ( Manifest Truth 18). However, Stucley then goes on to quote from the letter of one of the congregants had written to Allein, reproving the latter for “absenting your self from our private meetings” (19). In his response to Stucley, Allein blames the “private meetings” or “Conventicles” for the corruption of the church: “what is done there you have partly heard is it not to strengthen the members in their separation from other Churches of Christ, and to infuse farther dividing principles[?] . . . . [W]hy not publique meetings that all Gods people may see and heare what they doe, what they pray, and what they preach and practice as other Churches doe[?]” (Truths Manifest Revived 92-93).
144 after the rest of the church had agreed to receive the applicant, the anonymous writer also defends the right of the individual member to dissent and holds Stucley responsible, as leader, for not more thoroughly examining the congregation to see if they were all in one accord and for not giving sufficient opportunity for those to speak, either on their own or through another, who might not be in agreement (18). This writer, clearly supportive of Parr, criticizes Stucley for complaining that Parr did not come to him privately with her concerns, but does not criticize him for (mis)defining church meetings as public rather than private, as we might expect, given Edwards’ reading of the debate. Rather, the writer claims, anything that Stucley has done in a church assembly is public and deserves public rebuke (18). As I would argue, then, the primary objective for Parr is not justifying her speech as appropriate to the “private” nature of a church meeting, but rather preserving her individual right to dissent from others on issues within the congregation, her freedom to leave the group for the sake of her own spiritual health, and her liberty to associate with those, in whatever congregation she finds them, who she believes to have “had the Image of God renewed in them” (21). In fact, in one reported exchange with Stucley, the clear line she draws is between the private sphere of domestic relations and the public sphere of church relations. When the minister “[alleges] that I might as well delight in another man that was not my husband, because the Image of God shined more in him then in my husba[n]d,” Parr rejects the parallel: “I being troubled at this grosse discourse told him that those relations were of a different nature , and that I thought I did owe more duty where God in his Providence had cast me, and where I had the opportunity and ability to performe it, then I was engaged unto or could discharge unto others, where I had no opportunities” (21; my emphasis). Gillespie has argued that sectarian women “articulated their vision of an equality predicated on androgynous spirituality as opposed to embodied physicality precisely in order to liberate themselves from the age-old creed which said that their bodies rendered them susceptible to and in need of a patriarchal control that must, for the sake of the community, deny them such things as religious authority” ( Domesticity and Dissent 31). Parr represents a curious contradiction, in that she articulates a similar rejection of patriarchal control (i.e., minister as husband) not as an expression of nonconformity, but rather as a justification of her return to what would be seen by many separatists as the “conformity” of Presbyterianism. 184
184 While those loyal to the Church of England as it existed before the dismantling of the episcopal hierarchy would have seen the Presbyterian church structure as a radical departure, for many sectarians, such as the
145 While the shape of her argument may be the result of her years of association with a sectarian group and a congregational theology of church structure, the facility with which Parr picks up and uses it for her present purpose stands as an example of the remarkable ability of women to reformulate and adapt such arguments to their personal circumstances, as well as their belief that such stances were not the exclusive property of any one religious group or theological position. Citing Stucley’s ineffective ministry, faulty doctrine, the abuse of practices such as fasting, and the “absolute subjection [of members] to Mr Stucleys Ministry” (112), Parr claims the right and freedom to sequester herself from their society, to “willingly withdraw from them” (23). Instead of what initially seemed a belief in “liberty of conscience and freedome,” Parr sees in church practice a rejection of a founding principle of Protestantism: the right of the individual to discover for her or himself the “minde and will of God,” substituting instead the pronouncement of the few who constitute themselves “the voice of the Church . . . [which] carries all before it” (30). It is that principle upon which Parr draws when, after having publicly announced at a meeting “that I should come no more among them” (36), she is urged (even threatened) by several male officers of the church to reconsider her decision. Placing on them the burden of proof, so to speak, Parr challenges them to “study the Word, and convince me from the Word what is my dutie in such a Case, and I would gladly receive it, and willingly submit to it” (37). 185 In explaining her withdrawal, Parr insistently represents her decision as a matter of spiritual necessity, declaring that “it could not be safe for me to continue any longer under his [Stucley’s] pastoral charge,” given his unethical behavior towards her (32). In continuing her association with Stucley’s congregation, Parr believes that, like Susanna in her garden, she is in a vulnerable position and that it is not “safe for me to adventure singly and without witnesse among them, who were my accusers, witnesses, and judges” (37, my emphasis). 186 Her language
anonymous writer of One blow more at Babylon , Presbyterianism did not represent a successful reform of “the Church state” and its parish churches constituted “Assemblies of the wicked,” which true Christians were obligated to leave ( One blow more 5, 7). As I have noted, there seemed to be a tentative association between Presbyterian clergy and at least some Independents (including Stucley). However, this pamphlet, to which Parr briefly refers (Preface 2), sees the relationship as much more adversarial. Published in 1650, One blow more singles out Exeter as a particular site of Presbyterian clergy opposition to “the Parliaments and Independents proceedings” (2). 185 Following their excommunication, in their formal letter sent to Stucley to be read to the church, Parr and Marie Allein declare that they are ready “to submit to the law and will of Christ” as they “see reason from Scripture to Convince” ( Susanna’s Apologie 41). 186 Edwards assumes the presence of female servants with Susanna in the garden, arguing that “those unimportant enough not to violate her privacy lack, by definition, the authority to serve as witnesses” (13). While
146 invokes the Susanna story once again, since the two “elders” in that story accuse the biblical Susanna, represent themselves as the sole witnesses to her infidelity, and claim the right to act as her judges, all before a public audience. However, sequestering herself from her former congregation is not simply a defensive move or resistance to Stucley’s attempts to keep her safely sequestered within his sphere of influence. Rather Parr’s rhetorical self-sequestration functions as a statement of her right to determine and pursue whatever course of action and choice of association she believes necessary to her spiritual welfare. Her primary goal throughout has been finding instruction “in the mystery of this great Salvation, God manifest in the flesh.” That goal, she emphasizes, has remained “my desire in Joyning with them, and in my withdrawing from them, I finding not a Sufficiency in their Ministry for edification and building up,” and her subsequent “disappointment of my expectation in the ministry” becomes the primary factor motivating her to “[continue] my practice of hearing Mr Ford, sometimes once a Lords day merely out of [spiritual] necessity” (104-05). As far as Parr is concerned, engaging in that practice as a member of an Independent congregation is not, as Stoneham purportedly declared in his “publique” teaching, “a going out of the bosome of Christ into the bosome of strangers . . . [and] rebellion against Christ” (Apologie 20). In fact, Parr’s stance on this issue aligns with the defense of the Independents put forward in One blow more at Babylon , in which the main speaker claims that the Presbyterians rather than the Separatists try to prevent parishioners from attending other services. Rather than being “sheep stealers,” the traveler-cum-Independent-spokesman emphasizes, “when any are joined to their Churches [the Independents] give them liberty to hear where they were wont, and not type them up to hear none but themselves, as the Presbyterians many of them are wont to do” (37). Claiming this freedom as an essential part of her “Christian Liberty” (19) ultimately leads Parr to her decision “to leave them” (21) when some in the congregation continue to press her to give up her visits to Ford’s church. Two months later, when Ezekiel Pace comes to tell her that the Church has suspended her, Parr denies that they have any right to discipline her: “I told him that I had left their Society, and that I had no communion with them” (39). this would very likely be the case if they had remained with Susanna, the Apocryphal version of the Susanna story notes explicitly that her maids were not present: “Now when the maydes were gone forth, the two Elders rose up and ranne unto [Susanna]” (v. 19). Thus, Susanna has no witnesses to her initial encounter and exchange with the elders. In his earlier pamphlet, Allein defends his wife’s refusal to meet with any leaders from Stucley’s church unless ministers from another church were present, attributing her reluctance to observing Parr’s experience, who “in treating with them alone, had been overreacht by them, whilst they had witnesses of what passes, and she had none” (Truths Manifest 28).
147 Parr does not see herself as a solitary figure outside the community, a voice crying in the wilderness, and her narrative offers a perspective on inter-church dynamics between Independents and Presbyterians. Shortly after leaving Stucley’s church, Parr applies to “the Ministers of the City, desiring to be admitted into fellowship and communion with them in ordinances” (39). At this point, Stucley intervenes, informing one of the ministers that the congregation has unresolved issues with Parr. According to Parr, Stucley produces written charges that are then discussed at a meeting attended by himself and an elder, two Exeter ministers (Ford and John Bartlet), and Parr herself ( Apologie 39-40). In spite of Stucley’s allegations, the other ministers do not find anything in the charges that would prevent her from joining another congregation, and they receive her into communion. Several years later, when she hears that the church intends to excommunicate her and Marie Allein, Parr requests a “new triall” (40) before these same ministers. Writing some months after Stucley’s version of events had appeared in print, Parr takes issue with his claim that a public trial (i.e. involving anyone outside his congregation) robs individual churches of their right of “trying and censuring their own delinquent members” (42). Turning his argument back upon him, Parr declares that Stucley’s contention violates the very principle he uses to support his excommunication of the women: “This is nothing to the purpose, we were not their members, but reall members of some other congregations . . . . [W]e had withdrawen from Communion with them, and they [have] not satisfied us so as to remove the occasion of our leaving them” (42). While Parr may be “conservative” ( Her Own Life 102) in her acceptance of the right of church leaders to discipline members, she defends the right of the individual member to remove herself from the oversight of one community and choose to associate herself with a different community, whether or not she has the approval of her former congregation. Since Parr could also be termed “conservative” or “traditional” for her quick transition to a another congregation and for her strong affirmation of her submission to her new ministers, “without whose advice I would do nothing” (40), the degree to which she vests the right of association in the individual can be easily missed. As reported by Mall in his True Account , Stucley claims that Parr was already “suspend[ed] from Communion, before ever she joined in the Sacrament with any other,” and that the church censured her “to discharge our duty to her, as Legally [a?] part of our flock” (46). Parr does not argue with Stucley’s first assertion. According to her version of events in the Apologie , two months after she had given notice to the
148 congregation of her “going away” (37), Ezekiel Pace visits her to inform her that she has been suspended by the church; only after this does she approach the Exeter ministers about officially joining their congregation. Yet from the moment she leaves, having “upon Conscientious principles withdrawne from communion with them” (41), she sees herself as a spiritually independent individual, self-sequestered and not answerable to her former church even though she has not yet formally established ties of membership with another group. Parr’s insistence on this right appears most strikingly in her response to the accusation that she and Allein had violated the covenant they had entered into by joining with the community, and that as a “Covenant-breaker” she is guilty of breaking “the Oath of God” ( True Account 22). According to the Mall-Stucley argument, “when these persons outwardly closed with Christ, they outwardly subscribed, that they would be the Lords; and therefore we owned them: now they have cast away these cords from them, they have broken the Covenant . . . .”(7). Parr’s first line of argument in answering this charge is not that she has established a covenant with another congregation. Rather, Parr defines her covenant as primarily with God, and only secondarily with the church body: “what Covenant I have [entered] into with God , whether with them or any other, I desire still to own and acknowledge, that I am engaged unto to performe, and am resolved in the strength of Christ never to retract. And if in any particular I have denyed my Covenant with God , it lies upon them to convince me of it[,] . . . . [I]t lies upon them to prove their charge” (111; my emphasis). In fact, Parr asserts, she and Allein “did own our Covenant with God more than they [Stucley’s followers] did,” the two women having in their letter to the church “[professed] our submission to the law and will of Christ,” while the others in the church had rather “by their Explicite Covenant engaged themselves to an Implicite faith, in subjection to Mr Stucley’s ministerial guidance and teaching, without any restriction or limitation” (112). 187
187 Parr’s language here echoes the accusation made in Diotrephes detected, corrected, and rejected , whose writer criticizes Stucley for requiring people to “swear” to a covenant “without any Lymmitation, restriction, or promise whatsoever mentioned therewith” (12). Toby Allein also charges that Stucley “did . . . tye up his Church- members to an implicit faith in him, when he did upon that black day of his curse, make his members subscribe a Church-covenant or oath . . . . [t]hat they would submit to his guidance and teaching as their Pastor, (absolutely) without any restrictions or limitation” ( Truths Manifest Revived 87-88). Parr’s comments on the nature of covenant show her awareness of the larger debate going on both in the colonies and in England over the issues of implicit and explicit covenants and visible and invisible churches. One of the main arguments in One blow more at Babylon (1650), with which Parr was familiar, is that parish churches do not count as “true visible Churches of Christ,” since a national church constituted politically prevents local churches from being “entire Churches in themselves, but [makes them] Branches depending and hanging on the other, which is a thing directly contrary to the Word of God”
149 Questioning Stucley’s claim that an explicit covenant is necessary to control “a lawlesse spirit,” Parr believes that making covenant directly with God protects one from the spiritual abuse of a minister who demands “absolute subjection” to his ministry (112). According to Gillespie, sectarians “consistently . . . imagined the individual as a nodal point in and of him/herself, one who could affiliate (disaffiliate) freely with a chosen community because of the inward ‘right’ that he/she possessed independent of any community or institution, be it familial, religious, or even governmental” ( Domesticity and Dissent 53). Paradoxically, Parr appropriates this logic in order to sequester herself from the sectarian community (as represented by Stucley’s church), and to represent her return to conformity as a self-imposed repentance for the “sin of separation” (14). When I introduced my discussion of Parr’s text, I undertook to show both how Parr reads the Susannah story in her own life, and in doing so, how she goes beyond it. I have pointed out significant ways in which Parr types herself as Susannah in order to accuse her accusers and declare her own innocence. However, one critical difference remains: The Historie of Susanna ends with the focus not on Susanna, but on Daniel. When a veiled Susanna first appears before the people to face the elders’ charges, they order the covering removed so that they can gaze on her beauty, thus continuing to feed their lust for her. While Susanna does proclaim her innocence in her public prayer, bravely charging the elders with bearing “false witness” against her, her appeal is ineffective; the people believe her accusers because they are “elders and judges of the people” (v. 41 Geneva). Her death sentence is overturned and her reputation restored (“there was no dishonestie founde in her” 63), but only because Daniel appears to defend her. Entering the narrative near the end as a “yong childe” speaking with a “holie spirit” raised up by God (45), he traps the elders in their own lies and denounces them for their “wickedness” because they have “pronounced false judgements, and [have] condemned the innocent, and [have] let the giltie go fre” (57, 53). Susanna’s Historie ultimately becomes a vindication of Daniel, to whom “God hathe given . . . [the] office of an Elder” (50). It is no coincidence, I would maintain, that Parr chooses a scriptural narrative in which a young child plays such a critical role. According to the editors of Her Own Life , Parr “explains her change of heart as originating in matters supposed to be central to the womanly role,” an explanation that they read as a sign of her conservatism
(29). In implicit opposition to this view, the writer of Diotrephes detected refers to Parr and Allein as “Reall Invisible Saints” (2), inferring the spiritual validity and authenticity of the national church.
150 (102). In Manifest Truth , Stucley disparages Marie Allein’s claim (and implicitly Parr’s) that her departure from the church was occasioned in part by reading “Gods displeasure against her, manifested in her childrens death, and her own sicknes for departing” from her former pastor’s ministry. Such events, Stucley patronizingly advises, are like the writing on the wall, which cannot be read without “the skill and wisdome of a Daniel” (11), referring to the adult Daniel who is called in to translate the divine script for Balshazzar, the Babylonian king (Daniel 5). Parr implicitly counters Stucley’s “Prelaticall Spirit” (29) in her (re)writing of the Susannah narrative. In Parr’s Apologie , her own child functions as a Daniel, speaking through death as the “holie spirit” that she claims has brought her to a recognition of the part she has played in the wounding of Christ’s body brought about by the “sin of separation” (14). As a result of this spiritual lesson, Parr can assume the role of a Daniel herself, offering her own vindication and exposing publicly the “elders” who have condemned her: “Then indeed I did begin to pull off their masking robes and vizards, as Mr. Stucley expresseth it in the true Account, that so it might appeare to the world, how unlikely it was that such (as many of them were) should cast off any upon the Account of lying” (89). 188 Although Parr makes the conventional apology that she is “of a stamering [sic] Tongue, slow of speech, and [wants] eloquence” (A3 L), through the very act of publishing her pamphlet as another Susannah story, Parr rewrites Susannah as one who can speak and act for herself and one who can tear the veil from the faces of those who would try to disguise their unjustifiable efforts to sequester her as the legitimate exercise, Stucley claims, of “that power and Authority which Christ hath intrusted [particular Churches] with, of trying and censuring their own delinquent members” ( Manifest Truth 22). Moreover, while she may not have attracted national attention, as Westerkamp observes (581), Parr did see herself as staging her drama for a national audience, appealing at the close of her preface to “the Ministers of Christ in this Nation” and offering herself and Allein as models, arguing that those who were against separation should “encourage others to follow our example,” since the only “fault” of the two women lay in “our leaving them [the Congregational church], and returning unto you” (A5 R). The path of that return, however, rests on a foundation 188 The masquing figure appears first in Mall’s text. According to his report of Stucley’s excommunication sermon, he compared excommunicates to animals (wolves, bears, dogs, vipers, dragons, scorpions) and to masquers from whom the church is “to pull off the Masking Robes; and the Vizards wherewith these have deceived us” (9). Allein picks up this figure, claiming in the “Advertisement to the Reader” of Truths manifest revived that Stucley’s intent in his pamphlet is to “vaile and vizard his and his Churches unwarrantable practice,” another evidence of which is Stucley’s adamant refusal to bring the matter to “a fair hearing, and debate of the business by godly Ministers and Christian friends of each side, in order to peace” (A2).
151 of typological rhetoric that challenges the right of any group, sectarian or conformist, to claim proprietary ownership over the spiritual allegiance of the independent soul. Anne Wentworth: delivered daughter of Zion Susannah Parr rhetorically fortified the boundaries of her spiritual “garden” to claim her right to return to the “fold” of the national church in the last chaotic days of the Puritan republic; during another “politically volatile” period some thirty years later ( Domesticity and Dissent Gillespie 202), Anne Wentworth, in her self-published Vindication of 1677, employed a similar strategy to maintain her right to sequester herself from her spouse and former religious community in order to prepare and then deliver the message she believes God has directed her to give to the people of England. In a complex and daring maneuver, Wentworth establishes her spiritual calling and justification through the use of language that relies heavily on the typology of both Old Testament prophecy and New Testament eschatology. The rhetorical strategies through which she constructs herself as the “voice” of God and the local Baptist church as the hypocritical, enslaving Babylon are rooted in familiar (to the early modern audience) biblical types of true and false political and religious communities. As Parr’s use of typology illustrates the fluidity with which this strategy can appropriate and redramatize a biblical individual’s singular story, Wentworth performs a similar public drama of self-sequestration built upon the broader patterns of the history of biblical nations and cities. On the title page of her Vindication , Anne Wentworth describes herself as a “Daughter of Sion , newly delivered from the Captivity of Babylon .” The metaphor contains a significant paradox: Wentworth appropriates a figure—the Jewish nation—that typologically had a history of representing the communal identity of the church and uses it to establish a singular authorial identity in direct opposition to the sectarian Baptist group of which she was formerly a member. In “outing” in print the abuses of her religious brothers and sisters and her husband, Wentworth transgresses prescribed boundaries both to challenge their attempts to “[mar her] face, to darken and disappoint [her] testimony from the Lord” (2), and to declare that she has indeed been appointed God’s mouthpiece to king and nation. The claim to a prophetic calling enabled early modern women in England to cross the often unstable divide between public and private, especially as the upheavals of the English Revolution seemed to create a uniquely permeable public space into which women’s texts
152 flowed with a kind of unprecedented freedom. But as Katharine Gillespie has pointed out, much of that criticism rests on defining the figure of the woman prophet as similarly unstable and fragmented. Susan Wiseman succinctly summarizes: “To represent oneself as speaking God’s word is theoretically to dissolve the unified subject-position of the speaker . . . . The prophetic voice is never an ‘I,’ a unified subject . . .” (“Unsilent Instruments” 189). Carrying forward that perspective into the post-Restoration era, Hilary Hinds has argued more specifically that Wentworth’s text foregrounds the process by which this prophet-in-the-making goes through a “divine dissolution of the old Wentworth” in order to construct “a new divinely ordained voice of authorial authority” (104-05). In response to such feminist critics, many of whom have contributed significantly to establishing early modern women’s texts as a respected and fruitful field of study, Gillespie has recently argued that Wentworth, along with other sectarian women writers, “used the early modern feminist theory of popular sovereignty to articulate a highly developed concept of possessive individualism” ( Domesticity and Dissent 202). Following a somewhat different path than Gillespie to a similar end, I want to explore another significant aspect of Wentworth’s text: her representation of the intact self set apart from, inaccessible to the community, and the specifically typological rhetorical strategies she employs to reposition herself, to revise to her own advantage the narrative of exclusion written by her former spiritual compatriots. Like Parr, Wentworth also refuses to allow anyone—neither her (former) church nor her husband—to enact a disempowering sequestration upon her, to reabsorb her distinctive, dissenting voice into the larger voice of collective communal consensus; rather, she claims her right as an individual subject to sequester herself, not (as Parr does) to legitimate her right to chose another communal association, but rather to create a unique spiritual community of herself and God, a community where she is delivered daughter of Zion, bride of Christ, and mother of the birthing and birthed prophetic word. From the beginning of the Vindication , a persistent emphasis on isolation underlies Wentworth’s efforts to recuperate her reputation and to establish her credibility as a prophet. “How should we Sing the Lords Song in a strange Land?” reads one of the verses on the title page, a line from Psalm 137 traditionally associated with the Israelites’ years of captivity in the alien city of Babylon. For Wentworth, the years of her marriage have been a “wilderness of affliction,” living under the “unspeakable Tyrannies” of her husband in a domestic domain of repression, suffering emotional and quite likely physical abuse. Once God has “chosen and
153 called” (12) her to prophesy (sometime around 1670), she experiences persecution not only from her husband but also from the sectarian Baptist group of which she has been a member, as they all attempt to contain her and her prophetic message. Relating her experiences in the 1677 Vindication , Wentworth represents the seven-year sequestration in her home primarily through her emphasis on the way in which she was deprived of the freedom to write. Vividly describing the removal of her liberty to do that which she believes God has commanded her to do, she describes how “my earthly husband in a most cruel manner hindered me . . . ., [by] seizing, and running away with my Writings” (5). The Vindication makes obvious that she regards this sequestration of her work as an unwarranted violation of her proprietorial rights in the texts she has created, resulting in a sense of disenfranchisement and imprisonment within the space of her own home. 189 This wresting away of her manuscripts seems to be a communal effort involving other Baptists, thus heightening the sense of her solitary existence. Twice making reference to her husband’s “abetters” (3,6), Wentworth conflates him with others involved in the attempt to silence her, explaining that her testimony would already have been made public had not “[her] Enemies hindred, by seizing and destroying my writings” (13). This act of censorship and destruction leaves Wentworth with no choice, in her mind, but to physically remove herself from the situation as a declaration both of her independence from the community and her obedience to God, “who has commanded me to go forth in his Name” (3). 190 In the same language as Parr, Wentworth reiterates that her self-sequestration is “necessary to the peace of my Soul” (4). Ironically, after recounting her departure from her husband in order to gain freedom to write and the subsequent disciplinary action taken by the Baptists, who, having failed to silence her, proceed to sequester her officially from their fellowship, Wentworth’s emphasis on alienation only increases. She represents herself as experiencing significant social and religious
189 In a 1677 petition written by friends of Wentworth, requesting the return of the writings that her husband had “by fraud and force taken . . . from her,” these texts are listed specifically as follows: “A book with a white parchment cover. The Epistle to the Lady Tyddle. The title, A Mother’s Legacy to her Daughter , dated 22 Sept., 1677”: “A little book with a painted red cover having 8 or 9 titles with a prayer of faith to show my wrestling with God till I prevailed”; and “A paper of verses dated 22 Sept.” The petition also speaks the language of property, representing Wentworth as the legal owner of her unpublished writings; she has, the petition reads, been “constrained . . . to transfer her right in those books, now unjustly in his possession, to persons who will value and use them better than he or his abettors do, and are resolved to let him and them know that she has given them to us, who thankfully accept and highly value the donation . . .” (my emphasis; letter from Calendar of State Papers Domestic , 1677, 435-36. Published online by Vickie Taft as “Appendix C: The Petition to Wentworth’s Husband for the Return of Her Writings” at
154 isolation, describing her current situation as one in which she is “surrounded, and beset on every side, and left alone in the midst of all discouragements from within , and without ” (12,21). The language of the Vindication reads like many of the biblical psalms in which the speaker laments his struggles alone against a host of adversaries, as Wentworth frequently refers to “my oppressor” or “mine Enemies” (1), to “them who have so deeply wounded me” (13), and to “all the fierce wrath of man, which has been against me” (1). Again, she foregrounds her solitary position by describing the onslaught as both private and public, involving both the “temptations of friends and [the] conspiracies of enemies” (9). Most significantly, Wentworth makes specific reference to her expulsion from the communal group of the Baptist congregation, twice objecting to their public condemnation of her as a “Heathen, and a Publican” (1,13), terms of excommunication that are the ultimate “othering” to one who has been a member of the community. In a striking portrayal of a figurative drowning of the self, Wentworth represents herself as the object of a “flood of scorn, contempt, bitter railing, false accusations, scandalous papers, and lying Pamphlets poured out against me” (9). The rhetoric of the passage, while it communicates an insistent anxiety at the assault on her reputation, also contributes to the overall effect of dramatically staging the isolation imposed upon her by the group’s sequestration of her and by their subsequent public attacks on her in response to the publication in 1676 of her True Account , which details the specifics of her persecution by her husband and the church. While this staging of her isolation and alienation may be seen as emphasizing her lack of agency as an individual outside of the recognized social communities of family and church, Wentworth provides this necessary context and prelude in order to reposition herself and to perform an act of self-sequestration in which she sets herself apart as the one chosen and called out by God rather than the one cast out by her congregation. The subtitle of the Vindication offers the enabling typology for this inversion: the daughter of Zion who has been “newly delivered from the captivity of Babylon.” A passage in Micah 4 provides a context and one clear source for this figure; the chapter is headed in the KJV as “The glory of the Church” and reads in part: “Bee in paine and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travell: for now shalt thou goe foorth out of the citie, and thou shalt dwel in the field, and thou shalt go euen to Babylon: There shalt thou be delivered: there the LORD shall redeeme thee from the hand of thine enemies” (vs.10). In appropriating this multi-faceted type that forms a thread running through most of the Old Testament and even invoked by Jesus (Matt. 21.5; John 12.15),
155 Wentworth creates multiple resonances upon which she plays throughout her text. In scripture, the daughter of Zion is represented as alternately, sometimes simultaneously, virgin, wife, and mother, 191 roles that Wentworth claims for herself. As the daughter of Zion suffers for her sin, so Wentworth suffers for resisting the call of God to write; as the daughter of Zion is held captive in Babylon for seventy years, so Wentworth is held captive by her husband for seven; as she regains the favor of God, who, like a bridegroom “[rejoices] over [her] with joye” (Zeph. 3.17), so the spiritually purified Wentworth finds a new husband in Christ; as the daughter of Zion travails and brings forth children, a cause of pain but a means to deliverance, 192 so Wentworth laboriously produces her text and brings forth the words of prophecy that are both harsh and potentially redemptive. By invoking the long history of the theological association between the “daughter of Zion” and the church, Wentworth deliberately draws attention to her strategy of placing herself as a singular subject in the position of the “true” church, relegating her former community to the role of Babylon, the “false” church. Invoking her own terms of harsh censure, Wentworth elides the Baptists with all “Formalists, Hypocrites, and profane Persons” (1). Babylon, she declares, is “every where [sic] found among the litteral and outward Churches” (2). The enemy proliferates, outlining her own singular stance more sharply, the individual against the masses. Her use of the terms “formalists” and “professors” seems calculated to offend the sectarian group that she targets, particularly as she equates those categories with the terms of othering the Baptists have imposed upon her; in effect, she transforms herself into the wielder of word weaponry rather than its victim: “I have suffered as much Tiranny and Cruelty under a formal profession of Religion, as I could have done amongst Turks, Heathens, and Infidels” (22). Now, rejecting the part of
191 The references to the daughter of Zion (also called “Jerusalem,” “my daughter,” “daughter of my people”) begin in 2 Kings and are most numerous in the prophetic books of the Old Testament. Jesus makes reference to the daughter of Zion, quoting Isaiah 62.11, and later the figure reappears as the “new Jerusalem.” For references to the “virgin” daughter, see, for example, 2 Kings 19.21 and Isaiah 37.22. Aside from implicit connections between the daughter of Zion and the bride of Psalm 45 and the lover of the Song of Solomon, the daughter of Zion as the new Jerusalem comes “downe from God . . . prepared as a bride trimmed for her housband” in Revelation 21.2. For the daughter of Zion in labor, see Jeremiah 4.31 and Isaiah 66.7-8, in addition to the Micah passage. References to the daughter of Zion as mother are frequent, since Jerusalem/Zion is often represented as having sons and daughters. See, for example, Lamentations 2.19 and Isaiah 60.4. In Isaiah 66.11, Jerusalem is represented with “breasts of . . . consolation,” at which her children “may milke out & be delited with the brightnes of her glorie.” The captive daughter of Zion appears as well in Isaiah 52.2. 192 Jerusalem, a common synonym for the daughter of Zion (see Lamentations 2.13), is also described as a “menstrous woman” (1.14). While this can be seen as a badge of shame, it also serves as a reminder of her potential fruitfulness; a woman without menstrual blood is a barren woman.
156 ungovernable wife in which she has been cast, Wentworth plays the role of humble petitioner, the submissive bride of Christ praying to her heavenly husband that her earthly husband may be “converted and saved,” and that her “persecutors” eyes “may be opened” (4). Typologically, she rewrites her given position as outsider and reprobate, refusing to accept the marginalization enacted on her by the community and positioning herself as a stable center; reversing the usual stereotype of the female “potential to create disorder, to be an enemy to culture” (Mack 31), Wentworth instead represents herself as the fixed point in a chaotic world of apostasy, united with God in an unchallengeable alliance. Wentworth further turns her sequestration by the community to her advantage as she represents her isolation as a figure of public meaning, specifically designed for public consumption. She declares that the sufferings she has experienced in her marriage and her husband’s resistance to her calling have not been “unduly published” (2), as her Baptist detractors have claimed; rather, both her “oppressions and deliverance [have] a Publick ministry and meaning wrapt up in them” (12). As Hilary Hinds points out, Wentworth displays a stance typical of sectarian women writers, who characteristically refused to acknowledge any distinction between private and public (176). Yet unlike many of the Quaker women visionaries of the 1640's and 50's who, as Phyllis Mack has shown, find the community a legitimizing space from which to prophesy, 193 Wentworth uses her expulsion to sequester herself, to declare herself set apart by God and consecrated for a particular purpose; “I am set for a sign and a wonder,” she writes (8). Through the text of her individual experience, contained both in her body and her writing, Wentworth represents herself as becoming “a spectacle to behold,” an “open Testimony to the world,” as the city of Zion appears as a light to the nations in Old Testament prophecies (12). In her own experience of oppression and her deliverance from her “affliction,” she encompasses both the experience of and the promise for all God’s “poor despised ones in me” (10). Effectively transforming that “flood of scorn and contempt” (10) and the public “reproach” (9) into the unjustified but normative response towards those who have been “called . . . out” by God (1), Wentworth also places herself in a spiritual genealogy originating in Christ, warning her readers that they should “remember still how the Jewes of old, vilifie[d], reproach[ed], condemn[ed], and execute[d] our Saviour” and how it has not “fared otherwise with the whole
193 See Visionary Women , Ch. 5.
157 seed of Christ and all the spiritual manifestations of him in all ages” (6). 194 The boldness of her identification with Christ here is, of course, balanced by the accompanying narrative of her marriage to and life with Christ as her spouse and soul’s husband (19), who has “call’d and commanded [her] (in a way too terrible, too powerful to be denyed)” (4). Her use of the husband- wife relationship, however problematic with its overtones of force and violence, provides her with the validation she needs for her claims; she has been named and recognized in her own right, not as a representative of any earthly or spiritual community. Positioning herself both as a humble, submissive bride of Christ and as a warning “spectacle” for the whole nation of England, Wentworth engages in both self-containment within a prescribed role and God- authorized self-display that together present a public message through the writing and publication of her text. This staging both of her sequestered interior life with Christ as an exclusive community of two and of her public sequestering of herself in order to rewrite the community’s narrative of exclusion acts as Wentworth’s strategy to claim the ownership of her reputation and her right to be defined by God, “in whose strength I stand” (9), rather than by the prescriptive standards instituted and enforced by the Baptist group that she left sometime after receiving her prophetic call. Questioning this “pretended church power,” as she calls it, Wentworth condemns her former community for defaming her publicly in “Coffee-Houses [and] Ale Houses” (15) over what she claims are “matters of Conscience, in which I was faithful to the Teachings of God, according to the Scriptures of Truth, and obey’d the voyce of the Lord, who called me out from amongst them” (1). The only laws to which she is subject, she declares, are the law of Christ and “the great Law of self-preservation” (4); either of these laws would justify her leaving her husband, although she claims the former as having precedence over the latter. Since the law of Christ is spiritual in kind, it cannot be reduced to regulations determined by human agency; similarly, the “great Law” seems to suggest a natural law, inscribed in creation and superseding cultural prescriptions. Moreover, when Wentworth rewrites the community’s public account of her as a wife who has “wickedly left” her husband (2), she also claims to have been denied what she considers a basic individual Christian freedom, the “just and necessary liberty to attend a more than ordinary call and command of God” (6). Ultimately, she refuses to bow to community 194 In one of the songs appended to her prose declaration, she explicitly types herself as Christ “taking up this heavy Cross / to follow the Lord my God,” while her enemies give “Wormwood and gall . . . and scourge / me with their sharpest Rod” (20).
158 pressure and censure, reiterating the binary of “mans day and judgment,” which is based on outward appearance (7, 4), and God’s righteous judgment. Since obedience to the “Heavenly Vision” comes out of a direct communication between the individual Christian and God, Wentworth need not be subject to the scrutiny of the community or dependent on their approval. Rather, as she points out, God is the one who can and will “discover” in her any “spiritual pride . . . any worldly designe, or any other delusion whatsoever” (3). 195 Wentworth is not completely rejecting community, for she refers sympathetically to those of the “Lord’s People” who have been misled in their persecution of her by their zeal, as well as to those of “the little flock of Christ” who have stood by her when she was “distrest and left alone” (21). Yet she is arguing that individual conscience and the liberty to act according to that conscience do not require the sanction of the communal group; her decision to separate does not arise out of “consulting with flesh and blood” (5). Through her strategy of sequestration she sets boundaries which allow her to resist the community’s assumption of the agency and power to define and license her both within the group and in the larger public sphere. In particular, Wentworth resists the community’s representation of her as “a Proud, Passionate, Revengeful, Discontented, and Mad Woman” (2). In a recent collaborative article, Hinds argues that Wentworth’s text “produces a series of selves, variously mad and sane, and all of equal standing, for none is finally privileged above the others” (Graham et al, “Pondering” 59). Yet Wentworth insistently emphasizes that her actions are both justifiable and reasonable, within the range of acceptable conduct. At the same time as she invokes the rhetoric of necessity often associated with women prophets–she was constrained to write, she was forced to write against her will–she interweaves that rhetoric with her claim that “the writings . . . man was so displeased with, were in themselves very warrantable, [even] if I had not had any such command of God” (7). The language in which she explains the rationale behind this claim paradoxically echoes typical sectarian discourse within the community: “I only wrote the way he lead me in a wilderness of affliction for 18 years, to do me good; and declared my experiences, my great and wonderful deliverances, my many answers of Prayers in difficult cases from time to time” (7). In other words, Wentworth subversively suggests, she is being persecuted for engaging in the very discourse approved of by the Baptists and certain other sectarian congregations, the public 195 Parr makes a similar argument when she protests that the “greatest ground of [the church’s] proceedings against me, hath been a censuring of the ends of my words and actions, which is Gods prerogative alone, who searcheth the heart, and tryeth the reines ” ( Apologie 110-11; my emphasis).
159 “practice of testification” (Graham et al, “Pondering” 58), that was frequently required to legitimate membership in the group. And for this, Wentworth maintains, she has been ousted from her community of faith and unfairly slandered. Again, in the same passage, she assures her audience that while she has been under a spiritual compulsion to publish, her “duty to God in this matter, will be found not only most reasonable and necessary on my part” (8). In response to the community’s representation of her as “one distracted, and beside [her]self” (8), Wentworth negotiates a complex series of responses to establish her own clarity of mind against this “false report.” First, she claims that her enemies themselves must want this report to be proved false, since if she truly is mad, they could be “justly” held responsible for their cruel treatment of her; secondly and on the other hand, it is also in their interest to believe her actually mad, since if she isn’t, they must be for persecuting her; thirdly, this charge only places her in honorable company with the prophets and Jesus himself, all of whom were considered mad at some point; fourthly, that if to be mad is be “captivated” to God’s “wisdom and will,” then she surely is mad, implying that any Christian believer should aspire to this madness; and lastly, she says, “it will speedily , very speedily be known” that she is not mad, but rather has spoken “words of truth and soberness” (9). According to Wentworth, her enemies have deliberately constructed her alleged madness precisely in order to discredit her. Since the community has failed to contain her or her text, their collective strategy is to represent her as fragmented and unstable, ruled by emotions, unable to think clearly, and incapable of maintaining a legitimate, separate identity outside the controlling confines and constructing agency of the group. But the “plain hearted” ones of her audience (4), Wentworth maintains, will surely recognize her as a clearly defined, unified, and reasonable self, one whose differentiation of herself in opposition to the communal identity is rooted in the very sanity and stability the community denies that she is capable of in her independence. In fact, by rooting that identity in her relationship with God, she claims a foundation for self-definition that cannot be challenged by her detractors. The fourth chapter of Micah presents an apocalyptic vision of judgment and redemption; although “many nations are gathered” against the daughter of Zion, calling for her to be defiled, God calls her to “arise and thresh,” promising that she will “beat in pieces many people.” By the end of Wentworth’s text, this singular delivered daughter of Zion successfully appropriates the discourse of her former community to stage a strategy of sequestration within the public text of the Vindication , a strategy that allows her to resist the narrative of the community, which writes
160 her out of their communal life and represents her to the public as one to be despised and shunned. From within the space that she creates for herself to inhabit, she can act to claim control of her public identity. The very language validated by the community and used as the currency of its spiritual judgments becomes the means for Wentworth to claim her right to establish and reinforce boundaries of personal conscience and individual liberty that limit the control of the community and challenge its censuring of her actions and her prophetic message. Although both her husband and her former Baptist “family” enact measures of sequestration in an attempt to contain her and her texts, Wentworth resists with her own actions of self- sequestration, finding a self-definition birthed within an isolation that she rhetorically reframes in her own terms in order to appropriate the agency and authentication her opponents want to deny her. Conclusion As Helen Wilcox points out, “a woman was indeed regularly ‘bounded’ in the early modern period . . . by the bonds of social and linguistic restraint” (“My Soule in Silence” 23). As the texts by Webster and Mathers illustrate, women with an “affection of gadding” (Mall 20), either literally or textually, outside the acceptable boundaries of behavior, faced the corresponding desire of males to insure that women remained sequestered within territories policed by long-established conventions. In their texts, Parr and Wentworth respond to this circumscription of women’s lives by the male patriarchies of family and church both with vivid images of that imposed sequestration and with typological strategies of writing that allow them to create liberating narratives of their own, narratives that rewrite them as Susanna rebuking the respected elders of the church or the daughter of Zion claiming a central, God-authorized role in the working out of the destiny of church and nation. In claiming typological roles as a central part of their rhetorical strategy, Wentworth and Parr assert ownership of a hermeneutic that males in the church hierarchy saw as their province, an implicit claim for control underlies that often underlies theological expositions on typology. At the end of her Vindication , Wentworth speaks directly to her opponents, accusing them of keeping her text “in your custody” (15); the implication might be that, while the literal text may be contained, she herself is now at liberty, able to write and publish in defiance of their injunctions. Susanna Parr advertises herself and Marie Allein as examples for other potential
161 Susannas to assert their rights to declare themselves beyond the judgment of church leaders who would seek to appropriate their personal liberties and exercise unwarranted control over them. In her analysis of later seventeenth-century secular autobiography, Rose has noted that “the achievement of self-definition through separation and conflict is characteristically masculine rather than feminine” (“Gender, Genre and History” 270). These two texts suggest that early modern women equally laid claim to the right to sequester themselves through typological strategies as a means of claiming an identity, a means to establishing ownership of a public voice and individual significance, enabling them to reshape the “linguistic restraint[s]” of their culture into a liberating language of independence. Whereas Trapnel and Rowlandson were able to engage public issues in print while maintaining and even, in Trapnel’s case, solidifying ties to their communities, Parr and Wentworth found themselves in overt and public disagreement with the faith communities in which they once had played a significant role. However, while those disputes threatened the public reputation of the two women, the immediate conflict remained between them and the local churches who claimed the right to censure them. In the next and final chapter, I will look at women whose words and actions brought them into direct conflict with legal authorities who had the power to deprive them not only of reputation or membership in a religious group, but also of the right to a legal position in society, and, ultimately, of life itself.
162 Chapter Four: Legal Dramas and the Typological Language of Defense For if it be perswaded the understanding of Gods law to be at larg in women and children, whereby they may have the rule of that, and Gods law must be the rule of all, is not hereby the rule of al brought into there hands? Bishop Stephen Gardiner, 1547 It may be thought strange, and unbeseeming our sex to show ourselves by way of petition to this honourable assembly: but the matter being rightly considered, of the right and interest we have in the common and public cause of the church, it will, as we conceive (under correction) be found a duty commanded and required. A true copy of the petition of the gentlewomen and tradesmen’s wives, 1641 Introduction I began this project in the domestic space where early modern women were most typically sheltered, secluded, and empowered, and where their writing, as long as it retained a justifiable connection to that domain, was likely to be the least contested. From there I moved on to explore the more contested spaces (for women) beyond the home, with their often wider audiences of print, showing how the rhetorical strategy of typology enable women to make their voices clearly and effectively heard, although they might not always be welcomed, in the public square. In this final chapter, I complete the progression by looking at women’s speech in one of the most public, contested, and potentially dangerous spaces of all. Here I will examine texts that represent women speaking from the position of the accused, both during and after a formal examination or courtroom procedure, and answering to charges, formal or informal, which foreground their religious and political beliefs and practices. While newer work has focused on the scaffold specifically as a site of legitimized speech for women, 196 and while a few individual 196 See, for example, John R. Knott, Discourses of Martyrdom (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1993), and Frances E. Dolan, “Gentlemen, I have One Thing More to Say’: Women on Scaffolds in England, 1563-1680,” Modern Philology 92 (1994): 157-78. In addition to this more specific focus on women’s scaffold speech, other studies have focused on women’s experience and speech within the legal system beyond the common criminal courts. Garthine Walker has challenged methodological assumptions in studies considering the role of gender in criminal activity in early modern England. See “Women, theft and the world of stolen goods,” Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England , ed. Jennifer Kermode and Garthine Walker (London: Routledge, 1994) 81- 105. In her more recent Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge U.P., 2003), Walker considers both women and men, but focuses more specifically on violent crimes committed by inhabitants of a specific region. Work on women and property law has shown how women successfully negotiated their legal way
163 women have received localized attention within this particular framework, critics have yet to explore fully the range of responses from women who have been accused and tried for religio- political reasons within the more formal legal structures of early modern culture, especially in terms of their use of typology as a strategy which functions as both a defense and an offence. Through their use of typological rhetoric, the women I discuss were able to reconfigure the oppressive space of examination not only to declare their own innocence with boldness, but also to situate themselves in a position of rhetorical authority over their examiners. Typology provided the means for the accused to become the accuser, and the examined to become the examiner. I begin by discussing several male-authored texts that represent women accused, prosecuted, and sentenced: Joan of Arc in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI ; Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, in 2 Henry VI ; and Esther Rodgers, in John Rogers’ Declaration and Confession of Esther Rodgers . In these dramas of female guilt, women are typically stripped of any significant power of speech, driven to confessions that are clearly a capitulation to the charges against them, or brought out of social and verbal silence to articulate a penitence safely positioned within the accepted spiritual discourse of the community. In the process, women are represented as responding in fruitless and ineffective verbal rebellion that only damns them as guilty of all charges, or submitting to the stereotypical sackcloth repentance, which often leads to their transformation into living (or dying) moral parables, sanitized of any individuality or distinctive voice. As a contrast to such texts, I consider texts representing women actively arguing in their own defense with clarity of language and, even through the filter of male editors, remaining in control of their own public self-representation. Here my choice of texts is deliberately broad in terms of time, location, and confessional identity in order to emphasize again at the end of this study, as I do in the initial chapter, that the appropriation of this rhetorical strategy of typology was not only widespread among women, but was also not confined to a particular genre or specific type of religious discourse, nor was it the exclusive practice of any one particular confessional community. I begin in 1546, near the end of the reign of Henry VIII, with Anne around coverture and other restrictions on female property ownership. See Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993); the collection Women, Property and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England , ed. Nancy E. Wright, Margaret W. Ferguson, and A. R. Buck (Toronto: U. of Toronto P., 2004); and Tim Stretton on women’s litigation in the Court of Requests in Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2005).
164 Askew: gentry wife, mother of two children, member of the Reformist circle around Katharine Parr, and martyr to the cause of the Protestant theology of the Eucharist. I examine her account of her examination in the context of the audience she invokes, especially as her narrative is, I believe, shaped by her understanding of her role as a model for a specific religious community, an aspect which feminist critics have not addressed at any length in their analyses of her text. The adeptness with which Askew mobilizes typology to her rhetorical advantage, refusing to be manipulated into a hopeless parrying of the accusations of her enemies on their terms, sets an early pattern for the rhetorical behavior later echoed by women in like circumstances. After establishing the skill of some of the typological strategies that characterize Askew’s self-representation in the exchanges she recounts, I discuss two other texts which emerge in the context of legal proceedings. One is the 1637 colonial account of the examination of Anne Hutchinson, who was actively involved in debating contested doctrinal issues of the time, tried for seditious behavior, and subsequently exiled from the New England Puritan community, much as the “undesirables” were ejected from the world of the 17 th -century court masque. In discussing Hutchinson, whose rhetorical maneuverings in the courtroom echo Askew’s strategies, I examine the ways in which Hutchinson appropriates scriptural types both to position herself as the judge, rather than the judged, in the courtroom, and to critique the political policies that she believed were contrary to the calling of the colonial community. The third text on which I focus differs from the accounts of Askew and Hutchinson, which are both mediated by males acting as editors or transcribers. In Malice Defeated (1680), a self-published text, the Catholic midwife Elizabeth Cellier presents her self-vindication immediately following her trial for high treason, of which she was acquitted. As my analysis will show, Cellier’s unique strategy subtly and effectively fuses together typologies drawn from both the Bible and national myth in order to position her as innocent and loyal to the crown, while at the same time typological rhetoric becomes a vehicle for her critique of the treatment meted out to her by the government. The Maid, the Matron, and the Penitent: Women and the law in male-authored texts In the first antimasque of Thomas Carew’s Coelum Britannicum , performed before Charles I and Henrietta Maria in 1634, Momus, the representative of disorder, points out that women have an asset that allows them to circumvent “the letter of the law” (291). Commenting
165 on the requirements for inhabiting the “heavenly mansions” (286) he has just purged of “loathsome monsters and misshapen forms” (265), Momus declares that those dwellings may be occupied only by virtuous women. However, he adds, if a woman is “not completely stocked” with virtue, she may still be able to enter the heavenly sphere if “she carry a sufficient pawn of handsomeness” (289). This quality, Momus promises, will surely purchase her an exemption from Jupiter, the highest authority, who, “however the letter of the law runs . . . will never refuse to stamp beauty, and make it current with his own impression” (291-93). This intersection of sexual attraction and legal leniency highlights women’s always vulnerable position in situations where they are subject to prosecution under the laws of the land. Momus’ words point at some of the common gender stereotypes that, as we will see, also shape the roles in which women are cast as they encounter the authority of the law in these male-authored texts. In Shakespeare’s English history plays, most of the female characters we encounter are, with the notable exceptions of Margaret and Joan of Arc, “politically invisible” (Montrose 188). In forwarding the project of building or reinforcing an English national identity, Shakespeare participates in the history-making activity that was, in early modern culture, a distinctly “masculine tradition.” In terms of male identity in early modern culture, the history plays provided a dramatic reinforcement of the ideals of English male heroism. In his argument that gentlemen’s attendance at plays should be seen as a “rare exercise of vertue” rather than immoral behavior to be censured severely, Thomas Nash, a contemporary of Shakespeare, offers as his primary reason their educational and edifying effect. Such an effect derives from the source of the plays, he claims, “for the subject of them (for the most part)…is borrowed out of our English Chronicles.” Thus, as the audience watches these plays, they see “our forefathers valiant acts, . . . long buried in rustie brasse, and worme-eaten bookes, . . . revived, and they themselves raised from the Grave of Oblivion, and brought to pleade their aged Honours in open presence.” Rather than being merely entertainment, Nash claims, stage works that are rooted in England’s history can provide an admonitory function, acting as a “[sharp] reproofe to these degenerate effeminate dayes of ours” (F3). Among the plays to which Nash was referring here are those Shakespeare wrote based on the chronicle histories of the reign of Henry VI. In fact, Nash goes on to offer
166 Talbot, who has a key thematic role in 1 Henry VI , as a specific example of heroic virtue. 197 Not surprisingly, then, when they do have roles in the English history plays, women are often represented as “anti-historians,” as “opponents and subverters of the historical and historiographic enterprise,” “inevitably alien” to the male-centered narratives of monarchy and political power (Rackin 329, 343). In addition, Shakespeare seems to have no compunction about manipulating the historical record, as he does with regard to Margaret and Eleanor of Gloucester, simply for the purpose, it seems, of reinforcing traditional stereotypes of women. In particular, two of the roles the dramatist created for women in the Henry VI trilogy emphasize the transgressive behavior of women who are then tried by a court and sentenced for their alleged crimes: Joan of Arc and Eleanor, the Duchess of Gloucester. Shakespeare’s representation of Joan of Arc is a pastiche of contrary stereotypes. In the list of Dramatis Personae of 1 Henry VI , she is introduced as “Joan La Pucelle”—Joan the Maiden or Joan the Virgin—a name by which the historical Joan chose to be known, in order to make public her vow of celibacy. In the play, she is first introduced to the Dauphin as “a holy maid” who has received “a vision . . . from heaven” and who has “the spirit of deep prophecy” (1.2.51-52, 55). Yet Joan herself introduces a note of sexual ambiguity almost at once when she offers to serve Charles as his “warlike mate” (1.2.92). Taking up Joan’s challenge to try her “by combat” (89), the Dauphin makes a more explicit sexual reference, declaring that “in single combat thou shalt buckle with me” (95). Throughout the play, the male characters “define her as a woman to be sexually encountered” (Gutierrez 191). As Talbot’s initial assessment shows, even her name can be played upon to refashion her identity: “Pucelle [maiden] or pussel [strumpet]” (1.4.107). Another duality which Joan embodies in Shakespeare’s representation of her concerns the source of her powers. While the messenger announces to Talbot that the French are being aided by “a holy prophetess new risen up,” Talbot assigns her power to a different source, declaring in his first meeting with her, “Thou art a witch” (1.4.102; 1.5.6). As Frederick S. Boas concludes, “no consistent image is presented” (39). While Boas, writing in the early
197 Nash continues: “How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least, (at severall times) who in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding” (F3).
167 1950s, sees that inconsistency as evidence of more than one writer’s hand in the text, recent critics read the “unsocializable collection of opposites” (Schwarz 143) both as a reflection of the political situation and as a conflict between Joan’s desired self-representation and the identities imposed on her by others in the play. Thus, Nancy A. Gutierrez sees Joan as “a battleground on which the French and the English enact their power struggles” (184). In a similar reading, Lisa Dickson places emphasis on the loss of Henry V, with which the drama opens. The death of this heroic king figure “precipitates a collapse of categories of difference upon which national identity and epistemology are grounded”; the attempt to restore stability is reflected in the shifting identity of Joan, who becomes “an overdetermined site of contestation” (148, 147). In her role as warrior, Kathryn Schwarz points out, Joan figures as the “outsider” who “disrupts the rhetoric that connects men to men,” and against whom “the male heroic subject” is (re)constructed (147, 146). Among the more familiar and recurring binaries of maiden/whore and saint/witch associated with Joan, another more singular construction appears, voiced by the Dauphin when she bests him in a sword fight during their initial meeting. Overwhelmed by Joan’s superior skill with the sword, the Dauphin cries, “Stay, stay thy hands! thou art an Amazon / And fightest with the sword of Deborah” (1.2.104-05). This curious juxtaposition of characterizations has not drawn much comment. In a passing reference to the Dauphin’s characterization of Joan, Schwarz notes that the usually metaphorical reference to Deborah’s sword becomes quite literal in this context (140). However, while Amazons were believed to be warlike women who did wield swords, the biblical Deborah did not, although she reluctantly accompanied the Israelite army when they went into battle against Sisera. 198 Originally referenced in classical Greek literature as a race of women who lived somewhere at the edge of the known world, Amazons reputedly cut off their right breasts so that they could use their weapons more effectively, and associated with men strictly for the purpose of procreation. In contrast, Deborah is described in the book of Judges as a prophetess, a judge, and a married woman; her power is not rooted in physical strength or military prowess, but rather in her role as one appointed by God to communicate
198 According to the biblical story, Deborah goes with Barak into battle only because he refuses to encounter Sisera’s army (and nine hundred iron chariots) without her. In fact, as a reproof for his insistence, Deborah promises him that the honor for Sisera’s eventual defeat will go to a woman rather than to him, as the commander of the Israelite army. Later in the story, Deborah must push Barak to attack, as he hangs back (Judges 4.8-10, 14).
168 divine messages to the nation of Israel and to judge its people wisely. 199 The marginal gloss in the Geneva Bible for Judges 4.4 emphasizes this source of authority by explaining that Deborah judged “by [the] Spirit of prophecie, resolving of controversies, & declaring [the] wil of God” (facsimile of 1560 ed.). However, in Charles’ description of Joan’s power, the figure of the exotic Amazon warrior woman precedes and overshadows the figure of the biblical prophetess, thus undercutting Joan’s declaration only moments earlier of her sacred calling. For the rest of the drama, she will remain an object of fascination rather than a recognized agent of God’s power. Unlike Deborah, already established and accepted as God’s chosen leader and judge before the decisive event of Sisera’s defeat, Joan must continually win military victories to buttress her claim with the French to be the nation’s anointed savior, while at the same time those triumphs are read by the English as evidence of evil powers at work. This is particularly emphasized by Shakespeare’s inclusion of a scene which takes place during the final battle, and in which Joan is shown pleading with her “familiar spirits” (5.3.10) not to desert her (they do). With Joan the only “human” character on the stage, the scene functions in a pivotal role, positioned as it is just before the scene in which Joan is condemned to death. While characters have made allusions to or straightforwardly labeled her as a witch throughout the play, here the audience is presented with visual “evidence” of those accusations; the spectators are implicitly invited to observe, judge, and draw their own conclusion about the source of Joan’s power. Although they function to “bear witness to the act and…fulfill the ceremonial protocols of exorcism” (Dickson 151), the viewers are not so much there to determine “the truth” of Joan’s identity, but rather to ratify the assumptions the English have made about her from the beginning of the play. While the audience may believe themselves to be outside the action on stage, in the status of observers, this scene draws them within the boundaries of the play, making them party to the proof of Joan’s alliance with evil powers. When Joan returns to the stage a few moments
199 In this commentary on a pageant played before Queen Elizabeth, the observer-interpreter uses the Deborah typology to emphasize wise government and the maintenance of peace, not military triumphs: “Thys ground of this last Pageant was, that forsomuch as the next Pageant before had set before her Graces eyes the florishing and desolate states of a Commonweale, she might by this [pageant] be put in remembrance to consult for the worthy Government of her People; considering God oftimes sent women nobly to rule among men; as Debora, whych governed Israell in peas the space of xl years: and that it behoved both men and women so ruling to use advise of good counsell." From John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth , 1:54-5 (London, 1788); quoted in Michelle Karen Ephraim, “Jewish Matriarchs and the Staging of Elizabeth I in The History of Jacob and Esau , SEL 43 (2003): 32, 321.
169 later, now taken captive by the English, York calls her an “ugly witch” and an “enchantress” (5.3.34.42). Although York does not have access to the “evidence” just performed for the audience, dramatically the segue is so quick and seamless that his lack of actual proof to support his charges does not seem important. The trial scene is notable as much for what it omits as for what it shows. While Holinshed details Joan’s historic trial at length, Shakespeare chooses to elide completely the lengthy ecclesiastical trial she underwent, during which, according to first-hand accounts, she appeared contained and even “court smart” as she underwent the preliminary examinations, where she had no legal counsel. According to H. Ansgar Kelly, “Joan showed herself to be a better lawyer than all, or almost all, of her legally trained defenders subsequently” (1023). However, in 1 Henry VI Joan’s trial is a hastily conducted affair, held in a military camp in the aftermath of the battle and presided over by the English nobility. She herself is represented as an ungrateful daughter, a liar, a morally corrupt woman, and a coward in the face of death. While the sexually charged issue of Joan’s claim to pregnancy often becomes the focus of critical discussions of this scene, Shakespeare’s representation of Joan as a “heartless snob,” “without any hint from Holinshed” (Boas 38), forms a significant prelude to the more titillating subject of Joan’s sexual behavior. Joan’s behavior as a daughter provides an obvious foil to the younger Talbot’s courageous behavior as a son. Refusing to fly to safety, even though commanded by the elder Talbot, young John declares he will stay and fight beside his father, rather than “shame [his] mother’s womb” by behaving in a way that would suggest he is not truly his father’s offspring, but rather a cowardly “bastard” (4.5.35,15). In contrast, Joan disowns her father, calling him a “base ignoble wretch” and claiming he is “no father nor no friend of mine” (5.4.7.9). Even more reprehensibly, she denies the paternal relationship as a way of distancing herself from the humble origins she so straightforwardly owned to the Dauphin in her first appearance on stage: “I am by birth a shepherd’s daughter, / My wit untrained in any kind of art” (1.2.72). Now she claims she is “descended of a nobler blood,” and accuses the English of bribing the shepherd to claim her as his daughter “of purpose to obscure my noble birth” (5.4.8.22). Joan’s rude treatment of her father and her denial of his paternity contravenes the most basic duty of children, as outlined in Thomas Becon’s New Catechism (1559); children are instructed not only to hold “a reverent opinion of [their parents], of their prudence and wisdom, [and] of their state and vocation,” but also to consider them placed in the parental role “not by
170 fortune and chance, but by the singular providence and good will of God” (Cressy and Ferrell 76). As the son persona in Becon’s Catechism goes on to elaborate, children should be quick to acknowledge in an outward, visible way their parents’ position as God’s representative, such as “to bow the knee unto them, [and] ask [their] blessing” (76). Very pointedly, Joan’s patient father offers her a chance to redeem herself by performing the prescribed daughterly ritual of respect, only to be spurned once again: “Kneel down and take my blessing, good my girl. / Wilt thou not stoop?” (5.4.26). Dickson argues persuasively that “the sorcery scene does not . . . culminate in the trial scene, nor does it influence the represented action of that scene, but actually permits from the point of view of the audience the displacement from witchcraft to whoredom that enables the English to burn Joan at the stake” (152). According to Dickson’s analysis, “the judges’ condemnation of Joan on the grounds of promiscuity is given dramatic support by the sorcery scene of which we, and not they, were witness” (152). 200 However, Dickson does not comment at length on the role that Joan’s encounter with her father plays in giving additional credence to both those charges. In fact, the first person in the trial scene to accuse Joan of wantonness is not the English, but her own parent. Stung by Joan’s rejection, the shepherd, in turn, denounces his daughter as a “cursèd drab” who deserves to “burn,” since “hanging is too good” (5.4.32-33). That condemnation is not as extravagant as it may seem. In Becon’s Catechism , the son persona voices a warning of “God’s anger and vengeance” upon those children who behave as Joan does: “Is not the commandment of God, that such children as are stubborn and disobedient to their parents should be stoned unto death?” (Cressy and Ferrell 78). In fact, Joan’s father reprimands her specifically for being “so obstacle,” or obstinate, his malapropism only accentuating his characterization of his daughter (5.4.17). Having been represented as such an ungrateful and cruel daughter, Joan’s continued insistence after her father’s departure that she is “not . . . begotten of a shepherd swain / But issued from the progeny of kings,” does little to recuperate her character at this point, nor does her claim to be “virtuous and holy, chosen from above” (37- 39). While Joan may plead the belly, claiming that her condition is “[warranted] by law” to win
200 While the trial scene can certainly be read from this angle, it is worth noting that when Joan arrives on stage at the beginning of the scene, York describes her as “that sorceress condemned to burn” (5.4.1), suggesting that her fate has already been decided, and that her declared pregnancy, in itself, does not cause her death in the play. Her treatment in this scene could almost be seen as a parody of Christ’s treatment by the Roman soldiers after he has been sentenced to crucifixion, an attempt to heighten (perceived) shame and reinforce powerlessness, rather than to provide justification for an execution.
171 her at least a temporary reprieve from the stake (5.4.61), an early modern audience would be quite aware that only moments before, Joan has shown so little regard for God’s law governing the parent-child relationship that her own father, who arrived on stage torn by grief over his daughter’s “timeless cruel death” and ready to “die with [her],” has left the scene proclaiming the justice of her sentence, dismissing her as not even worth his presence to witness her death (5.4.5- 6). While this last representation does indeed “[show] Joan finally and irrevocably as the male characters and the audience have fashioned her” (Gutierrez 192), the scene with her father also grounds that fashioning in a moral lesson that goes beyond the political need to dismantle the enemy and restore the English heroic self. When Joan first denies any relationship to her father, York makes a key pronouncement: “This argues what her kind of life hath been, / Wicked and vile, and so her death concludes” (5.4.15-16). Although his patronizing conclusion can be read as evidence of English male self-righteousness and hypocrisy, he voices a common belief, one which we will see reiterated much more explicitly in the confession of Esther Rodgers: early, domestic sins provide a fertile breeding ground for later, more heinous sins. From this cultural perspective, Joan’s sins of witchery and wantonness are a natural consequence of her disrespectful and insulting treatment of her father; Joan’s failure to conduct herself as a daughter should, to accept God-ordained authority and her place in the social order, provides further justification for her fate. A similar transgression of cultural and religious boundaries frames the fate of Eleanor, the Duchess of Gloucester, in 2 Henry VI . While her name does not trigger recognition today as Joan of Arc’s still does, the historic Eleanor Cobham not only appears in all the extant fifteenth- century chronicles, but also features as the subject of many popular ballads of the day (Levine 106). Her crime was a “national sensation”; she underwent both civil and ecclesiastical examinations, had to perform public penance, and spent the last eighteen years of her life in jail (107). As a result of Eleanor’s case, British law was changed so that female peers accused of treason or a felony would be tried, like their male counterparts, by the same peers of the realm, thus making women of the nobility eligible for the death sentence, which could not be imposed by ecclesiastical courts (107). While the earliest accounts of her alleged crime, written by Yorkist chroniclers, “[suppressed the] political motives altogether, . . . translating her political desires into a moral framework” (107), John Foxe defends Eleanor in Acts and Monuments ,
172 citing her condemnation as one example of “a tradition in which charges of witchcraft are exploited for political gain” (Levine 109). While Nina S. Levine provides strong support for her argument that the representation of Eleanor seems to follow Foxe closely, giving more weight to the political situation as a whole, Shakespeare’s construction of the duchess also participates in the same kinds of gender and class stereotypes that we can see in Joan of Arc in 1 Henry VI . In Eleanor’s first appearance, she is urging Gloucester to “Put forth thy hand, [and] reach at the glorious gold,” earning a scolding from her husband for giving place to “the canker of ambitious thoughts,” a cardinal sin in a woman (1.2.11, 18). Unlike Joan, whose concerns, even in the sorcery scene, seem to be for her country, Eleanor indeed appears a “presumptuous dame” in the self-interested dreams she entertains: “Me thought I sat in seat of majesty / . . . . / And on my head did set the diadem” (1.2.42, 36, 40). While Joan in her last scene claims a social identity far above her lower-class origins, the Duke chides Eleanor for her dissatisfaction with her current position, since she is already “second woman in the realm” (1.2.43). Unmoved by either her husband’s reproach or his affection, in her soliloquy at the end of the same scene Eleanor reveals the aggressiveness of her ambition with her declaration that if she “were . . . a man, a duke, and next of blood,” she would not hesitate to remove those between her and the throne and “smooth [her] way upon their headless necks” (1.2.63, 65). Granted, Shakespeare juxtaposes Eleanor’s ambition against York’s similar scheming in the previous scene, and Hum’s admission of his double agent status foregrounds the political plotting that abounds in the play. As Levine points out, Eleanor does appear to be as much the object of plots as she is herself a plotter (111-12). Yet, at the same time, her ambition is both demonized and trivialized. York has no need to ally with witches or consult spirits, as Eleanor does, to pursue his desires; as a male of the nobility, with political influence and arms at his command, he has access to significant resources that can be brought into play to “make [Henry] yield the crown,” when York judges the moment to be auspicious (1.1.258). Moreover, Shakespeare represents the relationship between Eleanor and Margaret as a petty jostling for prestige and position. As we see her from Margaret’s point of view, the Duchess appears interested in political position simply as a vehicle for self-display: “She bears a duke’s revenues on her back, / And in her heart she scorns our poverty. / . . . . / She vaunted . . . / The very train of her worst wearing gown / Was better worth than all my father’s lands” (1.3.82-83, 86-88). When
173 the two women inhabit the same physical space, they clash in a mean-spirited trading of insults. The queen drops her fan on the floor, using it as a pretext for pretending to mistake the Duchess for a servant and boxing her on the ear for her failure to retrieve the fan; the incensed Eleanor threatens violence: “Could I come near your beauty with my nails, / I’d set my ten commandments in your face” (1.3.133-34). This altercation has nothing to do with politics or the welfare of the nation, and everything to do with gender stereotypes. Williamson points out that Shakespeare had to rearrange history to bring the two women together, since the historical Eleanor Cobham had been disgraced before Margaret arrived in England (42). From this scene, the only direct exchange of words between them in the play, it would seem that the meeting arranged by the dramatist’s manipulation of time serves mainly to represent Eleanor, in contrast to the “good Duke Humphrey” of the play’s original title, as so consumed by personal vanity that she has no concern for anyone’s welfare beyond her own. When the Duchess is exposed as the “ringleader” of the alleged plot against the king’s life, her fall is swift and complete (2.1.169). Much as Joan’s father does with his daughter, the Duke promises to sever any connection with his wife, if the charges against her should prove true: “I banish her my bed and company, / And give her as a prey to law and shame, / that hath dishonored Gloucester’s honest name” (2.1.196-98). While the audience does not see Eleanor’s trial, her sentencing takes place in an official space, specified as the “hall of justice” in the stage directions. The imposed consequences for her alleged treason are not only heavy and permanent, but are also a means to expose her to public shame: “You, madam, . . . / Despoilèd of your honor in your life, / Shall after three days’ open penance done, / Live in your country here in banishment” (2.3.10-12). Once again, the structure of the drama juxtaposes the ambitions of York and the Duchess. At the end of the preceding scene, York accepts the fealty of Warwick and Salisbury, reminding them that “I am not your king / Till I be crowned and that my sword be stained / With heart-blood of the house of Lancaster” (2.2.65-67). The pairing of York and Eleanor at this particular point serves to remind the audience that although the Duchess imagines herself as creating her own “part in Fortune’s pageant” (1.2.67), she is, in fact, constricted to the role imposed on her by Winchester and Suffolk. While the Duchess is subjected to harsh punishment for her attempt to inquire into the future, condemned largely on the evidence of an ambiguously worded Latin text, York remains free to plot his political path without hindrance, planning to direct history with the point of his sword. Ironically, Eleanor is brought under the
174 rule of law primarily through the machinations of those who are themselves plotting and acting outside the law to unseat Gloucester and eventually take power from the king; due legal process becomes the tool of self-interest, and Henry’s judgment cannot but reinforce that contradiction. More compelling than Eleanor’s sentencing is the scene in which the Duke watches his wife undergo public humiliation as a prelude to her exile to the Isle of Mann. In a stark inversion of Margaret’s earlier representation of Eleanor parading in her finery before the court, the Duchess, stripped of that material badge of her position, now walks through the streets of London “barefoot, and a white sheet about her, with a wax candle in her hand, and verses written on her back and pinned on” (2.4.s.d.). Because of the way her identity has been constructed thus far in the play, the Duchess’s sentence, which in both history and Shakespeare’s play is punishment for treason and consorting with conjurors, seems to be, at least in part, a penalty for stereotypical female vanity and self-serving ambition. 201 Because she has courted the public gaze through her ostentation in dress and manner, she now suffers the penalty of being “made a wonder and a pointing-stock / To every idle rascal follower” (2.4.46-47). In addition, the “papers on [her] back” reinforce the consequence for such behavior (2.4.31). In the conjuring scene, Bolingbroke consults a paper on which Southwell has written in Latin both the Duchess’s questions and the spirit’s responses; that sheet then enters the public record as primary material proof that the Duchess has “practiced dangerously against . . . [the] state” (2.1.170). In the end, this text, which represents her desire to act with some agency of her own, not to be confined by the title of “woman,” is superseded and canceled by the text of the papers she wears, the “verses” reinforcing the authority of the state to impose an identity upon her and display her loss of power to the public gaze. However, while Joan and Eleanor experience the law as a force that removes women from positions of (potential) influence and robs their speech of any public power, at other times speech is represented as a desirable outcome of an encounter with the law, providing that such speech confirms and reinforces approved societal standards and behavior. Exchanging the Elizabethan stage for a “vital Puritan drama” in which “a Tragick Scene [is] strangely changed 201 Levine points out that the scene of the conjuring plays down Eleanor’s direct involvement by situating her above and apart from those in the garden who are calling forth the spirit, although Hall, in his chronicle, makes clear her role as a primary initiator of the plot and director for the action of the conjuring (112). For Levine, this displacement functions as one of several ways in which Eleanor’s role is decentered in order to underline that she was manipulated and “contained within the circle of conspiracy drawn by Gloucester’s enemies” (112). However, her passivity in this scene can also be read as a) indicative of her pride, suggesting that she holds herself aloof from mingling with those so much below her; or, conversely, b) indicative of her fear of direct involvement.
175 into a Theater of Mercy” (Williams, “‘Behold a Tragic Scene’” 828; Pillars of Salt 95), we turn to the Declaration and Confession of Esther Rodgers , a conversion-execution narrative centered on a young servant tried and hanged for infanticide in New England in 1701. A loosely-linked collection of accounts, the Declaration comprises both narratives apparently written from the perspective of local clergymen, along with narratives, in first and third person, purporting to be “wholly Dictated by [Rodger’s] own Mouth, though Written by another hand” (100). 202 The early part of the Declaration and Confession provides a relatively straightforward account, written from Rodgers’ point of view, of the specific behaviors and choices that culminated in Rodgers killing not only a first child, the result of her sexual liaison with a young Black servant in the same household, but a second child, also born in the settlement after Rodgers had returned, having been absent for a time, and had taken up employment with a different family. Following a confession of her sins, written in first person, the Declaration details the gradual “reformation” of spirit experienced by Rodgers during her time in prison, and elaborates at length on her speech and behavior leading up to the very moment of her execution. In this latter part of the Declaration , the point of view shifts more often between first person and third person, sometimes creating ambiguity as to the degree to which the recorder is expressing his or her own thoughts or simply rewriting Rodgers’ first person speech. Overall, the collected texts chronicle the transformation of an invisible, silent female servant into a public figure and voice performing penitence to an audience of thousands, her dying words and prayers sufficiently impressive to be recorded “in Short-hand by some there present” (106). The Declaration exhibits two significant factors that function in the representation of female speech in the context of colonial New England’s legal system. First, at many points throughout the Declaration , Rodgers’ words come prompted, annotated, and enclosed by male voices. Beginning in the preface, that theme surfaces when Samuel Belcher points out that Rodgers’ spiritual rescue owes much to “the Labours, Prayers and Endeavours of the Reverend Elders of the church of Ipswich” (95). As Daniel E. Williams points out, it was typical for condemned criminals who showed a desire to repent to be “told exactly how to participate in [the] drama of death,” and to be “coached far in advance” in that role by members of the clergy
202 In Coming Into Communion: Pastoral Dialogues in Colonial New England (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998), Laura Henigman notes that the piecemeal, relatively unshaped nature of the text suggests minimal editing of the original documents (45).
176 (“‘Behold a Tragic Scene’” 834). 203 Thus, throughout the various texts, references to male spiritual leaders recur regularly, cropping up both in the sections represented as transcriptions of Rodgers’ own spoken words, as well as in the sections most obviously authored by others. In fact, male figures and voices seem to congregate around Rodgers, literally and figuratively. The Declaration offers a quasi-interview with Rodgers by “the Reverend Mr. Wise” (102), and the execution address is delivered by yet another minister. Even as she walks to the execution site, several ministers offer their “Christian and Civil Attendance” on her “in her last Journey,” taking this final opportunity to give spiritual counsel, “[filling] up the time with such Divine Passages of discourse as might best suit her condition” (105). Of course, the most prominent male voice and presence in the text belongs to John Rogers, the compiler and editor of the Declaration , who functions as Rodgers’ primary spiritual advisor; Wise notes that in her account to him, Rodgers has confirmed that “the special instrumental cause of her Awakening and Comfort, was an ambassador of Jesus Christ [i.e., Rogers]” (104). Rogers’ presence is pervasive in the text, sometimes even breaking through to appropriate sections of the text represented as direct transcriptions of Rodgers’ own speech (see, for example, 100-101). In addition to the expected and obvious roles of the various elder-minister figures, the cumulative effect of the Declaration emphasizes the significance of the role the whole settlement plays in legitimating the speech of the penitent criminal. In Rodgers’ case, her social status as a teenaged female domestic would have marginalized her socially and educationally in the Puritan community. Only through the discovery of her crimes and her subsequent repentance did she achieve the status of notoriety that gave her story potential currency as an exemplum of a “Bloody Malefactor” who is transformed into a “Sprinkled, Cleansed, Comforted, . . . Candidate of Heaven” (95). In his contemporary preface to the account, Samuel Belcher gives credit for Rodgers’ metamorphosis to “the Labours, Prayers and Endeavours” not only of the “Reverend Elders of the Church of Ipswich,” but also to “ many other good Christians there ” (95; my emphasis). Once Rodgers’ reclamation has been identified as a public project, the whole community actively participates in specially designated days spent in fasting and prayer for her salvation. In fact, Rodgers’ speech becomes more frequent and more public as it is increasingly
203 Kristin Boudreau, commenting more broadly on criminal narratives in the eighteenth century, also notes: “it is clear from all accounts that the behavior of a dying sinner was staged, from the numerous conversations with ministers . . . to the walk to the gallows and dying words and conduct.” See her “Early American criminal narratives and the problem of public sentiments,” Early American Literature 32 (1997) 258.
177 embedded within the accepted spiritual discourse sanctioned by the larger community. While she responds only monosyllabically to initial attempts to tend to her spiritual condition, once she has been convicted and sentenced, Rodgers declares that she is “much more free and enlarged in discourse than before” (100). 204 Some of this communication takes place on an individual level, when, for example, she is questioned just before her execution by Wise and a “Gentlewoman that was her peculiar Visitant” (103). 205 Much more public are the two “Bills” she prepares to be read to the local congregation as her execution approaches. Each of the bills, the narrative emphasizes, represent Rodgers’ actual speech. The one she asks to have read to the Ipswich congregation on the “last Sabbath of her Life on Earth” has been “wholly Dictated by her own Mouth, though Written by another hand” (100); the second bill, intended to be read publicly on the day of her execution, is also “presented by one that took it from her own mouth” (102). Given that the two bills appear similar in wording and content, they function in the Declaration as public indicators of her more generic role as an exemplum to the community; through this “careful orchestration” of the process of penitence, the community itself could “regain its soundness in the conviction, reformation, and public execution of the criminal” (Boudreau 256). At the same time, Rodgers’ speech in the dictated bills, acknowledging her repentance in the acceptable vocabulary of faith, also serves to confirm the congregation’s successful reinterpellation of a wayward member who had rebelled against the prevailing moral standards. Predictably, Rodgers asks the congregation to pray that “her Mouth [be] Opened,” so that she can testify to God’s goodness and “warn them that are Beholders to take heed by her Example” (101). Continuing the emphasis in her earlier written confession on her neglect of simple spiritual and community duties like prayer and Sabbath observances, Rodgers’ “last Dying Words” are not warnings against sexual immorality or murder, but rather admonitions to the crowd against disobeying “Parents and Masters” and keeping “bad Company,” especially when such behaviors involve going out on “Sabbath Nights” (106). Her address to her audience makes the event participatory not only for those physically present at the event, who are moved to “Tears of affection, with greatest wonder and admiration” by Rodgers’ speech and behavior 204 Williams points out that confession typically marked a stage of “new articulateness” in condemned criminals (“‘Behold a Tragic Scene’” 839). 205 While Rodgers seems not to resist this close examination at all, at one point during the questioning, when Wise wants to “make a more exact scrutiny into the State of [her] Soul,” Rodgers does ask for “Privacy” (103). While that privacy may have been granted in the moment, the remainder of their exchange, ironically, appears as part of the published record of her story.
178 (108), but also for the readers of the printed text, which can repeatedly (re)present the scene and inculcate the lesson offered by this “model of penitence” (Williams, “Introduction” 6). In all three of these male-authored texts, the representations of women transgressing the law draw on and reinforce stereotypes of gender, and, in the case of Rodgers, repentance. All three of the texts also represent women as guilty and deserving of the punishment they receive. And to a large degree, the women are represented as offering little, if any, effective rhetorical resistance; they are, in a sense, imprisoned by the assumptions and expectations of their audience and their culture. In the texts I will discuss in the remainder of this chapter, women represent themselves otherwise: they enact for themselves typological identities of both innocence and authority; they construct their opposition, inside and outside the courtroom, as distinctly unflattering and morally compromised types; and through their subversive use of typology, they rhetorically reposition themselves within a typically repressive space, claiming the spiritual authority to speak to a broader public audience. Anne Askew: “Too wise for a woman” 206 In July of 1546, near the end of Henry VIII’s reign, Anne Askew, at the time a relatively unknown woman of twenty-five, was burned as a heretic at Smithfield, just outside of London, along with three male companions. An upper-class woman from a Lincolnshire gentry family, Askew had already stepped outside cultural and religious bounds by leaving her husband, Thomas Kyme, 207 and by reading aloud from the Bible in a Lincolnshire cathedral, a deliberately provocative and probably illegal act for a woman. 208 Before being sentenced to death for her
206 The Duke of Norfolk used these words to describe his daughter who, not yet twenty and tired of waiting for her father to speak on her behalf, had herself consulted lawyers and gone to Henry VIII to petition him for her jointure . Quoted in Barbara J. Harris, “The View from My Lady’s Chamber: New Perspectives on the Early Tudor Monarchy,” Special Issue: The Remapping of English Political History, 1500-1640, The Huntington Library Quarterly 60 (1997): 244. 207 According to a government document noting that Thomas Kyme and his wife had been summoned to appear before the Privy Council, she “refused him to be her hosbande—without any honeste allegacion.” The document is recorded in the Appendix to Narratives of the Days of the Reformation , Chiefly from the Manuscripts of John Foxe the Martyrologist , ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1859) 301. Qtd. in Elaine Beilin’s introduction to The Examinations of Anne Askew (Oxford and New York: Oxford U.P., 1996) xxiii. 208 According to the Act for the Advancement of True Religion, passed in 1543, while gentlewomen were allowed to read the Bible in English in private for their own edification, they were prohibited from reading the vernacular scripture aloud to anyone else. Beilin concludes it is “probable” that Askew made the journey to Lincoln, which she herself references (see Examinations 56), after the law was in effect (“Introduction” xxvi). As I noted
179 denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation, Askew had twice been subjected to intensive examination and eventually put to the rack in the Tower of London, the latter action outside the bounds of legal recourse in her case (Beilin, “Introduction” xxvii). The contemporary attention she drew from supporters and enemies, both while she was alive and after her death, centered on her role as a representative of the English Protestant movement during the unpredictable and unsettled religious climate of England in the 1540s. While the circumstances surrounding Askew’s sentencing and burning may not have been unique, they were certainly highly unusual, prompting Protestant leaders to appropriate her text, both to encourage similarly beleaguered Protestants and to memorialize her act of resistance. After her death, John Bale, a leading Protestant reformer, published, as separate texts, Askew’s accounts—or what Bale alleged were her accounts—of the two examinations. They appeared as The first examinacyon , in November of 1546, and The latter examinacyon , in January of 1547, both printed in the Duchy of Cleves on the Continent, since Askew had been burned for heresy and since Bale’s name appeared on the list of authors whose writings were banned in England (Beilin, “Introduction” xlv). To each of Askew’s first-person narratives, Bale added a preface and an “Elucidation.” The latter “overwhelming intertextual commentary” frames Askew’s words to serve Bale’s larger project of establishing the Protestant movement “as universal and coherent against an other, a disordered, corrupt and medieval ‘papist’ past” (Hemp 1028; Betteridge 269, 267). 209 After Edward VI succeeded his father, easing the restrictions on
earlier, such laws may or may not have been enforced with rigor or consistency, but they did reflect the perception that women should not be reading the Bible in public. 209 John Bale, a sixteenth-century antiquarian and radical Protestant reformer, was intent on creating a new narrative of the English church that could be appropriated for the cause of both British nationalism and Protestantism. In John Bale (New York: Twayne, 1996), his study of the English Reformer, Peter Happé notes that Bale was “concerned with the reinterpretation of history” (31). This impetus and the role which women play in Bale’s project can also be seen in his “Epistle Dedicatory” and “Conclusion” to the Princess Elizabeth’s translation of Marguerite of Navarre’s Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse , completed when Elizabeth was 11 and published in Germany three years later (1548) by Bale. According to Bale, Elizabeth’s text, her “godly fruit” (88), functions to expose the “barren doctrine and good works” (89) of those who follow the traditions of the Roman church. Askew’s name makes an appearance at a critical juncture in his “Conclusion.” Here Bale presents one of his characteristic catalogues of names, this time of illustrious women in British history. Such lists, points out Richard Bauckham, “function...as a rhetorical device to give [Bale’s] readers an impression of the historical sweep of his themes.” See Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth-century apocalypticism, millenarianism and the English Reformation: from John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman , Courtnenay Library of Reformation Classics, No. 8 (Oxford: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978) 61. Into this particular flow of history, Bale inserts Askew, not simply as an historic marker, but also as the progenitor of a new order of “noble women, not rising of flesh and blood as in the other [day],” but rather authenticated by “their godly doctrine and deeds of faith.” See John Bale, “Conclusion,” Elizabeth’s Glass , ed. Marc Shell (London and Lincoln, NB: U. of Nebraska P., 1993) 101-02.
180 the printing of Protestant texts, the two texts were published in one volume in England, sometime later in 1547. In 1563, Fox included both Examinations in the first English edition of Actes and Monuments , printing Askew’s narrative without Bale’s more obvious commentary, but with his own editorial shaping. 210 The combination of the historical circumstances and a highly publicized (and frequently published) first-person account has given Askew “an unusually resilient reputation in historical memory” (Linton 3), attested to by the numerous versions of her story that have appeared over the centuries since she was burned at the stake. While subsequent reinventions of Askew’s story have often unquestioningly appropriated many elements of the contemporary accounts, today, as Kimberly Anne Coles notes, “Askew’s very authorship of the Examinations is a thorny issue in Askew studies” (“Death of the Author” 52). Most critics point out the absence of any extant original autographs, preventing us from conclusively attributing authorship or determining the extent or kind of alterations Bale may have made to the original text(s) before publishing it (them). 211 Because we don’t have access to the source manuscripts, Thomas Freeman and Sarah Wall believe that we cannot claim the words to be definitively hers, nor can we read her narrative apart from the framing structure imposed by her two best known editors, Bale and Fox (1166-9). Coles argues that Askew’s “vernacular resembles [John] Frith’s writing alone,” and her prose does not reflect the “style or trope” of any of the reformist men she mentions in her account (527). This consistent similarity of style and vocabulary, according to Coles, “serves as the most persuasive evidence that these texts were written by one person who was not John Bale” (527, n. 32; my emphasis). Of course, even were 210 According to Thomas Freeman and Sarah Wall, the general trend in Askew criticism has been to focus on Bale’s shaping of the text, while minimizing or overlooking Foxe’s editorial hand. Foxe, they argue, is “her collaborator, her mediator, her shaper, just as much as the now critically despised Bale” (1168). 211 In “‘Ways of Lying’: Anne Askew and the Examinations ,” Gender and History 18 (2006), Megan L. Hickerson notes that, unlike “a number of her apparent associates” who “left paper trails much more substantial than hers,” Askew “exists only briefly in Henrician public records,” leaving little behind her “outside the published texts that may or may not have been written by her, or even anyone who knew her” (52). The appearance of The Examinations prompted strong reaction from at least one person involved. When the first text made an appearance in his diocese, Stephen Gardiner protested to the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, claiming in his letter that the account was “very pernicious, sedicious, and slanderous” (qtd. in Hemp 1028). According to Wall and Freeman, Gardiner’s complaint that Askew’s examinations have been “utterly misreported” was directed at Bale’s editorial contributions, not Askew’s account itself (1169). Some supporters of William Paget, who had also played a role but who had subsequently associated himself with the reformist circle, materially altered copies that came into their hands, before circulating the texts, to the extent of removing or gluing together pages which bore witness to Paget’s involvement (1028; see also Beilin, “Introduction” xxviii). No critic that I have read cites any contemporary reaction claiming that Bale might have manufactured the account, or that someone other than Askew wrote it. That is not, of course, definitive proof of anything, but does suggest that she seemed to be generally accepted at the time as the author, even by those who were directly involved in her case.
181 we able to authoritatively establish both the authorship and the integrity of the text Bale gives us, the Askew of The Examinations is still Askew as she wished to be seen by her readers, in a “textual performance” (Linton 6) staged particularly for the community of Protestant reformists with whom she identified. In spite of the problematic issues of authorship and editorial mediation, critics continue to read the account Bale offers us as a representation of an historical woman’s encounter with political and religious authorities, a representation characterized by a consistent speaking voice identified by Bale as Askew. Most critics focus on what they see as an individualized spirituality rooted in her gender, the strategy of silence or evasion Askew uses in response to her questioners to maintain this “interior site of faith” (Coles 524), and the appropriation of a female-authored text by a male editor in order to further his own project as a Protestant reformer. 212 In her recent article, Megan L. Hickerson aptly summarizes the general critical conclusion: “while her [Askew’s] strategy reveals an unaffiliated interiority, an unfettered relationship with scripture and an awareness of women’s debarment from male doctrinal discourse, his distorts her representation (or lack thereof) of her faith, in the process denying her right (and thus arguably a woman’s right) to own it” (51). Less attention has been directed towards placing Askew’s account of her experience within the tradition of Protestant martyr narratives, or situating her discourse in relation to the beliefs and practices of the “thriving evangelical network” of which she was a part (50). Ritchie Kendall, in Drama of Dissent , places Askew within the tradition of Lollard writings, which highlight similar kinds of examinations (123-26), and both John Knott and Diane Watt point out several features of Askew’s text that link it to previous martyr narratives. 213 More recently, Susannah Breitz Monta has argued that we must “[attend] to Askew’s own inscription of her text in a literary-historical narrative of martyrdom,” and that she “works to link female martyrdom to the right to speak authoritatively on religious matters” (140).
212 In addition to Coles, see also Beilin, “Introduction,” xxxiii; Matchinske, 44-48; and Betteridge, 265-84. In “Women and Religion in Early Modern England,” (Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds , ed. Sherrin Marshall [Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1989]) Diane Willen argues that “gender remained an inescapable, obtrusive reality for Askew’s interrogators, her defenders, and for Askew herself” (143). Betteridge, although he sees Bale as shaping Askew’s meanings to his own ends, cautions against the tendency to construct Askew as foregrounding her gender in a proto-feminist way (see, for instance, Beilin’s introduction to her edition of the Examinations , xxx), an interpretation which he argues does not take into account that Askew’s “radicalism and resistance to patriarchal oppression is based on an understanding of Christian authority that relies for its effectiveness on an explicit disavowal of autonomy and power” (282, n.19). 213 See note 222.
182 In the most extended analysis to date of the degree to which Askew’s account participates in the same strategies as similar contemporary texts, Hickerson argues that “when viewed through the lens of Askew’s known context, the Examinations becomes less a discrete record of female self- expression than an artifact of late-Henrician religious persecution, and its negotiation” (52). In examining Askew’s use of typology as a rhetorical strategy, I am offering a somewhat different perspective, one that focuses both on her use of a hermeneutic with a long history, dating back to the writers of the New Testament, and her adaptation of that theological tool to her own rhetorical purposes in the context of her particular circumstances. However, my previous examination in this project of other women’s texts that follow hers chronologically also suggests that her strategy, while it may be an example of “female self-expression,” is rather less discrete and singular than previous criticism has suggested. In the Examinations , Askew represents herself as an articulate and adept advocate for and interpreter of the Bible, a role that she consistently foregrounds in the text of The Examinations and an unconventional positioning for a woman in sixteenth-century society. 214 While they may draw differing conclusions about Askew’s strategies and their effect, most critics agree that her “familiarity with Scripture…afforded a rich resource in her self-defense” (Linton 11). 215 According to Coles, Askew’s “only tactic is to point to Scripture” (“Death of the Author” 529); she cites the Bible, but refuses to “elucidate” the text for her examiners in the way that Bale does for his readers. However, rather than simply standing outside the text, using it as an external reference point, Askew appropriates the voice of the text as her own. Identifying with Scripture was not a new strategy, but it was usually put forth as a devotional reading strategy intended to bring about spiritual change in the individual. Thomas Luxon points out that “English Protestants as early as Thomas Cranmer had encouraged pious readers to find themselves in the Scriptures , to be transformed by an experimental, rather than a merely notional, understanding of the Word.
214 The somewhat mixed metaphors Bale uses to describe Askew suggest the anomaly of this position. While he applauds her for showing the “stronge stomacke of a most Christian martyr” (Askew 107), in his construction of her Bale also emphasizes her youthful innocence; she is a “poore innocent lambe,” as well as being “verye yonge, dayntye, and tender” (24, 143, 7). 215 The critical disjunction continues here. For example, Hickerson claims that Askew’s “erudite and artful appeal to scripture” functions as a means “to affirm her faith to her reading audience,” and that “her most compelling agenda, which she shared with all her fellow reformers, was to promote biblical authority—and universal access to the English Bible—over the ‘traditions of men’” (57). Conversely, Coles argues that Askew finds authority in “the power to interpret Scripture for herself,” and uses that authority to “[assert] her right to own…a private faith,” rather than “to assert the tenets of the early Protestant community” (520).
183 Cranmer . . . asserted that the Bible reader who most profits is ‘he that is most turned into it, that is most . . . altered and transformed into that thing, which he readeth’” (18; my emphasis). Askew, however, practices this identification as one of her rhetorical strategies. When Dare queries her on her view of the practice of confession, Askew emphasizes to her audience that her words in response match the words of James, as recorded in the New Testament book that bears his name: “I answered him my meanynge , whych was as Saynte James sayth ” ( Examinations of Anne Askew 23; my emphasis). 216 Again, when her examiner suggests that she is impugning the integrity of the clergy, Askew writes that she answers him “by the saynge of Salomon” (33). Later, when she is questioned further by Bonner on her beliefs about transubstantiation, Askew claims to be appropriating the words of Paul: “Then layd it my Lorde unto me, that I had alleged a serten text of the scripture, I answered that I alleged non other but S. Paules owne saynge to the Athenianes, in the xvii. chaptre of the Apostles actes. That God dwelleth not in temples made with handes” (49; my emphasis). While her wording in the two former citations doesn’t establish clearly that Askew explicitly identified herself with the biblical writer in her verbal response to the examiners, as she does in the written text, in this latter instance she deliberately represents herself informing Bonner that her words are Paul’s “owne saynge.” Here, as elsewhere, she does refuse to add her own explication of the meaning of the Scriptures; as Coles emphasizes, Askew “sees no reason to do anything but to cite the text” (“Death of the Author” 529). However, I would argue that the way in which she cites the text goes beyond simply “pointing” at Scripture as her textual authority. In the instances I have just cited, she identifies the biblical speaker, rather than simply naming the book and chapter of her source. Knott points out that in Askew’s historical moment “the contest is between the authority of the established church insisted upon by the examiners and the authority of the Word proclaimed by the individual Christian who opposes them” (50). Askew does indeed claim the authority of the Word, but she represents that authority as more than the literal words on the page; she also chooses to emphasize the presence of the writer or speaker in the text who voices the words recorded in Scripture. Through this rhetorical move, Askew inserts biblical history into the present moment and inserts herself into that framework as a means of legitimating her own position and speech. Mouthing the biblical words as her own might seem a loss of agency, an inability to
216 Further references to the Beilin’s edition of the examinations will be indicated as Examinations ; page numbers refer to Bale’s edition of Askew’s text.
184 claim rhetorical space in which to speak her unique words, rather than depend on those already written in the Scriptures. However, in the context of confrontations with political and religious authorities, “the strategy of biblical quotation…was, by the sixteenth century, a well-tried means of trying to escape danger,” one used by men as well as women (Hickerson 57). Moreover, in addition to adopting an already approved strategy of defense, in claiming to speak in the voice of the biblical writers, Askew also performs a rhetorical move that positions her speech as both authorized and authorizing. She exercises agency in choosing the appropriate biblical words to which she will give voice, and in speaking the words to those representing the official church, in effect declares her independence, her right to determine for herself the meaning of Scripture, and her ability to draw from it conclusions about matters of theology and the practice of the Christian faith. In articulating the words of James or Solomon or Paul, her voice becomes a type of their voices, a voice taking on the authority of biblical history, re-authoring and reauthorizing the words in the currency of the rhetorical exchange of the present moment. 217 As her interrogators try to fix her position as the subject of an examination, Askew not only draws on straightforward identification with the words of scripture, but also exercises a more subtle typological strategy that enables her to resituate herself and to subvert her examiners’ attempts to control the examination. One of the ways in which Askew does this is by responding to the questions and accusations directed at her with counter-questions that reconfigure the terms of the rhetorical exchange. Only a few sentences into Askew’s account of the first examination, she counters the initial inquiry posed to her with a query of her own: “first Christofer dare 218 examyned me at Sadlers hall . . . and asked yf I ded not beleve that the sacrament hangynge over the aultre was the verye bodye of Christ reallye. Then I demaunded thys questyon of hym, wherfore S. Steven was stoned to deathe?” ( Examinations 19-20). While Askew’s response here illustrates her “much-noted evasive strategy under interrogation” (Hickerson 51), the short, seemingly random question shifts the exchange rather dramatically from a theological framework to a typological one, from a crux of doctrine to a biblical
217 Linton acknowledges this appropriation as well: “In citing Scripture, Askew…can be said to appropriate other voices.” However, Linton sees this not as a proactive strategy, but “only as a means of self-defense” (7). 218 Dare was one of the twelve men who formed the “quest” or jury that initially examined Askew, a process instituted by a 1544 statute and required before a person could be charged with heresy (Beilin, “Introduction” xxvi).
185 narrative. 219 That rhetorical repositioning announces to her examiner that Askew knows the stakes of the rhetorical contest, that she disputes the morality of the procedure she is undergoing, and that she considers herself not as an isolated individual, but as a part of a larger, persecuted community. By even voicing the question Askew challenges authority; more importantly, she makes clear to Dare that she refuses to allow him to cast her in a role of his choosing, that she will define the part she will play in their encounter and the narrative that will structure the meaning of their exchange. Askew’s invoking of the biblical story of Steven is hardly haphazard, since tradition had for centuries celebrated him as the first martyr of the Christian church. Furthermore, he was, according to the book of Acts, one of the most dynamic leaders in the fledgling Jerusalem church and particularly skilled in “disputynge” (Acts 6.9, Great Bible). Unable to defeat him in debate, certain of the Jewish leaders arranged to have Stephen accused by “false witnesse” (Acts 7.13), who told the Jewish authorities that he had spoken “blasphemous wordes against Moses, and agaynst God” (Acts 6.11). 220 Through the question she poses to her examiner, Askew reconfigures the situation to represent herself as a type of Stephen, and to place Dare in the position of the Jewish religious authorities who caused Stephen’s death. In doing so, she chooses her own position, not as a potential heretic, but as a member of the “true Church,” however
219 Linton also points to Askew’s use of the Stephen story as an “[attempt] to reframe Dare’s questions to her advantage through a combination of verbal strategies” (9). While she notes Askew’s “use of scriptural authority” as her “chief” verbal strategy, Linton addresses the reference to Stephen mainly as a means of “[deflecting] the opening question” (9), and does not carry her analysis on this point any further. Hickerson points out that “the discretion exercised by Askew when faced with persecution was far from unique to her, nor was it a symptom of her gender” (61), citing an excerpt from Foxe’s account in the Acts and Monuments of the examination of John Fortune, a Marian martyr. Responding to a question on “how [he] beleved in the Catholicke faith,” Fortune asks “which faith [the examiner] ment: whether the faith that Stephen had, or the faith of them that put Stephen to death” (61). Here, Hickerson notes, Fortune “[shares] not just Askew’s tools but also her analogy” (61). However, the accounts also differ in a couple significant respects. Fortune’s question citing Stephen precedes the examiner’s specific reference to the sacrament, and the question itself is much less open-ended than Askew’s, prompting a sharp retort from the examiner (“what a naughty fellow is this?”), in contrast to Dare’s almost uneasy “I cannot tell” in response to Askew’s “why” question. Furthermore, while Fortune recounts that he “ asked [Parker] which fayth he ment,” Askew tells her audience that she “ demaunded this question of [Dare]” (qtd. in Hickerson 61; Examinations 20). 220 Hickerson states that Stephen was stoned “for insisting that God is not to be found in temples made with human hands” (59). While this claim was certainly part of Stephen’s address to the authorities and the larger audience, his condemnation of the crowd as “ye stiffenecked and of uncircumcised hertes and eares” seems to have been more disturbing to his hearers (Acts 7.51, Great Bible). However, it is Stephen’s claim that he “[saw] the heavens open, and the sonne of man standyng on the right hand of God” which causes the people to “[run] upon him all at once, and cast hym out of the cytie” (Acts 7.56-57). While I would agree that Askew’s reference to Stephen “suggests rather than obscures her position on the nature of the sacrament” (59), there seems to be no rationale in the context of the passage for identifying the statement Hickerson isolates as the primary cause of his death by stoning.
186 threatened and marginalized the Reformist movement in England might be at the moment. 221 Casting herself as a latter-day Stephen from the outset of her narrative allows Askew to place herself within a well-established tradition of the unjustly persecuted who frequently invoked the New Testament figure as a prototype for their sufferings. 222 And in doing so, she places Dare on the defensive; his response that “he [can]not tell” the reason for Stephen’s stoning (Examinations 20), certainly an avoidance of an obvious answer on his part, suggests that Dare understands the implications behind Askew’s question but is unwilling to engage in a dialogue framed by her terms of reference. Given that this particular exchange opens the Examinations —in fact, the first words Askew speaks are those of the question to Dare—the reference to Stephen carries added weight. However, this is not the only time that Askew invokes Stephen’s story. Later, in recounting her initial encounter with Edmund Bonner, the Bishop of London, who infers that she holds a heretical view of the sacrament, Askew maintains that she “never sayde so” (47). But she does not end with that simple denial; rather, she deliberately inserts the Stephen story again, citing her exchange with Dare during her earlier examination by the quest. In response to the charge to “say,” Askew tells Bonner that she had refused to “answere . . . tyll soche tyme as they had assoyled me thys question of myne. Wherfor Steven was stoned to deathe.” Reporting to Bonner that the quest had “sayd, they knewe not,” Askew cites her own response: “Then sayd I agayne, no more wolde I tell them what it was” (48). Linton finds in the Latter Examination “a pattern of reiterative utterances,” including Askew’s “protests of innocence and her invocations of the
221 Hickerson also makes the point that Askew “implicitly identified her persecutors with the Pharisees who procured [Stephen’s] death” (59). However, she reads the Stephen reference primarily as one of the indications of Askew’s “fear of…violence and its inevitability,” which Hickerson sees as “[permeating]” the Examinations (59). Moreover, although her main argument focuses on situating Askew and The Examinations in relation to the English Protestant community and its representatives, Hickerson surprisingly does not make any reference to Stephen’s own association with a young, marginalized Christian community in Jerusalem. Monta gives a more positive reading to Askew’s references to Stephen, reading in them Askew’s awareness of her own self-construction as a martyr. Linking her story to Stephen’s multiple times “[implies] that her construction of martyrdom and the biblical version reinforce each other” (141). 222 See John Knott’s Discourses of Martyrdom . Knott notes in a number of places the frequency with which Stephen was invoked as a “protomartyr” (28) and model, and also points out that Luke’s construction of Stephen’s trial in Acts parallels that of Jesus in Luke (12). While John Bale makes explicit comparisons between Askew’s sufferings and Christ’s, Askew herself does so only infrequently. However, if Stephen’s trial was considered as an echo or imitation of Christ’s, the connection would probably be implicit and recognized from the outset, when she poses the question. She does, however, at one point compare one of her examiners to Judas. Both Diane Watt (95-97) and John Knott (54) note that identification with Christ was a common feature in martyr accounts.
187 divine voice,” that “respond to changing occasions and audiences….[and] function as self- citations that enable Askew to appropriate versions of her past self in addressing new audiences” (24). Here, as well, much earlier in the Examinations , Askew engages in a version of self-citation that reinforces the typological identification through a layering of narrative: the New Testament narrative of Stephen; the narrative of Askew’s exchange with Dare, in which she casts herself as a type of Stephen; and the narrative of her encounter with Bonner, in which she both verbally recapitulates and reenacts the first two stories. Thus, with this brief reference, Askew reiterates not only the two earlier narratives to yet another audience (Bonner), but also her identification with Stephen and her challenge to her examiners. Askew’s even more subtle appropriation of a second biblical narrative underlines the efficient subversiveness of typology as a rhetorical strategy. In the Latter Examination , when Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor, questions her again on her view of the sacrament, Askew asks him “how longe he wolde halte on both sydes?” (97). When Wriothesley inquires as to her source, she refers him to 1 Kings 18.20, a common reference to wavering between two opinions (97, n. to line 263). 223 However, the citation provides more than a footnote to the source of the question itself, since it comes from the dramatic narrative of Elijah’s challenge to the 450 prophets of the god Baal, at the climax of which Elijah calls down fire from heaven. 224 That a woodcut accompanies the story in the Great Bible attests to its significance and familiarity. Thus, Wriothesley would have been well aware that the question Askew puts to him is the question Elijah the prophet puts to the fickle Israelites gathered to see the contest between God and Baal: “howe longe halte ye betwene two opynions?” This particular rhetorical framework not only places Askew in the authoritative role of teacher (she must “teach” the chancellor where to find the scriptural quotation), but also casts her in a prophetic role, while the chancellor is relegated to the role of an erring Israelite who cannot make up his mind whether he will serve the foreign 223 Askew cites the reference as “.iii. Regum .xviii” ( EAA 181). Coles notes Thomas Freeman’s conclusion that specific scriptural references in The Examinations , cited by Bale or by Askew, come from the Vulgate version of the Bible. Coles speculates that Bale “interpolated” such references, since she believes it unlikely that Askew could read Latin (“Death of the Author” 521). The form of the reference illustrates the practice of naming I and II Samuel as the first two books “of the kynges,” thus making I and II Kings the third and fourth book of the kings. That practice can be seen in Protestant versions as well, such as the fourteenth-century Wycliffe translation and the Great Bible (1540). The lesser known Coverdale Bible of 1535 uses I and II Samuel as the primary names, secondarily noting that they are also called the first and second books of the kings, and the Bishops’ Bible (1568) follows the same format in naming the books. Later in the century, however, the Geneva Bible (1587) simply names the books I and II Samuel. 224 For the complete story, see I Kings 18, 1ff.
188 Canaanite god or “ye Lorde God” of Israel. The question takes on even deeper significance read against Askew’s final “confession of faith.” The worship of Baal involved the worship of idols, a term which Askew specifically uses to condemn the mass (as opposed to the Eucharist), which she calls in her confession “the most abhomynable ydoll that is in the worlde” (144). The scriptural text goes on to say that “the people answered [Elijah] not a word.” In a similar fashion, Askew represents the rhetorical silencing of her examiner with the conclusive phrase, “then he went hys waye” (97). 225 Again, she represents this exchange as occurring at a key moment; immediately after Askew silences the Chancellor with her citation from 1 Kings, the Bishop declares she “shuld [i.e., will] be brente,” his statement suggesting he understands Askew’s typology and the condemnation of the authorities it implies (98). In fact, the role of Elijah is the last one in which Askew casts herself in the context of her direct discourse with her examiners. 226 In her confrontations with her examiners, Anne Askew’s rhetorical strategies go beyond defense and evasion. Rather than allowing herself to be contained within an identity the authorities wish to force her to own, Askew engages in a typological rhetoric that rewrites the rhetorical structures intended to imprison her, reversing the terms of the exchange to claim a position that subtly but certainly condemns those who would condemn her. Anne Hutchinson: Entertaining the saints The examination of Anne Hutchinson took place almost a century later, in 1637, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Massachusetts Bay colony where she was tried before the General Court at Newtown. Hutchinson was the daughter of Cambridge-educated Church of England minister, Francis Marbury, and grew up in a home where religious controversy shaped the family’s identity. Marbury, originally a deacon of Christ Church in Cambridge, was imprisoned for protesting the lack of education among members of the Church of England 225 The phrase “went hys way” also occurs multiple times in the Bible; however, it is used indiscriminately to refer to multiple characters, including both God and Satan. 226 She does make a subsequent reference to Psalms before the end of this examination, telling the Bishop that “God will laugh [his] threatninges to skorne” (182). However, she does not mention any biblical character, and it is not clear from the text whether the citation she gives from Psalms is included only for the reader’s benefit. At the end of her account of her racking in the Tower, Askew makes specific reference to Job, which Linton examines as an appropriation of a biblical voice through which Askew “confronts her suffering and defines her responsibility, through sacrifice, to the divine” (7; see also 19-21). However, the Job typology doesn’t form part of an actual exchange with authority.
189 clergy, primarily due to the number of appointments made as part of the unofficially sanctioned and widespread system of political patronage, and was subsequently “silenced” for a number of years before his preaching license was restored. 227 Hutchinson and her husband were influenced by the teaching of John Cotton, to the point that, seemingly at her urging, the family followed Cotton to Massachusetts in 1634, where he had emigrated a year earlier to escape the Laudian purges. Soon actively involved in the Boston church, Hutchinson, like others in the church, began holding regular meetings in her home, primarily for women, although some men attended. As these gatherings became increasingly popular, even among the social and political elite, the views Hutchinson expressed during these twice weekly “sermon discussions” came under increasing scrutiny, and she eventually became, in her opponents’ view, the primary catalyst in the Antinomian Controversy of 1636-37. According to Winthrop, Hutchinson proved to be, with Wheelright excepted, “the head of all this faction, (Dux femina facti) a woman [who] had been the breeder and nourisher of all these distempers” ( Short Story 31). The manner in which Hutchinson engages with her accusers in the courtroom parallels in several notable ways Anne Askew’s strategies a century earlier, a connection that is by no means coincidental. Patrick Collinson observes that from its beginnings, the initially fragmentary Protestant movement in England was held together by a shared “network” of texts, preachers, and doctrines (84). With the continuous exchange between the settlements in America and the “mother” country, this same kind of network seems quite likely to have maintained and nurtured connections between the colony in Massachusetts and Puritan communities in England. Certainly, it is highly likely that both Hutchinson and those in her community were familiar with Askew’s story, which, because of its inclusion in Acts and Monuments , would have been widely read. David Hall notes that the sixteenth-century martyrology was part of the shared “social memory” of the Puritans in New England, where, during the Antinomian crisis, Foxe was frequently cited by both factions in the theological conflict (Worlds of Wonder 98). Even during Hutchinson’s civic trial, the monumental text surfaces explicitly when Cotton recalls for the court how he “instanced to [the other ministers] the story of Thomas Bilney in the book of martyrs[,] how freely the spirit witnessed unto him without any respect unto a work” (Hall,
227 Hutchinson’s mother, Bridget Dryden Marbury, was Francis Marbury’s second wife. Her family, the same Dryden family that would later produce the poet John Dryden, provided some financial support to the Marburys during the years Hutchinson’s father was barred from holding a clerical charge.
190 Antinomian Controversy 334). 228 Perhaps not so surprisingly, then, as the examination begins, Hutchinson almost immediately employs Askew’s opening rhetorical strategy of answering a question with a question. After Winthrop’s initial lengthy statement of the accusations made against her, he asks Hutchinson to respond to the charges. To this invitation to admit her guilt, Hutchinson replies, “What have I said or done?” (312). Here Hutchinson does not pose the question simply as a blunt refusal to cooperate or a delaying tactic; rather, she uses the interrogative both to deny the implied charges and to communicate that she will not recognize the court’s charges as Winthrop has framed them. That she is engaged in reconfiguring the terms of the discourse is underscored by the exchange between her and the colony’s governor, John Winthrop: Mrs. H . What have I said or done? Gov. Why for your doings, this you did harbour and countenance those that are parties in this faction that you have heard of. (Mrs. H.) That’s [a] matter of conscience, Sir. Gov. Your conscience you must keep or it must be kept for you. Mrs. H. Must not I then entertain the saints because I must keep my conscience[?] (312-13)
228 I am using the anonymous account of Hutchinson’s trial appended to Thomas Hutchinson’s History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay (1767), as it appears in David Hall’s The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History , second ed. (Durham and London: Duke U.P., 1990), as my primary source, and drawing on Winthrop’s Short Story primarily for the purpose of highlighting some significant differences that bear on my argument. (All page numbers for Hutchinson’s examination refer to Hall’s edition, unless otherwise indicated.) While the anonymous account lacks a provenance and history beyond Thomas Hutchinson’s general description of his source as an “ancient manuscript” (Hall, Antinomian Controversy 311), the latter text poses different but equally knotty problems as a source for examining Anne Hutchinson’s rhetorical strategies. Winthrop published A Short Story of the Rise, reign, and ruin of the Antinomians, Familists & Libertines, that infected the Churches of New England in 1644, some seven years after Hutchinson’s trial, claiming that he had been “slow” to put his account into print, having been “loath” to publicize “the names of some parties, that acted in our troubles, that have, since that time, (I hope) repented” (A2). The wording of his narrative suggests that it was written close to the time of the events; however, since he seems to have acted as his own editor, we do not know the timeline for the writing of the original account, or the degree to which he may have edited it before publishing. Michael G. Ditmore notes that the Winthrop text includes “unique biblical allusions not found in the Thomas Hutchinson transcript,” and that, as a result, the two accounts “do not easily harmonize.” See “A Prophetess in Her Own Country: An Exegesis of Anne Hutchinson’s ‘Immediate Revelation,’” The William and Mary Quarterly , 3 rd series 57 (2000) 355, n. 14. Since Hutchinson functions as such a rhetorical locus of attention in Short Story , it is possible that Winthrop may have inserted excerpts from no longer extant writing by others involved in the controversy. As a record of the orthodox opposition’s construction of Hutchinson, Short Story is an invaluable source. However, while it is also a mediated account of her self-representation, the anonymous text provides a more complete and seemingly less editorialized record of Hutchinson’s examination.
191 In a recent article, Cheryl C. Smith reads Hutchinson’s short interrogatives as a negative, disempowering representation in which she is “shown to speak almost entirely in one-line retorts, mostly trying to figure out what she is being charged with” (440; my emphasis). However, her rewording of Winthrop’s accusation shows that, like Askew, Hutchinson strategizes through her questions, structuring an alternative linguistic framework for the examination. 229 By this time, with many of her party already punished and John Wheelright, her brother-in-law, and William Aspinwall banished, Hutchinson would have been well aware of the gravity of her position, and not likely to have viewed the examination “as an opportunity to explain her perspective and assume the role of teacher,” as Cheryl Smith suggests (441). As further evidence, Winthrop’s use of words like “harbour,” “countenance,” and “faction” would surely have signaled to Hutchinson his intent to prove her a danger to the state. Moreover, if, as Sandra VanBurkleo suggests, the examination was a familiar procedure imported from the English system of law, Hutchinson would have realized that “the purpose of the examination was to expose a [person] assumed to be guilty,” making it unlikely that she would escape serious censure. 230 Thus, by initially claiming any involvement as a “matter of conscience,” Hutchinson removes it from the legal realm of hard proof to the interior space of personal spirituality.231 Moreover, in her next question Hutchinson rhetorically reconfigures the accusation of “[troubling] the peace of the commonwealth and the churches” (312) to pose the issue within the framework of injunctions to Christian virtue, as an issue of hospitality within the community of faith rather than as a threat to the Puritan state. This question, the last in the exchange cited above, establishes another significant parallel to Askew: here, only moments into the examination, the anonymous recorder represents Hutchinson employing a typological strategy as subtle and subversive as Askew’s opening question to Dare. When Hutchinson asks if she “must not…entertain the saints,” she invokes a phrase that would have had clear associations for her audience. First, the biblical injunctions to exercise hospitality would have been familiar to her Puritan listeners from both Scripture and 229 In fact, Hutchinson’s questions in the initial counterpoint between her and Winthrop do not stop here. Of the next ten consecutive exchanges between the two, in seven, Hutchinson “answers” him in the interrogative. 230 Donald Veall, The Popular Movement for Law Reform, 1640-1660 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 17-18. Quoted in VanBurkleo 8. 231 Additionally, “expressions of opinion at women’s meetings, or private conversations with friends, were not unlawful” (VanBurkleo 9). In Anne Hutchinson, Guilty or Not?: A Closer Look at her Trials (New York and Frankfurt: Lang, 1994), Jean Cameron also notes that private conversations could not be used to prove sedition, and precluded the necessary witnesses (149, 158).
192 secondary commentaries. The closest biblical parallel in wording to Hutchinson’s question comes from the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews: “Be not forgetfull to intertaine strangers: for thereby some have received Angels into their houses unwares” (13.2 Geneva 232 ). Other similar exhortations are found in Romans 12.13 and 1 Peter 4.9. 233 While “strangers” are not necessarily synonymous with “saints,” the context of these latter two passages makes it clear saints should be among the strangers that one “entertained.” In addition, Christian tradition affirmed hospitality to the saints in particular as mandated by New Testament teaching. In the fourth century, Augustine, preaching on the story of Mary and Martha from the Gospels, specifically references the Hebrews passage in conjunction with his admonition to serve the saints: “Good are ministrations done to the poor, and especially the due services and the religious offices done to the saints of God . . . . Good are they, we exhort you to them, yea by the word of the Lord we build you up, ‘be not slow to entertain’ the saints . Sometimes, they who were not aware of it, by entertaining those whom they knew not, have entertained angels” (“Sermon 53”; my emphasis). In a more contemporary admonition, William Jones, in his commentary on Hebrews (1635/36), urges that hospitality be practiced frequently: “Wee must make a dayly use and occupation of it” (598). In fact, we have a responsibility, he says, “not [to] tarry till strangers offer themselves: we must pull them in” (598). 234 Thus, even at this level of
232 Amy Schrager Lang’s research suggests that most of the Antinomians preferred the Geneva Bible to the Authorized Version (37). In this case, both the AV and the Geneva use the word “entertain” in the Hebrews passage, with the AV actually repeating the verb in the second phrase. The 1560 edition of the Geneva uses “lodge,” but in the 1587 edition, the verb is “intertaine.” From his research, Ditmore believes that Hutchinson used several versions: a Geneva Bible “stemming from the original 1560 edition”; a Geneva New Testament that had adopted the newer notes and commentary by Laurence Tomson; and probably an Authorized Version (n. 19, 359). All further references in my discussion of Hutchinson are from the Geneva Bible of 1587, unless otherwise noted. 233 According to Romans 12.13, Christians should be “distributing unto the necessities of the Saintes: giving your selves to hospitalitie.” In 1 Peter 4.9, the exhortation is to “be ye harberous one to another, without grudging.” All three texts cross reference each other in the Geneva. 234 I have quoted from Augustine simply as one example of the long-established understanding of the Christian’s duty to be hospitable, particularly to those of the faith, as well as to all other “strangers.” It is worth noting, however, that Augustine would certainly have been a familiar authority at the time. A basic search of the Early English Books Online database for the years from 1591 (Hutchinson’s birth) through 1634 (when she left England) returned 12,622 hits in 904 records; several new English translations of Augustine’s major works appeared in print early in the seventeenth century. While the Hebrews commentary was published in London only 1-2 years before Hutchinson was tried, the author has potential links to Winthrop, making it possible that the text itself might have been known in New England. According to Frances Bremer’s research, Jones was one of the ministers on the lengthy list that Adam Winthrop, John Winthrop’s father, kept of all the ministers he had heard preach. See “The Heritage of John Winthrop,” The New England Quarterly 70 (1997): 515-47. William Prynne, in Canterburies doom , accuses Samuel Baker, chaplain to the bishop of London, of expurgating all the passages in Jones’ text that had to do with “Altars, Images, Masse, Transubstantiation, Popery, Papists, and…the sanctification of the Lord's
193 general Christian behavior, the significance of Hutchinson’s question would be clear to her audience, who would be well-schooled in such directives from Scripture, as well as from secondary sources. Winthrop himself would likely have been quite aware that, with her reference to “entertaining the saints,” Hutchinson intended to reframe her actions as within the domain of private Christian duty and calling, not as a behavior for which she can be called to account by state authority. 235 More importantly, while “entertaining the saints” has resonance for the audience as a divinely mandated calling common to all the faithful, that resonance is rooted in a typological association that Hutchinson also introduces through her allusion to Hebrews. Again, her choice of words seems deliberate, given that the verb “entertain” occurs only once in the Geneva Bible and a mere handful of times in the AV, with the Hebrews reference accounting for two of those. 236 And it is the Hebrews passage on hospitality that carries the strongest typological connection, indicated by the cross references in the Geneva Bible to Genesis 18 and 19, which record two parallel accounts of “entertaining strangers”: the story in which Abraham, living a nomadic existence on the plains of Mamre, shows hospitality to three unknown men, and the story in which Lot, then settled in Sodom, notices two unknown men entering the city and “[presses] upon them earnestly” to accept the hospitality of his home (Genesis 19.3, Geneva). In both instances, the strangers turn out to be angels. To Abraham, they announce that the elderly and barren Sarah will soon bear a son; to Lot, they issue a warning to gather his family and flee the city, since God is going to destroy Sodom. The association between these parallel narratives--
day,” alleging that Jones disclaimed authorship as a result, saying it was no longer his text, and that the extensive censoring precipitated the decline that led to Jones’s death six months later (255). Prynne’s description of the text, with its anti-Laudian theme, suggests that the text might well have found a ready audience in New England, particularly if any there had personal acquaintance with the author. 235 There may be an additional linguistic challenge in Hutchinson’s question. Winthrop says she “did harbour …those that are parties in this faction” (312; my emphasis). In 1 Peter 4.9, one of the cross-referenced passages to Hebrews 13.2 in the Geneva Bible, the audience is directed to “be harberous one to another” (my emphasis). Again, the two uses of the word represent conflicting interpretations of Hutchinson’s actions. 236 In the anonymous text, “entertain” (in various forms) occurs nine times, traded back and forth between the two interlocutors. However, while Winthrop’s account also quotes Hutchinson saying “entertain,” he uses it only twice, both times in speeches by Hutchinson. Also, he introduces the term in a way that downplays her question. Winthrop leaves out her initial question (“Must not I then entertain the saints?”) and much of the exchange included in the anonymous account; he delays her introduction of the term until after the “Court” has accused her of breaking the fifth commandment, when she asks, “Doe I entertaine, or maintaine them in their actions…?” ( Short Story 34). (This particular question is worded similarly in the anonymous account). Winthrop’s suppression of the term could be further evidence that my reading of Hutchinson’s typology and its application has validity.
194 the Abraham story in particular--and the New Testament injunction in Hebrews was commonplace. The AV, which has minimal editorial apparatus in comparison to the Geneva Bible and which does not cross reference the various New Testament injunctions to hospitality as the Geneva does, provides a cross reference to Hebrews 13.2 at the beginning of Genesis 18. 237 In his commentary on the Hebrews verse, Jones points out that the biblical writer does not mention names, since he is speaking to an audience “exercised in Scripture” (as Jones’s audience ought to be, by implication), who will immediately know the story to which the passage refers: “the people should bee so acquainted with the Scripture, as that the preacher should not neede to name the good men, when hee speakes of their vertues. Abraham and Lot” (597-98). Certainly, Hutchinson’s wording of her question is all that is needed to resurrect the biblical narrative(s) in the communal Puritan memory of her audience. With this allusion, then, Hutchinson represents herself as a type of Abraham, a rhetorical move that positions her in the role of a biblical patriarch, one of particular import to the New England Puritans. In terms of the colonial history, the migration to America was often read as mirroring Abraham’s departure, in response to God’s direct call, from the city of his birth and ancestry to an unknown land and a special destiny that was embodied in the covenant God made with this literal and figurative father of the nation of Israel. In response to Winthrop’s construction of her in his opening remarks as one who troubles the peace and engages in “a thing not tolerable…in the sight of God nor fitting for your sex” (312), with this appropriation of Abraham’s identity Hutchinson rewrites her part in the drama to claim the role of one who has the spiritual authority of having been specially called and blessed by God. In terms of the story of Genesis 18, Hutchinson’s typological strategy also allows her to represent the meetings she holds as occasions for an exercise of hospitality that goes beyond providing the necessities of physical comfort to creating a space for spiritual enlightenment and even direct communication with God. 238 By positioning the gatherings within the framework of this Abraham narrative, Hutchinson resists Winthrop’s accusation of facilitating “parties” that form a “faction” (312). In contrast, through this typological rhetoric, Hutchinson actively creates a script in which her
237 The Hebrews passage in the AV does not cross reference Genesis 19. However, the AV does provide a cross reference in 19.2, which relates Lot washing the strangers’ feet, back to Genesis 18.4, in which Abraham performs the same cultural act of hospitality, thus making a point of the parallel nature of the two accounts. 238 Addressing the question of the identity of the third man in the Abraham story (only two men appear in Sodom), Jones explains that “One of the three was GOD, the other two were Angels” (598).
195 actions are those not of an instigator of sedition who “[vents] her mischievous opinions as shee [pleases],” requiring the action of authority to “reduce” her ( Short Story 35; “Examination” 312), but rather those of a humble host who welcomes the opportunity to offer service to the saints. At the same time, the biblical narratives also provide a means to claim an authority beyond the reach of human law. The accounts of Abraham and Lot’s parallel encounters with unknown men share an interesting structural similarity, with the words the strangers deliver blurring gradually into words that are eventually attributed directly to God; in addition, both stories also represent Abraham and Lot making a request of God, and God granting that request, in a sense agreeing to change the ordained course of history in response to human petition. 239 Thus, Hutchinson claims a role in which she can cast herself as humbly responsive and receptive to divine visitations, yet at the same time heir to a patriarchal mantle of authority that includes unmediated access to God. Hutchinson has gotten significant critical attention for her claim to “immediate revelation,” a term that has generally been seen as the key turning point in the trial, and that her opponents clearly wanted to represent as a rejection of the Word (“Examination” 337). Critics continue to read her claim as unconsidered or as representing a loss of rhetorical power. Lindal Buchanan attributes it to “anger, illness, or overconfidence”; Smith reads Hutchinson as “inadvertently providing the disparaging details that the court craved” (248; 440). Kaminsky, while she rightly points out that “Hutchinson’s judges may have inflated the prophetic aspect of her self-presentation,” still reinforces that distinction by distinguishing between her “male discursive style” and her “prophetic mode,” and by inferring that the shift to the latter marks a departure from Hutchinson’s earlier “deft [rhetoric]” (80-81). I would argue, however, that there is not a sharp disjunction, and that her later pronouncements are no less “rhetorically deft” than her earlier, seemingly more rational style. As a close textual analysis of Hutchinson’s language shows, “her revelations were almost entirely mediated through scripture, often verbatim” (Ditmore 355).240 Her opening use of Abraham typology suggests that she can make such connections without explicitly citing chapter and verse. When she frames her response to Winthrop as a question of “entertaining the saints,” it is clear that Hutchinson employs a
239 When Abraham learns that God means to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he initiates a bargaining session, at the end of which God agrees to spare the cities if even ten “righteous” people live there (Genesis 18.32). Lot asks for rather less; he petitions God to spare a small nearby city so that Lot and his family can take refuge there, rather than have to flee to the mountains, as the strangers initially direct him to do (Genesis 19.18-22). 240 See also Cameron, 161-62.
196 typological strategy designed to claim authority through her allusion to a defining biblical narrative that would be very familiar to her audience. Moreover, this initial allusion to an Abraham story foreshadows her claim to an “immediate revelation,” since both the character of Abraham and the promise of Isaac’s birth in the Genesis 18 narrative hint at and prepare for that later claim, which has typically been read as an unexpected capitulation. In fact, her defining declaration is enclosed within Abraham narratives that, this time, Hutchinson cites clearly. When she explains that she has been given insight into “which was the clear ministry and which the wrong,” Increase Nowell demands how she can know “that that was the spirit” (“Examination” 336-37). Framing her answer—not uncharacteristically, as we have seen—as a question, Hutchinson asks him “how…Abraham [knew] that it was God that bid him offer his son [Isaac], being a breach of the sixth commandment?” (337). Hutchinson’s reference here to the sixth commandment in the context of a biblical story that precedes the giving of the Ten Commandments does not invalidate her point, since they represented universal law to the Puritans, existing from the creation of the world, even though they had not yet been codified in written form. 241 In the case of the Isaac story invoked by Hutchinson, the message from God was a directive, not a promise, as it was in the Genesis 18 story, and this story carries even greater typological weight, since the sacrifice of Isaac was seen as a type of the death and resurrection of Christ. In the context of this narrative, Hutchinson’s representation of herself as a type of Abraham infers not only that she can hear and respond to God’s voice, but that she also has the spiritual wisdom to discern the divine origin of a directive that clearly conflicts with an already existing and understood moral rule. Such an assertion, since it implicitly places Hutchinson beyond the authority of both church and state, resident in the ministers and the colonial officials, represents a distinct threat to maintaining order in and control of the colonial community. Hutchinson’s third appropriation of an Abraham narrative follows immediately after her claim to special revelation. Describing her initial resistance to God’s revelation of “what he would do for me and the rest of his servants,” Hutchinson explains to that court that she behaved
241 In addition, the defining precedent of the first murder recorded in the Bible, Cain’s murder of Abel, clearly reflects God’s disapproval of killing.
197 “like Abraham [running] to Hagar,” for a time ignoring this divine disclosure (337). 242 While her claim to this Abraham story seems less dramatic and significant than the first two, by positioning herself as Abraham in the relationship, Hutchinson further rewrites her opponents’ script, in which she plays an “audaciously insolent” woman, one who has stepped outside her “calling” of teaching her children, one who is responsible for “[seducing] many simple souls,” and one who as caused families to “be neglected” ( Short Story B3a, 35; “Examination” 316). Figuring herself as Abraham frees Hutchinson from confinement within such gender judgments, and perhaps more specifically, suggests her resistance to the court’s desire to figure her as a Hagar—an alien (she was an Egyptian), an interloper, and, ultimately, an exile after Isaac’s birth (Genesis 21). The way in which Hutchinson phrases the reference to Hagar suggests an added level of meaning. According to Genesis 16, it is Sarah’s idea to give her handmaid to her husband, since Sarah herself was barren; the Bible goes on to record that “Abram obeyed the voyce of Sarai” (16.2). In describing Abraham as “[running] to Hagar,” Hutchinson rhetorically shifts the responsibility onto the male patriarch for the discord that would be caused by the eventual birth of Ishmael to Hagar, both conflict within Abraham’s own family and long-lived animosity between Isaac and Ishmael’s descendants. 243 If families are being neglected or are experiencing friction as a result of her meetings, Hutchinson suggests, the “patriarchs” of the commonwealth should look to their own actions as the most likely cause. As well as claiming the role of a patriarch, Hutchinson also represents herself as an Old Testament prophet. In the same speech in which Hutchinson types herself as Abraham for the third time, she elaborates on the message she has received from God, citing Daniel 7, a chapter in which Daniel details a vision of the eventual defeat of the four kingdoms, the final judgment, and
242 Winthrop’s account includes the identical phrase that Hutchinson is quoted as using in the anonymous account: “the atheism of my own heart” ( Short Story 38). However, Winthrop does not cite her reference to Abraham and Hagar. 243 In his comments on the biblical allusions in Hutchinson’s speeches at this point in the examination, Michael G. Ditmore believes her reference is to Paul’s spiritual allegory of the Hagar/Sarah binary in Galatians 4.22-26, in terms of the son (Ishmael) of the bondwoman and the son (Isaac) of the freewoman (n. 49, 377; 391). Ditmore cites from Cotton’s response to the Massachusetts Bay ministers who asked for clarification on his theology, a document written in 1636/37, but not published until 1644. In it, Cotton explains that a believer may “sometimes go aside to a Covenant of Workes ,” as an impatient Abraham did when “he turned aside to goe into Hagar (who was a Type of the Covenant of Workes ),” hoping to get a “more speedy satisfying of his Faith and Hope” (qtd. n.49, 377). While that understanding would certainly have informed Hutchinson’s response, given the controversy over covenants, the context doesn’t exactly parallel Cotton’s description, since Hutchinson doesn’t suggest that her “running to Hagar” was an attempt to expedite the future God had shown her. Moreover, her phrasing of the reference is more vividly narrative than Cotton’s more abstractly theological “go aside.”
198 the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on earth, in which the “holy people of the most High” will finally gain “dominion” over the world (7.27). 244 Having announced her appropriation of the prophetic role, Hutchinson positions herself within yet another familiar biblical narrative: Daniel, thrown into a den of lions and preserved through the providence of God (Daniel 6). According to Hutchinson, God “did shew me that though I should meet with affliction yet I [God] am the same God that delivered Daniel out of the lion’s den, [and] I will also deliver thee” (“Examination” 338). The explicit response of the court centers on whether or not she is claiming that she will be “delivered by miracle,” rather than through the less spectacular but more common divine providence, a rash enough claim in itself (338). However, the more subversive challenge that Hutchinson issues by scripting her role as a second Daniel lies in her construction of her continuation of the meetings as a parallel to Daniel continuing to pray in public view, in defiance of the new law. Moreover, by implication, those who have accused her are playing the role of the Babylonian “rulers and governours” who engineer the innocent Daniel’s downfall (Daniel 6.4). Their actions are succinctly condemned by marginal note in the Geneva: “Thus the wicked can not abide the graces of God in others, but seeke by all occasions to deface them” (note to 6.4). Through her appropriation of Daniel, Hutchinson not only represents herself as both a prophet and a wronged innocent, but resists the court’s attempt to other her by othering them in return, as “the wicked,” as foreigners and aliens outside the Abrahamic covenant, and as those who were visited with the same fate they had designed for Daniel, since the Scriptural account records in grisly fashion the coda to the story: “And by the commaundement of the King these [men] which had accused Daniel, were brought, and were cast into the denne of lions, even they, their children, and their wives: and the lyons had the mastry of them, & brake all their bones a pieces, [before] ever they came at the [ground] of the denne” (6.24). Winthrop’s commentary in A Short Story on Hutchinson’s use of Daniel clearly establishes that her opponents had no difficulty recognizing her typological strategy and the position in which it placed them. In fact, Winthrop’s words suggest that he finds her typologizing almost as blasphemous as her claim to direct revelation from God:
244 This kind of millenarian theme was not particularly unusual in the early seventeenth century; it was even used as a justification for the migration to America. In his defense of the New England colony in The planter’s plea (1630), John White offers “the nearnesse of the Jewes conversion,” which was to be one of the signs of Christ’s imminent return to set up his kingdom on earth, as one evidence that the time is ripe for such an enterprise, since “the Gentiles, and consequently the Indians must needs bee gathered in before that day” (15-16).
199 …she can fetch a revelation that shall reach the Magistrates and the whole Court, and the succeeding generations, and she hath Scripture for it also, Daniel must be a type of Mistris Hutchison [sic], the Lions denne…the Court of justice, and the Presidents and Princes of the reverend Elders here, and all must sort to this conclusion, she must be delivered by miracle, [and] all wee must be ruined. (40; my emphasis) In a mocking tone, Winthrop attempts to shift her role in the drama, applying a variation of the “woman as tiger” stereotype. Observing that Hutchinson’s failure at one point to “get the party upon that advantage which she expected” had caused her to “[vent] her impatience with so fierce speech and countenance,” he goes on to conclude that “one would hardly have guessed her to have been an Antitype of Daniel, but rather of the Lions after they were let loose” (40). However, not content to remain within a narrative framework of Hutchinson’s choosing, Winthrop also imposes an alternate typology: “See the impudent boldnesse of a proud dame, that Athaliah-like makes havock of all that stand in the way of her ambitious spirit” (40). The book of 2 Kings recounts the story of how Athaliah, when her son Ahaziah dies, kills her grandchildren in order to claim the throne of Judah for herself. 245 The monstrous murders invoked by the reference complement Winthrop’s other theme of “monstrous” births. His reading of Hutchinson as an Athaliah not only returns Hutchinson to a safely stereotypical female role, here one of the vengeful and violent anti-mother, but also rewrites her self-representation from patriarch and prophet to political opportunist making an unauthorized bid for power. At this point, of course, Hutchinson, having been conveniently killed in an Indian raid in 1643, could not return to the stage to resist Winthrop’s virulent demonization of her. Following her reference to Daniel, and in her last utterance of any substance in the courtroom, Hutchinson represents herself and her position through a final cluster of typological associations that contain probably her most outrageous claims and her most scathing
245 2 Kings 11.1-16. A parallel account is recorded in 2 Chronicles 22.10-23.16. The Athaliah story intersects with a more familiar one that had a much more positive typological resonance in early modern English culture. While Athaliah believes she has slain all other claimants, Ahaziah’s half-sister rescues his young son Joash, secreting him and his nurse in the temple for six years, until the chief priest organizes a coup that puts Joash on the throne when he is only seven. Joash eventually has the temple repaired, and is one of the few Old Testament kings of whom the Bible records that he “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” Accordingly, when an early modern English monarch governed commendably, he or she was often referred to as a Joash.
200 denunciation of the opposition. 246 As Ditmore points out, “the full force of this anathema,” as Hutchinson’s auditors would have understood it, lies in the narratives to which she alludes (381). He elaborates on the typological significance of the opening allusion to Luke 4.21, in which these words are Jesus’ closing commentary on his reading of Isaiah 61.1 in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. While initially Jesus is welcomed because of his growing reputation, the Nazarenes later turn against him when he announces that “No Prophet is accepted in his owne countrey” (v. 24), subtly implying that his own people do not understand his mission (Luke 4.24). 247 When the townspeople attempt to seize Jesus to throw him off the hill on which Nazareth stands, he mysteriously escapes them. The parallels to Hutchinson’s situation are pointed; she, too, has been rejected by her own people, who have refused to accept her teachings on Scripture, and are seeking her destruction. (If there is any doubt that Hutchinson knew what she was up against, this allusion provides convincing proof.) Through casting herself as Jesus in the context of this particular narrative, Hutchinson “[gains] not only Jesus’ example of righteous defiance in the face of public persecution, even by those closest to one’s own background, but also her appropriative method of scriptural citations and exegesis” (Ditmore 382). And that method, in this instance, allows her, through this enacted typology, to create a historical trajectory from Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet (cited by both Jesus in Matthew and by Hutchinson later in this speech), through Jesus, on whose birth history hinged (in the eyes of early modern Christians), to Hutchinson herself in her present historical context. In the second allusion in her speech, Hutchinson paraphrases Jesus’ counsel to the twelve disciples in Matthew as he sends them out to preach and do miracles in his name throughout
246 The complete passage follows. The italicized words are exact quotations or very close paraphrases of the references in editorial brackets: “Therefore I desire you to look to it, for you see this scripture fulfilled this day [Luke 4.21] and therefore I desire you that as you tender the Lord and the church and commonwealth to consider and look what you do. You have power over my body but the Lord Jesus hath power over my body and soul [Matt. 10.28], and assure yourselves thus much, you do as much as in you lies to put the Lord Jesus Christ from you, and if you go on in this course you begin you will bring a course upon you and your posterity, and the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it ” [Isaiah 1.20; 40.5; 58.14] (338). 247 While Ditmore notes that only Luke records Jesus’ reading of Isaiah, the story appears in more abbreviated form in other Gospels. In an illuminating comment in one parallel passage, the writer elaborates on the attitude of the Nazarenes toward one of their own, who they knew only as “the carpenters sonne”: “And they were offended [with] him. Then Jesus said to them, A Prophet is not without honour, save in his owne countrey, and in his owne house. And he did not [do] many great [workes] there, for their unbeliefes sake” (Matthew 13.55,57-58 Geneva).
201 Judea. 248 Again, the parallel to Hutchinson’s situation is obvious, since Jesus warns his disciples to “beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the Councils , and will scourge you in their Synagogues. And ye shal be brought to the governours and Kings for my sake, in witnes to them, and to the Gentiles” (Matthew 10.17-18; my emphasis). In Hutchinson’s seemingly rash words to the court that they cannot touch her spirit, no matter what they do to her body, she appropriates the status of a disciple of Christ—not a particularly revolutionary move—and as such, the assurance that Jesus gave as he sent out the Twelve: “And feare yee not them which kill the bodie, but are not able to kill the soule: but rather feare him, which is able to destroy both soule and body in hell” (Matt. 10.28 Geneva). 249 Ditmore points to Jesus’ additional advice in the same account that the disciples should not concern themselves with planning what they will say when they are brought before the authorities, since “it shal be given you in that houre, what yee shall say. For it is not yee that speak, but the spirit of your father which speaketh in you” (vs. 19-20). Hutchinson, Ditmore concludes, “would have valued in this passage the promise that in the midst of persecution the voice of her own personal identity would be effaced, supplanted by the voice of the Holy Spirit” (383). However, in one sense, through her use of typology Hutchinson continues to construct both herself and her opposition in ways that rather than efface her, constitute a claim to authority that puts her above the power of the court or the colonial government. The extent to which she accomplishes this through appropriating the narrative of Christ sending out the disciples goes beyond claiming that the court has no power to “kill [her] soul.” Rather, she becomes the one with the authority to pronounce upon the spiritual insight or blindness of those around her. In the Matthew 10 account, one of Jesus’ first directives is that the disciples are not to go to the Gentiles, the aliens, but rather to “the lost sheepe of the house of Israel” (vs. 6). Thus, Hutchinson becomes the one who has been sent to preach “the Gospel” (headnote) to the “lost sheepe” of the colony, those who do not understand that they are not yet 248 Parallel accounts of the sending out of the disciples appear in Matthew 10.1-42, Luke 9.1-6, and Mark 6.7-13. Luke 10.1-17 gives a very similar account of the episode. In this case, Jesus has “appointed other seventie also” (vs. 1), sending them out in twos, as he had the disciples previously, and he gives them similar directives and counsel. 249 Here, a comparison with Winthrop’s account illustrates the way in which he often sensationalizes Hutchinson’s testimony. In contrast to the anonymous account, which records Hutchinson saying, “You have power over my body” (338), Winthrop claims she said, “you have no power over my body, neither can you doe me any harme” ( Short Story 38). Ditmore also cites a similarly worded passage in Luke 12.4-5, although the context is not parallel.
202 (in the language of her spiritual community) under a covenant of grace. Not only does this position allow Hutchinson to lay claim to divine appointment, but it also resists the authority of either the ministers or the colonial authorities to judge her spirituality. In the closing words of his address to the disciples Jesus issues this decisive pronouncement: “He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and hee that receiveth mee, receiveth him that hath sent me” (vs. 40). 250 By identifying as a latter-day disciple who has received that ultimate authentication, Hutchinson suggests that she does not require the approval of anyone in the colony to sanction the spiritual validity of her teaching and her ministry; it is already authenticated because she has been commissioned by Jesus. Here, Hutchinson’s role as a disciple merges with and strengthens her previous appropriation of a Christ typology. In receiving her, the community receives Christ; in rejecting her and the “Gospel” she brings, they are rejecting Christ himself. In fact, seeming to anticipate the sentence of banishment, Hutchinson suggests the court has already chosen the latter path: “you do as much as in you lies to put the Lord Jesus Christ from you” (338). Her comment creates an intersection between the spiritual and the historical; in sentencing Hutchinson to a literal banishment, the court will also be also be banishing Jesus himself, thus bringing upon themselves and their “posterity” the spiritual destiny accorded to those who reject Christ. Hutchinson’s audience would have been well aware of the account of the sending out of the disciples, particularly since there are several parallel passages in the Gospel. At the end of Hutchinson’s speech, following her warning of impending doom for those who condemned her, Thomas Dudley, the very conservative and orthodox deputy governor, seemingly assuming that her last words would also have some Scriptural precedent, asks, “What is the scripture she brings?” (338). 251 Apparently in response to Dudley’s question, Israel Stoughton, a magistrate who was one of the few to evince any concern for the summary way in which the legal 250 See also Luke 10.16: “He that heareth you, heareth me: and he that despiseth you, despiseth me: and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.” The petition protesting Wheelright’s banishment, referred to as a “seditious writing” by Winthrop, makes the point more explicitly: “wee beseech you consider the danger of medling against the Prophets of God…for what yee doe unto them, the Lord Jesus takes as done unto himselfe; if you hurt any of his members, the head is very sensible of it: for so saith the Lord of Hosts, Hee that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of mine eye” ( Short Story 22). To the court, Hutchinson’s speech would quite probably seem an echo of that earlier document. However, through her typological strategy, Hutchinson not only issues such a warning, but positions herself as a prophet and Christ’s message bearer, as well as invokes a particularly powerful biblical narrative in which those roles are embedded. 251 Since the Daniel reference is specific, Dudley must be referring to the final sentences of her speech, assuming that Hutchinson is drawing on an additional scriptural passage that he does not immediately recognize.
203 proceedings were conducted, responds with a brief and seemingly cryptic statement: “Behold I turn away from you” (338). While there is an alternate interpretation, I would argue that Stoughton’s answer suggests that Hutchinson was indeed understood to be appropriating the Matthew narrative in its entirety, not simply the verse she paraphrases. 252 In the biblical account, Jesus specifically directs the disciples to stay in homes as they travel from place to place. When people show receptivity to the disciples’ message, they are to accept the hospitality offered as their right. However, where they meet with resistance and rejection, Christ’s instructions to his disciples are clear: “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor heare your woordes, when yee depart out of that house, or that citie, shake off the dust of your feete” (vs. 14). The parallel passage in Luke 9.5 adds another phrase to emphasize the significance of this symbolic action: “when ye goe out of that citie, shake off the very dust from your feete for a testimonie against them ” (my emphasis). Not only do the other two Gospel accounts include this directive, 253 but the book of Acts describes the Apostle Paul and his traveling companion Barnabas performing this act of dismissal when the Jews in the city of Antioch “[raise] persecution against Paul & Barnabas, and [expel] them out of their coastes.” As they leave, the two men make a point of “[shaking] off the dust of their feete against them [the Jews]” (Acts 13.50-51). In addition, in three of the four Gospel accounts, Jesus follows his instruction with a stern promise of future consequences for any city that rejects his disciples and their message: “it shall be easier for them
252 Stoughton’s comment has two possible interpretations. If we read it as a “startled” response to Hutchinson’s speech (Louise A. Breen 18), the most likely biblical source, based on his phrasing, is 2 Timothy 3.1- 5: “This knowe also, that in the last dayes shal come perilous times. For men shal be lovers of their owne selves, covetous, boasters, proud, cursed speakers, disobedient to parents, unthankefull, unholy, without naturall affection, truce breakers, false accusers, intemperate, fierce, no lovers at all of them which are good, traitours, headie, high minded, lovers of pleasures more then [sic] lovers of God, having a shewe of godlinesse, but have denied the power thereof: Turne away therefore from such ” (my emphasis). This interpretation is certainly legitimate, given some of the implications behind her speech that I have outlined above, and given the strong linguistic similarity to the 2 Timothy passage. However, while Stoughton’s comment doesn’t echo the specific language of Christ’s directive to the disciples, it makes equal sense that he could be responding to Dudley’s question, that he would understand Hutchinson’s allusion to what must have been a familiar biblical narrative, and that he would interpret her “sentence” on the court as a further extension of her typological rhetoric in the context of the relevant story. Also, Stoughton seems marginally more sympathetic to Hutchinson’s plight than most others; even after her pronouncement and his comment, he is one of the few who press for the ministers to take an oath. While he finally agrees that Hutchinson’s words were “pernicious” (“Examination” 347), given his own history of having been accused of sedition, unfairly so in his viewpoint (Breen 19, 24), he may have been more reluctant to condemn Hutchinson. 253 Mark 6.11, another of the parallel passages, reads: “shake off the dust that is under your feete, for a witnes unto them.” In the account of the sending out of the seventy, Christ tell them that they are to verbally speak this judgment: “Even the very dust, which cleaveth on us of your citie, we wipe off against you: notwithstanding knowe this, that the kingdome of God was come neere unto you” (Luke 10.11).
204 of the lande of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgement, [than] for that citie” (Matt. 10.15). 254 When he hears Hutchinson’s words, Stoughton immediately recognizes that she is verbally “shaking off the dust of her feet” against the court and, by implication, consigning the colony to a judgment more severe than that accorded to the biblical cities that were seen as types of the ultimate in sin and corruption. Moreover, given the brevity of Stoughton’s reply, he seems to expect that Dudley, too, will make the connection to the relevant biblical passages, read the typological identity Hutchinson has constructed for herself and for the court, and understand the implication of her final pronouncement. Ditmore concludes that Hutchinson’s typological method was the critical issue in the Newtown courtroom. While the “mainstream Puritans” exercised caution in the “personal application of scriptural exempla, however widely they construed their national or community application,” Hutchinson “employs jeremiad typology to obliterate the distinction, so carefully observed by her opponents, between self and biblical figure” (386). Moreover, for the former group, the “personal typological absorption of self could be justified only in anonymity or in humiliation, never in celebration, judgment, or certainty”; Hutchinson, on the other hand, made assertive typological applications that were “directed outward toward ecclesiastical and even civil government” (387). In Ditmore’s view, the courtroom audience also reacted to Hutchinson’s speech because “its utterance required the erasure of her own voice and identity into a subsumption by the Holy Spirit—which did not merely come to her, but actively spoke through her” (387). However, to return to Richard Hays’ explanation of the operation of a metaphorical trope, I would argue, conversely, that the rhetorical success of Hutchinson’s typological appropriation depended on her ability to maintain at least some distinction between self and type, a conscious choice that at least one person in the audience recognized. Ditmore concludes that Winthrop’s response was prompted “not so much [by] the content of her revelations (which he and everyone else in the court mainly ignored) as to the way in which the threat came and was uttered” (384). Hutchinson’s typological strategy, however, cannot be separated from the content, and Winthrop, in particular, realized this. His objection—“nothing but a word comes to her mind and then an application is made which is nothing to the purpose” (342)—suggests, paradoxically, that he recognized the “purpose,” and wanted to distract the
254 See also Mark 6.11 and Luke 10.12.
205 court from thinking too thoroughly about the implied “application” of Hutchinson’s typology, which, I would argue, actually begins with her opening allusion to Abraham. In appropriating Abraham’s identity through her pointed reference to entertaining the saints, Hutchinson not only repositions herself as exercising a hospitality that has the authority of biblical precedent, but she also implicitly critiques the colonial government’s own practice. On May 17, 1637, six months previous to Hutchinson’s trial, the General Court of Massachusetts, anxious to protect the colony from immigrants from England who might hold views that would result in any further disruptions to colonial order, had passed an Alien Exclusion order “forbidding anyone to entertain strangers for more than three weeks without consent of some of the magistrates (i.e., the governor, deputy governor, and assistants)” (Morgan 144). The order caused such an uproar that Winthrop, recently returned to power as governor, wrote A Declaration in Defense of an Order of Court Made in May, 1637 , in which he attempted to justify the new law, in part through redefining how and to whom the injunction to hospitality should be applied. 255 Drawing on the familiar parallel between family and state, Winthrop claims that “as a family is not bound to entertaine all comers…no more is a common wealth” (Morgan 146). Furthermore, no one is “bound” to the exercise of “mercye” or “the rule of hospitality” unless a person “be in miserye,” and, Winthrop adds, “there are few that stand in neede of mercye at their first coming hither” (146). Moreover, he protects the officials who will make such decisions by comparing them to jury members who must be “satisfied in their consciences, upon the evidence given,” and not “acquit…upon the different opinion of other men,” unless the jury finds the rationale convincing (147). When Hutchinson not only appropriates the identity of Abraham, who himself lived the existence of an alien in strange lands, but invokes the story that defined hospitality for the New Testament writers, it is difficult not to hear an implied rebuke to the colonial government, and perhaps to Winthrop himself, for enacting a law that stands in stark contradiction to the biblical “rule” of hospitality. In fact, in his commentary on Hebrews 12.2, Jones makes a point that Christians have an obligation to offer hospitality and refuge particularly to those who have had to emigrate for religious reasons: “Here hee meanes such strangers especially, as are compelled to forsake their countrie for the Gospels sake” (599). Suggesting that he has read Hutchinson’s critique in her typological rhetoric and does not like it, Winthrop
255 Previously to this, some of the towns had independently enacted similar orders. However, this law applied to the commonwealth as a whole.
206 abruptly shuts off the “entertain” exchange with an abrupt “We do not mean to discourse with those of your sex” (“Examination” 314). The most obvious interpretation here, as numerous critics have pointed out, is that Winthrop is seeking to regain rhetorical control and reinforce the stereotypical boundaries of a society that confined women’s speech within the (seemingly) more containable space of the home. To leave it at that, however, I would argue, accomplishes exactly what Winthrop desired, for by playing the gender card not only does he emphasize the solidarity of the male court, but he distracts the audience from an exchange that embodies an implicit critique of a highly unpopular government policy. Moreover, Hutchinson’s opening challenge to the state connects directly to the final words of her later condemnation, “the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it,” which she speaks in the voice of the prophet Isaiah. The phrase first appears in 1.18-20: “Though your sinnes were as crimsin, they shalbe made white as snowe: though they were red like skarlet, they shalbe as wooll. If ye consent and obey, ye shall eate the good things of the land. But if ye refuse and be rebellious, ye shalbe devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” Here, in the context of God’s rebuke to the nation for their “religious formalism,” Hutchinson positions herself “as the mouthpiece of God calling the chosen to repentance” (Ditmore 383). Even more to the point, given the connection to two previous narratives she has invoked, God addresses his rebuke specifically to “the princes of Sodom” and “the people of Gomorrah” (vs. 10). Furthermore, Isaiah 1 is only the first of three passages in Isaiah that contain Hutchinson’s phrase, 256 which also appears in Isaiah 40 and 58; the three chapters are connected by thematic threads that have particular relevance to the situation in the colony. One of those threads focuses on the nature of the fast that is acceptable to God, certainly a pertinent theme in light of the fast day declared in January of 1637 by the General Court as an opportunity for the colony to reflect on the growing controversy centered on Wheelright and Hutchinson. In Isaiah 1, God declares that he “can not suffer” the nation’s “solemne dayes (it is iniquitie) nor solemne assemblies” (vs. 13). A similar condemnation appears in Isaiah 58, from which Cotton drew the text for his sermon preached on the January fast day: “Beholde, ye fast to strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickednesse” (vs.4). Twinned with these critiques are both suggestions and admonitions on the true nature of the fast that pleases God. In Isaiah 1, the princes are accused of unrighteousness because they “judge not the fatherlesse, neither doeth the widowes cause come 256 Ditmore does not explore the potential significance of the additional occurrences of the phrase.
207 before them” (v. 23); as a contrast, in Isaiah 58, God declares, “Is not this the fasting, that I have chosen, to loose the bandes of wickednes, to take off the heavie burdens, and to let the oppressed goe free, and that ye breake every yoke? Is it not to deale thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poore that wander, unto thine house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and hide not thy selfe from thine owne flesh?” (vs. 6-7). Between these two chapters, in Isaiah 40, the prophet draws a picture of the results of such a repentance and engagement in “true” fasting: “And the glory of the Lord shalbe reveiled, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” (vs. 5). While the headnote to the chapter notes that it is typically seen as a prophecy of the coming of John the Baptist, the content of the chapter shares similarities with other prophetic pronouncements that describe the final kingdom of Christ described in broader terms in Daniel 7, one of Hutchinson’s previous references. This web of references and the connection to contemporary situations suggests that Hutchinson’s use of typology serves not only to authorize her speech, but also functions to embody a harsh commentary on a colonial government that, in its unwillingness to “entertain” any saint that should arrive on its shores, is cutting itself off from the kind of potential future that would see the “glory of the Lord” revealed in a society in which doors would stand open in welcome and the widows and fatherless would receive justice. Winthrop’s clear attempt to regain rhetorical control of their opening exchange indicates his discomfort with Hutchinson’s insistence on framing the issue as one of “entertaining the saints.” Moreover, given the recentness of the community discontent that prompted his public defense of the Alien Exclusion order, Winthrop would have had good reason to trivialize the potentially subversive “applications” of Hutchinson’s typological strategy as random and impulsive. Perhaps the severity of her sentence—banishment from the colony—serves to indicate the success of her typological strategy in communicating her bold critique of the colony’s ruling elite. Elizabeth Cellier: a distressed David and a damsel in distress At the end of the Latter Examination , Bale included a poem entitled “The Balade whych Anne Askewe made and sange whan she was in Newgate,” which opens with the following image: “Lyke as the armed knight / Appoynted to the fielde / With thys world wyll I fight / And
208 fayth shall be my shielde” ( Examinations 149). Whether or not Askew authored this text, 257 the opening simile warrants notice for its blending of chivalric and biblical references. 258 Written well over a century later, Elizabeth Cellier’s Malice Defeated (1680), her self-published account of her trial for treason, exhibits that same syncretistic mixture of chivalric and biblical elements, a juxtaposition of typologies unique among the women’s texts represented in this project. Cellier, a London midwife married to a French merchant, Peter Cellier, has earned her historical reputation in part through her tracts on the subject of midwifery; her last known publication was A Scheme For the Foundation of a Royal Hospital (1687), in which she proposed an orphanage and a school to train midwives, staffed by women skilled and experienced in midwifery. Known as “the Popish Midwife,” Cellier’s clientele was primarily aristocratic, many of a similar religious persuasion, and she served Mary of Modena, herself an ardent Catholic, from at least 1684-88, the last evidence of Cellier’s presence in extant records. Cellier’s Catholic beliefs also made her a prime suspect in the alleged Meal Tub Plot of 1679, resulting in her imprisonment and subsequent King’s Bench trial for high treason. Demolishing the credibility of the crown’s main witness against her, Thomas Dangerfield, Cellier earned an acquittal, after which she promptly produced Malice Defeated .259 Cellier’s text, like those I’ve examined by Trapnel and Evans and Chevers, contains a mixture of genres: narrative, journal-style entries, letters, court depositions, play scripts, and more. Dolan argues that the “multiform” nature of Malice Defeated arises from the “inadequacy of the available forms” to embody Cellier’s story effectively ( Whores 172-73). 260 Among the 257 Coles notes the “vexed question of authorship,” and on that basis excludes the ballad from her discussion of Askew (“Death of the Author” 516, n. 6). However, several relatively recent anthologies include the ballad, still attributing it to Askew. 258 The writer of the epistle to the Ephesian church urges the early Christian converts to put on “ye whole armoire of God,” and “above all, take to you the shylde of fayth, wherwith ye maye quenche all ye fyrie dartes of the wicked” (Ephesians 6.13, 16). 259 Unfortunately, her account earned her another charge—seditious libel, partly for her accusation that the prisoners in Newgate were being tortured—and she was not so fortunate the second time. Caught in a political tug- of-war between the Crown and the Whig politicians who governed the city of London (Mowry 44-45), Cellier was arrested and tried the next day, with no opportunity to prepare a defense. Found guilty, Cellier was not only assessed an unusually hefty fine of ₤1,000, but also sentenced to be pilloried three times, the first of which proved nearly fatal, since she was left unprotected from the stones the antagonistic spectators threw at her face. For more details of the political situation and Cellier’s position in it, see Melissa M. Mowry, The Bawdy Politic in Stuart England, 1660-1714: Political Pornography and Prostitution (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004). 260 In addition to Dolan’s work on Cellier, two other significant contributions are Rachel Weil’s “‘If I did say so, I lyed’: Elizabeth Cellier and the construction of credibility in the Popish Plot crisis,” Political Culture and
209 genres she appropriates, the play is one form that Cellier emphasizes, both in her language and in the structure of the text itself. After a fairly straightforward narrative opening, lengthy sections of the remainder are cast as if they were scenes from a play, with speeches assigned to the various participants in the verbal exchanges, including Cellier herself, who, of course, plays a leading role. Cellier establishes that frame of reference as she begins her account, reading history as drama when she points out that many who gave witness against Catholics charged with treason “were those, or the Sons of those, that acted the principal parts in the last Tragedy, which history told me too, had the Prologue of a pretended Popish Plot” ( Malice Defeated 2). 261 In response to one of the lords examining her who threatens that Cellier will be “put to death,” she again stresses the intersection between the two genres. Wittily claiming relief at the announcement, she declares that she “[hopes] the Play is near an end, for Tragedies whether real or fictious, seldome end before the Women die” (30). When the irritated peer accuses her of “[making] a play” of the situation, Cellier retorts that there may be more “truth” on the stage than in the accounts others have given of the alleged plot: “If there be no more Truth in the whole Story, than there is in what relates to me, every Play that is Acted has more Truth in it” (30). Cellier herself plays it both ways, dramatizing her experiences for her audience to win their sympathy, and, at the same time, reminding them that what seems to be “fact” may actually be a carefully scripted performance. 262 In her typological strategies, Cellier draws from two different sources. Like Askew and Hutchinson, Cellier finds in biblical typology a means to resituate herself in relation to the power of the state that threatens her welfare and her reputation. The scriptural references Cellier chooses to frame her text direct her audience to read her as a type of David, specifically as an Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown , ed. Susan D. Amussen and mark A. Kishlansky (Manchester, UK: Manchester U.P./St. Martin’s Press, 1995) 189-212; and Jody Greene’s discussion of Cellier in The Trouble with Ownership: Literary Property and Authorial Liability in England, 1660- 1730 (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2005) 88-103. 261 Penny Richards notes that “the playhouse is a significant model” (415), but does not trace the influence back to this opening metaphor. See “A Life in writing: Elizabeth Cellier and print culture,” Women’s Writing: the Elizabethan to Victorian Period 7 (2000) 411-25. Future references to Cellier’s text will be indicated as MD . 262 In her analysis of Cellier’s use of the romance genre, which I will discuss shortly, Dolan points out the danger to Cellier’s own credibility when she fuses “the pretensions to fact of the trial account with the presumed fantasy of the romance,” an ambiguity that her detractors were quick to turn to their advantage, as Dolan illustrates (Whores 189, 185-90). Since she herself foregrounds the problem of distinguishing fact from fiction, Cellier may be suggesting that determining “what happened” often comes down to which side can create the most compelling dramatic narrative. Certainly, her choice of typologies suggests that her project was to cast herself as the innocent beset by plotters within and dangers without, whatever the narrative framework.
210 innocent David lamenting the unjust attacks of his enemies. On the title page, Cellier quotes from Psalm 7 and Psalm 35; at the end of the trial account she cites Psalm 18. All three psalms carry headnotes that describe them specifically as David’s complaints against his enemies: “David prayeth against the malice of his enemies, professing his innocency…By faith he seeth his defence and the destruction of his enemies” (Ps. 7, AV 263 ; my emphasis); “David prayeth for his owne safety, & his enemies confusion…He complaineth of their wrongfull dealing (Ps. 35); “a psalme of David, the servant of the Lord, who spake…the words of this song, in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul” (Ps. 18). In fact, the headnote to Chapter 7 seems one possible source of Cellier’s title, since it contains both the first key word (“malice”) and the sense of the second (“defeated”). 264 Even within the text, she incorporates an echo of the David typology in her own cited speech. In a heated exchange with Dangerfield while she is confined in the gatehouse of Newgate before her trial, Cellier accuses him of betrayal and warns him: “he that digs a Pit for another, shall fall therein himself” ( MD 21). Her words form a close paraphrase of Psalm 7.15: “He made a pit and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made,” reminding readers that, like David, Cellier has been pursued and persecuted unjustly. 265 The biblical David carried a particular resonance in the seventeenth century both because of his role as a prominent monarch in the history of the nation of Israel, and because of episodes
263 I cite the AV in discussing Cellier, since the quotations in her text seem to follow this version the most closely. She occasionally interpolates or omits a short phrase, but otherwise follows the AV almost exactly. 264 Mihoko Suzuki sees the source of Cellier’s title in John Lilburne’s Malice detected in printing certain Informations and examinations concerning Lieut. Col. John Lilburn the morning of the Tryal…which were not brought to his Indictment (242). See “Elizabeth, Gender, and the Political Imagery of Seventeenth-Century England,” Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500-1700 , ed. Cristina Malcolmson and Nihoko Suzuki (New York: Palgrave, 2002) 231-53. While she does not comment specifically on the title page references, Penny Richards, noting Cellier’s “use of religious language,” suggests that the word “deliverance” in the subtitle “plays upon . . . both the literal sense of release from prison and the religious sense of deliverance from evil” (417). Richards’ observation fits with the context of the Psalm references, and adds further plausibility to the Psalm as a source of the title, particularly since the biblical psalms are filled with deliverance language. 265 There are other places in scripture where the image is repeated, with similar wording. However, given that Cellier cites Psalm 7:14, 16 on the cover of her text, it seems hardly coincidental that she should chose to shape her response to Dangerfield in a way that clearly echoes the omitted verse 15.
211 in the narrative of his reign that are significant to concerns of the era. 266 Not only was he the second anointed king of Israel and ancestor of Jesus (according to the genealogy in Matthew 1), but David also replaced the unrighteous Saul and was later temporarily ousted from the throne himself by his charismatic son Absalom. Charles I, Cromwell, and Charles II were all read as “Davidic neotypes” by writers as varied as Milton, Hobbes, Cowley, and Dryden (Austin 412). According to Mary Ann Radzinowicz, "Englishmen [sic] supposed that they could think of their own times and write clearly about them by recalling the rise of King David as represented in 1 Samuel" (45, qtd. in Austin). By representing herself as an embattled David, Cellier appropriates a biblical type commonly associated with debates about kingship and rightful rule, particularly since she cites Psalms that are linked to both the above episodes in the story of David’s kingship. The headnote to Psalm 18 specifically references the time in David’s life when he was running from Saul, who was determined to kill him; a secondary annotation to Psalm 7 identifies it as David’s words “which he sang unto the Lord concerning the words of Cush the Beniamite.” While the only “Cush the Benjamite” (i.e., of the tribe of Benjamin) named in Scripture seems to be Saul’s father, of whom there is no mention after his son is anointed, a direct descendant of Saul, Shimei, hurls both insults and stones at David as he is fleeing from Absalom’s army (2 Samuel 17.5-8). Thus, in representing herself as a type of David in distress, Cellier places her actions and her encounters with the state authorities within a larger public arena of debate and proclaims her innocence. As if to leave no doubt about her own appropriation of David to lay claim to the right to exonerate herself to the public and critique the way she was treated by the legal system, Cellier makes explicit reference to the David-Absalom story at the end of her narrative, just before the account of her trial, applying the types this time to the current political situation. Constructing her association with Sir Robert Peyton 267 as simply one strategy “to gain Proselites to [the
266 Saul was the first anointed king of Israel, and as such carries special significance. But his disobedience to God’s command through the prophet Samuel resulted in God’s disfavor and the anointing of David as God’s chosen king while Saul still ruled as the official king. And it was to David that God made the promise of a permanent succession on the throne of Israel; none of Saul’s descendants ruled. 267 Sir Robert Peyton was a Member of Parliament for Middlesex. In December of 1680, about six months after Malice Defeated appeared in print and after Cellier was convicted of seditious libel, the House voted to expel Peyton, “it appearing to this House, by the Report made at the Bar, and by the Confession of Sir Robert Peyton, in his Place, That Sir Robert Peyton had secret Negotiation with the Duke of York, by the Means of the Earl of Peterborough, Mrs. Cellier, and Mr. Gadbury, at such time when they were turning the Popish Plot on the
212 king’s] services,” Cellier maintains that there are others “undiscovered like Hushai,” who, she hopes, “will have as good success to confound the crafty Contrivances of all the old Achitophels, and the Headstrong Ambitious Practices of young Absalom” ( MD 32). In the biblical narrative, Achitophel, one of David’s trusted counselors, abandons the king to help Absalom gain the throne; however, Hushai, remaining loyal to David, insinuates himself into Absalom’s camp and sets himself up as a rival counselor in order to undermine Absalom’s coup. Here Cellier gives the role of Achitophel to the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was virulently anti-Catholic and a strong supporter of excluding the Duke of York from the succession in favor of the illegitimate Monmouth, the “ambitious” Absalom in Cellier’s configuration of the political intrigues. With this deployment of the characters, Charles most obviously stands in for David, a way for Cellier to signal her own loyalty to the Crown. But she can also displace the Duke of York from a central position of mistrust, and can even suggest that loyalty to York can be seen, ultimately, as loyalty to Charles. The brief paragraph in which this typological drama is laid out begins with Cellier’s apology to “my own Sex,” should they think her involvement in the political arena “too Masculine” (32). However, given her own representation of herself as a type of David, the way in which Cellier deliberately foregrounds the Absalom/Achitophel plot in the same paragraph subverts the apology by framing her own role as service to the state and by suggesting that those who attack her are, by association, opposing the legitimate king. The second typological identity that Cellier claims arises from her use of the St. George legend, an identity that, at first glance, seems to construct her in quite a different, seemingly more conventional “feminine” role that has little to do with biblical identity. Throughout her account, and in the midst of detailing legal procedures and documents, Cellier represents herself playing the role of a maiden in a chivalric romance; however, when she does so, her tone verges on ironic, as if she is playing a kind of romantic farce. Of William Waller, she declares to her readers that he is a “Doughty Knight,” with whom she would not want to be left alone “lest he should make romances of me, as he [has] done of others” ( MD 23), suggesting not only that he has mis-played the role of chivalric knight, but also that readers should be wary of accepting a
Protestants” ( 14 December 1680, House of Commons Journals 9 (1680), British History Online, http://wwww.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=27841). Cf. Malice Defeated , 14.
213 proposed narrative at face value. 268 To Waller himself, when he is trying to pry information out of her while she is in prison, she retorts: “I am not such a Distressed Damosel to use your Service. For as the Devil can do harm, but not good, so, though you have put me in, yet it is not in your power to fetch me out of this inchanted Castle” (27). Since Waller has neither the courtesy nor the power of a knight, Cellier’s maiden persona cannot afford to be as helpless, naïve, or dependent on male rescue as those that people stereotypical romances. During her examination by the council, Cellier also appropriates the language of romance. Bluntly admitting her awareness that she is “the talk of the town,” Cellier laments that those who should have been supporting her have seemingly deserted her: “Are all my Summer friends flown? Is my Knight against me too?” (24). 269 As Dolan has shown, readers clearly understood Cellier’s use of romance, as was evident in responses like Modesty Triumphing , which refers on the title page to “a late Romance published by Elizabeth Cellier, Midwife and Lady Errant.” 270 Once she has constructed her role within this romance manqué framework, Cellier makes a specific link to the legend of St. George and the dragon. When the jurors demand monetary payment for having acquitted her of high treason, she sends a wittily-worded refusal, appealing to the ideals of chivalry that she has already suggested no longer exist: “I am assur’d you will not forfeit your Spurs by oppressing the Distressed She, Your selves and the Laws have preserv’d from a raging Dragon” (42). Finally, she addresses her audience, pointing out that, unlike the maiden in the celebrated narrative, she has been attacked by those who should have protected her: “I hope the judicious Reader will pardon what is either forgot, or not well express’d, in consideration that I was forc’d to defend my Life, both against the Knights and the Dragon, for in this unequal Combate there was no St. George to defend me against him, but Sir C---- Sir J---- Sir R---- and 268 Framing Waller’s version of the romance inside of her own appropriation of the genre also seems to suggest that Cellier was aware of the slippery nature of even those narratives that we think we know well, depending on who is writing the script or directing the action. 269 This line is potentially another juxtaposition of biblical and romance typologies. In the seventeenth century, the term “summer friends” surfaces in references to Job, most of whose friends deserted him when he was no longer prosperous and seemed to be cursed by God. At the end of his version of Job (“in part, Periphrased; in part, Abridged”), which was dedicated to Charles, Prince of Wales, Frances Quarles includes several short verses under different headings, intended to sum up the work. Under the heading “In Slander,” are these lines: “If Winter fortunes nip thy Summer Friends, / And tip their Tongues with Censure, that offends / Thy tender Name, despaire not, but be wise, / Know Heaven selecteth, whom the World denies” (n.p.). See Job Militant with meditations divine and morall (London: Felix Kyngston, 1624). Quarles uses the term again in “Eleg. 19,” one of the laments he gives the prophet Jeremiah in Sions elegies. Wept by Jeremie the prophet, and periphras'd by Fra. Quarles (London: W. Stansby, 1625) n.p.). 270 See Whores (85-90) for Dolan’s analysis of both general and specific responses to Cellier’s tract.
214 Sir George also stood by my accuser, to manage his Malice against me” (42). Here, as she did with her use of the David story, Cellier creates a dramatic moment in which she unveils the specific source of her typology to her audience so that they have the “correct” lens through which to read the role in which she has cast herself. 271 St. George serves as a particularly “polyvalent figure” (Riches 51) for Cellier to invoke, one which allows her to open up multiple spheres of meaning. The St. George legend, the version in which the chivalric knight rescues a king’s daughter and saves a country from further terror by slaying a dragon, first appeared in written form in the fourteenth-century Legenda Aurea , which was published in English by Caxton in 1483 as the Golden Legend .272 Previous to that, however, St. George had been highly venerated by Edward III, who founded the Order of the Garter and made the saint its patron. During the Middle Ages, St. George became associated with the Virgin Mary, a connection reflected in the title of “Our Lady’s Knight,” commonly used by the cult of St. George in the late medieval period (49). In the windows of the church of St. George at Stamford, designed during the restoration of the building by William Bruges in the mid-fifteenth century, St. George appeared in scenarios that linked him to Christ and the Virgin; in one image he receives a scourging, visually similar to contemporary images of the Passion of Christ, and in another image St. George is beheaded as he kneels before an image of the Virgin and Child, and, in yet another, the Virgin subsequently resurrects the martyr (51). In addition to this connection to Marian devotion, Riches sees evidence in the common visual portrayal of St. George demolishing the dragon outside the walls of a city of a “trend towards an iconography of social control,” with the dragon representing “the threat of chaos and disorder,” which is contained by the heroic saint (50). Certainly, the Protestant Reformation had an impact on perceptions of St. George. Riches notes that “the peculiarly English narrative of his connection with the Virgin Mary…generally 271 Cellier also chooses to make this revelation at a point in the text that parallels her earlier identification of the David story. The latter is placed at the close of the major section of Malice Defeated , just before the “Abstract” of her trial. The St. George reference comes at almost precisely the same place at the end of the trial account. 272 St. George, of course, has a history (or several histories) that goes back much further than the mid- fourteenth-century, when he began to displace Edward the Confessor as “specyel protectour and defendour of this royaume” of England (Riches 48; Hogarth 19). Both Riches and Hogarth give helpful overviews of the evolution of a third- or fourth-century Palestinian martyr into the eventual patron saint of England. Since the story of a knight overcoming a dragon has earlier analogues in myth, Riches suggests that this “motif…developed entirely separately from the original martyrdom legend of the saint” (47). While the first extant written version of the story appears in Legenda Aurea , visual representations of St. George and the dragon were in existence for some time before this.
215 fell away with the advent of the Reformation” (51). Moreover, the ritual celebrations of St. George’s Day (April 23), while they did not disappear, shifted and changed both in their literal expression and their symbolic significance from community to community during the early modern period, often becoming more secular in nature. Disagreeing with the revisionist claim that there was a uniform clinging to rituals and beliefs of the past following the Reformation, McClendon argues that “the persistence of St. George represented practically everything except the continuity of tradition” (27). However, the feast of St. George was one of few that survived the reforms to the church calendar during Henry VIII’s reign. Moreover, within the Catholic community in England, the figure of St. George may well have retained some of the earlier associations with piety and with the Virgin. In the political realm, the crown reinforced its link to the saint during the seventeenth century. Rubens painted Charles I as St. George, although as a “chivalric lover” rather than a military figure (Sharpe, “‘So Hard a Text’” 388). In the later Stuart period, Charles II chose to hold his coronation on St. George’s Day, with James II and Queen Anne following suit (McClendon 27). In 1680, the association between monarch and saint surfaced again, when a translation of the sixth book of Cowley’s Plantarum (1668) appeared, announcing itself as a “poem upon the late rebellion,” the “Happy Restoration,” and the “Dutch War Ensuing” (t.p.). As the time of his execution approaches, Charles is represented laying aside all his accoutrements, including “the Garter” of the order of St. George; the story has been inverted, with “the Dragon vanquishing the Sacred Knight” (27). Similarly, Cellier laments to her audience that the script has not played out as it should; rather than rescuing her, her “Knight” has joined the dragon in seeking her destruction. Because of the saint’s multiple associations, invoking St. George by name allows Cellier to critique the treatment she has received at the hands of the Crown’s authorities, reinforce her representation of Shaftesbury as Achitophel by now assigning him the role of the dragon, 273 and also suggest that not only she, but Catholicism itself has been betrayed by those who should have been acting the part of “Our lady’s [the lady’s] Knight.” In the context of an account that is laden with specific details of legal processes and intercut with legal documentation, Cellier’s rhetorical strategy of typology stands out, helping to maintain a subtle narrative continuity. Moreover, while the two strands of typology may seem to 273 Given the parallel placement of the specific references to both the David story and the St. George myth, the connection to Shaftesbury seems likely. It would also extend the critique of Shaftesbury as potential enemy of the crown to Shaftesbury as the guiding hand behind the construction of the Meal Tub Plot.
216 have little in common, Cellier connects them through the visual emblem on the title page of Malice Defeated , fusing the David story and the St. George story. Notably, the small black cross to the right of the anchor crossbar strongly resembles one type of cross often depicted in representations of the Knights Templar, whose reputation was built during the Crusades and whose mission focused on defending those places in Palestine most closely associated with Christ’s birth, Passion, and resurrection, the latter two of which were tied to Jerusalem. St. George himself owes part of his reputation to his reputed military assistance to beleaguered Christian soldiers at the siege of Antioch in 1098, and, a century later, to Richard Coeur de Lion at the siege of Jerusalem (Hogarth 19). It was also during the time of the Crusades that the Kingdom of Jerusalem existed for a brief period of time as one of a chain of Crusader military states in the region. Moreover, in a fifteenth-century traditional English Christmas hymn, Novus Sol de virgine , the opening verse assigns Mary the title of “holy daughter of Sion, / Princess of Jerusalem” (Rickert 17). 274 That Cellier’s emblem awakened one or more of these associations in her audience seems likely, given the opening comment of the writer of Modesty Triumphing , who rather mockingly points out that the emblem looks like “the counterfeit of a seal of some antiquated Princess of Jerusalem” (3). The David narrative also has connections to Jerusalem, since it was his reign that clearly established the city both as the seat of monarchy and the center of worship for the nation of Israel. In the more specific story invoked by Cellier’s references to Absalom and Achitophel, David’s flight from Jerusalem is a key moment, marking Absalom’s popular and political ascendancy. And the New Testament nativity narratives identify Mary herself as being of the house and lineage of David. Thus not only do the stories individually offer Cellier roles through which she can address issues of political and religious debate, but these significant points of intersection between the two typological narratives serve to further emphasize Cellier’s critique of the authorities’ behavior and the state of the country in a more powerful way to the average reader than, perhaps, the more concrete evidence she offers by way of the legal evidence and analysis she presents.
274 This title seems to have still held currency as late as the nineteenth century, as evidenced in a travel narrative of that era. In his criticism of the “Mariolatry” he sees evidence of in Catholic countries in Europe, Normal L. Walker gives an English translation of a printed prayer in German he claims to have found in a roadside chapel dedicated to the Virgin in one such country. Among other names, the prayer refers to Mary as “Princess of Jerusalem” (107-108). While the translation as a whole may be suspect, such a specific title seems likely to have been a fair translation of the original.
217 Conclusion In these three texts, I have analyzed the ways in which women found a means to empower themselves by appropriating scriptural narratives in order to enact typological identities of innocence in the face of false or unjustified accusations. All three women found themselves in confrontation with authorities of the state or church, caught within larger currents of debates and events. The adeptness with which they deployed typological strategies to engage their opponents and accusers allowed these women to reconfigure threatening and oppressive rhetorical situations into situations in which they gained and exercised significant rhetorical advantages and verbal authority over their male prosecutors. Not content simply to use typology as a defensive strategy to proclaim their innocence, Askew, Hutchinson, and Cellier provide models of women using typology proactively to put their opponents themselves on the defensive. At one point in the examination, a frustrated Winthrop attempts to reassert rhetorical control of the process by reminding Hutchinson sharply that “We are your judges, and not you ours” (“Examination” 316). These three women redraw the rhetorical positions in such a way that they can turn that statement back on their judges. Their rhetorical success in doing so, however, exacted a high personal price; their ability to use typological rhetoric to construct themselves into a position of rhetorical power played a role in earning them punishments from severe economic hardship to exile to death. Yet, the same intelligence that guided Cellier, Askew, and Hutchinson in their choice of typologies would surely have given them an awareness of the risks they were taking, making those choices strong evidence of their desire to speak publicly and boldly, whatever the potential dangers. Their typological strategies, I would suggest, may well have been driven by their awareness of an audience beyond their prosecutors, an audience these women believed needed to hear what they had to say. Thus, their use of typology provided a means not simply to subdue their examiners, but also to claim an authoritative position from which to voice their own critiques of the broader political and religious controversies that shape and fuel the authorities’ desire to suppress and silence them.
218 Conclusion My study of early modern women’s use of the rhetorical strategy of typology began in the domestic domain of beds and tables and ends in the courtroom. This exploratory journey originated in London with a Catholic gentry woman’s use of typology to enact spiritual motherhood (and priesthood); the completion of the journey returns us to London and a Catholic midwife, whose livelihood centered on biological motherhood. The bookending of my exploration of women’s typological practices may cause a few raised eyebrows, for after all, Catholic women lacked the intimate knowledge of Scripture that characterized their Protestant counterparts. Or so it has been generally—and mistakenly—assumed. As Jorge Canizares- Esguerra points out, critical assessments of early modern culture have long held “[a] common misconception…that the Bible did not circulate widely among Catholics and was the preserve of a tiny priestly elite” (par. 8). In their use of typology, Elizabeth Cary and Elizabeth Cellier certainly challenge that conventional narrative. I emphasize their contributions here, in my conclusion, to give them their due as women whose typological strategies speak to their conversance with scripture, and also to reiterate the importance of this project as its own kind of alternative narrative of early modern women’s rhetorical practices. The early modern women in this study span chronological time, geographical location, and religious tradition; from Anne Askew to Mary Rowlandson, they represent 135 years, the Old World and the New, and a range of faith traditions from radical Fifth Monarchist to colonial Puritan to devout Catholic. I have shown how these women enacted typological identities in the material contexts and circumstances in which they found themselves. In the first two chapters, those sites range from the familiar enclosed spaces of the home to the unknown, sometimes hostile territories early modern women encountered on journeys beyond their normal geographical location; in the last two chapters, perspective shifts from the local church as a site of disputes between leaders and women congregants to the highly contested sites of formal examinations or trials of women carried out by religious and political authorities. The way in which these women use the rhetorical strategy of typology establishes their active participation in an early modern interpretive practice rooted in the cultural belief that the overarching biblical narrative revealed “the one and only real world,” a world that could “in principle embrace the experience of any present age and reader” (Frei 3). Michael Austin points out that “[t]o the extent that we can identify a ‘public sphere’ in seventeenth century England, we must
219 acknowledge that it was a public sphere constructed, maintained, and negotiated by the near- absolute rhetorical legitimacy of the English Bible” (34). While Askew belongs to the sixteenth century, typological readings characterize both visual and textual commentaries on the affairs of church and state in that era as well, as I noted in the introduction. Thus, for these women, biblical typology served as a significant meaning-making rhetorical strategy, a lens through which the “real world,” and their experience of it, was “detailed and made accessible by the biblical story—not the reverse” (3). Through enacting scriptural roles, they could insert themselves into the metanarrative of sacred history, the currents of which, for these women, flowed seamlessly into all areas of their lives, providing a framework that gave order and significance to their own lives and to the events unfolding around them. I suggested that this project offers an alternative perspective on the significance of women’s rhetorical practices in the early modern world. Approaches to early modern women’s texts often seem to create narratives built on overdetermined continuities or marked oppositions. Here are a few representative cases-in-point. Perhaps the most obvious example of continuity at the expense of difference is the “general tendency” that Marcus Nevitt complains of in his recent book, Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England : what he identifies as a critical tendency to put “historically specific moments of agency…into the service of a longstanding, collective feminist solidarity” (5). Nevitt’s own study provides an apt illustration of the opposite tendency to create overdetermined binaries. Suggesting that rhetorical (“literary”) readings of the pamphlet literature of the 1640s and 1650s obscure or disregard women’s historical and material circumstances, Nevitt claims a uniquely “interdisciplinary approach” that will excavate, in particular, the significant contributions of non-aristocratic women to the material production of the plethora of pamphlets that littered the mid-century years of upheaval in England (4-5). While further uncovering the role of women in this process certainly contributes to our understanding of early modern culture, doing so by defining agency as something “beyond” or “not simply reducible to…text or verbal performance” creates a couple of unhelpful oppositions: one between rhetorical expression and “real work” (an opposition the classical rhetoricians could not have imagined); and another associating aristocratic women with the former and non-aristocratic women with the latter. More recently, in Religion, Reform, and Women’s Writing , Kimberly Anne Coles concludes her study by constructing an opposition between “the conceptual notion of religious womanhood [that] enabled the writing performance
220 of women in the Reformation” of sixteenth-century England and the contrasting “figure of the religious woman [as] a symbol of fractured religious authority and female self-government” in the seventeenth century (15, 181). While comparison and contrast are essential and valuable critical tools, ones which I use in my own study, we also need ways to think more holistically, across boundaries, about women’s rhetorics. Considering early modern women’s use of biblical typology provides for both continuity and difference; this approach acknowledges continuity without necessarily positing a success or solidarity narrative, yet recognizes that women engage in this rhetorical practice in ways that reflect their individual religious beliefs and their specific material circumstances. I opened my project with Katharine Evans and Sarah Chevers’ declaration that they were a new Lazarus, risen from the dead as a sign of hope and of God’s intended purposes for the Quaker community in seventeenth-century England. I conclude with one last example of this typological strategy by another Quaker, a contemporary of Evans and Chevers. During Michaelmass of 1657, Dorothy Waugh, former maid turned Quaker preacher and missionary, felt “moved of the Lord” to travel to Carlisle to preach against “all deceit & ungodly practices” (Lambs Defense 29). Pulled down from the town’s cross, from which she had been delivering her message, Waugh was hauled off to jail, despite, she claims, the authorities “not having any thing to lay to my Charge” (29). Waugh’s brief description of her punishment in Carlisle has been of interest to critics primarily because it is one of the few surviving accounts from a woman who had been forced to wear the scold’s bridle, which she describes as “a stone weight of Iron” (30). The particular value of her narrative for this project lies in what she represents as the catalyst for her sentence in an exchange she has with the mayor, who comes to see her in prison. When he asks where she is from, Waugh promptly responds, “Out of Egypt where thou lodgest.” This answer, she claims, makes the mayor “so violent & full of Passion he scarce asked me any more Questions,” and prompts him to send for the bridle, “as they call it,” Waugh adds (30). Ward’s account captures in a specific encounter at a particular moment in history the core of the argument I have been making throughout my consideration of women’s use of typology. She implies that the mayor’s outrage arises from his awareness of the typological rhetoric that informs her simple statement: Waugh represents herself as a type not only of the children of Israel, but of Christ himself (Matt. 2.15), and the mayor as the Pharaoh or the Egyptian nation, who, according to the narratives of the Old Testament, enslaved God’s chosen people for over
221 four centuries. Clearly, she believes that the mayor fully comprehended the typological message in her comment, a comment that may well be puzzling to an audience without an intimate knowledge of both biblical narratives and the language of seventeenth-century translations of the Bible. Not only does the mayor’s response suggest that he got the message, but his intense reaction demonstrates once more the typological imagination that was an integral part of early modern consciousness, and the facility with which women shaped their rhetorical strategies to draw on and play to this embedded habit of thought. Finally, as a rhetorical practice, typology not only provided a ready and adaptable means for early modern women to make their interventions in public discourse, but also represented their participation in a democratizing impulse that, while not necessarily gender-specific, certainly had gender implications. As I noted at the outset, in early modern England and New England, typology had ceased to be the exclusive province of clerics and theologians, and typological readings of events, places and people had become commonplace. Such a marked interpretive tendency may have prompted Samuel Mather’s decision to preach a series of sermons on typology to his congregation in Dublin in the mid-seventeenth century, in which he expounded on the correct understanding of “the figures and types of the Old Testament” (title). There is, he points out, a “double use” of types and other such comparisons: “if explained and understood, they do exceedingly enlighten and illustrate; but if not explained, they are like a Riddle, they cast a dark mist and cloud upon the thing” (9). The implication is clear; any personal interpretation must be guided by those who are suitably qualified to “enlighten and illustrate.” Emphasizing that it is “God’s Prerogative to make types,” Mather cautions his audience that “it is not safe to make anything a type merely upon our own fancies and imaginations” (55). So in one sense at least, this narrative of women’s use of biblical typology is a narrative of disruption, for they chose and enacted their typological identities without regard to the rigid rules and schematics that Mather lays out in his sermons. In taking ownership of a hermeneutic long associated with an educated male elite, early modern women transformed what was once a static, theological exercise into a dramatic and dynamic rhetorical exercise of identity, authority, and meaning-making. Through their typological practices, women inserted themselves into the authorizing narrative of sacred history and legitimated their own active participation in the public discourses that shaped both understanding and action in the early modern world.
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225 down for the regulating things, and the taking away of oppressing laws, and oppressors, and to ease the oppressed . London, 1659. Foxe, John. Actes and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable, happenyng in the Church with an universall history of the same, wherein is set forth at large the whole race and course of the Church, from the primitive age to these latter tymes of ours, with the bloudy times, horrible troubles, and great persecutions agaynst the true martyrs of Christ, sought and wrought as well by heathen emperours, as nowe lately practised by Romish prelates, especially in this realme of England and Scotland. Newly revised and recognised, partly also augmented, and now the fourth time agayne published and recommended to the studious reader, by the author (through the helpe of Christ our Lord) Iohn Foxe, which desireth thee good reader to helpe him with thy prayer . Second ed. London: John Daye, 1583. ---. “The Life and Story of the True Servant of God, William Tyndale.” From Foxe’s Book of Martyrs . Ed. William Byron Forbrush. Internet Sacred Text Archive. 2007. 16 September 2007 < http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm>. Gamon, Hannibal. The Praise of a godly woman . 1627. Ed. Bettie Anne Doebler and Retha M. Warnicke. Ann Arbor: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 2001. Graham, Elspeth, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby and Helen Wilcox. Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen. London: Routledge, 1989. Hall, David D., ed.. The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History . Second Edition. Durham, NC: Duke U.P., 1990. The Holy Bible: The Geneva Bible: A facsimile of the 1560 edition . Intro. Lloyd E. Berry. Madison, WI: U. of Wisconsin P., 1696. ---: The Geneva Bible. 1587. The Bible in English . ProQuest. King Library, Miami U., Oxford, OH.
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