THINKING BACK THROUGH OUR MOTHERS contd:

1
THINKING BACK THROUGH OUR MOTHERS contd

• The especial genius of women I believe to be
  electrical in movement, intuitive in function,
  spiritual in tendency. (Margaret Fuller)

2
Our Exploration of a Milleniumor more of Womens
Literature

• Julian of Norwich (1343-1416)
• Medieval mystic, educated by nuns (or so it is
  widely believed) became an anchoress, or recluse
• The Book of Showings, or her accounts of her
  visions
• The mother can give her child to suck of her
  milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us
  with himself, and does, most courteously and most
  tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is
  the previous food of true life (657)
• Appropriating female functions (giving birth,
  suckling children) for the male
• Anonymous, The Wifes Lament (8th century?)
• Records a pre-Christian womans voice
• Note link to Helene Cixous in headnote
  disjointed and fragmented syntax mirrors the
  unimpeded tongue that bursts partitions, classes,
  and rhetorics, orders and codes. (416)

3
Our Exploration of more than a millenium of
writing by women contd

• Margery Kempe (1373?-1438?) if all history is
  biography, then what is autobiography? What kind
  of history?
• Religious visionary, traveled widely, known for
  her dramatic behavior (419)
• Bore 13 children of whom she almost never wrote
• The Book of Margery Kempe
• Dictated to two male scribes
• Can a womans life be told accurately if so
  mediated by men?
• Many references to erotic spirituality personal
  eccentricities omitted in favor of portrayal of
  an obedient Margaret in dialogue with her God
• Complete book not rediscovered until 1934
• Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
• Manipulated her status as queen and as single
  woman to maintain her power
• On Monsieurs Departure When I was Fair and
  Young
• What complexities of gender roles are obvious?
• What are less obvious but apparent?

4
Our Review of a Millenium and more of writing by
women contd

• Aphra Behn (1640-1689) Virginia Woolf declared
  her to be the first Englishwoman to earn a living
  by her wits.
• as a young woman visited Surinam, the setting for
  her novel Oroonoko (1688)
• Surinam was also where Maria Sibylla Merian
  (1647 1717) traveled. Merian went from
  Amsterdam to the Dutch Colony of Surinam in
  northern South America to study an unexplored
  world of exotic flora and fauna. New scholarship
  on Merian rejuvenates her significance in the
  history of science and positions her as a mother
  of the discipline of Entomology (Carl Linnaeus,
  by some regarded as the father of taxonomy
  depended upon her copious, thorough notes, and
  also her methods of categorizing to produce his
  Systema Naturae).
• The Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn, Written by One
  of the Fair Sex (pub. anonymously in 1696)

5
Our Review crosses the Atlantic

• Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) born in England,
  tutored by her father in Greek, Latin, Hebrew,
  and English literature at age 18, comes to
  America with parents and husband, Simon
  Bradstreet
• Devout Puritans, founding the Massachusetts Bay
  Colony
• Bradstreet herself more ambivalent about life in
  the Colonies
• The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (pub.
  1650 when her brother-in-law took it to England)
• Anthology focuses on her role as mother, of her
  poetry as well as of her children
• The Author to her Book renders obligatory
  disclaimers
• Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain /
  Who after birth didst by my side remain / Till
  snatched from thence by friends, less wise than
  true / Who thee abroad, exposed to public view

6
Women Writing in America contd

• Upon the Burning of Our House, July 18, 1666
  (not anthologized here) reveals Bradstreets
  ambivalence about the Puritan mission and also
  her attachment to material things
• My sorrowing eyes aside did cast / And here and
  there the places spy / Where oft I sate and long
  did lie. / Here stood that Trunk, and there that
  chest, / There lay that store I counted best, /
  My pleasant things in ashes lie / And them behold
  no more shall I. / Under the roof no guest shall
  sit, / Nor at thy Table eat a bit. / No pleasant
  talk shall 'ere be told / Nor things recounted
  done of old. / No Candle 'ere shall shine in
  Thee, / Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall
  bee. / In silence ever shalt thou lie.
• Three centuries later, Adrienne Rich remarks the
  importance of this kind of writing by a woman

7
Women Writing in America contd

• Mary Rowlandson (1636-1710) came with her
  family to American in 1638, while still a mere
  babe
• Moved to Lancaster, MA in 1653 and married a
  Harvard graduate, Joseph Rowlandson, who was
  Lancasters Puritan minister
• The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together
  with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed,
  Being a Narrative of the Captivity and
  Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)
• Captivity lasted 11 weeks. Six-year-old daughter
  died
• Was this dictated to a male scribe by Rowlandson
  or actually written down by her?
• 3 editions during her lifetime frequently
  reprinted in 19th century United States
• Captivity narrative a form of Puritan spiritual
  autobiography (important to keep in mind how
  different were their senses of self,
  individuality)
• Susan Howe while helping the original
  inhabitants of earths millennial fourth corner
  to become Christians, members of the moral and
  profit-seeking Elect helped themselves to land.
  (The Birth-mark Unsettling the Wilderness in
  American Literary History 1993)
• Then shall the Kingdom of Heaven be likened
  until ten virgins, which took their lamps and
  went forth to meet the bridegroom (Matthew 25
  1-3)

8
Continuing our review on your own, to prepare for
Ada Lovelace, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy
Wordsworth, Mary Shelley

• Anne Finch
• Mary Astell
• Hannah More
• Phillis Wheatley
• Fanny Burney
• Elizabeth Heywood