Killing the Angel Part One: Early British Transgressive Woman Writers

Killing the Angel

EARLY BRITISH TRANSGRESSIVE WOMAN WRITERS

francis booth

Contents Killing the Angel Transgressive Women Dæmonologie Mediaeval Mystics Julian of Norwich Margery Kempe Christine of Pizan Gwerful Mechain Anne Askew The Monument of Matrones Isabella Whitney Jane Anger Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke Æmelia Lanyer Elizabeth Cary Lady Mary Wroth

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To all Women in general, and gentle Reader whatsoever.

FIE on the falsehood of men, whose minds go oft a madding, & whose tongues can not so soon be wagging, but straight they fall a railing. Was there ever any so abused, so slandered, so railed upon, or so wickedly handled undeservedly, as are we women? . . and they think we will not write to reprove their lying lips.

Jane Anger

To all virtuous Ladies in general Each blessed Lady that in Virtue spends Your precious time to beautify your souls; Come wait on her whom wingèd Fame attends And in her hand the Book where she enrolls Æmelia Lanyer

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Noble, Worthy Ladies, Condemn me not as a dishonour of your Sex, for setting forth this Work; for it is harmless and free from all dishonesty; I will not say from Vanity: for that is so natural to our Sex, as it were unnatural, not to be so. Besides, Poetry, which is built upon Fancy, Women may claim, as a work belonging most properly to themselves.

Margaret Cavendish They tell us we mistake our sex and way; Good breeding, fashion, dancing, dressing, play Are the accomplishments we should desire; To write, or read, or think, or to inquire Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time, And interrupt the conquests of our prime.

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

And shall we Women now sit tamely by, Make no excursions in Philosophy, Or grace our Thoughts in tuneful Poetry?

We will our Rights in Learning’s World maintain, Wit’s Empire, now, shall know a Female Reign Sarah Fyge Egerton 8

Timid brides, you have, probably, hitherto been addressed as angels.

Prepare for the time when you shall again become mortal. Take the alarm at the first approach of blame; at the first hint of a discovery that you are anything less than infallible: – contradict, debate, justify, recriminate, rage, weep, swoon, do anything but yield to conviction. I take it for granted that you have already acquired sufficient command of voice; you need not study its compass; going beyond

its pitch has a peculiarly happy effect upon some occasions. But are you voluble enough to drown all sense in a torrent of words? Can you be loud enough to overpower the voice of all who shall attempt to interrupt or contradict you? Are you mistress of the petulant, the peevish, and the sullen tones? Have you practised the sharpness which provokes retort, and the continual monotony which by setting your adversary to sleep effectually precludes reply?

Maria Edgworth

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1 Killing the Angel You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her – you may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic.

She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it – in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all – I need not say it – she was pure. . . And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. . .

Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.

Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women

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his book is about British women writers who comprehensively killed the Angel in their own house, who transgressed the expectations placed upon the women of their time by learning to read, learning languages, learning to think for themselves, enjoying the company of other, equally transgressive women, studying and translating contemporary European literature and the male classics of the patriarchive, often for money, transgressing the unspoken prohibition against women being professional writers and, most transgressive of all, daring to publish their own original writings under their own names.

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irginiaWoolf said ‘nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century,’ and in her time nothing much was. But we know a lot more these days about those early transgressive women, the foremothers of contemporary women writers, the creators of the still-emerging matriarchive.

As Woolf said, ‘Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontës and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue.’

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illing the Angel weaves an Ariadne’s thread, connecting together some of these British women writers, from the earliest days of the English language to the end of the eighteenth century.

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2 Transgressive Women

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ccording to the Bible the first transgression on earth was committed by the first woman on Earth: Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit and transgressed God’s will. he biblical Eve soon learned her lesson however; she became obedient to God and her husband and never transgressing again as far as we know. It was too late though; the whole of mankind and womankind has had to pay for her original sin. Or not: we will meet several women writers vigorously disputed this idea of Eve.

Out of her cave came the ancient Lilith; Lilith the wise; Lilith wound away among the mountains and glittering peaks, and be cave came Lilith, scornful of his solitude, exultant in h ‘Still alone, star gazer! Is thy wisdom of no avail? Thou hast yet to learn that I am

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n the Gnostic tradition Eve was Adam’s second wife, the good wife.

She had been preceded by Adam’s very transgressive bad wife Lilith, ‘the witch he loved before the gift of Eve,’ according to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem about her. Lilith refused to obey her husband and refused to lay underneath him in the missionary position. She left him and went off to become a succubus, stealing men’s semen and abducting children; about as transgressive as a woman can get.

the enchantress. There ran a little path outside her dwelling; it efore the door one of the Wise Ones walked to and fro. Out of her her wisdom, flaunting her shining and magical beauty. m more powerful, knowing the ways of error, than you who know the ways of truth.’

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everal male authors have written about Lilith – half in love with her, half scared of her: the beautiful but deceitful transgressive temptress who will seduce and betray any man she wants. Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast 666 himself, wrote his book Lilith in such ambivalent terms.

Ah! Were those virgin lips of thine polluted with some rank savour of Sabbatic lust?

What spell turned thee, the maiden, to a monkey jabbering antiphonal blasphemies To those chaste chants I wooed thee by, the moment that touching thee, my fruit dissolved to dust, Fair-seeming Sodom-apple! Yet thy kisses smote all my spine to shuddering ecstasies!

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hat woman would not love to be called a fair-seeming Sodom-apple?

The medieval Jewish mystical text Zohar also refers to Lilith as the original transgressive woman.

Approaching the earthly Garden of Eden, she sees cherubs guarding the gates of the Garden, and she dwells there by that flaming sword, for she emerged from the side of that flame. As the flame revolves she flees and roams the world, finding children who deserved to be punished. She toys with them and kills them.

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ery transgressive. In other myths of origin the woes of the world are also attributed to a woman not doing as she was told by men. In Greek myth everything was perfect until Pandora opened a jar containing nothing but trouble. As Hesiod described the event: For ere this the tribes of men lived on earth remote and free from ills and hard toil and heavy sickness which bring the Fates upon men; for in misery men grow old quickly. But the woman took off the great lid of the jar with her hands and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men.

From her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmates in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.

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ften in early myth it is women’s lust that is seen as men’s downfall, especially when the woman is said to be a witch or a sexually predatory goddess like Athena or Lilith. Female lust was always – until very recently and perhaps still today – seen in patriarchal societies as being transgressive but sometimes it led to unspeakably transgressive acts: in Cretan mythology – from which we get Europa, the first European – the witch Pasiphaë lusts after a bull, though only because she has herself been bewitched. She has a 15

wooden frame built to resemble a cow so she can hide in it while the bull penetrates her; her lust transgresses even the species barrier. Also transgressing that barrier was the sorceress Circe, who turned Odysseus’ crew into swine, though thankfully not for sexual purposes.

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ther transgressive ancient Greek women include Helen of Troy, who caused a catastrophic war; Medea, who killed her children; Clytemnestra, who killed her husband, and Clytemnestra’s daughter Electra, who plotted to kill her mother and stepfather in revenge. There was also Antigone, daughter of the incest between Oedipus and his mother who broke the law because she wanted to bury her brother, and Lysistrata, who led the world’s first sex strike by women. And of course in Greek myth, Amazons, Harpies, Fates, Furies, Gorgons, Maenads and Sirens were all female and were all a threat to peace and patriarchal order.

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n India, although Hinduism has much-loved gentle goddesses like Sita, Laksmi and Saraswati, as well as the equally-loved, semi-divine Sakuntala, mother of India’s founder Bharat (of the Mahabharata), it also has fierce, relentless goddesses like Kali and Durga. However, as in Tibetan or Tantric Buddhism, which has Penden Lhamo, Rachigma and Troma, the fierce warrior goddesses are a threat mostly to evil male deities rather than ordinary people.

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oing back to the Christian Bible we have Delilah, who cut off Samson’s hair to rob him of his strength and we also have two women who went even further and cut off men’s heads – surely the most transgressive thing a woman can do: Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes before he had chance to rape her – a scene lovingly painted by, among many others, pioneering woman artist Artemisia Gentileschi, herself named after Artemisia, the warrior Queen of Caria – and the highly transgressive Salome, who seduced her stepfather in front of her mother so that she could have the severed head of John the Baptist, who had spurned her – a story lasciviously retold

by Oscar Wilde and sensuously set to music by Richard Strauss.

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3 Dæmonologie

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ransgressive women have often been called witches. They have allegedly always been with us, transgressing peaceful society at least since the time of the Old Testament: Exodus says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ the first of several references to witchcraft in the Old Testament.

There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son, or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.

Deuteronomy Ch. 18 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry: because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.

First Book of Samuel Ch. 15

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And I will cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand, and thou shalt have no more Soothsayers Book of Micah Ch. 5

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ccusations of witchcraft were a common way of subjugating women, as even pre-feminist female writers noted.

Whatever the pretext made for witchcraft persecution we have abundant proof that the so-called ‘witch’ was among the most profoundly scientific persons of the age. The church having forbidden its offices and all external methods of knowledge to woman, was profoundly stirred with indignation at her having through her own wisdom, penetrated into some of the most deeply subtle secrets of nature: and it was a subject of debate during the middle ages if learning for woman was not an additional capacity for evil, as owing to her, knowledge had first been introduced in the world. In penetrating into these arcana, woman trenched upon that mysterious hidden knowledge of the church which it regarded as among its most potential methods of controlling mankind.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State, 1893

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he belief in witches persisted for centuries; the Witchcraft Act in England was passed in 1563, when Elizabeth I was newly on the throne and was not repealed until 1951, shortly before Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, about 20

the so-called Salem witches: young women who were supposed to have done harm to men by using sympathetic magic, creating ‘poppets,’ replicas of the person they wanted to hurt.

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he witch was seen as transgressive, but she was thought not to do the harm of herself, just to be a conduit for a demon, with whom she may have had sex as an incubus.

Witches could also be succubi, stealing men’s semen in their sleep like Lilith.

People believed in this absolutely, and not just uneducated, superstitious people.

King James I of England commissioned others to write what we now call the King James Bible, but he had previously written a book on witches, Dæmonologie, himself, discussing among other things their use of poppets.

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To some others at these times he teacheth how to make Pictures of wax or clay: That by the roasting thereof, the persons that they bear the name of, may be continually melted or dried away by continual sickness.

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he witches in the Salem trials and in many of the similar trials in Europe were young women or girls, but the popular image of a witch is of an old and ugly woman.

One sort of such as are said to be witches, are women which be commonly old, lame, bleary-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles; poor, sullen, superstitious, and papists; or such as know no religion: in whose drowsy minds the devil hath gotten a fine seat; so as, what mischief, mischance, calamity, or slaughter is brought to pass, they are easily persuaded the same is done by themselves; imprinting in their minds an earnest and constant imagination thereof. They are lean and deformed, shewing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, devilish.

Reginald Scott, The Discovery of Witchcraft

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or hundreds of years any woman who did not look, dress and behave as men thought she should could be accused of being a witch: between 1482 and 1782, around a hundred thousand women across Europe were accused of witchcraft, and some forty to fifty thousand were executed for transgressions they didn’t commit.

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4 Mediaeval Mystics

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e saw that women who didn’t fit the norm – transgressive women – were for a long time considered to be witches. If a witch supposedly dedicated herself to the devil then her opposite was a nun, who dedicated herself to God. But some senior nuns in the later middle ages wrote books – a transgressive act of itself for any woman at that time but even more so for one who had taken vows of obedience to a patriarchal religion. And worse, they often transgressed orthodox religious views. Literally cloistered in female communities and away from the control of men these religious women expressed deeply personal views in a way they would never have been allowed to do in the outside world. Of course any male priest, however junior, could give orders to any female nun, even an abbess, but in practice some convents were large and powerful; their abbesses were often highly literate and some communicated – discreetly – on equal terms with scholars around Europe in Latin even though the mere learning of Latin was transgressive for a woman.

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ome medieval abbesses wrote about secular matters and even composed fiction. The earliest of them was the canoness Hrotsvitha (or Hrotsvit, Roswitha) of Gandersheim in Saxony, born in the tenth century, who wrote plays in Latin – probably the first playwright of either gender since Roman times and the first female poet since Sappho.

Like the later Christine of Pizan, Hrotsvitha said she was writing a virtuous response to sinful secular poetry, ‘my objective being to glorify, within the limits of my poor talent, the laudable chastity of Christian virgins in that same form of composition that has been used to describe the shameless acts of licentious women.’ This led her to ‘apply my mind and my pen to depicting the dreadful frenzy of those possessed by illicit love, and the insidious sweetness of their speech – things that should not even be named among us.’ Hrotsvitha wrote a note to her readers warning them that she would be trawling the depths of vice in order to illuminate virtue; like Christine of Pizan she borrowed secular forms to hold religious content.

In that same kind of composition in which the filthy pollutions of lewd women are recited, the praiseworthy chastity of holy virgins will be celebrated according to the ability of my little wit. This led me, not rarely, to be ashamed and to blush, that I had to think and write in this kind of composition about the hateful madness of illicit lovers and their evilly sweet talk, which are not permitted to reach our ears. But if I failed to do this because of my embarrassment, I could not carry out my purpose, nor expound fully the 24

praise of innocents according to my powers, since the more the flatteries of the senseless lead to illicit things, the higher the glory of the heavenly helper and the more glorious the victory of the triumphant proves to be, especially when feminine fragility conquers and virile strength is confounded.

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ike many female authors for the next thousand years, though for a different reason, Hrotsvitha wrote alone, literally in cloistered silence: as Virginia Woolf advocated, she had ‘a room of her own,’ in her case a cell in a convent where she kept her writing to herself; even in this tight 25

community her fellow nuns didn’t know what she was up to. ‘Unknown to all around me, I have toiled in secret.’ Hrotsvitha attributes her inspiration, as did other religious female writers, solely to God. ‘Although prosody may seem a hard and difficult art for a woman to master, I, without any assistance but that given by the merciful grace of Heaven (in which I have trusted rather than in my own strength) have attempted in this book to sing in dactyls.’ Her plays were not translated into English until the 1500s, when at the time they were thought to have been written by the English St. Hilda of Northumbria, but they are all now in print. rotsvitha’s works were written in three books: Liber Primus, The Book of Legends, lives of the saints written in verse; Liber Secundus, The Book of Drama, six plays emulating the Latin playwright Terence, trying to correct his misogyny: ‘Wherefore I, the strong voice of Gandersheim, have not hesitated to imitate a poet (Terence) whose works are so widely read, my object being to glorify, within the limits of my poor talent, the laudable chastity of Christian virgins in that self-same form of composition which has been used to describe the shameless acts of licentious women,’ and Liber Tertius, which contains histories in verse of the emperors Otto I and Otto II as well as a history of her own Gandersheim Abbey. The epistle of dedication at the beginning of her works to its male patrons strikes a balance between the expected humility of any religious writer, and the pride of her being a woman.

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That my natural gifts might not be made void by negligence I have been at pains, whenever I have been able to pick up some threads and scraps torn from the old mantle of philosophy, to weave them into the stuff of my own book, in the hope that my lowly ignorant effort may gain more acceptance through the introduction of something of a nobler strain, and that the Creator of genius may be the more honoured since it is generally believed that a woman’s intelligence is slower. Such has been my motive in writing, the sole reason for the sweat and fatigue which my labours have cost me.

At least I do not pretend to have knowledge where I am ignorant. On the contrary, my best claim to indulgence is that I know how much I do not know.

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he best known of these transgressive early abbesses today is the twelfth-century Hildegard of Bingen, the head of an abbey in the Rhineland, mainly because of the many beautiful songs and poems she wrote; her sung morality play Ordo Virtutum is arguably the first opera ever written. Hildegard was an extraordinary woman who corresponded as an equal with some of the great men of the twelfth century and wrote on botany and medicine as well theology, where her views were unorthodox and, in a male theologian might have brought trouble. Among 27

other transgressive, pre-feminist ideas she wrote that the perfection of Mary counterbalanced the error of Eve, absolving women of responsibility for the evils of the world and raising them above men: after all a woman gave birth to God. ‘Because a woman brought death a bright Maiden overcame it, and so the highest blessing in all of creation lies in the form of a woman, since God has become man in a sweet and blessed Virgin.’ This is heresy, transgressing the doctrine of the Trinity but Hildegard got away with it – probably because the male Church elders wouldn’t trouble themselves to read the works of a woman.

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ike other medieval mystics, Hildegard apologized that God should speak through a woman, but said that, regardless of gender, ‘every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of Divinity.’ She also stressed the importance of the individual voice: ‘We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.’ Man or woman, everyone should find their voice, even if that might bring accusations of transgressiveness. ‘Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap.’

Although as a nun she might not be expected to have personal knowledge of 28

the sexual act, Hildegard explicitly and highly transgressively describes how the woman has the power in sexual relationships and procreation.

When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings forth with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman’s sexual organs contract and all parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.

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aint Teresa of Avila (1515 – 1582) transgressed the expectations of silence and obedience among nuns by writing to help her fellow nuns on the path of virtue; they needed it: Saint Bridget of Sweden (1303 – 1373) had earlier said that ‘there is so much abuse in the convents that their doors are kept open for clerics and laymen alike, whomever it pleases the sisters to let in, even at night. Accordingly, such places are more like brothels than holy cloisters.’ As has often been said, Teresa’s idea of religious ecstasy is very close to what many women would consider sexual ecstasy, but her aim was to induce purity in her sisters. Like many subsequent female writers, she explains that it needs a woman’s voice and 29

a woman’s understanding to communicate ideas of virtue and chastity to other women.

I know that I am lacking neither in love nor in desire to do all I can to help the souls of my sisters to make great progress in the service of the Lord. It may be that this love, together with my years and the experience which I have of a number of convents, will make me more successful in writing about small matters than learned men can be. For these, being themselves strong and holding other and more important occupations, do not always pay such heed to things which in themselves seem of no importance but which may do great harm to persons as weak as we women are. For the snares laid by the devil for strictly cloistered nuns are numerous and he finds that he needs new weapons if he is to do them harm. I, being a wicked woman, have defended myself but ill, and so I should like my sisters to take warning by me.

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5 Julian of Norwich It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

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he first book published in the modern English language, Revelations of Divine Love, was written by a woman, an English abbess: Julian of Norwich; in it, Jesus famously tells her that, although there must be sin in the world, in the end all will be well if we simply trust Him. Like some of her predecessors and successors, Julian transgressively insisted that being a woman was no bar to writing about the love of God. ‘But for I am a woman should I therefore live that I should not tell you the goodness of God?’

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ulian had a near death experience – ‘And when I was thirty years old and a half, God sent me a bodily sickness, in which I lay three days and three nights; and 31

on the fourth night I took all my rites of Holy Church, and weened not to have lived till day.’ After this, Julian began to receive revelations or ‘Shewings’ which she believed came straight from God without any ‘mean’ [intermediary]. ‘These Revelations were shewed to a simple creature unlettered, the year of our Lord 1373, the Thirteenth day of May.’ I saw the red blood trickle down from under the Garland hot and freshly and right plenteously, as it were in the time of His Passion when the Garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head who was both God and Man, the same that suffered thus for me. I conceived truly and mightily that it was Himself shewed it me, without any mean.

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his transgresses, as do the revelations of all the female mystics, the Catholic idea that God would only speak to the people through a male priest, and in Latin at that. It was men like Luther and Calvin objecting to this idea that led to the Reformation and Protestantism, though the Wycliffe and Tyndale Bibles in English and the Lollards of the late fourteenth century, Julian’s contemporaries – among whom were women preachers and organisers – had preceded them. But, as other female mystics maintained, since God had entrusted his words to her, she had to express them in writing.

‘As a heart desires to the wells of water: so thou God, my soul desireth to thee . . . The Lord sent his mercy in the day: and his song in the night.’ Also like other female mystics, Julian stressed the Virgin Mary’s status as the most perfect human; a woman superior in grace to any man.

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In this [Shewing] He brought our blessed Lady to my understanding.

I saw her ghostly, in bodily likeness: a simple maid and a meek, young of age and little waxen above a child, in the stature that she was when she conceived. Also God shewed in part the wisdom and the truth of her soul: wherein I understood the reverent beholding in which she beheld her God and Maker, marvelling with great reverence that He would be born of her that was a simple creature of His making. . . I understood soothly that she is more than all that God made beneath her in worthiness and grace; for above her is nothing that is made but the blessed [Manhood] of Christ.

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lso, like some later woman writers, Julian (passing on God’s words, as she maintains) blames Adam rather than Eve for the woes of the world.

But in this I stood beholding things general, troublously and mourning, saying thus to our Lord in my meaning, with full great dread: Ah! good Lord, how might all be well, for the great hurt that is come, by sin, to the creature? And here I desired, as far as I durst, to have some more open declaring wherewith I might be eased in this matter.

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And to this our blessed Lord answered full meekly and with full lovely cheer, and shewed that Adam’s sin was the most harm that ever was done, or ever shall be, to the world’s end; and also He shewed that this [sin] is openly known in all Holy Church on earth. . . Then signifieth our blessed Lord thus in this teaching, that we should take heed to this: For since I have made well the most harm, then it is my will that thou know thereby that I shall make well all that is less. . .

And as to this I had no other answer in Shewing of our Lord God but this: That which is impossible to thee is not impossible to me: I shall save my word in all things and I shall make all things well. Thus I was taught, by the grace of God, that I should steadfastly hold me in the Faith as I had aforehand understood, [and] therewith that I should firmly believe that all things shall be well.

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6 Margery Kempe

that this creature first had feelings and revelations before she had any written.

Afterwards, when it pleased our Lord, he commanded and charged her that she should have written down her feelings and revelations, and her form of living, so that his goodness might be known to all the world. Then the creature had no writer who would fulfil her desire, nor give credence to her feelings.

Some of these worthy clerics took it, on peril of their souls and as they would answer to God, that this creature was inspired with the Holy Ghost, and bade her that she should have a book written of her feelings and her revelations. Some offered to write her feelings with their own hands, and she would in no way consent, for she was commanded in her soul that she should not write so soon. And so it was twenty years and more from the time

The Book of Margery Kempe

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hortly after Julian wrote the first book in English, Margery Kempe began a work in 1436 that also transgressed ideas of what a woman should do and say, in what would become the first autobiography in English: compiled over many years it became known simply as The Book of Margery Kempe.

As she makes clear, Kempe could neither read nor write and struggled to find someone to write down her experiences.

Kempe eventually found a priest who was willing to write it out legibly from the various existing badlywritten sections, ‘asking him to write this book and never to reveal it as long as she lived, granting him a great sum of money for his labour.’ Because of the ad hoc nature of its composition, ‘this book is not 36

written in order, every thing after another as it was done, but just as the matter came to this creature’s mind when it was to be written down, for it was so long before it was written that she had forgotten the time and the order when things occurred.’

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empe refers to herself throughout in the third person, mostly as ‘this creature.’ Like Julian and the other mystics she claims her revelations came directly from God, after she had been led astray by devils. ‘She slandered her husband, her friends, and her own self. She spoke many sharp and reproving words; she recognized no virtue nor goodness; she desired all wickedness.’ Jesus then appeared to her, ‘clad in a 37

mantle of purple silk, sitting upon her bedside.’ After this Margery wanted to devote herself entirely to God, at the expense of sexual relations with her husband; transgressively she refuses her husband his conjugal rights.

And after this time she never had any desire to have sexual intercourse with her husband, for paying the debt of matrimony was so abominable to her that she would rather, she thought, have eaten and drunk the ooze and muck in the gutter than consent to intercourse.

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empe wants to make a vow of chastity and regrets being married. ‘Ah, Lord, maidens are now dancing merrily in heaven. Shall I not do so?

Because I am no virgin, lack of virginity is now great sorrow to me.’

Still, God forgives her. ‘Ah, daughter, how often have I told you that your sins are forgiven you and that we are united.’ But her husband has become so afraid that he does not even try to have sex with her anymore: then she said with great sorrow, ‘Truly, I would rather see you being killed, than that we should turn back to our un-cleanness.’

And he replied, ‘You are no good wife.’

And then she asked her husband what was the reason that he had not made love to her for the last eight weeks, since she lay with him every night in his bed. And he said that he was made so afraid when he would have touched her, that he dared do no more.

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argery travels to the Holy Land and to Rome but on her return to England she is put on trial for her outspokenness by the Mayor and the Abbot of Leicester. She is not treated well.

‘Ah’ said the Mayor, ‘Saint Katherine told what kindred she came of, and yet ye are not like her, for thou art a false strumpet, a false Lollard, and a false deceiver of the people, and I shall have thee in prison ’ And she answered ‘I am as ready, sir, to go to prison for God’s love, as ye are ready to go to church ’ When the Mayor had long chidden her and said many evil and horrible words to her, and she, by the grace of Jesus, had reasonably answered to all that he could say, he commanded the jailer’s man to lead her to prison. . .

Then the steward took her by the hand, and led her into his chamber and spoke many foul bawdy words unto her, purposing and desiring, as it seemed to her, to oppress her and ravish her And then she had much dread and much sorrow, crying him for mercy She said – ‘Sir, for the reverence of Almighty God, spare me, for I am a man’s wife ’ Then said the steward – ‘Thou shalt tell me whether thou hast this speech of God or the devil, or else thou shalt go to prison ’ ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘to go to prison, I am not afraid for My Lord’s love, Who suffered much more for my love than I may for His I pray you do as ye think be . . . Then he, all astonished at her words, left his business and his lewdness, saying to her, as many a man had done before – ‘Either thou art a right good woman, or else a right wicked one.’

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n trial at the abbey, packed with onlookers, Kempe says she is the one who is obedient to God and accuses the mayor in return. ‘Sir, ye are not worthy to be a Mayor, and that shall I prove by Holy Writ.’ On another occasion, in York, Kempe is accused by the Archbishop and ‘many of the Archbishop’s retinue, despising her, calling her “Lollard” and “heretic” and swearing many a horrible oath that she should be burnt,’ but again she gives as good as she gets. ‘Sirs, I dread ye shall be burnt in Hell without end, unless ye amend in your swearing of oaths, for ye keep not the Commandments of God I would not swear as ye do for all the money in this world.’ Margery’s book ends with a dedication to God and a prayer for herself, referring to the story in the Gospel of John where Jesus told anyone without sin to cast the first stone.

Have mind, Lord, of the woman that was taken in adultery and brought before Thee, and as Thou drove away all her enemies from her, and she stood alone by Thee, so verily may Thou drive away all mine enemies from me, both bodily and ghostly that I may stand alone by Thee.

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7 Christine of Pizan Here beginneth the book of the city of ladies, the which book is divided into three parts. The first part telleth how and by whom the wall and the cloister about the city was made. The second part telleth how and by whom the city was builded within and peopled. The third part telleth how and by whom the high battlements of the towers were perfectly made, and what noble ladies were ordained to dwell in the high palaces and high dungeons.

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hristine of Pizan (1364 – 1430; she died the year before Joan of Arc) was not British, she was French, but her seminal work of literature by, about and in support of women, Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, 1405, was translated into English, as The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes and published in London in 1521, ‘in Paul’s churchyard at the sign of the Trinity by Henry Pepwell.’ Pepwell’s printers in St Paul’s Churchyard published many of the new humanist works along with works of mysticism. In its English version, Christine’s message was well-timed and found a more receptive audience in Tudor Reformation England where printed books in English were leading to greater levels of education among women and creating in turn an appetite for books addressing women in English – Tyndale’s English language New Testament reached England in 1526.

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ike Julian of Norwich, Christine was a nun who wrote to help women defend themselves against the world of men, though Christine only entered a convent for her own safety later in life after civil war broke out in France; for most of her life she was a professional writer. As we will see later, Virginia Woolf considered Aphra Behn to be the first professional woman writer but Christine, who is considered to be France’s first woman of letters also has a claim to the title. She was not a professional writer in the modern sense of making money from selling books – there would not be any printed books for sale for a long time – her income came from wealthy patrons. Transgressing the norms of medieval society Christine wrote treatises on government and public affairs as well as the role of women in society; she also wrote poetry which included much autobiographical information, very unusual in an age when most poets 42

rewrote traditional, impersonal courtly and romantic tales. The Book of the City of Ladies, was written in response to some of the misogynist works of the time, especially the great mediaeval epic The Romance of the Rose. Christine tells how she a read a book which made me wonder why on earth it was that so many men, both clerks and others, have said and continue to say and write such awful, damning things about women and their ways. I was at a loss as to how to explain it. It is not just a handful of writers who do this . . . It is all manner of philosophers, poets and orators too numerous to mention, who all seem to speak with one voice and are unanimous in their view that female nature is wholly given up to vice.

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hristine claims to have had a vision from three ladies, ‘crowned and of majestic appearance.’ They are Reason, Rectitude and Justice, who have come to help her build a city in which women can live in safety and security. ‘The female sex has been left defenceless for a long time now, like an orchard without a wall, and bereft of a champion to take up arms in order to protect it.’

We have come to vanquish from the world the same error into which you had fallen, so that from now on, ladies and all valiant women may have a refuge and defence against the various assailants, those ladies who have been abandoned for so long, exposed like a field without a surrounding hedge, without finding a champion to afford them an adequate defence, notwithstanding those noble men who are required by order of law to protect them, who by negligence and apathy have allowed 43

them to be mistreated. It is no wonder then that their jealous enemies, those outrageous villains who have assailed them with various weapons, have been victorious in a war in which women have had no defence.

Now it is time for their just cause to be taken from Pharaoh’s hands.

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he three ladies tell Christine a large number of stories, which make up the bulk of the book, about famous and admirable women from history in various categories such as learning, invention, poetry, warfare and so on. This is a marvellous and exhaustive catalogue of transgressive, powerful woman from before the Middle Ages. Having built the city with all these exemplary women inhabiting it, Christine invites women to enter it.

Most excellent, upstanding and worthy princesses of France and other countries, as well as all you ladies, maidens, and women of every estate, you who have ever in the past loved, or do presently love, or who will in the future love virtuous and moral conduct: raise your heads and rejoice in your new city.

The principal resident of the new city and its supreme monarch will be the Virgin Mary, ‘she, in her humility, which surpasses that of all other women, coupled with her goodness, which is greater than that even of the angels, will not refuse to live in the City of Ladies. She will reside in the highest palace of all.’

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t the age of forty Christine had written at least nineteen books, some of which were on public policy, advocating peace, and addressed to the king and the nobles of France in a transgressive tone which even most men would have been afraid of adopting.

She then wrote a sequel to the Book of the City of Ladies called, confusingly Treasure of the City of Ladies. This is very different from its predecessor, being more of a practical manual for virtuous living; it is almost a religious etiquette manual aimed at princesses and noble women, though it still purports to be inspired by the same three ladies. ‘From us three sisters, daughters of God, named Reason, Rectitude and Justice, to all princesses, empresses, queens, duchesses and high-born ladies ruling over the Christian world, and generally to all women: loving greetings.’

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ore than its predecessor, the book advocates, above all, that women should be faithful to God. Christine addresses all the issues facing wealthy women at all stages of life and constantly advocates modesty, prudence and harmony; she never advocates any form of transgressiveness, despite her own background. ‘Do not be proud of yourselves, but always be meek, and by holding to this course you can drive your chariot up to the farthest reaches of glory that Almighty God bestows upon you.’ The nearest she comes to advocating transgressiveness in her readers is in relation to a bad husband: although she stresses that a married woman should love her husband, care for him and live in peace with him, not all husbands deserve to be obeyed.

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But some may perhaps answer us here that we are not taking into account certain defects and that we are talking utter nonsense. They may argue that we are saying that come what may ladies ought to love their husbands very much and show the signs of it, but that we are not saying anything about whether they all deserve to be treated so well by their wives. It is well known that there are some husbands who behave very distantly towards their wives and give no sign of love, or very little. We reply to them that our teaching in this present work is not addressed to men, although some of them need it if they would be well instructed. Because we speak so exclusively to women, we set out for their profit both to teach the valuable methods of avoiding dishonour and to give good advice for following the right course of action.

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men of the church Do not abstain, highest blessing,

by Saint Bueno, to give it a good feel.

Because of this, a whip of rebuke, To all you upright poets, Be prolific in your songs to the vagina Let them proliferate and gain reward.

It is silky, a sultan of an ode, A little curtained seam on a lovely white cunt, Flaps in a place of intercourse, The sour grove, it is full of passion, Great proud forest, faultless gift, Fragile freeze, further for a good pair of balls, It is a hollow longer than a spoon or hand, A bush to hold a penis two hands wide, A girl’s thicket, precious ringlet of greeting, Noble bush, may God save it.

Every drunken fool of a poet is quick In his pompous vanity (It is I who warrant it, I of noble stock) To sing of the girls of the lands In fruitless phrase all day long But quite incompletely,

by God the Father. . . . . . he leaves the middle without praise, That palace where children are conceived, The snug vagina, clear hope, Tender and lovely, open circle strong and bright, The place I love, delicate and healthy, The quim beneath the cloth.

You are a body of boundless ability, Pure court of feathery fat.

This is my credo, land of the quim, A circle of lips with broad edges, A cunt there by a lavish arse, Table of song with its double in red, And the bright saintly

Gwerful Mechain, Poem of the Vagina 48

8 Gwerful Mechain

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omen writers don’t get much more transgressive than the Welsh-language poet Gwerful Mechain (1460–1502). Her most infamous piece, ‘Cywydd y Cedor,’ usually translated as ‘Poem of the Vagina,’ exists in several manuscripts, some of which call it ‘Cywydd y Cont,’ ‘Poem of the Cunt.’ Cywydd however means more than simply ‘poem,’ it refers to a specific type of the twenty-four traditional Welsh forms of poetry which emerged in the fourteenth century, with its own formal rhythm and rhyme scheme: seven-syllable rhyming couplets in a work of between forty and eighty lines. This particular 49

form was traditionally used by peripatetic poets, looking to praise the old Welsh landowning nobility (Cywyddwyr) in order to get work as court poet. This use of a form intended to flatter the wealthy makes Gwerful’s poem even more ironic and her exhortation to ‘all you upright poets’ to be ‘prolific in your songs to the vagina’ even more transgressive. Mechain adheres strictly to the traditional forms of poetry but transgresses wildly in terms of content. (Despite what you might think, even Chaucer did not actually use the c-word, he used the old English word queynte, which formally meant ‘a clever or curious device or ornament,’ though it was also used as a slang word for the vagina, and Chaucer did use it as a kind of double entendre: ‘As clerkes ben ful subtile and ful queynte, And prively he caughte hire by the queynte.’)

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nly fourteen poems can be definitively attributed to Gwerful, though some of them exist in many manuscript versions – her cywydd to Jesus Christ, ‘Christ’s Passion’ is known in sixty-eight versions; Gwerful wrote devotional works alongside her erotica with no apparent contradiction. Another very secular poem is ‘To Jealous Wives,’ a transgressive meditation on women’s sexuality which forms a counter to the many misogynist poems by men – as we just saw, Christine of Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, was a reaction against the misogyny of The Romance of the Rose.

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The love of respectable wives For good cocks, a bad sign.

If you believe me, my angry voice, Every well-hung would-be lover pursues me, But not one virtuous wife will give me, From following a cunt in a field, It would not go one inch from her fist: No would she allow it freely Nor if she were paid handsomely.

She would not condone adultery By making a deal with anyone.

It is painful to think, delicate art, That the girl is not ashamed That the big cock means more to her Even than her own family now . . .

A lovely maiden would prefer, Some say, to give away the houses and land, And mind you, even her own good cunt, Than give away her penis.

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9 Anne Askew LIKE as the armèd knight Appointed to the field, With this world will I fight, And faith shall be my shield.

More enemies now I have Than hairs upon my head.

Let them not me deprave But fight thou in my stead

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any women writers were attacked for their views – Mary Wroth was savaged by half the nobility of London, Delarivier Manley was arrested The Ballad which for scandalum magnatum, Olympe de Anne Askew made Gouges was sent to the guillotine. But and sang when she probably no other female writer apart was in Newgate from Anne Askew (1520 – 1546) has ever been thrown out of the house and sued for divorce by her husband, imprisoned in both Newgate prison and the Tower of London, tortured on the rack, twice and written about it both times, then burnt at the stake for her views.

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ow considered a protestant martyr, Anne was the daughter of Sir William Askew, or Ayscough, the High Sheriff of Lincolnshire. She was educated from an early age and soon became very attached to and knowledgeable about the Bible. She knew her Scriptures well and as a young woman could discuss and debate – apparently on equal terms – details of doctrine with the clergy; according to her own later writings she could defeat any male cleric in liturgical argument from an early age. When she was still very young, Anne was forced into an arranged marriage with a man called Thomas Kyme. The marriage had originally been arranged with Anne’s elder sister but she died before the wedding and ‘to save the money,’ Anne was forced to marry him instead. In his introduction to her writings, the Protestant reformer John Bale described the marriage as ‘ungodly, unlawful and coacted’ [coerced]. Bale says however that Anne despatched her wifely duties and had two children. However, ‘In process of time by oft reading of the sacred Bible’ she converted to Protestantism; Kyme unfortunately was a Catholic.

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nne’s transgressive behaviour started early. In 1546 Kyme appeared in court with her as his wife, but she refused to acknowledge him as her husband. The court detained Anne because ‘she was obstinate and heady in reasoning of matters of religion, wherein she showed herself 53

to be of naughty opinion.’ According to the court records, ‘seeing no persuasion of good reason could take place, she was sent to Newgate, to remain there to answer to the law.’

Anne continued to be transgressive, reading the Bible openly in Lincoln Cathedral, which had recently become illegal: in 1543, The Act for the Advancement of True Religion had restricted the reading of the Bible to clerics, noblemen, the gentry and rich merchants.

Women other than gentlewomen, as well as servants, apprentices and ordinary people were forbidden to read it at all. Women of the gentry and the nobility were allowed to read it, but only in private. (William Tyndale’s English language new Testament was first made available in England in 1526 and, with Miles Coverdale’s additions, the first complete English language Bible was first available from 1535 though it was considered heretical and copies were burnt; Tyndale himself was burnt at the stake.)

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round this time, probably at the instigation of local Catholic priests, Kyme ejected his wife from the house and attempted to divorce her; it is not known for sure whether the 54

divorce ever went through but it is interesting that, unlike most women writers, Anne published under her father’s name rather than her husband’s.

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nfortunately for her, Askew had become associated with the underground Protestant circle around Katherine Parr, then the Queen of England and Henry VIII’s last wife – she was the one who survived him, despite all the odds.

Askew was detained and tortured

by Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, Sir Richard Rich and Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, who were looking for evidence to justify a warrant against the Queen for heresy and the names of any co-conspirators.

Torturing a gentlewoman was illegal but that made no difference. Anne was detained under the 1539 Act of Six Articles which took the Catholic view that in the communion ‘the natural body and blood of our

Saviour Jesus Christ’ is literally and physically present in the bread and wine and that ‘after the consecration there remaineth no substance of bread or wine, nor any other substance, but the substance of Christ, God and man.’ Anyone who dissented from this, as Anne did very strongly, was a heretic and would ‘suffer judgment, execution, pain, and pains of death by way of burning, without any abjuration, clergy, or sanctuary to be therefore permitted.’

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skew describes her torture on the rack in the starkest and clearest of terms. ‘Then they did put me on the rack, because I confessed no ladies nor gentlewomen to be of my opinion, and thereon they kept me a long time. And because I lay still and did not cry, my lord Chancellor and master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands, till I was nigh dead.’ But still Anne did not give her torturers any names.

On 16 July Askew was brought to the stake in Smithfield, still so weak from the torture that she had to be carried in a chair. John Foxe republished her works and related her death in his Book of Martyrs, 1563.

And thus the good Anne Askew, with these blessed martyrs, being troubled so many manner of ways, and having passed through so many torments, having now ended the long course of her agonies, being compassed in with flames of fire, as a blessed sacrifice unto God, she slept in the Lord A.D. 1546, leaving behind her a singular example of Christian constancy for all men to follow.

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hortly after her death, and before the appearance of Foxe’s work, John Bale published Askew’s writings, with his own heavy editorialising, in two books titled The First Examination of Anne Askew, 1546 and The Latter Examination of Anne Askew, 1547. In these works Anne writes autobiographically, in the first person, describing her examination and torture in simple, unemotional terms. According to her own words, she gives the inquisitors at least as good as she gets. The ostensible heart of the matter 57

is transubstantiation: whether – as the Catholics insist – the bread and wine of the communion literally become Jesus’ flesh and blood. Askew continues to deny this, jousting with her examiner, quoting Scripture back at him.

‘Then you drive me,’ saith he, ‘to lay to your charge your own report, which is this: you did. say, ‘He that doth receive the sacrament by the hands of an ill priest, or a sinner, receiveth the devil, and not God.’ To that I answered, ‘I never spake such words: but, as I said before, both to the quest and to my lord mayor, so say I now again, that the wickedness of the priest should not hurt me, but in spirit and faith I received no less than the body and blood of Christ.’ Then said the bishop unto me, ‘What saying is this, in spirit? I will not take you at that advantage.’ Then I answered, ‘My Lord, without faith and spirit I cannot receive him worthily.

Then he laid unto me, that I should say, that the sacrament remaining in the pix [the box that holds the host], was but bread. I answered that I never said so; but indeed the quest [court] asked me such a question, whereunto I would not answer, (I said,) till such a time as they had assoiled [absolved] me this question of mine, Wherefore Stephen was stoned to death? They said they knew not. Then said I again, no more would I tell them what it was.

Then said my Lord unto me, that I had alleged a certain text of the Scripture. I answered that I alleged none other but St. Paul’s own saying to the Athenians, in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, that ‘God dwelleth not in temples made with hands.’

Then asked he me, what my faith and belief was in that matter?

I answered him, ‘I believe as the Scripture doth teach me.’

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n Newgate prison, having been sentenced to burn at the stake, Askew was offered pardon at the very last minute if she would recant her heresy.

She wouldn’t. She wrote this instead.

But this is the heresy which they report me to hold: that after the priest hath spoken the words of consecration, there remaineth bread still. They both say, and also teach it for a necessary article of faith, that after those words be once spoken, there remaineth no bread, but even the self-same body that hung upon the cross on Good Friday, both flesh, blood, and bone. To this belief of theirs say I, nay. For then were our common creed false, which saith, that he sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and from thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

Lo, this is the heresy that I hold, and for it must suffer the death.

And so she did. Anne Askew was really not the Angel of the House.

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10 The Monument of Matrones

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he Monument of Matrons: Containing Seven Several Lamps of Virginity, or Distinct Treatises; Whereof the First Five Concern Prayer and Meditation: the Other Two Last, Precepts and Examples, 1582 was the first published anthology of women’s writing, containing ‘divers very godly, learned and divine treatises, of meditations and prayer, made by sundry right famous 60

Queens, noble Ladies, virtuous Virgins, and godly Gentlewomen of all ages.’ It is indeed monumental, containing one thousand five hundred pages, though by no means all of the women included are virtuous virgins. The conceit of separating the writings into ‘Lamps’ is based on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in Matthew 25: ‘Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.’

Most of the writings are devotional: prayers, meditations on Scriptures and so on; certainly all are devotional and virtuous, rather than transgressive.

Monument was compiled by Thomas Bentley, who was a student at Gray’s Inn in London, and printed by Henry Denham, hoping to attract the patronage of Elizabeth I. He stated his aim in this huge volume to be: to publish the same abroad in print, as a book, in the judgement of them that are learned, not unprofitable to the church: but very necessary, and in some respect, more proper and peculiar for the private use of women, than heretofore hath been set out by any. . . So have you good reader, by the goodness of God, who worketh all our works for vs, here now at the length in this Monument or collection contained (if you list so for distinction or names sake to call or entitle them) not only a burning Lamp for virgins, but also a crystal Mirror for Matrons: as also a delectable Dial for to direct you to true devotion, with a perfect President or register of holy prayer for all women generally to have recourse unto, as to their homely or domestical library.

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he ‘godly Gentlewomen’ included in Monument are mostly not at all transgressive, nor are they mostly writers in the proper sense, but three of the women included are worth a mention – none of them normally known as writers but all of them in their own way highly transgressive, 61

Lady Jane Grey

Katherine Parr

Princess Elizabeth

both in religious and political terms: Lady Jane Dudley (known to history as Lady Jane Grey); Henry VIII’s last wife Katherine Parr and the then Queen Elizabeth though the texts included in the anthology were written when she was still Princess Elizabeth. As a twenty-two-year-old Princess, Elizabeth had been imprisoned in the Tower of London by her sister Mary in 1554 for her transgressive, Protestant beliefs. She was led in via Traitors Gate, and questioned by the same Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester who had interrogated and tortured Anne Askew in the same anti-Protestant witchhunt which tried unsuccessfully to implicate Katherine Parr as a heretic; the Princess Elizabeth probably never expected to come out alive. Lady Jane Grey, also transgressively a devout Protestant, was technically Queen of England for nine days in 1553 after the fifteen-year-old Edward VI died and before Mary Tudor took over; initially Mary showed Jane and her husband clemency – they had only been married for two months and both were only fifteen – but they were executed in February 1554, just a month before Princess Elizabeth was imprisoned. Bentley specifically singles out these three women:

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the most gracious Sovereign Lady Queen ELIZABETH, to muse divinely of the inward love of the soul towards Christ their spouse, their Lord and father, mother and brother: or with the virtuous Lady Queen KATHERINE, to bewail the ignorance of their blind life led in superstition: and with her also in all their troubles to stir up their godly minds patiently to suffer all afflictions for the love of everlasting felicity: or with the right godly Lady Jane Dudley to endure the cross to death most patiently.

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atherine Parr is subject to quite an encomium by Bentley, showing how much the religious and political landscape had changed since Elizabeth took full hold of the reins of power.

Here mayest thou see one, if the kind may move thee, a woman; if degree may provoke thee, a woman of high estate; by birth, made noble; by marriage, most noble; by wisdom, godly; by a mighty King, an excellent Queen; by a famous HENRY, a renowned KATHERINE; a wife to him that was a King to Realms: refusing the world, wherein she was lost, to obtain heaven, wherein she may be saved: abhorring sin, which made her bound, to receive grace, whereby she may be free: despising flesh the cause of corruption, to put on the spirit the cause of sanctification: forsaking ignorance wherein she was blind, to come to knowledge, whereby she may see: removing superstition, wherewith she was smothered, to embrace true religion, wherewith she may revive.

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ne of the included texts written by the Princess Elizabeth comes from her time in the Tower, and is a prayer: ‘Help me now, O God, for I have none other friends but thee alone. And suffer me not (I beseech thee) to build my foundation upon the sands: but upon the rock, whereby all blasts of blustering weather may have no power against me.’

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he two very short pieces of writing by Lady Jane Grey come from her very last days, while she was in the tower.

The first is a prayer to God, asking him to, ‘arm me, I beseech thee, with thine armour, yet I may stand fast, my loins being girded about with verity, having on the breastplate of righteousness, and shod with the shoes prepared by the Gospel of peace: above all things taking to me the shield of faith, wherewith I may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.’ The second is a letter to her sister, apparently written the night before she was executed; it seems that Jane has left her Bible to her sister.

Lady Jane Grey’s prayerbook

I have here sent you, good sister Katherine, a Book, which although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is more worth than precious stones. It is the book (dear sister) of the law of the Lord; it is his Testament and last will, which he bequeathed unto vs wretches, which shall lead you to the path of eternal joy. And if you, with a good mind read it, and with an earnest desire follow it, it shall bring you to an immortal and everlasting life.

It will teach you to live, and learn you to die. . . And if ye will cleave to him, he will prolong your days, to your comfort, and his glory. To the which glory God bring me now, and you hereafter, when it shall please God to call you.

Farewell good sister, and put your only trust in God, who only must help you.

Your loving sister, Jane Dudley.

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Queen Elizabeth’s first speech

Queen Elizabeth’s speech at Tilbury

Queen Elizabeth’s Book of Hours

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11 Isabella Whitney Had I a Husband, or a house, and all that belongs thereto My self could frame about to rouse, as other women do: But till some household cares me tye, My books and Pen I will apply.

Isabella Whitney, A Sweet Nosgay

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sabella Whitney was the first published secular female poet in England. Very little is known about her life, though she was probably born in Cheshire sometime in the middle of the sixteenth century, the second of seven children. She had no formal education though one of her brothers, Geoffrey Whitney attended a grammar school and published A Choice of Emblems in 1586. Whitney was sent to London to work as a domestic servant somewhere around the age of ten or twelve; this is not necessarily a sign of the family’s poverty, it was quite common for girls to be sent to work as domestic servants at the time. Isabella seems to have been employed by a ‘virtuous lady’ but for some reason lost this position and she would then have found it very 66

difficult to find work; it seems she never found a husband either though we have no idea whether she wanted one.

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t is possible that Whitney turned to writing as a form of income, though her first book The Copy of a Letter, 1567 was probably written while she was still employed. Her second published book, A Sweet Nosgay, 1573 comprises poems about female virtue along with ‘replies’ by men complaining of women’s treacherous conduct. In the introduction to Nosgay, Whitney refers to the fact that she is ill and has no position, no ‘service.’

This Harvest time, I Harvestless, and serviceless also: And subject unto sickness, that abroad I could not go.

Had leisure good, (though learning lacked) some study to apply: To read such Books, whereby I thought my self to edify

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osegays are flowers, often given as gifts, perhaps to ward off or cure sickness. But Whitney makes it clear that the book is meant to be no cure; she makes it clear that she is no witch and has no magical powers – the recent Witchcraft Act of 1563, five years after the accession of Elizabeth I to the throne of England, had introduced the death penalty for any sorcery used to cause someone’s death; thousands of women were put to death as 67

witches during the sixteenth century.

A woman author in those days had a lot to worry about so her warning is probably not ironic.

My Nosgay will increase no pain, though sickness none it cure.

Wherefore, if thou it hap to wear and feel thy self much worse: Promote me for no Sorceress, nor do me ban or curse.

For this I say the Flowers are good, which I on thee bestow

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ncluded in Nosgay is Whitney’s will and testament, addressed ironically to the city of London, in which she leaves ‘large Legacies of such Goods and riches which she most abundantly hath left behind her: and thereof maketh London sole executor to see her Legacies performed.’ We know this is ironic because she then chastises London for being so cruel and leaving her in poverty.

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The time is come I must depart, from thee ah famous City: I never yet to rue my smart, did find that thou hadst pity. . .

And now hath time me put in mind, of thy great cruelness: That never once a help wold find, to ease me in distress.

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he Copy of a Letter is addressed in its subtitle to ‘her unconstant Lover.

With an Admonition to all young Gentlewomen, and to all other Maids in general to beware of men’s flattery. By Is. W. Newly joined to a Loveletter sent by a Bachelor, (a most faithful Lover) to an unconstant and faithless Maiden.’

Whitney quotes several examples of unfaithful men from the classics, usually held up as heroes by male writers.

For they, for their unfaithfulness, did get perpetual fame: Fame? wherefore did I term it so?

I should have called it shame.

Let Theseus be, let Jason pass, let Paris also scape: That brought destruction unto Troy all through the Grecian Rape.

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n another section, Whitney directly addresses female readers.

The admonition by the Author, to all young Gentlewomen: And to all other Maids being in Love Ye Virgins that from Cupids tents do bear away the soil Whose hearts as yet with raging love most painfully do boil.

To you I speak: for you be they, that good advice do lack: Oh if I could good counsel give my tongue should not be slack? . .

Beware of fayre and painted talk, beware of flattering tongues: The Mermaids do pretend no good for all their pleasant Songs. . .

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Trust not a man at the first sight, but try him well before: I wish al Maids within their breasts to keep this thing in store. . .

And I who was deceived late, by ones unfaithful tears: Trust now for to beware, if that I live this hundred years.

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his last verse implies that Whitney deliberately remained unmarried after having been herself let down and deceived by ‘flattering tongues,’ choosing the life of a writer instead, a life that then as now led almost inevitably to poverty.

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12 Jane Anger To all Women in general, and gentle Reader whatsoever.

FIE on the falsehood of men, whose minds go oft a madding, & whose tongues can not so soon be wagging, but straight they fall a railing. Was there ever any so abused, so slandered, so railed upon, or so wickedly handled undeservedly, as are we women? . . But judge what the cause should be, of this there so great malice towards simple women. Doubtless the weakness of our wits, and our honest bashfulness, by reason whereof they suppose that there is not one amongst us who can, or dare reprove their slanders and false reproaches: their slanderous tongues are so short, and the time wherein they have lavished out their words freely, hath been so long, that they know we cannot catch hold of them to pull them out, and they think we will not write to reprove their lying lips.

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ike many of the works written by early women authors, Jane Anger’s (1560? – 1600?) pamphlet Her Protection for Women, To defend them against the scandalous reports of a late Surfeiting Lover, and all other like Venerians that complain so to be overcloyed with women’s kindness, 1589, was addressed explicitly to an audience of other women. It was probably the first book-length defence of women’s place in society to be published in English but nothing is known about its author; Jane Anger may not even have been her 72

real name. The pamphlet seems to have been written in response to some other pamphlet concerning a ‘Surfeiting Lover’ but no appropriate candidate for that pamphlet is extant. However, earlier, in 1558 – the year Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, after five years of ‘Bloody’ Mary Tudor and nine days of Lady Jane Grey – the Scots preacher John Knox had published The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, railing against rule by women; Anger’s book is a fitting, if belated counterblast to that work, which opens.

THE DECLAMATION. The Proposition. To promote a Woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm, nation or city is A. Repugnant to nature.

B. Contumely to GOD. C. The subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.

A. Men illuminated only by the light of nature have seen and determined that it is a thing most repugnant to nature, that Women rule and govern over men.

B. 1. Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him.

2. After the fall, she was made subject to man by the irrevocable sentence of GOD. In which sentence there are two parts. (a) A dolour, anguish and pain as oft as ever she shall be a mother. (b) A subjection of her self, her appetites and will to her husband and his will.

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he appropriately-named Anger’s pamphlet was the first sustained blast of women in return and is very angry indeed.

She wonders rhetorically what is the cause of ‘so great malice towards simple women’ among men.

Doubtless the weakness of our wits, and our honest bashfulness, by reason whereof they suppose that there is not one amongst us who can, or dare reprove their slanders and false reproaches: their slanderous tongues are so short, and the time wherein they have lavished out their words freely, hath been so long, that they know we cannot catch hold of them to pull them out, and they think we will not write to reprove their lying lips

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ut they will. They really will. Anger says that men’s three main characteristics are ‘Lust, Deceit, and Malice.’

Of all kinds of voluptuousness, they affirm Lechery to be the chiefest, & yet some of them are not ashamed to confess publicly, that they have surfeited therewith. It defileth the body, & makes it stink, & men use it: I marvel how we women can abide them but that they delude us, as (they say) we deceive them with perfumes. Voluptuousness is a strong beast, and hath many instruments to draw to Lust: but men are so forward of themselves thereto, as they need none to hail them.

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ike other pre-feminist writers going back to Hildegard of Bingen, Anger claims that Eve’s original transgression is more than balanced by the Virgin Mary’s grace, bestowed upon her by God; the troubles of the world are not a woman’s fault and even if they were, Mary has absolved all women. Far from being inferior to men, women are superior; God first gave grace to woman and it is women ‘whereby the world increaseth.’ Again, Anger is specifically addressing a female audience, using mocklearned Latin, no doubt ironically.

And now (seeing I speak to none but to you which are of mine own Sex,) give me leave like a scholar to prove our wisdom more excellent then theirs, though I never knew what sophistry meant. There is no wisdom but it comes by grace, this is a principle, & Contra principium non est disputandum: but grace was first given to a woman, because to our lady: which premises conclude that women are wise. Now Primum est optimum, & therefore women are wiser than men.

GOD making woman of man’s flesh, that she might be purer then he, doth evidently show, how far we women are more excellent then men. Our bodies are fruitful, whereby the world increaseth, and our care wonderful, by which man is preserved. From woman sprang man’s salvation. A woman was the first that believed, & a woman likewise the first that repented of sin.

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ooks of this time very often begin and sometimes end with a apologia, often a woman will apologise for daring to publish her own writings, or they may include a fawning dedication to a wealthy patron – actual or potential. Jane Anger will have none of this; she ends her book with a highly transgressive blast of a poem (though possibly written by someone else) that is completely unapologetic, playing on the name Anger and emphasising rather than trying to hide or hide behind her gender.

Though, sharp the seed by Anger sown, we all (almost) confess: And hard his hap we aye account, who Anger doth possess: Yet hapless shalt thou (Reader) reap, such fruit from ANGERS soil, As may thee please, and ANGER ease from long and weary toil Whose pain were took for thy behoof, to till that cloddy ground, Where scarce no place, free from disgrace, of female Sex, was found.

If ought offend, which she doth send, impute it to her mood.

For ANGERS rage must that assuage, as well is understood If to delight, ought come in sight, then deem it for the best.

So you your will, may well fulfil, and she have her request.

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13 Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke This nymph, quoth he, great Pembroke hight by name, Sister to valiant Sidney, whose clear light Gives light to all that tread true paths of Fame, Who in the globe of heaven doth shine so bright For to this Lady now I will repair, Presenting her the fruits of idle hours; Though many Books she writes that are more rare, Yet there is honey in the meanest flowers: Æmelia Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

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he extraordinary Mary Sidney (1561 – 1621) was an almost exact contemporary of Shakespeare and has been one of the candidates in various conspiracy theories for the actual author of Shakespeare’s works, in particular his sonnets. Even though this is nonsense, Mary Sidney, brother of the more famous Philip, was arguably Shakespeare’s – and almost everyone else’s – equal as a poet. Her largest work is her complete translation of the Psalms of David, a form known as a psalter. She and her brother worked on the translations together at first but he died in battle overseas in 1586 when they had only reached Psalm 43 of 150; she finished 77

them by herself, also going back and revising all the earlier ones, so that the whole work may be considered to be hers. Mary was at the time overshadowed by her famous brother, who was a courtier, a warrior and considered then to be the ideal gentleman.

Philip was indeed a major literary figure: his sonnet cycle Astrophel and Stella rivals Shakespeare’s sonnets and his critical work The Defence of Poesie introduced the ideas of continental theorists to England.

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ut The Sidney Psalter, largely the work of Mary, and certainly all overseen by her, is a masterclass of poetic styles and techniques: every conceivable poetic form and structure is included and all brilliantly executed; it is a great tour de force of poetry, one of the greatest extended works of verse of its own age, and indeed of any age. When the volume of Psalms was published, Mary assumed authorship in her own name, Mary Sidney Herbert, but dedicated it to ‘the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney.’ It was highly appreciated at the time; John Donne was a fan and wrote a congratulatory poem.

So though some have, some may some Psalms translate, We thy Sydnean Psalms shall celebrate

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he Psalms as a collection are known in the Church of England as the Book of Common Prayer, and regular churchgoers will be quite shocked by the Sidney translations of them. In their normal Church of England version, the Psalms as used in church services are almost unchanged since Miles Coverdale’s 1535 translations, which were largely preserved in the King James Bible of 1611. The Sidney versions are not translations so much as poetic reimaginings. The well-known Psalm 110, Dixit Dominus is a good example: the version known to Church of England attendees ever since services were conducted in English goes: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.

The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.

He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries.

He shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head.

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nd here is Mary Sidney’s radically different version: Thus to my lord, the Lord did say: Take up thy seat at my right hand, Till all thy foes that proudly stand, I prostrate at thy footstool lay.

From me thy staff of might Sent out of Sion goes: As victor then prevail in fight, And rule repining foes.

But as for them that willing yield, In solemn robes they glad shall go: Attending thee when thou shalt show Triumphantly thy troops in field: In field as thickly set With warlike youthful train As pearlèd plain with drops is wet, Of sweet Aurora’s rain.

The Lord did swear, and never he What once he swear will disavow: As was Melchisedech so thou, An everlasting priest shalt be.

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At hand still ready priest To guard thee from annoy, Shall sit the Lord that loves thee best, And kings in wrath destroy.

Thy Realm shall many Realm contain: Thy slaughtered foes thick heaped lie: With crushed head even he shall die, Who head of many Realm doth reign.

If passing on these ways Thou taste of troubled streams: Shall that eclipse thy shining rays?

Nay light thy glories beams.

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espite living her earlier life in her brother’s shadow, Mary was recognised quite early on as an extraordinary talent and respected by her contemporaries both male and female; in addition to the recognition given to the publication of the Psalms, Mary was the only woman included in John Bodenham’s poetry collection Belvidere, 1600. In addition to Æmalia Lanyer’s encomium quoted above, Mary was also praised at great length by John Davies in the dedication to The Muses Sacrifice, 1612.

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PEMBROKE, (a Paragon of Princely PARTS, and, of that Part that most commends the Muse, Great Mistress of her Greatness, and the ARTS,) Phoebus and Fate makes great, and glorious!

A Work of Art and Grace (from Head and Heart that makes a Work of Wonder) thou hast done; Where Art, seems Nature; Nature, seemeth Art; and, Grace, in both, makes all out-shine the Sun.

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avies understands that even so prominent, so talented a woman as Mary Sidney cannot seek public fame, as male writers can.

And didst thou thirst for Fame. (as all Men do) thou would’st, by all means, let it come to light; But though thou cloud it, as doth Envy too, yet through both Clouds it shines, it is so bright!

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ary Sidney was not just a poet but a translator; her translation from the French of The Tragedy of Antony, Done into English by the Countess of Pembroke, 1592 revived the use of soliloquy from classical works and is a source of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, 1607. Mary also translated Petrarch’s Triumph of Death and is the probable author of the long poem The Doleful Lay of Clorinda, 1595, a lament for her dead brother.

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Woods, hills and rivers, now are desolate, Sith he is gone the which them all did grace: And all the fields do wail their widow state, Sith death their fairest flower did late deface.

The fairest flower in field that ever grew, Was Astrophel: that was, we all may rue.

What cruel hand of cursed foe unknown, Hath cropped the stalk which bore so faire a flower?

Untimely cropped, before it well were grown, And clean defaced in untimely hour.

Great loss to all that ever him did see, Great loss to all, but greatest loss to me.

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n her time however, Mary was probably known more as a host and patron to other writers than as a writer herself. Mary had grown up attached to the court of Elizabeth I where her mother Lady Mary Dudley – the sister of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth’s most favoured courtier and perhaps the Queen’s lover – was a gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber. In these surroundings Mary received a liberal education, including scripture, the classics, rhetoric, French, Italian, and Latin, in which she was fluent and possibly some Greek and Hebrew. Mary was also proficient at the ‘female’ accomplishments of singing and playing the lute as well as needlework, so much so that so that her name was used in endorsing needlework patterns and for books of music.

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n 1577, Mary married Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a family friend and wealthy landowner; among his properties were Wilton House near Salisbury, and Baynard’s Castle in London, where the couple entertained Queen Elizabeth to dinner. Henry died in 1601, leaving Mary less well-off than she had expected, and with the provision in his will that she should not remarry.

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John Aubrey said that ‘Wilton House was like a college, there were so many learned and ingenious persons. She was the greatest patroness of wit and learning of any lady in her time.’ Other poets agreed: Samuel Daniel said of his poetry that he had received ‘the first notion for the formal ordering of those compositions at Wilton, which I must ever acknowledge to have been my best School,’ and Thomas Churchyard said that ‘she sets to school, our Poets everywhere.’ At Wilton house, after Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603, Mary hosted the new King James I and Queen Anne; it is probable that Shakespeare’s As You Like It was first performed for a royal audience there.

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ut, under Mary’s vigorously riters vied for her approval transgressive stewardship, and patronage; she probably Wilton House became a received more dedications literary salon for writers known as the Wilton Circle, which included at the front of published books than Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, any non-royal woman, including from Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson. Thomas Nashe, Abraham Fraunce ,

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who incorporated her name into the titles of several works that he presented to her, including The Countesse of Pembrokes Emmanuel (1591) and the three parts of The Countesse of Pembrokes Ivychurch (1591–2) and Nicholas Breton’s ‘The Countesse of Pembrokes Love’ and ‘The Countess of Pembrokes Passion’.

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n her death in 1621, Mary Sidney was given a large funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral – possibly the only female writer ever to have been so honoured – and her body was taken by torchlight to be buried at Salisbury Cathedral next to her husband. Her epitaph is probably by Ben Jonson: Underneath this marble hearse Lies the subject of all verse; Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother.

Death! ere thou hast slain another Wise and fair and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee.

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14 Aemelia Lanyer

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malia Lanyer or Emilia Lanier (1569 – 1645) is sometimes said to be the first English woman to publish a printed book, though she was in fact preceded

by Isabella Whitney.

Nevertheless Lanyer was one of the first British women to assert her status as a professional writer, though her book of poems Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, published in 1611 – the same year as the King James Bible – when Lanyer was forty-two, is advertised as being by a wife, rather than just a woman.

‘Written by Mistress Æmilia Lanyer, Wife to Captain Alfonso Lanyer, Servant to the King’s Majesty.’ The book is addressed, like Jane Anger’s, specifically to women and dedicated to several female aristocrats, seeking their patronage woman to woman, begging pardon for her ‘defects.’ They include a dedication to Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset and ‘To the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty’. (The queen was James I’s wife, Anne of Denmark, a noted patron of the arts.)

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Renowned Empress, and great Britain’s Queen, Most gracious Mother of succeeding Kings; Vouchsafe to view that which is seldom seen, A Woman’s writing of divinest things: Reade it fair Queen, though it defective be, Your Excellence can grace both It and Me. . . .

And since all Arts at first from Nature came, That goodly Creature, Mother of Perfection, Whom Jove’s almighty hand at first did frame, Taking both her and hers in his protection: Why should not She now grace my barren Muse, And in a Woman all defects excuse.

Another dedication is to ‘The Lady ELIZABETH’S Grace.’

(Elizabeth was the daughter of James I.)

Even you fair Princess next our famous Queen, I do invite unto this wholesome feast, Whose goodly wisdom, though your years be green, By such good work may daily be increased, Though your fair eyes far better Book have seen; Yet being the first fruits of a woman’s wit, Vouchsafe your favour in accepting it.

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anyer was born Æmilia Bassano, a member of the Venetian Bassano family of musical instrument makers who lived and worked in London and has been a candidate for the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s 87

sonnets. (Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre commissioned the play Emilia on this subject in 2018; it had an all-female cast and won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play.) Not much is known about Æmilia’s early years but she seems to have grown up in the household of the Countess of Kent. From around 1587 she had an extended affair with To all virtuous Ladies in general Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, first cousin of Queen Elizabeth I and her Each blessed Lady that Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners in Virtue spends Your precious time to – effectively the Queen’s personal beautify your souls; bodyguard. Carey was also patron of Come wait on her whom the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, William wingèd Fame attends Shakespeare’s playing company. Carey And in her hand the Book gave Æmelia a pension of £40 a year where she enrolls but then in 1592, when she was 23, Lanyer became pregnant with Carey’s he thrust of Salve Deus Rex child. He settled money on her and Judaeorum is female virtue married her off to a cousin, Alfonso and obedience to God’s will; Lanyer, a Queen’s musician. in this sense she is no transgressive Like Jane Anger, Margaret bad girl. But, like Jane Anger before Cavendish, Mary Astell and others, Lanyer specifically addresses her and Margaret Cavendish later, Lanyer complains that it is unfair herself to other women.

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that, because of Eve, ‘we (poor women) must endure it all.’ Eve cannot be blamed for man’s fall; she was tricked, as was Adam, by the serpent, acting as Satan’s wily agent.

Our Mother Eve, who tasted of the Tree, Giving to Adam what she held most dear, Was simply good, and had no power to see, The after-coming harm did not appear: The subtle Serpent that our Sex betrayed, Before our fall so sure a plot had laid.

‘If Eve did err, it was for knowledge sake,’ she says, and in any case, Adam ate too; he could not even blame the serpent: ‘The fruit being fair persuaded him to fall: / No subtle Serpent’s falsehood did betray him.’ Adam wanted to share in the knowledge which eating the fruit gave Eve; human knowledge comes from Eve but men have always claimed it for themselves. ‘Men will boast of Knowledge, which he took / From Eve’s faire hand, as from a learned Book.’ The evil was not in Eve, who was, quite literally, made from Adam, but in men’s betrayal of God’s intentions.

If any Evil did in her remain, Being made of him, he was the ground of all; If one of many Worlds could lay a stain Upon our Sex, and work so great a fall 89

To wretched Man, by Satan’s subtle train; What will so foul a fault amongst you all?

Her weakness did the Serpent’s word obey, But you in malice God’s dear Son betray.

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ertainly, whatever Eve might have done wrong, this does not give men any excuse for the way they treat women. ‘If one weak woman simply did offend / This sin of yours, hath no excuse, nor end.’ Like many other women writers, Lanyer extols at length the obedient virtue of the Virgin Mary, who more than compensates for any sins of Eve. But, also like other women writers, as enumerated at such great length in Christine of Pizan’s book, Lanyer also extols strong women in history who have physically overcome powerful men, Like the Scythian Women, or the Amazons.

Though famous women elder times have known, Whose glorious actions did appear so bright, That powerful men by them were overthrown, And all their armies overcome in fight; The Scythian women by their power alone, Put king Darius unto shameful flight: All Asia yielded to their conquering hand, Great Alexander could not their power withstand.

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anyer also mentions with approval the biblical judge and prophet Deborah and the great pre-feminist Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes before he could rape her and so set her people free (portrayed several times in paint 90

by woman painter Artemisia Gentileschi, a younger contemporary of Lanyer’s and a Venetian like Lanyer’s family), though what Lanyer is celebrating in Judith’s act is a woman defeating a man who has ignored God’s will rather than a woman’s virtue.

Yea Judith had the power likewise to quell Proud Holofernes, that the just might see What small defence vain pride and greatness hath Against the weapons of God’s word and faith.

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ot that Lanyer had much to say in favour of men in general; in the prose piece To the Virtuous Reader, implying virtuous woman reader, she is particularly scathing about ‘evil disposed men, who forgetting they were born of women, nourished of women, and that if it were not by the means of women, they would be quite extinguished out of the world.’ But Lanyer is also critical of the way that women themselves criticise other women.

I have written this small volume, or little book, for the general use of all virtuous Ladies and Gentlewomen of this kingdom; and in commendation of some particular persons of our own sex, such as for the most part, are so well known to my self, and others, that I dare undertake Fame dares not to call any better. And this I have done, to make known to the world, that all women deserve not to be blamed though some forgetting they are women themselves, and in danger to be condemned by the words of their own mouths, fall into so great an error, as to speak unadvisedly against the rest of their sex.

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15 Elizabeth Cary She had read very exceeding much; poetry of all kinds, ancient and modern, in several languages, all that ever she could meet; history very universally, especially all ancient Greek and Roman historians; all chroniclers whatsoever in her own country, and the French histories very thoroughly; of most other countries something, though not so universally; of the ecclesiastical history very much, most especially concerning its chief pastors. Of books treating of moral virtue or wisdom (such as Seneca, Plutarch’s Morals, and natural knowledge, as Pliny, and of late ones such as French, Montaigne, and English, Bacon), she had read very many when she was young, not without making her profit of them all.

The Lady Falkland: Her Life

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ccording to her biography, written after her death by one of her daughters, Elizabeth Cary, née Tanfield, Viscountess Falkland (1585– 1639), was very highly- though largely self-educated; although she had some distinguished tutors she taught herself mainly from books. Elizabeth did get a tutor in French at the age of five and according to her biographer daughter she was speaking it fluently just a few weeks later; she then taught herself Spanish, Italian, Latin and Hebrew. Elizabeth nevertheless seems to 92

have been an obedient rather than a transgressive daughter and having been married off young, to have been an obedient wife, initially at least; she had eleven children by her husband. She was only fifteen at the time of the marriage and it seems that Henry, Viscount Falkland only married her because she was an heiress.

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owever, in her husband’s many absences – Henry was at various times Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire, a Justice of the Peace, Master of the Jewels, Comptroller of the Household and a Privy Councillor – Elizabeth was forced to live with her mother-in-law, who took away all her books. Since she was not allowed to read books anymore, she decided to transgress her motherin-law’s, her husband’s and society’s will and write her own books instead; according to Her Life Cary was one of the most prolific female authors of her time. She wrote two plays, a life of Tamburlaine and biographies in verse of Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Agnes and Saint Elizabeth of Portugal.

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ary’s most famous work is The Tragedy of Mariam, printed in 1613 but written earlier, which may be the first the first original English play to have been published by a woman. It is what became known as a ‘closet 94

drama,’ implying that it was not intended to be performed on a stage, but perhaps to be read out loud by friends; such things regularly happened in Mary Sidney’s Wilton House circle. Mariam is written in formal, rhyming iambic pentameter, a relatively new form at the time, and a specifically English form, different from the classical and French metres. Marlowe had first perfected iambic pentameter, followed by Shakespeare, but they mostly used unrhymed lines, known as blank verse; Shakespeare’s Sonnets though, published together in 1609, do use rhyming iambic pentameter.

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ariam is the wife of King Herod from the Bible and the central character; it is very unusual for a play of the time to have a female as the sole title character – very unusual for a play of any time in fact. Even more unusually, there are two strong female leads: Mariam and her sister-in-law, Salome – in this case Herod’s sister not his stepdaughter as in Oscar Wilde’s play. As in Wilde’s version, Salome is the bad girl, though not in a lustful, sexual sense; John the Baptist’s head does not appear. Salome here is more like Iago in Othello, 1604, telling lies to a jealous, dark skinned husband about his pale-skinned wife, seeding suspicion, leading to him having her killed. In contrast, Mariam is the good girl, though she is rather too proud of her own 95

famous beauty and she has earlier taken Herod away from his previous wife, Doris, in adulterous transgression of what were then accepted as the laws of God. DORIS I’heaven? Your beauty cannot bring you thither.

Your soul is black and spotted, full of sin; You in adultery lived nine years together, And heaven will never let adultery in.

Although she does not do the dance of the seven veils, Salome is in her own way quite transgressive, plotting against her sister-in-law and insisting on a woman’s equality; the following passage sounds like a cry from the author’s own heart.

Why should such privilege to man be given?

Or, given to them, why barred from women then?

Are men than we in greater grace with heaven?

Or cannot women hate as well as men?

I’ll be the custom-breaker and begin To show my sex the way to freedom’s door

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gain, very unusually for the time – or any time – Cary writes powerful scenes involving two strong, opposed women, with no men involved.

Salome resents Mariam for having married her brother; Mariam looks down on Salome for her low birth and resents her interference in her 96

marriage. At one point in the play, both women believe that Herod has died abroad; Salome thinks Mariam is pleased to be rid of her husband and ‘hopes to have another King; her eyes do sparkle joy for Herod’s death.’

SALOME You durst not thus have given your tongue the rein If noble Herod still remained in life.

Your daughter’s betters far, I dare maintain, Might have rejoiced to be my brother’s wife.

MARIAM My ‘betters far’? Base woman, ‘tis untrue!

You scarce have ever my superiors seen, For Mariam’s servants were as good as you Before she came to be Judea’s queen.

SALOME Now stirs the tongue that is so quickly moved; But more than once your choler have I borne, Your fumish words are sooner said than proved, And Salome’s reply is only scorn.

MARIAM Scorn those that are for thy companions held!

Though I thy brother’s face have never seen, My birth thy baser birth so far excelled, I had to both of you the princess been.

Thou parti-Jew and parti-Edomite, Thou mongrel, issued from rejected race!

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he casual anti-Semitism here is probably no worse than in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, 1590 or Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, first performed in 1605. There were very few Jews living in England at the time, probably all in London and mostly of Mediterranean descent, a small diaspora escaping Catholic France and Spain (the Spanish Inquisition had begun in the 1480s; in 1483, Jews were expelled from all of Andalusia and royal decrees were issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Muslims and Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave Castile). In England, Jews were not welcome either but English Protestants mostly saw Jews as lost souls waiting to be converted rather than burned in autos da fé (not that the English were averse to burning heretics, as we saw with Anne Askew). John Foxe, famous as the author of The Book of Martyrs, 1563 also published A Sermon Preached at the Christening of a Certain Jew at London, 1578. The introduction says that it contains ‘a refutation of the obstinate Jews, and lastly touching the final conversion of the same.’ Some people in England went even further in their anti-Semitism though: a 1569 book called Certaine secrete wonders of Nature had accused Jews of poisoning Christian wells and in 1594, Queen Elizabeth’s Portuguese Jewish doctor was accused of plotting to poison her in collaboration with the Spanish.

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s for the racism that equates Salome’s slipperiness with her dark skin, echoed by her own husband’s comparison of her to Mariam: ‘you are to her as a sunburnt blackamoor,’ Cary was reflecting the racism and xenophobia of her time. A draft of a Royal Proclamation of 1601 under Elizabeth I 98

commands expulsion of all ‘negroes and blackamoors,’ many of them Muslims who, like the Jews, were escaping persecution in the Catholic countries of Europe; Elizabeth’s government blamed immigrants for their economic problems, as governments will, and a German merchant had been hired to track them down and deport them.

WHEREAS the Queen’s majesty, tendering the good and welfare of her own natural subjects, greatly distressed in these hard times of dearth, is highly discontented to understand the great number of Negroes and blackamoors which (as she is informed) are carried into this realm since the troubles between her highness and the King of Spain . . . These shall therefore be to will and require you and every of you to . . . taking such Negroes and blackamoors to be transported as aforesaid as he shall find within the realm of England.

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n 1625, Elizabeth Cary herself converted to Catholicism, a deeply transgressive act, against both her husband’s will and the laws of the land; Catholics were still treated with extreme suspicion twenty years after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605; the Act for Restraining Popish Recusants [Catholics who refused to attend Church of England services] to Some Certain Place of Abode had been passed in 1593; then in 1606 a law had been passed requiring all persons to ‘receive the sacrament in the church of the parish where his abroad is, or if there be no such Parish Church then in the church of the next Parish.’

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lizabeth’s husband took away everything from her, including her children, just leaving her with one servant and tried to divorce her; since she had been disinherited by her father, Elizabeth had to apply to the Privy Council to try to force her husband to maintain her financially, but he refused, hoping to make her recant. She won in the end though: after his death she converted most of her children to Catholicism; four of the girls became nuns and one of her sons became a priest.

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long with Mary Sidney, Elizabeth Cary was praised at length by John Davies – he and Michael Drayton were probably her tutors as a girl – in the dedication to his The Muses Sacrifice, 1612 (before Mariam was printed, implying he had read it in manuscript).

CARY (of whom Minerva stands in fear, lest she, from her, should get ART’S Regency) Of ART so moues the great-all-moving Sphere, that every Ore of Science moves thereby.

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Thou makest Melpomen proud, and my Heart great of such a Pupil, who, in Buskin fine, With Feet of State, dost make thy Muse to mete the Scenes of Syracuse and Palestine.

Art, Language; yea; abstruse and holy Tongues, thy Wit and Grace acquired thy Fame to raise; And still to fill thine own, and others Songs; thine, with thy Parts, and others, with thy praise Such nervy Limbs of Art, and Strains of Wit Times past ne’er knew the weaker Sex to have; And Times to come, will hardly credit it, if thus thou give thy Works both Birth and Grave.

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16 Lady Mary Wroth When night’s black mantle could most darkness prove, And sleep (death’s image) did my senses hire From knowledge of myself, then thoughts did move Swifter than those, most sweetness need require.

In sleep, a chariot drawn by winged Desire, I saw, where sate bright Venus, Queen of love, And at her feet her son, still adding fire To burning hearts, which she did hold above.

But one heart flaming more than all the rest, The goddess held, and put it to my breast.

Dear Son, now shoot, she said, this must we win.

He her obeyed, and martyred my poor heart.

I waking hoped as dreams it would depart, Yet since, O me, a lover have I been.

Lady Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

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ady Mary Wroth (1587 – c 1653), née Sidney was the niece of the poet, statesman, and soldier, Sir Philip Sidney, and the niece, namesake and goddaughter of his sister Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Her father, a senior government official was also a poet and although Mary was not formally educated she had household tutors arranged by her mother; in 1599 her father’s steward wrote to him about his children, ‘my lady sees them well taught, and brought up in Learning, and Qualities, fit for their Birth and Condition.’ In 1604 Mary had an arranged marriage with a wealthy Essex landowner who had very little interest in literature but was close to the court of James I, of whom he was a hunting companion. Mary became part of the circle surrounding the new protestant King, who had ascended the throne in 1603 after the death of Elizabeth, and she performed in several of the great public masques of the time, including the hugely expensive production of The Masque of Blacknesse, an early piece of theatrical racism commissioned by the King’s consort, Queen Anne of Denmark, written by Ben Jonson with sets designed

by Inigo Jones and performed on Twelfth Night 1605, nine months before the foiling of the gunpowder plot. Jonson later dedicated The Alchemist to Wroth and wrote several poems of fawning praise to the ‘faire crown of your fair sex.’

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I that have been a lover, and could show it, Though not in these, in rhythms not wholly dumb, Since I exscribe your Sonnets, am become A better lover, and much better Poet.

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ary’s husband Sir Robert Wroth died in 1614, leaving his wife in huge debt.

This poverty, plus her long-standing affair with her cousin, with whom she had two children, meant she soon went out of favour with the court. She got her own back.

Between 1618-20 Lady Mary began writing her vast prose/poetry romance, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, 1621, and her pastoral tragicomedy, Loves Victory. Urania is probably the first work of original fiction and certainly the first romance published by an English woman though it draws on enormous range of English and European men’s fiction including Don Quixote, Orlando Furioso, Spenser’s Faerie Queen and her uncle Philip’s Arcadia. It is far larger than any of them, and longer than possibly any later novel at six hundred thousand words for both volumes, nearly twice as long as Don Quixote and four times as long as Richardson’s enormous Pamela.

The sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus which was appended to the 1621 edition is the first secular sonnet sequence written by an English woman.

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roth, venturing into this new territory, had the example of her famous aunt, also called Mary to guide her. And her printer wanted to make sure that potential buyers knew of the connection: the splendidly illustrated title page has the subtitle (spelling mistakes and all), ‘written by the right honourable the Lady MARY WROATH, Daughter to the right Noble Robert Earle of Leicester. And Niece to the ever famous and renowned Sr Phillips Sidney knight. And to the most excellent Lady Mary Countess of Pembroke late deceased.’

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he frame story of Urania, of the lovers Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, contains a large number of smaller stories. Amongst a vast cast of characters, mainly women with unfaithful husbands or disappointed lovers, Wroth included thinly-disguised caricatures of many prominent court figures and noblemen. The outrage of the men who believe themselves to have been referenced in it reached as far as the King; Wroth wrote a disclaimer to the Duke of Buckingham saying that the copies of the book were ‘sold against my mind, I never purposing to have them published.’ She asked for a King’s warrant to recover the copies already circulated and she did indeed buy some of the copies back but that cat was already out of the bag, even though Mary protested, perhaps disingenuously: The strange constructions which are made of my book contrary to my imagination, and as far from my meaning as it is possible for truth to be from conjecture, my purpose no way bent to give the least cause of offence, my thoughts free from so much as thinking of any such thing as I am censured for.

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ortunately, unlike Delarivier Manley ninety years later with The New Atlantis, with which Urania has many parallels, Wroth and her publisher were not actually arrested, though Sir Edward Denny, who was satirised, pseudonymously but recognisably, did charge Wroth with slander and wrote a very spiteful poem about her, calling her a hermaphrodite.

Hermaphrodite in show, in deed a monster As by thy words and works all men may conster Thy wrathful spite conceived an Idle book Brought forth a fooe which like the dam doth look Wherein thou strikes at some man’s noble blood.

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roth responded in kind with ‘Railing Rimes Returned upon the Author

by Mistress Mary Wroth;’ like all great satirists, she brilliantly and mercilessly turns the target’s words against him.

Hermaphrodite in sense in Art a monster As by your railing rimes the world may conster Your spiteful words against a harmless book Shows that an ass much like the sire doth look Men truly noble fear no touch of blood Nor question make of others much more good

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t the time, many moral, male writers were warning women against reading romances, let alone writing them; women should, according to these men, restrict themselves to religious works. Denny advised Wroth that she should: Redeem the time with writing as large a volume of heavenly lays and holy love as you have of lascivious tales and amorous toys that at the last you may follow the rare, and pious example of your virtuous and learned aunt, who translated so many godly books and especially the holy Psalms of David.

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ary’s aunt Mary Sidney did of course write and translate religious works but she was at least as transgressive as her niece and there is no doubt whose side she would have been on in this argument between a progressive woman writer and a regressive misogynist.

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Killing the Angel Part Two MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE KATHERINE PHILIPS APHRA BEHN ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA DELARIVIER MANLEY MARY ASTELL SUSANNA CENTLIVRE SARAH FYGE EGERTON JUDITH DRAKE LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU

Killing the Angel Part Three ELIZABETH MONTAGU SARAH SCOTT HESTER CHAPONE CHARLOTTE LENNOX FANNY BURNEY ELIZABETH INCHBALD PHILLIS WHEATLEY MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT MARIA EDGEWORTH CHARLOTTE DACRE ANNE LISTER MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY