The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women, 1558–1680

271 Pages·2010·2.025 MB·English

by  Johanna Harris, Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (eds.)

Early Modern Literature in History
General Editors: Cedric C. Brown, Professor of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and
Humanities, University of Reading; Andrew Hadfield, Professor of English, University of
Sussex, Brighton
Advisory Board: Donna Hamilton, University of Maryland; Jean Howard, University
of Columbia; John Kerrigan, University of Cambridge; Richard McCoy, CUNY; Sharon
Achinstein, University of Oxford
Within the period 1520–1740 this series discusses many kinds of writing, both within and
outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives,
but they share an historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively
negotiation with their own and successive cultures.
Titles include:
Andrea Brady
ENGLISH FUNERARY ELEGY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Laws in Mourning
Mark Thornton Burnett
CONSTRUCTING ‘MONSTERS’ IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA AND EARLY MODERN
CULTURE
Dermot Cavanagh
LANGUAGE AND POLITICS IN THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY HISTORY PLAY
Patrick Cheney
MARLOWE’S REPUBLICAN AUTHORSHIP
Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime
Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (editors)
‘THIS DOUBLE VOICE’
Gendered Writing in Early Modern England
David Coleman
DRAMA AND THE SACRAMENTS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
Indelible Characters
Katharine A. Craik
READING SENSATIONS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
James Daybell (editor)
EARLY MODERN WOMEN’S LETTER-WRITING, 1450–1700
Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield (editors)
THE RELIGIONS OF THE BOOK
Christian Perceptions, 1400–1660
Tobias Döring
PERFORMANCES OF MOURNING IN SHAKESPEAREAN THEATRE
AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE
Sarah M. Dunnigan
EROS AND POETRY AT THE COURTS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
AND JAMES VI
Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr. (editors)
ENVIRONMENT AND EMBODIMENT IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
Kenneth J.E. Graham and Philip D. Collington (editors)
SHAKESPEARE AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE
Teresa Grant and Barbara Ravelhofer
ENGLISH HISTORICAL DRAMA, 1500–1660
Forms Outside the Canon
Andrew Hadfield
SHAKESPEARE, SPENSER AND THE MATTER OF BRITAIN
William M. Hamlin
TRAGEDY AND SCEPTICISM IN SHAKESPEARE’S ENGLAND
Johanna Harris and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (editors)
THE INTELLECTUAL CULTURE OF PURITAN WOMEN, 1558–1680
Elizabeth Heale
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND AUTHORSHIP IN RENAISSANCE VERSE
Chronicles of the Self
Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham (editors)
THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE
Claire Jowitt (editor)
PIRATES? THE POLITICS OF PLUNDER, 1550–1650
Gregory Kneidel
RETHINKING THE TURN TO RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN
ENGLISH LITERATURE
Edel Lamb
PERFORMING CHILDHOOD IN THE EARLY MODERN THEATRE
The Children’s Playing Companies (1599–1613)
Jean-Christopher Mayer
SHAKESPEARE’S HYBRID FAITH
History, Religion and the Stage
Scott L. Newstok
QUOTING DEATH IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb
Jennifer Richards (editor)
EARLY MODERN CIVIL DISCOURSES
Marion Wynne-Davies
WOMEN WRITERS AND FAMILIAL DISCOURSE IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
Relative Values
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The Intellectual Culture of
Puritan Women, 1558–1680
Edited by
Johanna Harris
Lecturer in Early Modern Literature, Lincoln College, University of Oxford
and
Elizabeth Scott-Baumann
Lecturer in Early Modern Literature, Wadham College, University of Oxford and
Research Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
Selection and editorial matter © Johanna Harris and
Elizabeth Scott-Baumann 2010
Individual chapters © contributors 2010
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-22864-1
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First published 2010 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-31020-3 ISBN 978-0-230-28972-7 (eBook)
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
Foreword ix
N. H. Keeble
Notes on Contributors xv
List of Abbreviations xix
1 Introduction 1
Johanna Harris and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann
2 The Exemplary Anne Vaughan Lock 15
Susan M. Felch
3 The Countess of Pembroke and the Practice of Piety 28
Danielle Clarke
4 Imagining a National Church: Election and Education
in the Works of Anne Cooke Bacon 42
Lynne Magnusson
5 Anne, Lady Southwell: Coteries and Culture 57
Elizabeth Clarke
6 Godly Patronage: Lucy Harington Russell, Countess
of Bedford 71
Marion O’Connor
7 ‘An Ancient Mother in our Israel’: Mary, Lady Vere 84
Jacqueline Eales
8 ‘Give me thy hairt and I desyre no more’:
The Song of Songs, Petrarchism and Elizabeth Melville’s
Puritan Poetics 96
Sarah C. E. Ross
9 ‘But I thinke and beleeve’: Lady Brilliana Harley’s
Puritanism in Epistolary Community 108
Johanna Harris
v
vi Contents
10 ‘Take unto ye words’: Elizabeth Isham’s ‘Booke
of Rememberance’ and Puritan Cultural Forms 122
Erica Longfellow
11 Anne Bradstreet’s Poetry and Providence: Earth, Wind,
and Fire 135
Susan Wiseman
12 Viscountess Ranelagh and the Authorisation of Women’s
Knowledge in the Hartlib Circle 150
Ruth Connolly
13 Anna Trapnel’s Literary Geography 162
Diane Purkiss
14 Lucy Hutchinson, the Bible and Order and Disorder 176
Elizabeth Scott-Baumann
15 Pregnant Dreams in Early Modern Europe:
The Philadelphian Example 190
Nigel Smith
Afterword 202
David Norbrook
Bibliography 214
Index 239
List of Illustrations
1 Woodcut: John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of these latter
and perillous dayes touching matters of the Church
(London: John Day, 1563), STC 11222, titlepage.
Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford 16
2 Woodcut: Latimer preaching before Edward VI, John Foxe,
Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes
touching matters of the Church
(London: John Day, 1563), STC 11222, p. 1353.
Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford 17
3 Map of London from An exact Delineation of the Cities of
London and Westminster and the Suburbs thereof, together wth
ye Burrough of Southwark and all ye Through-fares – Highwaies
Streetes Lanes & Allies wth in ye same. Composed by a scale
and ichnographically described by Richard Newcourt…Willm.,
Faithorne sculpsit.] A scale of yards, 800[(cid:2) 140 mm]
(1658; BL shelfmark Maps R.17.a.3)
Reproduced by permission of the British Library 164
vii
Acknowledgements
Foremost thanks are due to our contributors for their endorsement of
the project from its inception, their efficiency, and exemplary scholar-
ship. Special thanks are due to Professor David Norbrook and Professor
N. H. Keeble for their contributions and for their consistent encourage-
ment. Steven Hall at Palgrave, and our general editors Cedric Brown and
Andrew Hadfield, have provided essential practical and intellectual sup-
port. For kind permission to reproduce maps and illustrations, and for
advice, we thank the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Chatsworth
House and the Courtauld Institute.
This collection was nurtured by the intellectual cultures of the Harris
and Scott-Baumann households, and it is to them that the editors extend
their deepest gratitude.
viii
Foreword
N. H. Keeble
The intellectual prospects for Puritan women, or, indeed, for a collec-
tion of essays devoted to them, might not appear particularly bright. It
is not difficult to come by examples of early modern Puritan opinion
such as that of John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts in the 1630s
and 1640s, who was in no doubt that the ‘sad infirmity, the loss of her
understanding and reason’ suffered by Anne Hopkins, the wife of the
governor of Connecticut, came about
by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and
had written many books. Her husband, being very loving and tender
of her, was loath to grieve her; but he saw his error, when it was too
late. For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as
belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle
in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc.,
she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and
honourably in the place God had set her.1
Disconcertingly, highly educated Puritan women of evident creative
ability could write in just these terms. For all her ‘intellectual tough-
ness’, to adopt David Norbrook’s apt phrase,2 Lucy Hutchinson could
reflect that, ‘as our sex, through ignorance and weakness of judgment
(which in the most knowing women is inferior to the masculine under-
standing of men), are apt to entertain fancies, and [be] pertinacious in
them so we ought to watch our selves…and…embrace nothing rashly;
but as our own imbecility is made known to us, to take heed of pre-
sumption in ourselves’.3 Though in the apologia prefaced to her poems
Anne Bradstreet was seeking, by anticipating it, to disarm prejudice, and
was perhaps doing so with knowing irony, she was nevertheless very
clear about what might be expected from her readers:
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on female wits:
If what I do prove well, it won’t advance,
They’ll say it’s stolen, or else it was by chance.
ix