Autobiography in the general form that we know it today is a relatively recent development. Even in antiquity, to be sure, it is possible to find isolated passages of autobiographical material in works of history or poetry. ¹ But as a distinct literary genre, representing an attempt to fulfill the author’s conscious and primary intention of recounting and assessing his life to date, autobiography before the seventeenth century is practically non-existent. The examples which have come down to us are few and far between and most certainly aberrant. The Confessionsof St. Augustine is the classic instance, and no study of early autobiography of English women would be complete without a mention of the remarkable Book of Margery Kempe, written around 1436; but like the Confessions this document is something of a sport, and the circumstances of its composition are sufficiently problematical to cast doubt on its classification as an autobiography. For the most part, then, we can accept Wayne Shumaker’s generalization:

Before 1600, autobiographies of the modern type are nearly impossible to find; after 1600, they follow one another at decreasing intervals, until at last, around 1800, their authors seem to be writing in a tradition instead of feeling their way into a new literary genre. ²

While the definition and implications of the Renaissance are still much debated, it is generally accepted that the rise of autobiography was associated with the increases in historical sense and self-consciousness which took place during the period. And because the winds of change which swept from Italy northward through Europe took a while to blow across the channel, the appearance of autobiography in England, like other literary forms, came relatively late. ³ What Ebner terms "the first indisputable autobiography written in England" ⁴ was produced by Thomas Whythorne in 1576, ⁵ but in all, only a score or so autobiographies have come down to us which were penned in England before around the middle of the seventeenth century. After 1640 there was a sharp increase in the number of British autobiographies; some of this increase can be attributed to the incipient formation of a tradition of religious autobiography in the various Protestant sects.

It should come as a surprise to no one that although women probably comprised more than half the population, ⁶ their autobiographies make up roughly ten percent of the total produced in the seventeenth century. ⁷ As might also be expected, seventeenth century autobiographies by men exhibit more variety than those of their female counterparts; military memoirs, political memoirs, accounts of a religious calling, family histories, boasting self-exposés--all these can be found among the production of men. Men of course had more educational opportunities than women and access to wider range of experience; though self-revelation was in general thought of as inappropriate and requiring some justification, the men who undertook it were at least not subject to a prejudice against members of their sex writing at all. The male autobiographers also represent a broader spectrum socially, ranging from peers (such as Lord Herbert) to ploughmen or at least their sons (such as Edward Barlow), from divines (such as Richard Baxter) to charlatans, mountebanks, and impostors (such as William Fuller).

What is noteworthy about the productions of women, whatever their numerical and other limitations, is that they are by no means anemic imitations of those of men; on the contrary, in many respects they seem more modern, more subjective, more given to self-scrutiny, more like what we have come to know as autobiography. ⁸ Furthermore, writings by women are among the early examples of the form. Two of the most remarkable autobiographical works of the century were written by women before 1660 (Anna Trapnel and Margaret Cavendish). Indeed, autobiography must share with the novel the distinction of being one of the first literary genres which women actively participated in shaping (if the word "shaping" can be used to describe the creation of a form many of whose early examples went long unpublished). Heretofore even the most gifted female intellects worked within forms already perfected and refined by male artists.

Before attempting a more specific analysis of the feminine contribution to the genre of autobiography, I think it would be useful to look at the works individually, especially as most of them are not widely known, even to scholars of the period, and some are not generally available. I shall quote generously in order to convey the distinctive flavor of each work. In my opinion, several of these works deserve modern editing, both for their intrinsic merit and in order to make then more accessible to people interested in identifying and publicizing the role which women have played in Western culture; I hope I shall have made a small contribution towards rescuing their authors from oblivion. I shall discuss them in approximately the order in which they were written, although in some cases that date is rather difficult to ascertain.

An early and unique autobiography is that of Lady Lucy Knatchbull (1584-1629), a devout Catholic nun who helped to found a convent at Ghent in the early part of the seventeenth century. It is incorporated into Sir Tobie Matthew’s Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull, an early specimen of biography; Sir Tobie was Lady Lucy’s spiritual director, and the narrative is evidently addressed to him.

From Sir Tobie we learn that Lady Lucy was the daughter of a prominent Catholic family; she was a high-spirited young woman, and her early religious devotions were perfunctory. We hear nothing of this period of her life from Lady Lucy herself. Her account of "her own whole Life" (p. 27) begins at the age of seventeen, when she first receives a call to the religious life:

When I arrived at the age of seventeen years or thereabouts, I grew, through the great mercy of God (by occasion of the vanity of the world, and the danger of death), to cast mine eyes in upon myself. And as I was taking a view of the dangerous condition wherein I stood, I conceived a great desire to begin in good earnest to serve Almighty God, upon whom I had so seldom thought to any good purpose till then. The happiness of a Religious Life was after this very often represented to my mind, but with unspeakable affliction to me. For all my thoughts at those years were chiefly running after advancement and a kind of honest liberty, which I loved as my life and which yet, if I had held on a worldly course, I do now verily fear might perhaps have brought me by degrees to eternal misery. I did often, in those days shut the ear of my Soul against Almighty God; but it pleased him to continue to call upon me so loud that I could not choose but hear him. In so much as that, between the desire that my Soul had to embrace his divine Vocation and the extreme repugnance which Sense found in it, my heart was, as it were, even torn in pieces. Notwithstanding, I humbly thank our good Lord (and I ought never to cease, to thank him for it), after three years’ struggling, I broke (through the strength he gave me) the chain in which my affections held me as strongly as with so many fetters, and in despite of all my ill inclinations I took (because I believed it to be the will of God) a firm resolution to be Religious; though I could not then see how it was possible but that I should suffer all the days of my life intolerably by it. After this resolution, which I made some half a year before my coming over, my thoughts were very quiet, and I conceived great hope that God would give me as much comfort as was necessary for the doing of him faithful service; and more than that I desired not, for it was his holy will that I adored. (pp. 27-28)

The propriety of this beginning can be understood when we consider that, as she later suggests, her spiritual birth is of more consequence to her than her physical birth:

I received the holy Habit of Religion in Christmas, upon the Feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and it was a day of exceeding comfort to me. Methought I felt myself then begin to be happy. This holy time of the Nativity of our dear Lord fell very fit for my purpose; because I desired to be born to new grace, and in conformity to this Blessed Babe to become a Child, and in all things to follow what should be ordained me by holy Religion, which I took to be my Mother. (p. 33)

During this period the English Catholic Church was not a vigorous institution, and it was not unusual for the Catholic young women to pursue their callings abroad. Lady Lucy originally went to a convent in Brussels, where she quickly became involved in convent politics: she was associated with an abortive attempt, apparently fostered by the Jesuits, to leave and begin a new monastery. The enterprise faltered, she apparently came to feel she had been manipulated, and she decided to return humbly to her original house:

. . . I passed some days in extreme affliction, especially three or four, in which I do not remember that I was able to give myself any one thought of comfort. After a while, when I was a little come to myself, a great friend of mine and I, who often conferred together, began to think what we were best to do; and having considered how all things stood, and earnestly commended the matter to Almighty God, we gave each other our promise to return to the Monastery from whence we came, without disputing what Superiors (whom we knew we had already disgusted) would or could do to us; for we were resolved for the love of God to suffer all. And with this resolution, so soon as we could, we parted from Louvain without acquainting any creature with our pretext, and so went to the Monastery. Where by Father Baldwin’s means, we were, upon the Nativity of our Blessed Lady, received, with promise both on their parts and ours that all former unkindnesses should be forgotten.

I was glad (being entered again) to see myself amongst the Religious; and yet my heart did ache with apprehension of I knew not what. But having passed a day or two, my fears grew to an end, and I could pray, read, sing, sweep, wash dishes or whatsoever else, and all with pleasure. . . . (p. 32)

Her happiness is short-lived, however, for shortly after receiving "the holy Habit of Religion" (p. 33), she suffers a painful loss of faith which she describes vividly:

I fell soon after Easter into extreme darkness of mind, and the observances of holy Religion grew tedious to me; I saw myself fail so fast that I began to despair of ever being able to get virtue in any reasonable degree. For so much as concerned Sin, I would to God I committed no more now than I did then; and yet, I knew not how, but by little and little I fell into so deep a melancholy that I gave myself for almost lost, both to this world and that to come. I began to doubt in divers things, concerning Faith, if not in all: I hope they were not absolute doubts (for that were horrible Sin) but my understanding was obscured, my judgment suspended, and I knew not what to think. Divers times, when I went to Pray, it came to my mind with deep affliction, Is there a God, to hear me? and then, as being seized on by a world of fears, I should think after this manner, If there be a God, he is cruel to me, But then instantly (taking myself in the manner) I would reply, O, Jesus, yes, there is a God; sure there is a God; and yet how shall I be sure? Is it possible that the greatest part of the world should not know him, or at least not rightly serve him? Then reflecting as it were, at the very end of my wits, I should think, Lord what shall I do; I know not what to think; I desire to think; I desire to know the truth; but who shall resolve me? It seemeth to me yet, that every power of my Soul was tormented. I hated to live, and yet did extremely fear to die. Comfort I had none, neither from heaven nor Earth, and methought that whensoever I was alone there was still a Devil behind me, ready to lay hold on me. I was careful to conceal what I felt from any creature except only Father Anthony Hoskins, whom I saw to be very sensible of me. He gave me Relics, which he said had power against the Devil; and bade me be devout to Blessed Father Ignatius, which I promised him I would be. I was for the most part, whilst I was with him very quiet, and hoped that all had been past; but oftentimes, I was no sooner out of his sight but I thought that I should have gone mad; and once did half believe myself to be so. It was near five months, from the time that I fell into this Conflict, that I was thoroughly free: but the extremity of it, as I remember, lasted not above six weeks or two months. This which I have said did humble my Soul exceedingly, and brought her down upon her knees, She saw it was nothing that she could do of herself; but it was God that must do all that is good in her. (pp. 33-35)

Most of the narrative is taken up with her spiritual experiences. She offers the following analysis of her weaknesses:

My soul was yet weak and idle, and fell easily into such defects as ill custom led her to: as, to talk too much and of unnecessary and idle things; to excuse myself, though I were in fault; to take delight to be esteemed wise; to be, even with anxiety, careful to content those persons whom I loved, and to grieve impatiently when I saw or knew them to be troubled; to be inwardly angry against such things as seemed to me to be against reason, and to shun, as near as I could without note, those creatures and those occasions which in nature I did not like. Against these things, and I know not how many more, I was to fight, and my soul did struggle to be at liberty. But methought it fared with me as with a Horse or some such Beast that is fallen into the mire, who the more it plunges the faster it sticks, unless some reasonable creature come to help it. This I made to be my case; and to the end that it might please our most merciful Lord to favour me herein I made the Spiritual Exercise, in which one of the Meditations which I had was of Resignation. (p. 29)

She is subject to swoons and visions. At one point she sees Jesus as a boy of twelve (p. 41); at another she sees his foot in great detail: "The instep and middle part where the nail had pierced was very beautiful and had a kind of Splendour, yet not so but that it appeared to be perfect flesh, and it was made a little big; the other part of the Foot was, as it were, shadowed (but not hid), so that I could not so well discern it: (p. 45). Her devotion is so intense that at times her feeling of union with God is actually a physical sensation:

When I had received the holy Communion, and was returned into the Place in which I was to Pray, methought I found my Soul, as it were, casting herself into the Arms of our Lord; and he, having regard to her, seemed in the same instant to draw into himself the affections of my whole heart. I know not how to say this was nor did I understand what passed in this time, so that I cannot give it well to be understood; but with this I became all faint and, as coming out of a most delightful trance, knew not what to do, but as it were to seek to die, by engulfing myself into that Sea of goodness. It comes to my mind that I may make a comparison between our Lord’s drawing my affections into him and the Sun’s drawing of Vapours from the earth; and the eye of my understanding did discern something in that manner; or rather a Beam of Motes to pass from me to our Lord. With this my Soul began to be wise; for now she was made soberly drunk, and in an instant turned from those follies in which she had taken unlawful delight. I did now often tell our Lord that I loved him. . . . (p. 42)

Resemblances to the writing of St. Teresa are striking and not coincidental; Lady Lucy refers to the saint in her narrative and was clearly familiar with her work.

This document is important not only as a very early example of English autobiography, but also as a rare glimpse into the spiritual life of a Catholic woman and into some aspects of convent routine. For its existence in the vernacular we have probably to thank her sex; a comparable account by a male Catholic would doubtless have been written in Latin.

Another very early work is that of Lady Anne Clifford, better known as a patron of John Donne. The Lives of Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery (1590-1676) and of her Parents. Summarized by Herself ¹⁰ is in the tradition of family history, and as such, it is a somewhat unlikely production for a seventeenth century woman. But Anne Clifford took her responsibilities as a matriarch seriously; indeed, she spent her later years in a massive restoration of the family estate, the castle of Skypton--although, as she tells us, it is only because of the fortuitous failure of all the collateral male lines in her family that this responsibility devolved upon her:

My father, for the love he bore to his brother, and the advancement of the heirs male of his house, by his last will and other conveyances which he had formerly sealed, did leave to his brother Francis, who succeeded him in the Earldom of Cumberland, and to the heirs male of his body, all his castles, lands and honors, with a proviso that they should all return to me, his only daughter and heir, if the heirs male failed; which they afterwards did. . . . (pp. 36-37)

But it was a responsibility which she accepted with spirit and one which she clearly enjoyed--even to the extent of engaging in or fending off a long series of lawsuits, including one instituted by her uncle in an attempt to gain control of her land. She also took pride in her charitable works, such as an almshouse "which had been almost two years a-building, so as I now put into it twelve poor women, eleven of them being widdoes, and the twelfth a maimed maid, and a Mother, a deceased minister’s widdow" (p. 62).

The details of her life, especially as they form a part of the annals of her family, are a source of fascination to her; how often do we learn from an autobiographer when and where she was conceived?

I was, through the mercifull providence of God, begotten by my valiant father, and conceived with child by my worthy mother, the first day of May in 1589 in the Lord Wharton’s house in Channell Row in Westminster, hard by the river of Thames, as Psalm 139. Yet I was not born till the 30th day of January following, when my blessed mother brought me forth in one of my father’s chief houses called Skypton Castle in Craven, Eccles. 3; for she came down into the North from London with her two sons, being great with child with me, my father then being in great peril at sea in one of his voyages. For both a little before he begat me and a little after, it was ten thousand to one but that he had been cast away on the seas by tempests and contrary winds; yet it pleased God to preserve him, so as he lived to see my birth, and a good while after, for I was fifteen years and nine months old when he died. (p. 33)

She also gives us something that we do not find again in women’s autobiography until the eighteenth century--an extended description of her physical appearance, though again, explicitly within the context of her family’s history:

I was very happy in my first constitution both in mind and body, both for internal and external endowments, for never was there child more equally resembling both father and mother than myself. The color of mine eyes were black like my father, and the form and aspect of them was quick and lively like my mother’s; the hair of my head was brown and very thick, and so long that it reached to the calf of my legs when I stood upright, with a peak of hair on my forehead, and a dimple in my chin, like my father, full cheeks and round face like my mother, and an exquisite shape of body resembling my father. But now time and age hath long since ended all those beauties, which are to be compared to the grass of the field. . . . For now when I caused those memorables of myself to be written I have passed the 63rd year of my age. And, though I say it, the perfections of my mind were much above those of my body; I had a strong and copious memory, a sound judgment and a discerning spirit, and so much of a strong imagination in me, as that many times even my dreams and apprehensions before hand proved to be true. . . . (pp. 34-35)

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this autobiography is the ambiguous picture she gives of her life with her two husbands:

I must confess with unexpressible thankfullness, that though through the goodness of Almighty God and the mercies of my Savior Christ Jesus, Redeemer of the World, I was born a happy creature in mind, body, and fortune, and that those two lords of mine, to whom I was afterwards by the Divine providence marryed, were in there several kinds worthy noblemen as any then were in this kingdom; yet was it my misfortune to have contradictions and crosses with them both; with my first lord about the desire he had to make me sell my rights in the lands of my antient inheritance for mony, which I never did, nor never would consent unto, insomuch as this matter was the cause of a long contention betwixt us, as also for his profuseness in consuming his estate, and some other extravagancies of his; and with my second Lord, because my youngest daughter, the Lady Isabella Sackvill, would not be brought to marry one of his younger sons, and that I would not relinquish my interest I had in 5000 pounds, being part of her portion, out of my lands in crowen. Nor did there want diverse malicious illwillers to blow and foment the coals of dissention betwist us. . . . Insomuch as a wise man that knew the insides of my fortune would after say that I lived in both these lords’ great familys as the river of Roan or Rodamus runs through the lake of Geneva, without mingling any part of its streams with that lake; for I gave myself wholly to retiredness, as much as I could, in both these great families, and made good books and virtuous thoughts my companions, which can never discern affliction, nor be daunted when it unjustly happens. And by a happy genious I overcame all these troubles. . . . (pp. 39-40)

Dean Ebner associates the obvious tug-of-war between the realities of her marriages and the interpretation she desires to impose upon them with an Anglican tradition of autobiography--a tradition which eschewed the psychological penetration and consciousness of sin that is manifested in the conversion psychology of sectarian autobiography and which, drawing on hagiography, characterizes people as the epitome of virtue. She had some difficulty, Ebner concludes, in portraying the Earl of Dorset as a saint:

Lady Clifford and the Earl had been quarreling nearly a lifetime over the financial control of her estate. Yet such was the determination of Anglican autobiographers to enshrine the heroic side of human nature that when Lady Clifford came finally to summarize the Earl’s character she ignored his greed and rendered him not only wise but patriotic and generous. ¹¹

Ebner’s point may be valid, but I think a more pressing reason for the tension is the fact that Anne Clifford saw herself not simply as marrying a man but as allying herself with a family, and even more importantly as maintaining the dignity of her own family. The petty or not so petty marital squabbles were, in a sense, trivial or even irrelevant. For the whole tradition of which she is a part--a tradition according to which she sees herself as "greatly born and matched" (p. 35)--is still a live and meaningful one to her. It is only later, in other times and other classes, that we will uncover a sense of alienation which destroys this long perspective on individual troubles. Nevertheless, we sense Anne Clifford’s relief when, having done her duty by society, she is permitted "a private retiredness, which I could never do till after the death of my two husbands" (p. 36).

It is not surprising that the Civil Wars were a cause of a great deal of disruption in her life. At one point she tells us that she "continued to lye in my own chamber without removing, six years and nine months, which was the longest time that ever I continued to lye in one house in all my life, the Civill Wars being then very hot in England, so that I may well say that was then as it were a place of refuge for me to hide myself in, till those troubles were overpassed" (p. 51). She found her estates, she informs us, in "extream disorder" (p. 56) because the Civil Wars prevented her access to them. When the Castle of Skypton is almost restored, she cannot move in "partly by reason of the small and unwholesomeness of the new walls, and partly by reason of the garrison of foot-soldiers which was put in there about the 4th of August under the command of Ensign Robert Fenner, for securing thereof, by reason of the troubles now in England" (p. 87). At this period, let us remember, she is no longer young; yet she is tough and pursues her plans with remarkable tenacity.

This work is for the most part a rather tedious account of births, deaths, and lawsuits--basically family history--but the occasional nuggets in which shines a picture of a masterful woman, with a strong sense of her position in society, are well worth mining.

Anna Trapnel was an inspired preacher who was, to quote William York Tindall, "gifted with the accomplishments of prophecy and song, which she combined in continual performance of her own melodious compositions." ¹² She was subject to public trances and visions, and in addition to her autobiographical writings published poems and devotional works. She was claimed by the Baptists, Fifth Monarchy Men, and Quakers; possibly as Luella M. Wright speculates, she belonged to all in turn. ¹³ Her A Legacy for Saints, ¹⁴ in any case, seems unlike the typical Quaker autobiography in both style and content; its emphasis on "free grace" would seem to ally it with the Baptists. It is a striking work and an early one--it was published in 1654, twelve years before Bunyan’s Grace Abounding, and was written in about 1646.

This work is rather formless and in fact was probably not intended as a coherent whole. The first twenty pages describe Anna Trapnel’s conversion and the experiences leading up to it, the next twenty or so provide a record of her spiritual experiences during a severe illness, and the last three seem to be an unfinished religious tract. Her style is characterized by a rapturous mysticism and spiritual intensity which pervade the whole work. Her childhood is charged with guilt over even minor transgressions, as is usual in such accounts:

First; When a child, then the Lord awed my Spirit, and for the least trespass, my heart was smitten, and though my godly mother did not see me offend, that she might reprove me, which she was ready to do, being tender of the honour of her beloved Saviour, even for the least secret sin, that the world calls a trifle; though I thought it nothing yet still the all-seeing [eye] watched my ways, and he called to me, though I knew him not, yet he kept me, and his banner over me was love; and though my nature was as corrupt as any, a child of wrath as well as others, and forward to do evill, and backward to that which is good, yet still I was under the awaking of Jehovah, (p. 1)

Her description of her sufferings, however, comes to take on an urgency which is quite terrifying:

. . . yet now it seized upon my spirit, that surely I was not in the Covenant, and if I were, I should know it; and I still cryed out, oh my God, I am undone; my spirit is filled with horror, and the terrors of the Law exceedingly oppressed me, and I ran from Minister to Minister, from Sermon to Sermon, but I could find no rest. . . . I apprehended Divine displeasure against me, leaving me in a seared condition, given me over to blindness of mind, and hardness of heart for ever; when I was hindred from hearing a Sermon which I desired to hear, I have concluded that I might have received Christ in that Sermon, which being shut out from, I was shut out from Christ. . . . I was strongly tempted to destroy my self, which had not divine power prevented, I had been a murderer of my own life, and of their lives that I loved most intirely; I have been waked in the night by the devill for this very purpose, and directed where to have the knife, and what knife I should take. . . . (pp. 2-3)

Her subsequent spiritual illumination, as she tells us, is an exciting and liberating experience:

I could speak much concerning the time of my sorrow, of my terrors and perplexities, and sore plunges, I could make a large rehearsall, I could tell you of the sad apprehensions I had of my eternal condition, which I have but as it were given you a little hint of, my condition in the time of my bonds, but my desire now is rather to tell you of my freedom, unto which I hasten; though I know that these mourning experiences may be of great use to the sorrowful and troubled spirit, that lyeth languishing for want of the light of assurance, which God doth see good for a time to conceal from his beloveds, that he hath loved with an eternall love, which in time he draweth with free grace enough, an ocean, to swallow up, not my sins only, but many more, a fountain open for all manner of sins, be they never so great; poor souls! you cannot out-sin mercy, your sins are finite, but grace is infinite; do not think that any sin can shut thee out of divine love, if it could, it would have shut me out, for certain I am, that no heart could be more desperately wicked than mine, no ones sins could be of a more scarlet dye than mine, strong unbelief, continually departing from the living God, as full of heart hypocrisie as I could hold; Oh let sinners admire free grace with me, that hath freed me from as stony, as seared, benummed, sensless a condition, as any could be in....(pp. 6-7)

Her conversion is described at a high emotional pitch:

. . . when this sermon before mentioned upon that 8. of the Romans was almost ended, I said, Lord I have the Spirit, in this confused manner as I found a witness within me that I had the spirit in those particulars that were declared, but my spirit strongly run out to the Lord for a clear manifestation of his love in Christ, and suddenly my soul was filled with joy unspeakable, and full of glory in believing, the spirit witnessing in that word, Christ is thy wel-beloved, and thou are his; my soul was now full of joy as it could hold, now I saw all my sins laid upon Jesus Christ, and when he was sacrificed, all my sins were sacrificed with him; Oh what triumphing and songs of Hallelujah were in my spirit, I knew not where I was, nor how to get out of the place where I sat, I apprehended nothing but a clothing of glory over my whole man; I never beheld Saints as I did then, I saw their faces like the face of Angels; Oh what Angelicall creatures did they appear before me, full of shining brightness! Oh what a heart inflamed now was mine, filled with the flame of Divine love! there appeared now no smoak, but a clear flame, nothing now before me but christal appearances: oh how my soul was enamoured with Christ! Earth was now gone, and heaven come; the unclean spirit dispossessed, the pure spirit now possest, taking my soul from the dunghill, and setting it upon the throne, my naturall food I tasted not till now, it was bitter to my taste, but oh now, every bit of bread I eat, how sweet it was to my taste! Christ sweetned every creature to me, oh how sweet was the feasts of love, that my soul was made partaker in every creature! oh what a rebound doth Divine love make in the soul. . . . (p. 9)

Not surprisingly, perhaps, she is subject to visions:

In the night before sleep has seized upon me, a bright light shined round my head visible, and in the midst of that light stood one all in white, in the likeness of a creature all covered with brightness, my outward man at this sight was stricken very weak, and all in a sweat, but I received much joy, and was bid by the inward speaking of the spirit not to fear, for I had seen an Angell; surely it was a very glorious vision, such a perfume was left in my spirits all that night, and my strength of body given me as soon as this vision was ended, and I was full of triumphing in the Lord, who killeth and maketh alive; oh how sweet are true visions! (p. 14)

She also experiences auditory hallucinations:

. . . the work I had was this, Christ is thine, and thou are his; it followed me where ever I went; sometimes as I have been going along the streets, I have looked behind me, thinking I heard some locall voice, a voice without me, but sure it was because I was unacquainted with the voice of the Spirit speaking in, or to the soul; I oft-times turned back when I have been going along the streets, to see who it was that spake. . . . (p. 7)

and even olfactory (cf. the vision of an angel, quoted above):

. . . my body grew weaker and weaker, and the sent of dead souls turned out of the grave was still in my nostrils, and my body like unto a clod of earth, and pain working up to my heart. . . . (p. 40)

At one point Anna Trapnel falls into a trance (p. 41). Despite these ecstasies, however, she is also capable of acute perceptions:

I am perswaded that bare Professors are the greatest Papists in the world; spirituall idolatry is the worst; and my experience teacheth me that one may be a great worshipper of Idols, and yet never bow down to a picture. . . . (p. 4)

More than most autobiographers of this period, she seems to be conscious of the possibilities of language. Consider the following almost metaphysical passage:

. . . even when the heart and strength fails, nay, tho there be not any feeling of the movings, and actings, and flowings of the Spirit, though the beams are claspt and in the body of the Sun, it is not the beams that are my center, but the Son it self. . . . (p. 43)

The sun/son pun is conventional enough, to be sure, but the submerged suggestion of pregnancy is less so. Although some of her metaphors and analogies are rather far-fetched, many are quite effective:

. . . I was now as a cripple, when his crutches are taken from him he falls. (p. 3)

And:

And many that were inlightned in the doctrine of free grace, took a great deal of pains with me, perswading me to hear those Ministers that taught most upon the doctrine of free grace, but I could not relish that doctrine, it was such a cold, lean, poor discovery, I thought; I being under the flashes of hell, I delighted in the thunderings of the Law, and they pleased me best that preached upon the law, and that prest legall qualifications, which I strove to come up to. (p. 4)

One of the most interesting facts about this interesting writer is how very little she appears to think of herself as a woman, and to identify herself with the traditional feminine stereotypes. Indeed, there is a disembodied quality about her; even when describing her illness, her insistence upon the spiritual aspects of the experience is remarkable. Anna Trapnel’s ability to free herself from the limitations of the traditional role definitions, to think of herself and others as "souls," is clearly a source of strength in her writing; here is no apology, no self-effacement, no subordination of herself to a man. The work as a whole is quite unlike anything else produced by a woman in this period.

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, first Duchess of Newcastle (1625-74), was one of the most extraordinary women of her age. Her "True Relation of My Birth and Breeding" ¹⁵ is certainly one of the most remarkable autobiographical documents to be produced in the seventeenth century, by either a man or a woman. Its importance lies not only in its extended if humorless and slightly ingenuous attempts at self-analysis--virtually unique outside the highly stylized spiritual autobiographies--but also in the fact that it was intended for publication and indeed was published as early as 1656. The "True Relation" comprises some twenty-eight printed pages and is the last piece in a volume entitled Nature’s Pictures Drawn by Fancy’s Pencil to the Life; the duchess describes its contents on the title page as follows:

In this volume there are several feigned stories of natural descriptions, as comical, tragical, and tragi-comical, poetical, romancical, philosophical, and historical, both in prose and verse, some all verse, some all prose, some mixt, partly prose and partly verse. Also there are some morals, and some dialogues; and a true story at the latter end, wherein there is no feignings. (p. 149)

Margaret Lucas was born in 1625, the eighth and youngest child in a happy and accomplished family. Her father died when she was an infant, and the family was raised carefully and thoughtfully by her mother. She entered the queen’s court as a maid of honour at the age of eighteen and accompanied the queen into exile in Europe. There she made a love match with William Cavendish, Marquis (later Duke) of Newcastle, some thirty-two years her senior, and married him at the age of twenty. She had no children; this circumstance, added to her preternatural bashfulness, probably encouraged her to turn inward and then to commit her "conceptions," as she called them, to paper. "Malice cannot hinder me from Writing, wherein consists my chiefest delight and greatest pastime," she proclaims in the preface to a volume of plays, "nor from printing what I write, since I regard not so much the present as future ages, for which I intend all my Books." ¹⁶

Because almost alone among women of her class she both wrote and published, and did not hesitate to enter upon what was usually regarded as male territory, she was forced to come explicitly to grips with the difficult question of "woman’s place." Though it was an issue which seems to have vexed her little in practice, she never achieved a consistent theoretical position. In her Dedication of Philosophical and Physical Opinions "To the Two Most Famous Universities of England," she bemoans the neglect of women’s education:

lest in time we should grow irrational as idiots, by the dejectedness of our spirits, through the careless neglects and despisements of the masculine sex to the female, thinking it impossible we should have either learning or understanding, wit or judgment, as if we had not rational souls as well as men, and we out of a custom of dejectedness think it so too, which makes us quit all industry towards profitable knowledge, being employed only in low and petty employments which take away not only our abilities towards arts, but higher capacities in speculations, so as we are become like worms that only live in the full earth of ignorance, winding ourselves sometimes out of the help of some refreshing rain of good education, which seldom is given us, for we are kept like birds in cages, to hop up and down in our houses, not suffered to fly abroad to see the several changes of Fortune, and the various humours ordained and created by nature, and wanting the experience of nature, we must needs want the understanding and knowledge, and so consequently prudence and invention of men. Thus by an opinion, which I hope is but an erroneous one in men, we are shut out of all power and authority, by reason we are never employed either in civil or martial affairs, our counsels are despised and laughed at, the best of our actions are trodden down with scorn by the overweening conceit men have of themselves, and through a despisement of us. ¹⁷

And several of her plays, orations, and letters fantasize armies of women, academies of women, etc. Yet she took refuge in the "modesty of her sex," ¹⁸ chastised women severely for their foibles, and advocated that women content themselves with exerting their power indirectly, for

not only Wives and Mistresses have prevalent power with Men, but Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Aunts, Cousins, nay Maid-Servants have many times a persuasive power with their Masters, and a Landlady with her Lodger, or a she-Hostess with her he-Guest; yet men will not believe this, and ’tis the better for us, for by that we govern as it were by an insensible power, so as men perceive not how they are Led, Guided and Rul’d by the Feminine Sex. ¹⁹

She was sufficiently exercised by criticism of her unwomanly occupations to offer a rather touching justification in one of the prefaces to her first book:

Be not too severe in your censures, for first, I have no children to employ my care and attendance on. Next, my Lord’s estate being taken away in those times when I writ this book, I had nothing for huswifery or thrifty industry to employ myself in, having no stock to work on. ²⁰

Margaret Cavendish’s output was prodigious, both in the number and in the variety of her productions. The earliest extant is a fascinating series of letters to her fiancé which has yet to be published in its entirety. Her first published work was Poems and Fancies (1653); thereafter follow several volumes of philosophical speculation and opinion (1653, 1655, 1664, 1666, 1668); the volume of stories which includes her autobiography (1656); two volumes of plays (1662, 1668), none of which was ever performed; a book of orations (1662); CCXI Sociable Letters (1664), a farrago of opinions which Henry Ten Eyck Perry credits with "dimly, gropingly, but surely foreshadow[ing] the later letter-novels"; ²¹ The Blazing World (1666), a fantastical combination of utopia/philosophical voyage/science fiction in which the narrator’s soul leaves her body to engage in interplanetary travel; and a splendid biography of her husband (1667), for which she is chiefly remembered today.

She shares with many great confessionalists a preoccupation with her own singularity. In her autobiography, she says

. . . I took great delight in attiring, fine dressing, and fashions especially such fashions as I did invent myself, not taking that pleasure in such fashions as was invented by others. Also I did dislike any should follow my fashions, for I always took delight in a singularity, even in accoutrements of habits. (p. 175)

This love of peculiar attires confirmed by Pepys, who remarked that "all the town talk is nowadays of her extravagances, with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears, many black patches because of pimples about her mouth, naked-necked, without anything about it, and a black just-au-corps"; ²² and by Evelyn, who wrote of "the extraordinary fanciful habit, garb, and discourse of the Duchess." ²³ She boasts particularly of her own originality, stating that she could not "afford boardroom to other people’s ideas lest the legitimate offspring of her own brain should be crowded out." This affectation renders most of her physical and philosophical opinions worthless; in her treatise "On the Motion of the Bodie," for example, she unblushingly confides:

I am to be pardoned, if I have not names and tearms that the Anatomists have or use; or if I have mistaken some parts in the body, or misplaced any: for truly I never read of Anatomie, nor never saw any man opened, much less dissected, which for my better understanding I would have done; but I found that neither the caurage of nature, nor the modesty of my sex would permit me. ²⁴

Likewise, dispensing with the dramatic laws she so scorned might have had a salutary effect on her plays, but some of those plays lack even the basic artistic unity provided by having her characters acquainted with one another.

Such personal and literary extravagance not surprisingly earned her a great deal of attention and a wide range of reactions. She was the subject of much adulation--some genuine, some undoubtedly flattery elicited by her title and her husband’s position as a patron of the arts ("our English Maecenas," Gerard Langbaine called him in his Account of the Dramatick Poets, 1691). ²⁵ Two years after her death, an entire volume of Letters and Poems, in Honour of the incomparable Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastlee, was brought out. Two centuries later Charles Lamb was to characterize her, with affection and respect, as "a dear friend of mine, of the last century but one--the thrice noble, chaste and virtuous--but again, somewhat fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle." ²⁶ But not everyone was so sympathetic with Mad Madge of Newcastle: Dorothy Osborne believed her to be "a little distracted," ²⁷ and Mrs. Evelyn evaluates her thus:

I was surprised to find so much extravancy and vanity in any person not confined within four walls. Her habit particular, fantastical, not unbecoming a good shape, which truly she may boast of. Her face discovers the facility of her sex, in being yet persuaded it deserves the esteem years forbid, by the infinite care she takes to place her curls and patches. Her mein surpasses the imagination of poets, or the descriptions of a romance heroine’s greatness: her gracious bows, seasonable nods, curteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from her discourse, which is airy, empty, whimsical and rambling as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions, terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity. ²⁸

Pope later enshrined her in The Dunciad:

Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great;

There, stamp’d with arms, Newcastle shines complete. . . . ²⁹

and the disdainful Horace Walpole patronized:

What a picture of foolish nobility was this stately poetic couple, retired to their own little domain, and intoxicating one another with circumstantial flattery, on what was of consequence to no mortal but themselves. ³⁰

Sir Walter Scott, in Peveril of the Peak, has Charles II say, "her Grace is an entire raree-show in her own person--a universal masquerade--indeed a sort of private Bedlam hospital." ³¹

But the duchess was clearly not mad in any functional sense of the word. She ran her household successfully, managed the duke’s affairs more prudently than he did himself, and was loved and admired by her husband, who offered this tribute on their tombstone, composed after her death but before his:

Here lyes the Loyall Duke of Newcastle, and his Dutches, his second wife, by whom he had noe issue: her name was Margarett Lucas, yongest sister to the Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble familie; for all the Brothers were Valiant, and all the Sisters virtuous. This Dutches was a wise, wittie, and learned lady, which her many Bookes do well testifie; she was a most Virtuous and Loveing and carefull wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his banishment and miseries, and when he came home, never parted from him in his solitary retirements. ³²

Certainly it is accurate to say that she was eccentric, and that she grew more so over the course of the years. But while her posture of originality in her scientific writings may be even more ludicrous to us than it was to many of her contemporaries, we must at least remember that the inductive methods of experimental science were not quite so firmly established then as they are now. And the personality which emerges from her writings is a charming and engaging one. The very weaknesses and idiosyncrasy which mar her philosophical writings become almost a merit in her autobiography. It is a rambling affair, with little attention to form or chronology. But her absorption in her own peculiarity leads her to several passages of self-analysis which are quite remarkable when considered alongside of the autobiographical productions of her contemporaries:

. . . I am naturally bashful, not that I am ashamed of my mind or body, my birth or breeding, my actions or fortunes, for my bashfulness is my nature, not for any crime, and though I have strived and reasoned with myself, yet that which is inbred I find is difficult to root out. But I do not find that my bashfulness is concerned with the qualities of the persons, but the number; for were I to enter amongst a company of Lazaruses, I should be as much out of countenance as if they were all Caesars or Alexanders, Cleopatras or Queen Didos. Neither do I find my bashfulness riseth so often in blushes, as contracts my spirits to a chill paleness. But the best of it is, most commonly it soon vanisheth away, and many times before it can be perceived; and the more foolish or unworthy I conceive the company to be, the worse I am, and best remedy I ever found was, is to persuade myself that all those persons I meet are wise and virtuous. The reason I take to be is, that the wise and virtuous censure least, excuse most, praise best, esteem rightly, judge justly, behave themselves civilly, demean themselves respectfully, and speak modestly when bold, rude, uncivil both in words and actions, forgetting or not well understanding themselves or the company they are with. And though I never met such sorts of ill-bred creatures, yet naturally I have such an aversion to such kind of people, as I am afraid to meet them, as children are afraid of spirits, or those that are afraid to see or meet devils; which makes me think this natural defect in me, if it be a defect, is rather a fear than a bashfulness, but whatsoever it is, I find it troublesome, for it hath many times obstructed the passage of my speech, and perturbed my natural actions, forcing a constrainedness or unusual motions. However, since it is rather a fear of others than a bashful distrust of myself, I despair of a perfect cure, unless nature as well as human governments could be civilized and brought into a methodical order ruling the words and actions with a supreme power of reason, and the authority of discretion: but a ride nature is worse than a brute nature by so much more as man is better than beast, but those that are of civil natures and gentle dispositions are as much nearer to celestial creatures, as those that are of rude or cruel are to devils. (pp. 168-69)

Such precision in defining mental or emotional states is rare in this period. Here is another example:

As for my humour, I was from my childhood given to contemplation, being more taken or delighted with thoughts than in conversation with a society, insomuch as I would walk two or three hours, and never rest, in a musing, considering, contemplating manner, reasoning with myself of everything my senses did present. But when I was in the company of my natural friends, I was very attentive of what they said or did; but for strangers I regarded not much what they said, but many times I did observe their actions whereupon my reason as judge, and my thoughts as accusers, or excusers, or approvers and commenders, did plead, or appeal to accuse, or complain thereto. Also I never took delight in closets or cabinets of toys, but in the variety of fine clothes, and such toys as only were to adorn my person. . . . As to my disposition, it is more inclining to be melancholy than merry, but not crabbed or peevishly melancholy, but soft, melting, solitary, and contemplating melancholy. And I am apt to weep rather than laugh, not that I do often either of them. Also I am tender natured, for it troubles my conscience to kill a fly, and the groans of a dying beast strike my soul. Also where I place a particular affection, I love extraordinarily and constantly, yet not fondly, but soberly and observingly, not to hang about them as a trouble, but to wait upon them as a servant: but this affection will take no root, but where I think or find merit, and have leave both from divine and moral laws. Yet I find this passion so troublesome, as it is the only torment of my life, for fear any evil misfortune or accident, or sickness, or death, should come unto them, insomuch as I am never freely at rest. Likewise I am grateful, for I never received a courtesy--but I am impatient and troubled until I can return it. Also I am chaste, both by nature, and education, insomuch as I do abhor an unchaste thought. Likewise, I am seldom angry, as my servants may witness for me, for I rather choose to suffer some inconveniences than disturb my thoughts, which makes me wink many times at their faults; but when I am angry, I am very angry, but yet it is soon over, and I am easily pacified, if it be not such an injury as may create a hate. Neither am I apt to be exceptious or jealous, but if I have the least symptom of this passion, I declare it to those it concerns, for I never let it lie smothering in my breast to breed a malignant disease in the mind, which might break out into extravagant passions, or railing speeches, or indiscreet actions: but I examine moderately, reason soberly, and plead gently in my own behalf, through a desire to keep those affections I had, or at least thought to have. And truly I am so vain, as to be so self-conceited, or so naturally partial, to think my friends have as much reason to love me as another, since none can love more sincerely than I, and it were an injustice to prefer a fainter affection, or to esteem the body more than the mind. Likewise I am neither spiteful, envious nor malicious. I repine not at the gifts that Nature or Fortune bestows upon others, yet I am a great emulator; for, though I wish none worse than they are, yet it is lawful for me to wish myself the best, and to do my honest endeavour thereunto. For I think it no crime to wish myself the exactest of nature’s works, my thread of life the longest, my chain of destiny the strongest, my mind the peaceablest, my life the pleasantest, my death the easiest, and the greatest saint in heaven; also highest on fortune’s wheel and to hold the wheel from turning, if I can. And if it be commendable to wish for another’s good, it were a sin not to wish my own; for as envy is a vice, so emulation is a virtue, but emulation is in the way to ambition, or indeed it is a noble ambition. But I fear my ambition inclines to vain-glory, for I am very ambitious; yet ’tis neither for beauty, wit, titles, wealth, or power, but as they are steps to raise me to Fame’s tower, which is to live by remembrance in after-ages. . . . Also in some cases I am naturally a coward, and in other cases very valiant. As for example, if any of my nearest friends were in danger I should never consider my life in striving to help them, though I were sure to do them no good, and would willingly, nay cheerfully, resign my life for their sakes: likewise I should not spare my life, if honour bids me die. But in a danger where my friends, or my honour is not concerned, or engaged, but only my life to be unprofitably lost, I am the veriest coward in nature, as upon the sea, or any dangerous places, or of thieves, or fie, or the like. Nay the shooting of a gun, although but a pot-gun, will make me start, and stop my hearing, much less have I courage to discharge one; or if a sword should be held against me, although but in jest, I am afraid. . . . (pp. 174-77)

She also gives insight into her writing habits and creative processes:

. . . when I am writing any sad feigned stories, or serious humours, or melancholy passions, I am forced many times to express them with the tongue before I can write them with the pen, by reason those thoughts that are sad, serious, and melancholy are apt to contract, and to draw too much back, which oppression doth as it were overpower or smother the conception in the brain. But when some of those thoughts are sent out in words, they give the rest more liberty to place themselves in a more methodical order, marching more regularly with my pen on the ground of white paper; but my letters seem rather as a ragged rout than a well-armed body, for the brain being quicker in creating than the hand in writing or the memory in retaining, many fancies are lost, by reason they ofttimes outrun the pen, where I, to keep speed in the race, write so fast as I stay not so long as to write my letters plain, insomuch as some have taken my handwriting for some strange character, and being accustomed to do so, I cannot now write very plain, when I strive to write my best; indeed, my ordinary handwriting is so bad as few can read it, so as to write it fair for the press; but however, that little wit I have, it delights me to scribble it out, and disperse it about. For I being addicted from my childhood to contemplation rather than conversation, to solitariness rather than society, to melancholy rather than mirth, to write with the pen than to work with a needle, passing my time with harmless fancies, their company being pleasing, their conversation innocent (in which I take such pleasure as I neglect my health, for it is as great a grief to leave their society as a joy to be in their company), my only trouble is, lest my brain should grow barren, or that the root of my fancies should become insipid, withering into a dull stupidity for want of maturing subjects to write on . . . . Yet I must say this in the behalf of my thoughts, that I never found them idle; for if the senses bring no work in, they will work of themselves, like silkworms that spins out of their own bowels. . . . (pp. 172-73)

She ends her account with a delightful apology which is perfectly characteristic:

But I hope my readers will not think me vain for writing my life, since there have been many that have done the like, as Caesar, Ovid, and many more, both men and women, and I know no reason I may not do it as well as they: but I verily believe some censuring readers will scornfully say, why hath this Lady writ her own life? since none cares to know whose daughter she was or whose wife she is, or how she was bred, or what fortunes she had, or how she lived or what humour of disposition she was of. I answer that it is true, that ’tis to no purpose to the readers, but it is to the authoress, because I write it for my own sake, not theirs. Neither did I intend this piece to delight, but to divulge; not to please the fancy, but to tell the truth, lest after-ages should mistake, in not knowing I was the daughter to one Master Lucas of St. Johns, near Colchester, in Essex, second wife to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle; for my Lord having had two wives, I might easily have been mistaken, especially if I should die and my Lord marry again. (p. 178)

In 1886 it was possible for Firth, editor of The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, to write of Margaret Cavendish that "she has been unduly praised and unjustly depreciated." ³³ Today, nearly ninety years later, perhaps it would be fair to add that she has been unduly neglected. Yet no one interested in the history of the novel, of biography and autobiography, or of women can afford to be ignorant of her work. Surely the time has come to take a fresh look at the life and writings of this exceptional woman.

Like Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Apsley Hutchinson (1620-71) has left us a Life of her husband which contains autobiographical elements. Like Margaret Cavendish, too, she began her own autobiography, but unlike the publicity-loving duchess she left her brief account unfinished. ³⁴

Mrs. Hutchinson was a learned and thoughtful woman, and her autobiography is in many respects a curious document. Her style is perhaps the least idiosyncratic--that is to say, the most literary--of the female autobiographers we are considering here; Stauffer describes it as "Latinized, with long circumstantial periods after the manner of Clarendon." ³⁵ She begins with a ringing paean to God, which she transmutes into her justification for writing her own life:

The Almighty Author of all beings, in his various providences, whereby he conducts the lives of men from the cradle to the tomb, exercises no less wisdom and goodness than he manifests power and greatness, in their creation, but such is the stupidity of blind mortals, that instead of employing their studies in these admirable books of providence, wherein God daily exhibits to us glorious characters of his love, kindness, wisdom, and justice, they ungratefully regard them not, and call the most wonderful operations of the great God the common accidents of human life, especially if they be such as are usual, and exercised towards them in ages wherein they are not very capable of observation, and whereon they seldom employ any reflection, for in things great and extraordinary, some, perhaps, will take notice of God’s working, who either forget or believe not that he takes as well a care and account of their smallest concernments, even the hairs of their heads.

Finding myself in some kind guilty of this general neglect, I thought it might be a means to stir up my thankfulness for things past, and to encourage my faith in the future, if I recollected as much as I have heard or can remember of the passages of my youth, and the general and particular providences exercised to me, both in the entrance and progress of my life.

Mrs. Hutchinson goes on the thank God for his special providence to her in the auspicious time and place in which she came into the world, and in the stock from which she came. This leads rather surprisingly to an overview of English history and discussion of the favored geographical situation of England. She proceeds to elaborate upon her fortune in coming from a good family and describes the lives of her parents and various other relations. She finally describes her birth and education, betraying an intelligent perception of the combined role which innate merit and environmental advantages played in her accomplishments:

My mother, while she was with child of me, dreamed that she was walking in the garden with my father, and that a star came down into her hand, with other circumstances, which, though I have often heard, I minded not enough to remember perfectly; only my father told her, her dream signified she should have a daughter of some extraordinary eminency; which things, like such vain prophecies, wrought as far as it could its own accomplishment; for my father and mother fancying me then beautiful, and more than ordinarily apprehensive, applied all their cares, and spared no cost to improve me in my education, which procured me the admiration of those that flattered my parents. By the time I was four years old I read English perfectly, and having a great memory, I was carried to sermons; and while I was very young could remember and repeat them exactly, and being caressed, the love of praise tickled me, and made me attend more heedfully. When I was about seven years of age, I remember I had at one time eight tutors in several qualities, languages, music, dancing, writing, and needlework; but my genius was quite averse from all but my book, and that I was so eager of, that my mother thinking it prejudiced my health, would moderate me in it; yet this rather animated me than kept me back, and every moment I could steal from my play I would employ in any book I could find, when my own were locked up from me. After dinner and supper I still had an hour allowed me to play, and then I would steal into some hole or other to read. My father would have me learn Latin, and I was so apt that I outstripped my brothers who were at school, although my father’s chaplain, that was my tutor, was a pitiful dull fellow. (pp. 16-17)

Her common-sense--actually, Puritanical--attitude toward superstition can be contrasted with Anne Fanshawe’s credulousness, as we shall see shortly. But for a Puritan Mrs. Hutchinson is refreshingly nonjudgmental about her youthful temperament and foibles, and in fact treats them with a tolerant, self-deprecating humor which is quite attractive:

As for music and dancing, I profited very little in them, and would never practice my lute or harpsichords but when my masters were with me; and for my needle I absolutely hated it. Play among other children I despised, and when I was forced to entertain such as came to visit me, I tired them with more grave instructions than their mothers, and plucked all their babies to pieces, and kept the children in such awe, that they were glad when I entertained myself with elder company. . . . (pp. 17-18)

The circumstances under which her narrative breaks off are rather peculiar. She begins an account of herself as a young woman:

I thought it no sin to learn or hear witty songs and amorous sonnets or poems, and twenty things of that kind, wherein I was so apt that I became the confidant in all the loves that were managed among my mother’s young women; and there was none of them but had many lovers, and some particular friends beloved above the rest. Among these I have . . . (p. 18)

At this point several leaves have been torn from the manuscript, presumably by the author, followed by this fragment:

Five years after me my mother had a daughter that she nursed at her own breast, and was infinitely fond of above all the rest; and I being of too serious a temper was not so pleasing to my . . . (p.18)

Delany speculates that "the memories of her youth created too much pain and guilt for her to be able to continue." He goes on to comment that "Her learning and her biographical talents qualified her to write an important autobiography; but her insights into what the composition of such a superior work demanded of its author may have made her unwilling to undertake it." ³⁶ She may also have had simply a failure of nerve, a pious revulsion against the temerity of writing a secular, self-centered work--something which even a man would find it necessary to justify; no doubt she realized that in telling tales of "many lovers, and some particular friends beloved above the rest," she was wandering from her original intent to glorify god, "to stir up my thankfulness for things past, and to encourage my faith for the future."

Her Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson is not a double-portrait of a couple in the same sense that Anne Fanshawe’s work is; this volume alone would hardly entitle her to the label "autobiographer," any more than Margaret Cavendish’s biography of the duke would. Indeed, she maintains a sharp distinction between the memorialist and the wife by referring to the latter in the third person. When she describes "Mrs. Hutchinson’s" visits to her husband in prison, an affecting scene is created but there is nothing comparable to Anne Fanshawe’s description of the feeling of the rain going through her clothes as she stands at the barred window outside the prison in which Sir Richard Fanshawe is being held. The device of the third person lends an illusion of impartial authority to the narrator’s praises of Col. Hutchinson (which permeate the entire account) by separating her from the presumed bias of "Mrs. Hutchinson." The most intensely autobiographical passage of the work deals with the couple’s courtship. She describes how he, when visiting her sister, chances to see her books:

One day when he was there, looking upon an odd by-shelf in her sister’s closet, he found a few Latin books; asking whose they were, he was told they were her elder sister’s; whereupon, inquiring more after her, he began first to be sorry she was gone, before he had seen her. . . . Then he grew to love to hear mention of her, and the other gentlewomen who had been her companions used to talk much to him of her, telling him how reserved and studious she was, and other things which they esteemed no advantage. But it so much inflamed Mr. Hutchinson’s desire of seeing her, that he began to wonder at himself, that his heart, which had ever entertained so much indifference for the most excellent of womankind should have such strong impulses towards a stranger he never saw. . . . (p. 57)

Even through this recital, however, she focuses mainly on her husband’s viewpoint and only indirectly on her own; the central purpose of the passage is to praise him for preferring intellectual to physical qualities in a marriage partner. After she brings the courting couple through their marriage, she abandons the subject with an odd combination of reluctance and fear of the impropriety of mixing genres, resulting in a kind of tension between the narrator and Mrs. Hutchinson:

I shall pass by all the little amorous relations, which, if I would take the pains to relate, would make a true history of a more handsome management of love than the best romances describe; but these are to be forgotten as the vanities of youth, not worthy of mention among the greater transactions of his life. (pp. 62-63)

Perhaps more articulately than any other female author of this period, Mrs. Hutchinson sums up the traditional ideology regarding the proper relationship between man and woman:

There is this only to be recorded, that never was there a passion more ardent and less idolatrous; he loved her better than his life, with inexpressible tenderness and kindness, had a most high obliging esteem of her, yet still considered honour, religion, and duty above her, nor ever suffered the intrusion of such a dotage as should blind him from marking her imperfections; these he looked upon with such an indulgent eye as did not abate his love and esteem of her, while it augmented his care to blot out all those spots which might make her appear less worthy of that respect he paid her; and thus indeed he soon made her more equal to him than he found her; for she was a very faithful mirror, reflecting truly, though but dimly, his own glories upon him, so long as he was present; but she, that was nothing before his inspection gave her a fair figure, when he was removed, was only filled with a dark mist, and never could again take in any delightful object, nor return any shining representation. The greatest excellency she had was the power of apprehending and the virtue of loving his; so as his shadow she waited on him everywhere, till he was taken into that region of light which admits of none, and then she vanished into nothing. It was not her face he loved, her honour and her virtue were his mistresses; and these (like Pygmalion’s) images of his own making, for he polished and gave form to what he found with all the roughness of the quarry about it; but meeting with a compliant subject for his own wise government, he found as much satisfaction as he gave, and never had occasion to number his marriage among his infelicities. (p. 63)

It is impossible to doubt the sincerity of this statement. Though sensing and exercising her own powers, she clearly accepts the notion that she can have no conception of herself apart from her husband (though the existence of the document in which she states so proves otherwise) Because this attitude is inherently anomalous, it is a tenuous one. At this point in history it is possible for women such as Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Hutchinson, and Anne Fanshawe to sustain it, but as we shall see it becomes more and more difficult to achieve as we proceed into the eighteenth century.

Lucy Hutchinson is comparatively well known, and deservedly so, for her works have both historical and literary importance. It is surely a matter of regret that the autobiographical impulse was not strong enough to carry her through the completion of her own life.

It is possible to believe of Anne Harrison Fanshawe (1625-80) that had her life been less eventful, she might never have felt called upon to take pen in hand. As the wife of a royalist who spent his life in the service of the monarchy, however, she found sufficient material for an extremely attractive book-length autobiography. Her Memoirs ³⁷ were addressed to her son and were not published until 1829.

Paul Delany, in dismissing this work as "quite orthodox in conception," ³⁸ fails I think to give the author credit for her achievement of an extended double-portrait of a man and his wife, shown both as individuals and in relationship to one another. It is perhaps a feat which only a woman, strong-minded but accepting subordination and convinced that her destiny was determined by her husband’s, could accomplish in that age. To look for comparable accounts by men is to appreciate the difference. However much a man might love his wife, the attachment was essentially a matter of personal emotion, not having in addition the whole force of culture and tradition to define it. Thus, though Richard Baxter has left us both an autobiography and a touching biography of his wife which can leave us with no doubt about the depth of his feeling for her, the two accounts are separate. Sir Kenelm Digby’s fictionalized account of his courtship is essentially the story of a physical passion hung as it were with the trappings of romance. Anne Fanshawe, by contrast, presents herself not merely as a woman who happens to be in love but as a being whose devotion to her husband is an integral part of her perception of herself:

Now you will expect that I should say something that may remain of us jointly, which I will do though it makes my eyes gush with tears, and cuts me to the soul to remember, and in part express the joys I was blessed with in him. Glory be to God, we never had but one mind throughout our lives. Our souls were wrapped up in each other’s; our aims and designs one, our loves one, and our resentments one. We so studied one the other, that we knew each other’s mind by our looks. Whatever was real happiness, God gave it me in him; but to commend my better half, which I want sufficient expression for, methinks is to commend myself, and so may bear a censure; but, might it be permitted, I could dwell eternally on his praise most justly; but thus without offence I do, and so you [addressed to her son] may imitate him in his patience, his prudence, his chastity, his charity, his generosity, his perfect resignation to God’s will, and praise God for him as long as you live here, and with him hereafter in the kingdom of Heaven. Amen. (p. 36)

The content of this passage may sound like Donne when he writes, "Our two soules therefore, which are one . . .", ³⁹ but they are not really like; if the vehicle is similar, the tenor is not. For the poet, spiritual oneness is to some extent a metaphor, or substitute, for physical union; it is more exalted than mere coupling and for that reason is an achievement to be celebrated. For Anne Fanshawe, spiritual oneness is the state of true marriage; as such it is a rare gift, a testimonial to her husband’s exceptional virtue, and a blessing for which to be grateful.

After her opening moralistic address to her son, she begins with an account of her own and her husband’s ancestors and then proceeds to a brief description of her childhood:

Now it is necessary to say something of my mother’s education of me, which was with all the advantages that time afforded, both for working all sorts of fine works with my needle, and learning French, singing, lute, the virginals and dancing, and notwithstanding I learned as well as most did, yet was I wild to that degree, that the hours of my beloved recreation took up too much of my time, for I loved riding in the first place, running, and all active pastimes; in short, I was that which we graver people call a hoyting girl; but to be just to myself, I never did mischief to myself or people, nor one immodest word or action in my life, though skipping and activity was my delight, but upon my mother’s death, I then began to reflect, and, as an offering to her memory, I flung away those little childnesses that had formerly possessed me, and, by my father’s command, took upon me charge of his house and family, which I so ordered by my excellent mother’s example as found acceptance in his sight. (p. 55)

She carried her account through her marriage, then states: "Here stay till I have told you your father’s life until I married him" (p. 59). After she brings him, too, to the altar, she launches into an account of their adventures during the Civil Wars:

Now we appear on the stage, to act what part God designed us; and as faith is the evidence of things not seen, so we, upon so righteous a cause, cheerfully resolved to suffer what that would drive us to, which affliction were neither few nor small, as you will find. (p. 63)

This interesting and unusual formal organization produces, obliquely, the impression that their marriage was the culmination of all the foregoing history, and that only together was it possible for them to take up their proper roles in the difficult times that were to follow. Her strength and value she finds in being her husband’s wife:

And now I thought myself a perfect queen, and my husband so glorious a crown, that I valued myself to be called by his name than born a princess, for I knew him very wise and very good, and his soul doted on me. . . . (p. 67)

This sort of thing is very fine in its way, the highest success which a system predicated on the subordination of one half of the human race to the other half can achieve.

Anne Fanshawe’s account is enlivened by numerous anecdotes such as the following:

There was, during my stay in this town, a Portugal merchant jealous of his mistress favouring an Englishman, whom he entertained with much kindness, hiding his suspicion. One evening he invited him to see a country-house and eat a collation, which he did; after which the merchant, with three or four more of his friends, for a rarity showed him a cave hard by the house, which went in at a very narrow hole, but within was very capacious, in the side of a high mountain. It was so dark that they carried a torch. Says one to the Englishman, ‘Did you ever know where bats dwell?’ he replied no; ‘Then here, Sir,’ say they, ‘you shall see them;’ then, holding up the light to the roof, they saw millions hanging by their legs. So soon as they had done, they, frightening the birds, made them all fly about him, and putting out the light ran away, and left the Englishman there to get out as well as he could, which was not until the next morning. (p. 148)

Some have supernatural overtones, as for example this incident:

From hence we went to the Lady Honor O’Brien’s. . . . There we stayed three nights. The first of which I was surprised by being laid in a chamber, when, about one o’clock, I heard a voice that wakened me. I drew the curtain, and, in the casement of the window, I saw, by the light of the moon, a woman leaning into the window, through the casement, in white, with red hair and pale and ghastly complexion: she spoke loud, and in a tone I had never heard, thrice, ‘A horse;’ and then, with a sign more like the wind than breath she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud than substance. I was so much frightened, that my hair stood on end, and my night clothes fell off. I pulled and pinched your father, who never woke during the disorder I was in; but at last was much surprised to see me in this fright, and more so when I related the story and showed him the window opened. Neither of us slept any more that night, but he entertained me with telling me how much more these apparitions were usual in this country [Ireland] then in England; and we concluded the cause to be the great superstition of the Irish, and the want of that knowing faith, which should defend them from the power of the Devil, which he exercises among them very much. About five o’clock the lady of the house came to see us, saying she had not been in bed all night, because a cousin O’Brien of her’s, whose ancestors had owned that house, had desired her to stay with him in his chamber, and that he died at two o’clock, and she said, ‘I wish you to have had no disturbance, for ’tis the custom of the place, that when any of the family are dying, the shape of a woman appears in the window every night till they be dead. This woman was many ages ago got with child by the owner of this place, who murdered her in his garden, and flung her into the river under the window, but truly I thought not of it when I lodged you here, it being the best room in the house.’ We made little reply to her speech, but disposed ourselves to be gone suddenly. (pp. 91-93)

Others offer revealing glimpses of her contemporaries:

Here I will show you something of Sir Edward Hyde’s nature: he being surprised with this news, and suspecting that my husband might come to a greater power than himself, both because of his parts and integrity, and because himself had been sometimes absent in the Spanish Embassy, he with all the humility possible, and earnest passion, begged my husband to remember the King often of him to his advantage as occasion should serve, and to procure leave that he might wait on the King, promising, with all the oaths that he could express to cause belief, that he would make it his business all the days of his life to serve your father’s interest in what condition soever he should be in: thus they parted, with your father’s promise to service him in what he was capable of, upon which account many letters passed between them.

Her husband served for several years as Charles II’s ambassador to the courts of Spain and Portugal, and that section of her account is filled with the lavish descriptions of foreign splendor which are typical of contemporary travelers’ memoirs; an example is her description of the Alcazar:

We lay in the King’s palace, which was very royally furnished on purpose for our reception, and all our treatment during our stay. We were lodged in a silver bedstead, quilt curtains, valences, and counterpane of crimson damask, embroidered richly with flowers of gold. The tables of precious stones, and the looking-glasses bordered with the same; the chairs the same as the bed, and the floor covered with rich Persia carpets, and a great brasero of silver, filled full of delicate flowers, which was replenished every day as long as we stayed. The hangings were of tapestry full of gold. . . . In this palace, the chief room of my husband’s quarters was a gallery, wherein were three pairs of Indian cabinets of Japan, the biggest and beautifulest that ever I did see in my life: it was furnished with rich tapestry hangings, rich looking-glasses, Persia carpets, and cloth of tissue and underneath the ground, with many large gardens, terraces, walks, fish-ponds, and statues, many large courts and fountains, all of which were as well dressed for our reception as art or money could make them. (pp. 179-81)

Her narrative is also punctuated, with a frequency and matter-of-factness that are unnerving, by the births and deaths of most of her twenty children over the course of twenty-three years of marriage.

Anne Fanshawe, in her understated way, shows great skill in depicting scenes of domestic drama. Perhaps better than any other of our writers of the period, she gives us not only a clear idea of the roles which husbands and wives were expected to fill, and the politics of seventeenth century marriage, but also a sense for the details of ordinary human interaction through utterances, gestures, and acts:

My Lady Rivers, a brave woman, and one that had suffered many thousand pounds loss for the King, and whom I had a great reverence for, and she a kindness for me as a kinswoman,--in discourse she tacitly commended the knowledge of state affairs, and that some women were very happy in a good understanding thereof, as my Lady Aubigny, Lady Isabel Thynne, and divers others, and yet none was at first more capable than I; that in the night she knew there came a post from Paris from the Queen, and that she would be extremely glad to hear what the Queen commanded the King in order to his affairs; saying, if I would ask my husband privately, he would tell me what he found in the packet, and I might tell her. I that was young and innocent, and to that day had never in my mouth what news, began to think there was more in inquiring into public affairs than I thought of, and that it being a fashionable thing would make me more beloved of my husband, if that had been possible, than I was. When my husband returned home from Council, after welcoming him, as his custom ever was he went with this handful of papers into his study for an hour or more; I followed him; he turned hastily, and said, ‘What wouldst thou have, my life?’ I told him, I heard the Prince had received a packet from the Queen, and I guessed it was that in his hand and I desired to know what was in it; he smilingly replied, ‘My love, I will immediately come to thee, pray thee go, for I am very busy.’ When he come out of his closet I revived my suit; he kissed, and talked of other things. At supper I would eat nothing; he as usual sat by me, and drank often to me, which was his custom, and was full of discourse to the company that was at the table. Going to bed I asked again, and said I could not believe he loved me if he refused to tell me all he knew; but he answered nothing, but stopped my mouth with kisses. So we went to bed, I cried, and he went to sleep. Next morning early, as his custom was, he called to rise, but began to discourse with me first, to which I made no reply; he rose, came on the other side of the bed and kissed me, and drew the curtains softly and went to Court. When he came home to dinner, he presently came to me as was usual, and when I had him by the hand, I said, ‘Thou dost not care to see me troubled;’ to which he taking me in his arms, answered, ‘My dearest soul, nothing upon earth can afflict me like that, and when you asked me of my business, it was wholly out of my power to satisfy thee, for my life and fortune shall be thine, and every thought of my heart in which the trust I am in may not be revealed, but my honour is my own, which I cannot preserve if I communicate the Prince’s affairs; and pray thee with this answer rest satisfied.’ So great was his reason and goodness, that upon consideration it made my folly appear to me so vile, that from that day until the day of his death I never thought fit to ask him any business but what he communicated freely to me in order to his estate or family. (pp. 67-70)

Another striking feature of this autobiography are the two prayers which interrupt her narrative--one following the birth of the son to whom the piece is addressed and the other following her husband’s death. As Dean Ebner remarks of the former, "The occasion of this prayer is specific and highly personal, yet its phraseology and rhythms, far from attempting to convey a sense of spontaneity, approximate the formality of the Anglican Book of Common Prayers." ⁴⁰ The prayers occur at moments of extreme happiness and extreme sorrow, and by rescuing these occasions from the realm of sentimentality by the formalizing effect of prayer, she succeeds in communicating the overweening ineffability of her emotion more effectively perhaps than an attempt at direct expression might have done.

Though Anne Fanshawe’s account breaks off in mid-sentence we can hardly feel that much is lost, for the energy of her narrative seems largely to dissipate itself after the death of her husband and her departure from Spain.

Mary Boyle Rich, Countess of Warwick (1625-78) came from a family of autobiographers: both her father, Richard Boyle, Lord Cork, and her brother, the scientist Robert Boyle, wrote their lives. Some Specialities in the Life of M. Warwicke ⁴¹ is not an especially attractive work, but the format is interesting. The thirty-eight printed pages are divided more or less in half by her conversion to the Puritan faith, but this document is by no means the typical conversion narrative. The beginning of the book is devoted to her courtship, frowned on by her father; and though she deplores her willfulness she makes no claim to having suffered at the time; when threatened with her father’s wrath if she fails to renounce Charles Rich, she affirms:

I made this resolute, but ill and horribly disobedient answer, that I did acknowledge a very great and particular kindness for Mr. Rich, and desired them, with my humble duty to my father, to assure him that I would not marry him without his consent, but that I was resolved not to marry any other person in the world; and that I hoped my father would be pleased to consent to my having Mr. Rich, to whom, I was sure, he could have no other objection, but that he was a younger brother; for he was descended from a very great and honourable family, and was in the opinion of all (as well as mine) a very deserving person, and I desired my father would be pleased to consider, I only should suffer by the smallness of his fortune, which I very contentedly chose to do, and should judge myself to be much more happy with his small one, than with the greatest without him. (p. 13)

Though from her later vantage point she cannot condone her youthful behavior, she refuses to deny it or even entirely to condemn it (she perfunctorily labels it "ill and horribly disobedient," to be sure, but devotes much more space to a rational exposition of her position).

Her father’s objections to her suitor arose from the fact that he had other plans for his daughter:

My father and his had, some years before, concluded a match between [myself and Mr. Hambletone], if we liked when we saw one another, and that I was of years of consent; and now he being returned out of France, was by my father’s command to come to my father’s, where he received from him a very kind and obliging welcome, looking upon him as his son-in-law, and designing suddenly that we should be married, and gave him leave to make his address, with a command to me to receive him as one designed to be my husband. Mr. Hambletone (possibly to obey his father), did design gaining me by a very handsome address, which he made to me, and if he did not to a very high degree dissemble, I was not displeasing to him, for he professed a great passion for me. (pp. 2-3)

Mary Boyle was not deeply introspective; she seems often to have been puzzled by her own feelings and passions. Yet something in her strongly resisted being bartered:

. . . my aversion for him was extraordinary, though I could give my father no satisfactory account why it was so. (p. 3)

When, later, she becomes infatuated with Charles Rich, her emotions once again seem mysterious to her:

. . . by his more than ordinary humble behaviour to me, he did insensibly steal away my heart, and got a greater possession of it than I knew he had. . . .

Thus we lived for some considerable time, my duty and my reason having frequent combats within me with my passion, which at last was always victorious, though my fear of my father’s displeasure frighted me from directly owning it to Mr. Rich. (pp. 7-8)

Finally her father is brought to consent to the marriage. But despite her disapproval of her own disobedience, she takes evident satisfaction in the way events justified her choice, for Mr. Hambletone loses his fortune and Charles Rich, upon the death of his older brother, comes into one. She also believes her choice was a good one from another point of view:

Here let me admire at the goodness of God, that by His good providence to me, when I by my marriage thought of nothing but having a person for whom I had a great passion, and never sought God in it, but by marrying my husband flatly disobeyed His command, which was given me in His sacred oracles, of obeying my father; yet was pleased by His unmerited goodness to me to bring me, by my marriage, into a noble and, which is much more, a religious family. . . . (pp. 14-15)

The death of her daughter, and illness of her son, and the preaching of the chaplain of the Warwick household combine to persuade her of the vanity of her worldly life. Despite her earlier resolve to resist Puritanism, she is converted, an event which radically changes her life:

. . . I was so much changed to myself that I hardly knew myself, and could say with that converted person, "I am not I." (p. 24)

The rest of the volume is devoted by and large to pious recollections, mostly dealing with the deaths of those around her; here, for example, is her description of her husband’s death:

In the year 1673 it pleased God by death to take from me my dear Lord, who died at his house at Lees, upon Bartholomew day, for whose loss I was more afflicted than ever before for anything in my fore-past life; for though my son’s death had almost sunk me, and my grief for him was so great that I thought it almost impossible to be more sensibly afflicted, yet I found I now was so; and though God had given me many years to provide for our separation by seeing my poor husband almost daily dying (for God had been pleased for about twenty years to afflict him with the gout more constantly and painfully than almost any person the doctors said they had ever seen), yet I still flattered myself with hopes of his life, though he had for many years quite lost the use of his limbs, and never put his feet to the ground, nor was able to feed himself, nor turn in his bed but by the help of his servants; and by those constant pains he was so weakened and wasted that he was like a mere skeleton, and at last fell into most dangerous convulsion fits and died of the fourth. The seeing him in them was so very terrible to me, that after his death I fell into very ill fits; but by God’s blessing I at last lost them again. I had this comfort that nothing I could think was good for either his soul or body was neglected; and I had much inward peace, to consider that I had been a constant nurse to him, and had never neglected night or day my attendance upon him when he needed it. . . . (pp. 33-34)

Interspersed among these reflections, slightly incongruously, are some discussion of her financial dealings and her successful arrangements for her nieces’ marriages.

Throughout this narrative Mary Rich evinces an independent streak which appears to be a matter of temperament rather than ideology. Her conversion to Puritanism reinforces her self-sufficiency by removing her primary commitment from social relationships to God. When, towards the end of her narrative, she is forced to play the businesswoman, she is ready though not eager for the challenge:

. . . I met in the trust my dear Lord had imposed upon me as his executrix, in the sale of lands for raising portions and payment of debts, by reason of Mr. Jesop’s death, who was one of the trustees, with a great many stops and troubles in my business, which, having not been formerly versed in things of law, I found very uneasy and troublesome to me; but yet the great desire I had to see my Lord’s will fulfilled, made me go through my disturbing business with some patience and diligence; and God was so merciful unto me, as He did, beyond my expectation, raise my some faithful, knowing, and affectionate friends, to let me see my dear Lord’s will fulfilled; and though there was a great many several persons I had to deal with, yet I satisfied them all so well, as I never had anything between them and me passed what was determined by going to law, but all that was in dispute between us, was always agreed on between ourselves in a kind and friendly way; for which O Lord, I bless thee. (p. 37)

The personality that emerges from this narrative is a rather cold and severe one, who tells of her sorrows rather than making us feel them. Nor is the author successful in communicating the quality of her religious experience; her manner of commending God for the most scarifying events (God cannot lose) cannot appeal to anyone who does not already share her religious convictions. But Mary Rich’s independent spirit and her vivid picture of the social mores surrounding courtship and marriage make this a valuable document nevertheless.

The Autobiography ⁴² of Anne Murray Halkett (1622-99), written in 1678, stands out among women’s autobiographies of the seventeenth century as an unusual and surprising production. It is longer than most--107 printed pages (it is incomplete, breaking off in mid-sentence); certainly it is the most extended example of a work primarily secular in content and orientation which does not subordinate the life of the central figure to that of her husband. Anne Halkett, without apology, concentrates her attention upon her own adventures both as a young woman being courted and as a Royalist activist; her three suitors, even the one she eventually married, play supporting roles in her narrative.

Her childhood was evidently a happy one, and though she was careful to observe the proprieties of industry and piety, she did not share the guilt-ridden existence of some of her Puritanical peers:

What my childish actions were I thinke I need not give accountt of here, for I hope none will thinke they could bee either vicious or scandalous. And from that time till the year 1644 I may truly say all my converse was so inocentt that my owne hart cannott challenge mee with any imodesty, either in thought or behavier, or an act of disobedience to my mother, to whom I was so observant that as long as shee lived I do nott remember that I made a visitt to y^e neerest neibour or wentt anywhere withoutt her liberty. And so scrupulous I was of giving any occation to speake of mee, as I know they did of others, that though I loved well to see plays and to walke in the Spring Garden sometimes (before itt grew something scandalous by y^e abuse of some), yett I cannott remember 3 times that ever I wentt with any man besides my brothers; and if I did, my sisters or others better than my selfe was with mee. (p. 3)

Eventually, however, she becomes more independent:

In the yeare 1644 I confese I was guilty of an act of disobedience, for I gave way to y^e adrese of a person whom my mother, att the first time that ever hee had occation to bee conversantt w^h mee, had absolutely discharged mee ever to allow of. . . . (p. 3)

Let it be noted that Anne Halkett is twenty-two years old at this time; and her disobedience only extends to assuring her suitor that she will marry no other man while he remains unmarried (which state, in her absence, he does not long maintain); she firmly rejects all his entreaties that she run off with him. This disobedience leads her to devise a naive little stratagem for obeying the letter of the law while violating the spirit:

Was ever creature so unfortunate and putt to such a sad dificulty, wither to make Mr. H. forsworne if hee see mee nott, or if I doe see him my mother will be foresworne if shee doth nott expose mee to the utmost rigour has anger can inventt! In the midst of this dispute with myselfe that I should doe, my hand beeing still upon my eyes, itt presently came in my mind that if I blindfolded my eyes that would secure mee from seeing him, and so I did not transgrese against my mother, and hee might that way satisfy himselfe by speaking with mee. (p. 12)

After the dissolution of her engagement to Thomas Howard, she becomes deeply involved in a convoluted relationship with Colonel Joseph Bamfield. Colonel Bamfield, an officer in the Royalist army, was apparently a political intriguer and charming scoundrel. Under his influence and that of her brother, she became a committed royalist activist; some of her adventures will be related in another section. She also fell deeply in love with him, and finally consented in an engagement despite persistent rumors that his wife was still living. This equivocal situation plagued her for years, until Sir James Halkett (whom she later married) finally presented her with incontrovertible evidence that Mrs. Bamfield was living. Even after this revelation, Colonel Bamfield seemed bent upon dismissing the technicality of his preexisting marriage; he descended upon her uninvited and inquired if she was yet married to Halkett. The instinct for self-preservation which had already carried her intact through many difficult circumstances in the past led her to invent a ruse reminiscent of the one she had used years earlier to mislead her mother:

I asked why hee inquired. Hee said because if I was nott, hee would then propose something that hee thought might be both for his advantage and mine; but if I were, hee would wish me joy, butt never trouble mee more. I said nothing a litle while, for I hated lying, and I saw there might bee some inconvenience to tell the truth, and (Lord pardon the equivocation!) I sayd I am (outt aloud, and secrettly said nott). (p. 99)

As Margaret Bottrall implies in comparing this production to Sense and Sensibility, ⁴³ and as Paul Delany implies in describing it as a "curious narrative, which reads like a blend of Richardson and Sir Walter Scott," ⁴⁴ Anne Halkett sustains a high level of interest in her story by her use of techniques which might be termed "novelistic." She is masterly in her re-creation of scenes which occurred several decades before, and the dialogue is extremely lively--though more to the point and remembered in greater detail than might in all strictness be expected. Clearly the incidents and adventures have been selected and arranged to keep the reader’s attention. She does not burden us with long passages of introspection and analysis; but she is very sensitive to the emotional implications of human acts, and a strong sense of her character emerges from the action. We come away with a clear impression of a woman who, while not self-righteous or hyper-pious, cherishes a conviction of her own innate rectitude, and who, while capable of being swayed by her emotions, attempts to conduct her life in accordance with her principles, her religion, and her rational faculties. Her writing exhibits a strong feeling for chronology; she maintains suspense by reserving the truth about Colonel Bamfield’s marriage until that moment in her life when she herself becomes certain of it. This is indeed artistry of a high order, however unconsciously it may have been exerted.

What prompted this outburst of self-expression is difficult to say, since it was apparently intended neither for publication nor for her own posterity. It is hard to resist speculating that she is a precocious example of a new breed of woman, liberated from a protected monotony and from traditional connections and definitions by political and social events, and inculcated, like many of her male contemporaries, with a growing consciousness of secular individuality and conviction of its importance. I shall discuss these factors in more detail later; at this point, it is sufficient to observe that for overall narrative and dramatic skill and emotional sensitivity, Anne Halkett’s autobiography is perhaps the finest account to be produced by a woman during the period under consideration. It certainly compares favorably with any autobiography of a contemporary male author. While Anne Halkett and Margaret Cavendish were very different personalities, with highly divergent life histories and ambitions, they shared two very crucial attitudes: each saw herself not simply as an extension of her husband or her God, but as an independently functioning individual; and each took an unabashed interest in her own individuality.

A Relation of the Labour, Travail and Suffering of that Faithful Servant of the Lord, Alice Curwen ⁴⁵ is a work which is only marginally an autobiography; it is a brief description of her travels on behalf of her Quaker faith, which is brought together with a number of letters which she and her husband wrote to or received from various others, mostly Quakers. It was dictated on her deathbed in 1679. The document runs to some fifty-three pages, but only the first seven are actual narrative. They tell nothing of her childhood or her conversion, but deal mainly with her travels in America:

In the year 1660. I hearing of the great Tribulation that the Servants of the Lord did suffer in Boston in New England, of cruel Whippings, of Bonds and Imprisonments, yea to the laying down of their natural Lives; four Friends being Hanged there for their Testimony to God’s blessed weighty Truth, against a Wicked Generation, which remains there until this day; I, at the hearing of their Patient Sufferings, my heart was broken, and my Spirit deeply affected with Admiration of the Goodness of the Lord, who bears up the Spirits of them that truly fear him, and are willing to give up all that is near and dear, to follow the Lamb whithersoever he leads; and my Spirit was comforted in the blessed invisible Power: but it was said in the Secret of my Heart, That I should travail in the Nation, and see that Bloody Town of Boston; at which my heart was exceedingly broken, and I cryed unto the Lord with many Tears, and said, O Lord, what shall become of my little Children, and of my poor Husband? (he being then in Prison for Tythe). (p. 2)

It is several years before she actually gets underway:

. . . the Lord appeared, and it was said secretly, that If I did go I should feel my Reward from the Lord in my own Bosom: then I having this Testimony sealed in my Heart, I laboured with my Husband day and night to know his Mind, because it was much with me, that we were to Travail together; but he did not yet see it to be required of him at that time, but gave me Liberty in Obedience to the Invisible Power, though the thing was hard, because it shewed me at first, that we should Travail together; but the Lord made me willing to leave all (that was near and dear to me) and I went on my Journey towards London, and after some time had with Friends there, I made Preparation to go to Sea, and having got my Bed and Clothes on board the Ship, it pleased the Lord (in whom was and is my Trust) to send my Husband to go along with me: and so we took shipping together, and were thirteen weeks in our Passage from London to Road-Island belonging to New-England; and I can truly say, I did not know what I might do; for all there were in an Uproar, Killing, and Burning, and Murdering, and great Distress was upon the Peoples Minds. (p. 3)

Her descriptions of the places she visits are minimal; they are seen merely as a backdrop for the Friends meetings which she incessantly attends:

. . . we came to Sittuate, and Dukesberry, and to Sandwich, and did visit Friends all along in several places until we came to Road-Island; and after a little time spent with Friends there, it was with us to go into the West part of New-England, to Shelter-Island and Long-Island, Oyster-Bay, Westchester and Eastchester, and to Gravesend, and a Place there called Jamaco, and Matunicook, and New-York, and some part of New-Jersey, so far as Friends did inhabit to our Knowledge, and we were there: in this time of our Passage thither we were several times put on Shore, the Wind not being with us, where we had good Service for the Lord and for his Truth, where there were no Friends, upon the main Land, at a place called New-London, and Seabrook, and Milford. . . . (p. 5)

Frequently we wish that she had enlarged on various incidents, but her style is so abstractly pious that we get little feeling for what actually happened:

So we travailed through the Woods and Places where the devouring Indians had made great Desolation in many Places, but the Lord preserved us. (p. 4)

When Alice Curwen is taken to a whipping-post for violating an ordinance forbidding attendance at Friends’ meetings, we learn only that

. . . the Presence of the Lord was manifested there, which gave us Dominion over all their Cruelty, and we could not but Magnifie the Name of the Lord, and declare of his Wonderful Work at that time, at which the heathen were astonished, and shook their head. (p. 5)

Such abstraction is typical of the Quaker style at its least evocative; it stands in sharp contrast with what might be called the Baptist style of Bunyan or Trapnel, where the spiritual and the material both take on a vivid, concrete reality, the material becoming almost another mode of the spiritual.

A Brief Account of My Exercises from my Childhood, ⁴⁶ by Mary Proude Penington (c. 1621-82), is cast in the form of a record of her search for truth and inner peace and her eventual conversion to the Quaker faith, which she brings up to date a couple of times over the course of her life, followed by an epistle to her grandson describing her life with his grandfather and shadowing forth his virtues for the boy to emulate. It is short (thirty-nine printed pages) and shares many features with the typical Quaker autobiography; as Delany points out, however, the author "died before the Quaker autobiography had settled into a rigid convention, and her conversion narrative has a freshness and intensity rarely found in the later journals." ⁴⁷ Another thing which distinguishes her from the usual Quaker autobiographer is her aristocratic background.

Her pre-Quaker life is one of unsatisfied seeking after religious truth and guilt over

many excesses and vanities, as foolish mirth, carding, dancing and singing. I frequented musick meetings, and made vain visits where there was jovial eatings and drinkings to satisfy the extravagant appetite. I delighted in what would please the vain mind, and with curiosities, and that which was to satisfy the lust of the eye, the pride of life, and the lusts of the flesh; and frequenting places of pleasure, where vain persons resorted to show themselves and to see others in the like excess of folly in apparel; in riding about from place to place, and in the airy mind. But in the midst of all this my heart was constantly sad and pained beyond expression. (p. 7)

This is what we have come to expect in Quaker autobiography. There is, however, a subtlety in her description which somehow conveys the sense of unique personal suffering; an example is her extended agonizing over prayer:

one day after we came from the public place of worship, this forementioned maid servant, read one of Preston’s sermons--the text, "pray continually"--in which sermon much was spoken of prayer, and amongst other things, of the excellency of prayer; this was said of it, that it distinguished a saint from the world, for, that in many things, the world and hypocrites could imitate a saint, but in this they could not. This thing wrought much in my mind all the time she read it, and it was in me, that I knew not prayer; for what I used for prayer, an ungodly man might do, which was to read out of a book, and this could not be the prayer he meant, that distinguished a saint from a wicked one. My mind was deeply exercised in this, and as soon as she had done reading, and all was gone out of the chamber, I shut to the door, and in great distress of mind, flung myself on the bed and oppressedly cried out aloud, Lord, what is prayer? (p. 2)

Her style is an understated one. Domestic events form the true backbone of her narrative; external political events take on significance only as they affect her personally:

One day, by accident, going through the city, from a country house; I could not pass through the crowd, (it being a day wherein the Lord Mayor was sworn,) but was forced to go into a house till it was over; I being burthened with the vanity of their show, said to a professor that stood by me, "what benefit have we by all this bloodshed, and Charles’s being kept out of the nation?" He answered, none, that he knew of, saving the enjoyment of their religion. To which I replied, that is a benefit to you who have a religion, to be protected in the exercise of it, but it is none to me. (p. 8)

Even Christ as he appears in her dreams, as Delany notes, is portrayed in "domestic and lifelike" ⁴⁸ terms:

I stood at a great distance, at the lower end of that great hall, and Christ at the upper end; whom I saw in the appearance of a fresh lovely youth, clad in grey cloth (at which time I had not heard of a Quaker or their habit) very plain and neat, he was of a sweet, affable, courteous carriage, and embraced several poor old simple people, whose appearance was very contemptible and mean, without wisdom or beauty. (p. 9)

But her greatest successes are her portraits of her husbands, especially her first, Sir William Springett; her touching description of his deathbed scene will be quoted in a later chapter. Her admiration of him shines through, even when we cannot entirely share her unqualified approval:

There was a parliament man who was also a deputy lieutenant of the county, a great stirer in the parliament cause and his wife a zealous Puritan. This man was assisting to him and his companion in this searching of Popish houses, and destroying their pictures and trumpery. Thy grand-father going one day to their house to visit them, as he passed through the hall he spied several superstitious pictures, as on the crucifixon of Christ, his resurrection, and such like, very large pictures that were of great ornament to the hall, and were removed out of their parlour to manifest a neglect of them, but he looked upon it as a very unequal thing, to destroy such things in the Popish, and leave them in their opposers; he drew out his sword and cut them all out of their frames, and spoiled them upon the sword’s point, and went into the parlour with them. The woman of the house being there, he said to her what a shame it is, that thy husband should be so zealous a prosecutor of the Papists, and spare such things in his own house; but, saith he, I have acted impartial judgment, and have destroyed them here. (p. 36)

Her second husband, too, is individualized; more than most religious autobiographies, Mary Penington depicts her marriage as an act of her own will, not merely a response to a divine hint:

In this condition that I mentioned of my wearied seeking and not finding, I married my dear husband Isaac Penington. My love was drawn to him because I found he saw the deceit of all notions, and lay as one that refused to be comforted by any appearance of religion, until he came to his temple who is truth and no lie. All things that had the appearance of religion were very manifest to him, so that he was sick and weary of all that appeared, and in this my heart cleft to him, and a desire was in me to be serviceable to him in this his desolate condition, for he was alone and miserable in this world; and I gave up much to be a companion to him in this his suffering. (p. 10)

In this passage the ethic of usefulness to others with which women were (and are) so thoroughly imbued is manifest; her own "seeking and not finding" are subordinated to the similar suffering of her husband, "serviceable" being the operative word.

As can be seen from the passages quoted, Mary Penington’s ability to portray human beings in interaction exceeds that of most autobiographers of her period, especially within a religious context; her strength of character and inquiring mind enable her to engage in relationships which are subtle and highly individualized, and to portray them effectively. This book stands as an attractive example of its type.

Elizabeth Andrews (c. 1628-1718), an impoverished Quaker, wrote a very brief and selective account of her life (about five printed pages). ⁴⁹ It is essentially a series of anecdotes, vividly and sparingly told, describing various persecutions which she suffered as a Quaker. The autobiography ends around 1688 and was presumably composed shortly thereafter; however, it may have been written much later.

She gives the following account of her family and early childhood:

I was born in the County of Salop at a place called Cound Lane End, within five miles of Shrewsbury. My parents were honest people and of good report. My father’s name was John Farmer. He was a man come of a substantial family near where we lived. He was called by many "honest John Farmer." He was a man of strict life and was called a Puritan, and after that a Roundhead. He brought us up very strictly, not suffering us to speak vain words nor go among other children to play, but would say: "Go to your books, and learn to fear the Lord." I, from my childhood, had a desire after the Lord; when I was sent to School, I have gone under a hedge and prayed to the Lord to keep me from sinning against Him. (pp. 3-4)

In 1653 she became a Quaker, converted, as she tells us, by reading "a book of the trial of George Fox and James Naylor at Lancaster" (p. 4). The following anecdote is typical in its naiveté and its scriptural defense of her position:

Another time the Lord Newport caused a great feast to be made at my Father’s house of his own cost, and Invited most of the Great men of the County to the feast, and spake to my Father that I might wait on him at the Table, which I did, doing all things which I ought, but not bowing (or Curchying). He observed me a while, and then said to me: "Why do not you make me a Curchy when you give me the Glass?" My answer was: "Before I knew how to do better, I did, which is well known to all that are here." Then said he to me: "Betty, if you will make me a Curchy, as I am a Gentlemen, and before all these Gentlemen I will give you Twenty Pounds." I answered: "If I might have all Eyton Hall to do it, yet I durst not do it, for all Honour belongeth to God: and the angel which revealed the Revelations to John (when John would have bowed to him) said: ‘See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow servant of thy Brethren the Prophets. Worship god!’" Then says he: "Why do you not speak to People when you meet them as you were wont to do?" I answered: "It is written in the Scriptures: ‘Go thy way; if thou meet any man salute him not; and if any man salute thee answer him not again’". . . . After this manner he discoursed with me all that afternoon. How many great gifts did he proffer me to submit to his will, but the Lord preserved me by his mighty power and made me stand boldly for the Truth in that publick house. (pp. 4-5)

Her failure to perceive the true ugliness of the behavior of Lord Newport is perhaps a good index of the level of consciousness of the average country woman (and of her class consciousness, or lack of it, as well).

The personal events in her life are noted in passing, as if their function were largely to serve as temporal landmarks. "I was afterwards married to a very honest Man, a Friend of Truth, a Mercer by trade, living at Holt in Denbighshire," she writes (p. 5), but two sentences later we find her mysteriously a widow. It is the incidents giving her an opportunity to stand up for her faith which loom large in her life, expanding to fill a seemingly disproportionate amount of her autobiography. These actions radiate from a spiritual center which we never see directly, but rather at one remove. Her detailed lists of the worth of confiscated goods and amounts of fines lend a kind of worldly reality to her sufferings; we get a sense not of rarefied spirituality but of a dogged faithfulness which produces real-world consequences, economic problems which must be dealt with on a day-to-day basis.

Her feelings, her doubts, her sense of who she is, can only be inferred; there is no attempt at introspection or evaluation. Nor is there any summing-up or cadence at the end: Elizabeth Andrews’ account closes rather anticlimatically with a list of the important Quakers she has entertained.

Joan Vokins (d. 1690) was a pious, busy, and missionary-minded Quaker. When she died some of her friends gathered together a collection of letters from her and testimonials about her and published them in 1691 under the title God’s Mighty Power Magnified; as manifested and revealed in his faithful handmaid Joan Vokins, ⁵⁰ Included in this volume is "Some Account given forth by Joan Vokins of the great Goodness and Mercy of the Lord towards her, and of the wonderful works that he hath done for her; conducing to his Glory and her great Joy and Comfort: Written with her own Hand (a few Months before her decease) as followeth," which, along with two additional "further testimonies," runs to about thirty-three pages.

Her childhood, according to her account, shows the typical Quaker pattern of guilt and dissatisfaction over even small worldly pleasures:

Something of the tender dealing of the Lord with me ever since my Childhood, for (blessed be his Name) he preserved me from many Evils that Youth is often ensnared with; and by his Light (that I then had no acquaintance with) shewed me the vanity and vain Customs of the World when I was very young, and all along my youth his Good Spirit did still strive with me to preserve me from Sin and Evil: And if I had at any time, through persuasion of others, gone to that they called Recreation, I should be so condemned for passing away my precious time, that I could have no peace, so that I could take no delight in their Pastime, but was still condemned. (pp. 15-16)

Her search for inner peace finally leads her to embrace the Quaker faith:

. . . Faithfulness is required to the Talent received, for which we must give an account; and then what can stand us instead, if we have not an increase? This was my concern for many years, and I could not take comfort in Husband or Children, House, or Land, or any visibles, for want of the Marriage Union with the Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the Souls of those that cannot be satisfied in them; but are weary of the burden of them, as I was; and God by his Spirit shewed me, he abhorred my self-righteousness; and let me see that in him was Righteousness, Life and Power; and then I was sensible that he is the Light of the World, that enlightens every one that comes into the World; and that it was striving with me from my Youth, which was before ever I heard the name Quaker; and then I did believe that there was a People or Church over whom Christ Jesus was Head, though I could yet not find them, nor be a Member of them; yet long sought after it sorrowfully, with many strong and fervent cries and desires: But the Lord in his own due time answered my weary soul, and made known more and more of the Way of his Truth and People, and at length sent some of his Messengers, as Instruments in his Hand, for my Encouragement and Confirmation: Then was I, and many desolate ones, right glad. . . . (pp. 18-19)

In this passage Joan Vokins makes explicit what is implicit in many religious autobiographies. The invidious comparison between her life with her husband and her union with God suggests part of the function of religion in her life: it allowed her to find by turning inward the meaning, mystery, exaltation, and ceremony that were lacking outwardly; in effect, she could admit that she was not satisfied with her domestic lot without actually rebelling against it. ⁵¹

The weak sense of chronology during her description of her early years and conversion helps to convey the wavering and indecision which she experienced. Her nautical metaphors in describing her spiritual tribulations during this early part of her life effectively foreshadow the actual experiences which she will later encounter traveling on behalf of her faith:

But then I could not watch or wait, but was as a Ship without Anchor among the merciless Waves; but Praises unto the Lord for ever, he caused the Living Hope to spring that is anchored in trying Times. And I was, even as Israel, compassed round on every Hand; great was the strait I was then in, much hardship, the Sea before, and the Enemy presenting so much impossibility, that his proud Waves of Temptations, Buffettings, and false Accusations had almost sunk me under: Oh then did I cry unto the God of Mercy and tender Compassion, that I might but stand still and behold his Salvation; and he did arise and rebuke the Enemy, and made way for me to travel on in my Heavenly Progress. . . . (p. 20)

Since, as she tells us, this passage was actually written while she was aboard a ship, it provides an interesting insight into the double focus of the autobiographer: from her present situation she draws the metaphor which allows her to give shape and meaning to past experience.

After her conversion, she feels a strong call to travel, which she resists:

Oh, how long did his tender Spirit strive with me before I gave up to go to Sea? How did his long Patience wait and suffer? Surely it’s worthy to be remembered, for he might have cut me off in a disobedient Condition: . . . the Dark Reasoner was very busie. . . . (p. 25)

Finally she succumbs, and in telling of her surrender unwittingly hits upon what is perhaps the spiritual source of the greatest weakness in the Quaker style:

. . . precious is the feeling of the Life of Jesus to the awakened and illuminated Soul, and that made the roaring Sea, and dry Land, and lonesome Wilderness all one to me by Night and by Day. . . . (p. 26)

If all experiences are reduced to a single Experience, and all differences are absorbed into oneness, the resulting descriptions of these experiences have a large potential for monotony. Unless the author compensates with mysticism or a unique and radiant inner life, she or he may bore the reader with colorless lists of places visited. Let it be said that Joan Vokins is not the worst offender in this respect; on some occasions, as we have seen, she achieves a fairly lively descriptive style.

Her adventures in Long Island, Rhode Island, Boston, and the Barbadoes are interesting enough, not least because of the naive satisfaction she took from the active role she played in them. In the following episode she displays the self-righteous attitude which often marks Quaker zealots (and indeed, the zealots of any sect):

. . . the People told me they did not dare to have a Meeting, yet I published Truth in the Streets, and they confessed to it; and so I left Truth honorable amongst them, and then came aboard the Vessel, where I last took my Passage, and sailed to the other Vessel, that I had suffered in, and called for the Owner and cleared my Conscience to him, and told him the Hand of the Lord was against him, and warned him to Repent, else he should suddenly feel the stroak of it to be heavy upon him; and inasmuch as his Herat [sic] had been too much set on that Bark, he should shortly see that the Lord would destroy it, and accordingly his Vessel was split on a Rock in a little time after. (p. 41)

As we frequently find among Quaker women, Joan Vokins does not take refuge in her sex as an excuse to evade responsibility. Unlike Alice Curwen, she embarks on her difficult and dangerous journeys unaccompanied by her husband, trusting in God to provide her with suitable female traveling companions. The issue of women’s preaching is raised--and dealt with firmly:

I told the Priest that he was not of the Primitive Faith and Church of Christ, testified of in Scripture. . . . [H]e said I should not have spoken in the Church; and I asked him what Church that was? for I had spoken in the true Church many times among God’s People, and they did not hinder me; and he said Paul spoke against a Woman’s speaking in the Church: I asked him what Woman that was, and what Church that was they she should not speak in? and he did not answer me, but went away; and a Woman Friend that was with me took hold of him, and said, My Friend, answer the Woman’s question . . . but the Priest put off his hat to us and busled away, and afterwards endeavoured to send me to Prison. . . . (p. 45)

It is incidents such as this one which lend color to this otherwise run-of-the-mill Quaker autobiography.

A Relation of Margaret Fell ⁵² is about fourteen pages long and is a straightforward narrative of the events and difficulties which befell its author as a Quaker, with hardly any attempt at psychological exploration. It was written in 1690 by Margaret Askew Fell Fox (1614-1702), best known as an important figure in early Quaker history (her work included organizing groups of Quaker women) and as the wife of George Fox, a founder of Quakerism. Unlike most Quaker autobiographies, this work tells us practically nothing of her childhood and pre-conversion doubts.

Her first husband was Justice Fell, an eminent Swarthmore judge. The story of her conversion and his reaction to it is reminiscent of the story of Esther:

Then in the Year 1652, it pleas’d the Lord in his Infinite Mercy and Goodness to send George Fox into our Country, who declar’d unto us the Eternal Truth, as it is in Jesus; and by the Word and Power of the Eternal God, turn’d many from Darkness unto Light, and from the Power of Satan unto God; And when I and my Children, and a great part of our Servants were so convinc’d and converted unto God at which time my Husband was not at Home, being gone to London, When he came Home, and found us the most part of the Family chang’d from our former Principle and Perswasion which he left us in, when he went from Home, he was much surpriz’d at our suddain change: For some envious People of our Neighbours, went and met him upon the Sands, as he was coming Home and Inform’d him, that we had entertain’d such Men as had taken us off from going to Church, which he was very much concern’d at; so that when he came Home, he seem’d much troubled. And it so happen’d, that Richard Farnsworth, and some other Friends (that came into our Parts a little time after G. Fox) were then at our House when my Husband came Home; and they Discours’d with him, and did perswade him to be still, and weigh things, before he did any thing hastily, and his Spirit was something calmed.

At Night, G. Fox spoke powerfully and convincingly, that the witness of God in his Conscience answer’d that he spake Truth; and he was then so far convinc’d in his Mind that it was Truth, that he willingly let us have a Meeting in his House at the next first Day after. . . . And he became a kind Friend to Friends, and to the practicers of Truth upon every occasion, as he had opportunity. For he being a Magistrate, was Instrumental to keep off much Persecution in this Country, and in other Places where he had any Power. (pp. 2-3)

After her husband’s death she spends considerable time in London, working with Friends there and in particular talking frequently with King Charles in an effort to persuade him to lighten the persecution of Quakers. Eventually she is imprisoned for refusing to take an oath; her narrative of these events is crisply factual and gives us little idea of the feelings she must have harbored:

. . . they passed Sentence of Praemunire upon me, which was, That I should be out of the King’s Protection, and forfeit all my Estate, Real and Personal, to the King, and Imprisonment during Life. But the great God of Heaven and Earth supported my Spirit under this severe Sentence, that I was not terrified; but gave this Answer to Judge Turner, who gave the Sentence, Although I am out of the King’s Protection, yet I am not out of the Protection of the Almighty God; so there I remained in Prison Twenty months, before I could get so much Favour of the Sheriff, as to go to my own House; which then I did for a little time, and returned to Prison again. And when I had been a Prisoner about Four Years, I was set at Liberty by an Order from the King and Council in 1668. (p. 8)

Margaret Fell’s marriage with George Fox is described with equal matter-of-factness; indeed, there is little indication that she actually participated in the decision:

And then it was Eleven Years after my former Husband’s Decease; and G. Fox being then returned from visiting Friends in Ireland, At Bristol he declared his Intentions of Marriage with me; and there was also our Marriage solumnized, in a publick Meeting of many Friends, who were our Witnesses. (p. 8)

Her account ends with a letter which she sent to the Women’s Meeting in London, which serves as both history and testimonial (hence a fitting conclusion for her narrative); it is a very conventional example of the Quaker epistolary style. The autobiography is of interest because of the historical importance of its author but is not a significant contribution to the history of autobiography.

The anonymous account of a woman (1654-1702?) who was supposedly related to Oliver Cromwell ⁵³ has never been published; the eighteenth century transcriber comments that "I hardly think it worth transcribing, and probably may be tired before I get halfway" (p. 411). It is primarily a journal, but it opens with four pages of autobiography which are apparently intended to recount her life up to the time when the author begins her journal; since the first entry is dated June 22, 1690, we may conclude that the autobiographical portion was written around that time; the author probably died around 1702, when she is ill and the journal is discontinued. The journal, except for whatever value it has as an illustration of Nonconformist spiritual processes, bears out the transcriber’s evaluation; the author thanks God repeatedly for various great deliverances, but we usually get no more inkling of what actually happened to her than that she was "under a Soare Trial" (p. 416), "under a great Indisposition of Body" (p. 416), or going "through one of the greatest Trials I ever met with in my whole Life" (p. 420).

The autobiographical portion, however, is of somewhat greater interest. She begins with a brief description of her childhood, the first ten years of which were spent with her grandmother. After her grandmother’s death she is placed with her aunt,

where I continewed, as I remember, about the space of 2 years; & Part of this 2 yeares (in which time my Mother dyed) I continewed without any Sense of God, notwithstanding my strickt Education, & my Aunt’s good Exampel, & daily Admonition to me: but God, who is rich in Grace, to the villest of Sinners, was pleased, in a marvilous Manner, to extend his Grace & Compassion to me, & to cause me to Know there was a God. (p. 412)

She goes on to describe her conversion experience, which has an appealing homeliness about it:

One Mr. Marshall, a Minister, & a holy & good Man, was used to perform Duty in the Famile, & I attended at Prayer Time, with the Rest, but without al Sense & Apprehension of God, & wondered within myselfe what they prayed two, becaus there was nothing visabel, therefor used on Purpos to cary Apels & Nutts to eat at the Time of Prayer, & often have done so undiscovered: but one Time the cracking the Shel of a Nutt so disturbed Mr. Marshall, that he took Notis of it: but not Knowing who had done it,--whether my Cosens or me, (thof thay were examined) I past this Time without Discovere to Man, but not without being discovered by the Lord, to whom the Secrets of al Herts are known: & thof I remained as I did before, as to my Soul-State, yet I was much troubled, or rather ashamed of it, & thereupon resolved to do so no more; nor never durst after. (pp. 412-13)

Her conversion is clearly the crucial experience of her life, since it is upon this event that she lavishes the most loving detail. Later she is sent to school in London, where

The Sparkes that were Kindled before, were almost extinguished had not God, who was rich in Mercy to me vile Sinner, awakened me by that Soare, but just Stroake, the taking to himselfe, by Death, my Grandfather, & my deare & everhonoured Father, within a weeke one of another. . . . (p. 413)

Her description of her four years of marriage is brief:

Shortly after, it pleased the Lord to provide a Husband for me, in every respect a Blessing: & I desire to be truly humbled, that I did not live to the Glory of God, in the Injoyment of that Mersy as I should; in the Time we lived Together God was pleased to give us 3 Daughters & a Son; the eldest & youngest yet are living. . . . But that I might not settel on my Leess[?], God took to himself my deare Husband within 4 yeares after we were married: a sad but righteous stroak. . . . yea, good was the Word of the Lord, as to this; it being, as I hoap, a sanctified Affliction. . . . (p. 414)

The anonymous woman goes on to describe the distress which the encounter of an acquaintance with the devil caused her:

And whether this were a Temptation I know not; but I lay for some Time under such dredful Aprehensions, as if I had been in an Agone, &, to my Aprehension, so holden down, as if tied with a Courd, but al the Time crying ernestly to God for Help, & strugling with God inn Prayer; & at last, this comfortabel Words were, as itt were, rung in mine Ears, as before, Therefore with Joy shal yea draw Water out of the Wells of Salvation: & almost imediately I was evedently released, & unbound, & my Hart in such a Frame as I never felt before, nor since. . . . (p. 415)

The autobiographical portion then draws to a close. On the whole it is not a remarkable document, but the first page or two are worthy of attention.

An Account of the Travels, Sufferings and Persecutions of Barbara Blaugdone, ⁵⁴ published in 1691, is a fairly typical and undistinguished example of Quaker autobiography. It is brief--thirty-four small printed pages--and breaks no new ground. It is unintrospective except for the conventional Quaker experience conventionally described. Consider, for example, her record of her pre-conversion life:

In my Youth and Tender Years, I feared the Lord, and was afraid to offend him; and was zealous and diligent in the Profession I was in, and sought the Lord earnestly, although I knew not where to find him, until I was directed by Friends that came from the North, John Audland and John Camm by Name, whose Behavior and Deportments were such, that it preached before ever they opened their Mouths; and it was then revealed to me, That they had the Everlasting Gospel to Preach in this City: And when they did open their Mouths, I was made to bless God that I had lived to hear the Everlasting Gospel preached; and they directed my Mind unto the Light of Christ therein to wait, which I was diligent to do, and found the Vertue of it; and as the Evil was made manifest, I departed from it, and willingly took up the Cross, and yielded Obedience unto it, in plainness of Speech and my Habit. . . . (pp. 5-6)

This is all we hear of her youth. Compared with the much more individualized youthful sufferings of, say, an Anna Trapnel or a Mary Penington, Barbara Blaugdone’s seem impersonal and insipid. In assigning credit to God for her fortitude, she is equally conventional, echoing the pious platitudes of many other Quaker autobiographies:

And I can speak it to the glory of God, he never moved me to anything, but that he gave me Power to perform it, and made it effectual, although I past through much Exercise in the performance of it. (p. 8)

The real interest in this account lies in her descriptions of her travels. Barbara Blaugdone was a woman of action rather than of profound emotion or abstruse thought, and most of her account is devoted to the various adventures she encounters as she roams around the countryside bearing testimony. The result is a series of disconnected anecdotes, briefly told but lively and entertaining. She is stabbed in the belly by a hostile "Rude Man" (p 10), whipped by a beadle, and shipwrecked. The following adventure is a typical one:

. . . they brought me before the Mayor for speaking in a private meeting, and he discoursed much with me, and had a sense of what I said unto him, and received it; and at last he set open two Doors, one right against the other, and said, He would give me my choice which I would go for that? Whether I would go to Prison again or go home? And I told him, that I should choose Liberty rather than Bond. So I went homeward, and then he took his Horse and come and followed me, for there was some tenderness in him; and he would have had me Rid behind him, but I found that when any Body which I knew did meet us, then he would draw back and lag behind, and as soon as they were gone he would come up to me again; so therefore I would not ride behind him, but he rode three of four Miles with me, and discoursed me all the way; and when we parted, I was made to kneel down and pray for him, in which time he was very serious; and afterward he grew very solid and sober, and in a little time he died. . . . (pp. 18-19)

Later in Ireland, she is attacked by an angry butcher:

And I was made to speak in a Market-place, and there was a Butcher swore he would cleave my Head in twain; and had his cleaver up ready to do it, but their came a Woman behind him and caught back his Arms, and staid them till the Souldiers came and rescued me. (p. 27)

Barbara Blaugdone is a good example of the independence and self-reliance which characterize Quaker women and which are on the whole, I think, the most attractive feature of their autobiographies; indeed, she is even careful to assure us at the end, that she paid for all her travels out of her own purse.

Strength in Weakness Manifest: in the Life, Various Trials, and Christian Testimony, of that faithful Servant and Handmaid of the Lord, Elizabeth Stirredge, ⁵⁵ written in 1692, is a book-length account and thus one of the longer of the Quaker autobiographies produced by women in the seventeenth century. Elizabeth Tayler Stirredge (1634-1706) was not a profoundly introspective woman, but she was sufficiently self-aware to maintain a happy balance between internal and external events. She had the racked and fearful childhood which frequently appears in such works:

In the first place, I was born at Thornbury in Gloucestershire, of honest parents; my father’s name was William Tayler; my father and mother were people fearing God, and very zealous in their day; and my father, being one of those called Puritans, prophesied of friends many years before they came; He said "There was a day coming, wherein truth will gloriously break forth, more glorious than ever since the apostles days; but said, I shall not live to see it;" he died in the faith of it seven years before they came; whose honest and chaste life is often in my remembrance, and his fervent and zealous prayers amongst his family, are not forgotten by me. My parents brought me up after a very strict manner, so that I can truly say, I was much a stranger unto the world, and its ways.

In my tender years I was one of a sad heart, and much concerned and surprised with inward fear, what would become of me when I should die: and when my lot was to be near any that would talk rudely, or swear, or be overcome with strong drink, I dreaded to pass by them; and when I did hear it thunder, Oh! the dread and terror that would fall upon me; I would get to the privatest place that I could, to mourn in secret, thinking the Lord would render vengeance upon the heads of the wicked. When I saw the flashes of lightning, Oh! thought I, whither shall I go to hide myself from the wrath of the dreadful and terrible God? Thus was I possessed with my soul’s concern, before I was ten years of age; I was so filled with fears and doubts, that I could take no delight in any thing of this world. (pp. 2-3)

She gives a vivid description of the strangeness and aloneness she felt in her distress. Another unusual feature of this narrative is her ability to portray herself and others as human beings involved in realistic interactions:

And under this exercise I grew very sad, insomuch that my mother feared I was going into a consumption, and greatly feared my death; and would say unto me, "Canst thou take delight in nothing? I would have thee walk forth into the fields with the young people, for recreation, and delight thyself in something." And to please her, I have sometimes, when we were out of our employment, gone forth with sober young people; but I found no comfort in that. Then I fell into a custom of reading the scriptures, and to be alone in private, reading and crying, because I knew not that heavenly power and spirit to have dominion in me, that was in them that gave forth the scriptures; and nothing else but the substance would give me true satisfaction, therefore the scriptures was but a book sealed unto me.

Then did I fall down upon my knees to pray unto the Lord, with my heart full of sorrow, and the tears running down my face, and could not utter one word; which seemed very strange unto me, and set me to thinking, that there was none like me. (pp. 5-6)

Later, as a Quaker, she (like Margaret Fell) feels herself called to testify to King Charles, though she resists believing that so humble a person as she should be chosen for such a task. She reveals first her intellectual reasons for her doubts:

I could not believe that ever the Lord would require such a service of me, that was so weak and contemptible, so unfit and unlikely, my understanding but shallow, and my capacity but mean, and very low and dejected in my own eyes; and looking so much at my insufficiency, made me strive so much against it; crying oftentimes within myself, ‘Surely this is something to ensnare me, for the Lord does not require such things of me; seeing there are so many wise and good men that are more honourable, and fitter for such service than I; Oh Lord! remove it far from me, and require any thing else of me, that I can better perform.’ (p. 26)

Notice that even her Quaker faith is not enough to eradicate her deeply rooted sense that a man would be better suited to the task. She then presents another aspect of her reluctance to go, giving the reader a feeling for the impact which such a journey would have on her life--the real-world obstacles which must have faced many women:

knowing myself to be of such a weak capacity, I did not think that the Lord would make choice of such a contemptible instrument as I, to leave my habitation, and tender children, that were young and tender, to go to King Charles, which was an hundred miles from my habitation, and with such a plain testimony as the Lord did require of me. . . . (p. 27)

Of course she goes--one cannot help wondering what the merry monarch must have made of these pious, insistent Quaker women appearing before him--and speaks as follows:

This is unto thee, Oh King! hear what the Lord hath committed unto my charge concerning thee: As thou hast been the cause of making many desolate, so will the Lord lay thee desolate; and as many as have been the cause of the persecuting, and the shedding of the blood of my dear children, in the day when I call all to an account, I will plead with them, saith the Lord; therefore hear and fear the Lord God of heaven and earth, for of his righteous judgments all shall be made partakers, from the king that sitteth upon the throne, to the beggar upon the dunghill.’ (p. 28)

She feels blessed and satisfied with Charles’ reply: "I thank you, good woman." Clearly the conviction that she has done what was required of her is more important than the quality of the results.

Elizabeth Stirredge was the wife of a shop-keeper, and her account, even more than that of Elizabeth Andrews, successfully conveys a sense of the quotidian realities of life for the average Quaker. She evidently suffered a great deal at the instigation of the Anglican clergy; the following incident is an example:

In the aforesaid year, 1670, when they began their work, the priest’s son of our town was one of the informers, and his curate was another. The priest’s son bought him a new sword, and swore, he would bathe it in our blood; and said, it was no more sin to kill a Quaker, than it was to kill a louse. Thus they began their dreadful work, which is too tedious to run through the particulars: but they first nailed up our meetinghouse doors, and set a guard before it; and it being one a day that the petty-sessions was kept in that town of Kainsham, four miles from Bristol, there being several justices there, they sent the bailiff and other officers, attended with a great company of rabble, who came in great rage with clubs, and other weapons; but the Lord was good and gracious unto us, and gave us strength according to the day, and opened my mouth in a testimony, for the encouragement of friends, and in praise to God, for counting us worthy to suffer for his name and truth’s sake. And after me, another woman, to the encouraging of friends and the power of the Lord was so livingly felt amongst us, that our enemies fell, that they could hardly speak to ask our names. But at length we were fined 20 £. a piece. But when meeting ended, we came away rejoicing. And indeed there was great cause for it; for the power of God was over all, to our great comfort. (pp. 43-45)

Later another priest, when he was unable to incite his neighbors to take action against the Quakers as they gathered for a burial, sent for "John Hellier, with more of his confederates, who was the great persecutor at Bristol" (p. 91), who gathered at the priest’s house:

after they had fed to the full, and drank in abundance, they brought with them faggots of wood from the priest’s, with a hatchet, and great axe, and commanded the people to aid and assist them. So they mustered up their forces as they came along; and the people seeing what posture they were in, cried out, ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘Blow up the house, and burn the Quakers,’ said they; then down they threw their wood at the meeting-house door, and cried out, ‘Set fire on them, blow up the house.’ Then the people cried out, ‘It will burn our houses that are near; and you will not be so wicked to burn the people, will you?’ Then they came in, in a violent manner, and laid hands on the children, threatening to burn them; bringing some of them out, they said, ‘We will make them a warning, to all others, and make them repent that ever they were Quakers’ bastards.’

Then they laid hands on us, hauling and dragging us along, beating some with a cane, and hewing off the legs of the forms, and taking other forms by the two ends, and so threw the Friends backwards that sat thereon; often calling to our neighbors to aid and assist them. Some of them replied, ‘We cannot work on the sabbath-day.’ So they continued the work until they had wearied themselves; then bringing us all out into the street amongst many people, I said unto them, ‘Where is your teacher?’ ‘What is that to you?’ some replied, ‘you shall be sure to suffer, if the rest do not.’ ‘But where is your teacher?’ I said again: ‘Let him come and see the fruit of his labour; this is his flock, and this is your sabbath-day’s work, let him come and behold the fruits of his labour, and see if he will be ashamed of it.’ Then they forced us in again, and John Hellier caused his man to make our mittimus, and himself committed us to Ivilchester jail, where we were so cruelly used, as is after related. (pp. 91-93)

This incident ends in Elizabeth Stirredge’s being sent to prison, and she gives us a striking picture of the facts of seventeenth century country prison life:

Our keeper Giles Bale, and his wife, put us in the common jail, with three felons, that were condemned to be hanged, and would not afford us straw to lie upon, though we would have paid for it; they locked us up, and carried away the key with them, they living some distance from the prison, thereby to prevent the under-keeper from shewing us any favour: And the head-keeper’s wife said, ‘There let them be like a company of rogues and whores together; if I had a worse place, I would put them therein.’

And truly that was a most dismal place, where we had neither stock not stone to sit upon; nor any resting-place to lean against, but the black stone wall, covered with soot, and the damp cold ground to lie upon. But before we lay down, three of our friends, that were prisoners in the room adjoining to that we were in, put through the grates in unto us four dust, or chaff, pillows and two blankets, and a little straw, whereon we lay down, like a flock of sheep in a pen, in that very cold winter, that we never had the like since I had a remembrance. . . . (pp. 96-97)

There follows a lively account of her trial, with considerable dialogue.

Like other Quaker women, Elizabeth Stirredge was attacked for preaching. She dismisses this charge as a Satanic misinterpretation of a mystery:

But now to come to what is most before me; that all may understand how the enemy works in a mystery, and under a fair pretence to betray the precious life, and from the simplicity of the gospel, which is foolishness to the wisdom of the world.

In this troublesome time, it came in my heart to visit friends in Wiltshire, where I heard much of J. S. his going on. He had much reflected upon several women for bearing their testimony against that spirit; and I met with two good women that had been upon the service of truth, and had a good testimony. He grieved them, bidding them go home about their business, and wash their dishes, and not go about to preach. And said, that Paul did absolutely forbid women to preach; and sent them crying home. (pp. 52-53)

The man’s tactic of bolstering his theological argument with an attempt to burden the women with feelings of guilt for "neglecting" their domestic duties is another of the difficulties with which women active outside their homes had to contend; the resistance of many women to this pressure suggests the power of a religious commitment is motivating them to overcome such difficulties.

The Autobiography ⁵⁶ of Alice Wandesford Thornton (1626/27-1706/07) is a long and in some respects a difficult work, but it is a rewarding one. It is written in three manuscript volumes, evidently over a long period of time (it was started shortly after her husband’s death in 1668, or perhaps even earlier; a reference to her son’s death indicates that she was still writing some time after 1692). Unfortunately, the work was drastically edited in preparation for publication, the editor contending that the

repetitions are so considerable, that it has been found necessary not only to make omissions, but to transpose passages here and there, to preserve to a certain extent the chronological sequence of events. Everything, however, has been inserted that is of any interest and value. . . . (p. xv)

Hence, what must be the dense, retrogressive quality of the work has been lost, and in places it reads almost like a journal. Parts of the work are rather tedious, being given over to family quarrels and detailed financial transactions; for, as the editor points out, the book was written at least in part to clear the author from the slander of a former friend and from the reproach of improvidence which was leveled at her after her husband died greatly indebted. Nevertheless, the work on the whole is a fascinating account of the life of a happy, well-to-do child, later the wife of a country gentleman, in the mid-seventeenth century.

The autobiography is much more devoutly religious in tone than we have come to expect from a woman of upper-class Anglican extraction. It is divided into innumerable sections with titles like "A Preservation in the Smale-Pox, 1631" and "My Mother’s preservation from the Irish rebellion, Oct. 23d, 1641: a thankesgiving for our great deliveration," and punctuated with formal prayers which probably derive, as Ebner suggests, from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. ⁵⁷

Despite her religious orientation however, Alice Thornton gives us a more intimate and individualized self-portrait than we generally find in Quaker or Baptist autobiographies. Her childhood was a happy one; her family went to Ireland in 1632, where she received

. . . the best education that kingdome could afford, haueing the advantage of societie in the sweet and chaste company of the Earle of Strafford’s daughter, the most virtuous Lady Anne, and the Lady Arbella Wentworth, learning those qualities with them which my father ordered, namlie,--the French language, to write and speake the same; singing; danceing; plaieing on the lute and theorboe; learning such other accomplishments of working silkes, gummework, sweetmeats, and other sutable huswifery, as, by my mother’s vertuous provision and caire, she brought me up in what was fitt for her qualitie and my father’s childe. But above all things, I accounted it my cheifest happinesse wherein I was trained in those pieous, holy, and religious instructions, examples, admonitions, teachings, reproofes, and godly education, tending to the welfaire and eternall happinesse and salvation of my poore soule, which I receaved from both my honoured father and mother, with the examples of theire chaste and sober, wise and prudent conversations in all things of this world. For which things, and infinitly more opportunitys of good to my well-beeing than I can expresse, I render my uttmost capacity, etc. . . . . . I humbly acknowledge my faithfull thankes and gratitude to my deare and honoured parents for theire love, caire, affection, and sedulity over me from my birth till this present, and for theire good performances towards my education in all things. (pp. 8-9)

Her descriptions of the accidents and illnesses that befall her, far from casting a pall over her narrative, give us realistic glimpses of the life of a child:

. . . the ladies ussing the costome to swing by the armes for recreation, and being good to exercize the body of children in growing, it was ordered by my Lady Straford they should doe it moderately, and found good in it, soe that they used to swing each other gently to the purpose. They would make me, beeing a young girle, doe the same with them; and did soe, and could hold very well by the armes as they did, and had never gott noe hurt by it, I blesse God, but found it did me good. But att this time, very unfortunately, some of the young ladies bid one of the pages (calld Don de Lan), a French boy, that he should swing me, being stronger than they, and they weary with play. But I cryed out, desireing them not to bid him, but could not gett off soe soone from him, and deliver my selfe from danger, before he had came to me. He immediately pushed me soe violently from him with all his force, as I was swinging by my armes, that I was not able to hold my hands on the swing, soe that he throwed me downe upon the chamber bords. I fell downe upon my face, fell to the grownd, and light with such a violent force with all my weight on my chinn-bone uppward, that both the chinn and chapp-bones was almost brok in sunder, and putt the bone out of its place, and did raise a great lumpe as bigg as an egge under my chinn and throte. . . ..(pp. 10-11)

Alice Thornton repeatedly expresses great unwillingness to leave the happiness of her single state:

I was exceedingly sattisfied in that happie and free condittion, wherein I injoyed my time with delight abundantly in the service of my God, and the obedience I owed to such an excelent parent, in whose injoyment I accounted my daies spent with great content and comfort; the only feares which possessed me was least I should be deprived of that great blessing I had in her life. Nor could I, without much reluctance, draw my thoughts to the change of my single life, knowing to much of the caires of this world sufficiently without the addittion of such incident to the married estate. As to the fortune left by my father, it was faire, and more than competent, soe that I needed not fear (by God’s blessing) to have bin troublesome to my freinds, but to be rather in a condition to assist them if need had required. (p. 75)

Nowhere in the autobiographies of seventeenth century women do we find a clearer statement of the primarily financial basis of marriage and of the genuine reluctance, if not aversion, which women often felt towards relinquishing the single state. This feeling is understandable, for even disregarding the fact that wife-beating was legal and practiced during this period, the usual lot of married women was a sorrowful and painful one. The agonies and infections commonly attendant upon childbirth were considerable, and the tragically high infant mortality rate frequently rendered the whole process futile. Alice Wandesford had frequently witnessed such difficulties, including the excruciating death of her sister, a month in the process, following the birth and death of her sister’s sixteenth child. Indeed, her beloved mother’s deathbed wish for her was primarily for strength to endure affliction:

As to my owne private consernes, she pettitioned God that I might finde comfort in my husband’s family, and be rewarded with the same blessing that God had bin graciously pleased to give me in my children (as she was pleased to say I had bin to her); and that I might be strengthned by His grace to indure those afflictions with patience which I must find in this world affter her death; and that I might have hope in God’s mercy that He would lay no more on me then He woud inable me to undergoe; and that they were signes of His love to me; and that I must not greive too much for her losse . . . for He could make up her losse in a greater comfort by giveing me a son. . . . (p. 111)

She consents to marry William Thornton, after lengthy financial negotiations between him and her mother; she is stricken on her wedding day, which she takes as an ill omen and which we can hardly fail to interpret as a reflection of her attitude:

That very day on which I was married, haveing bin in health and strength for many yeares before, I fell sodainly soe ill and sicke affter two a’clocke in the afternoone, that I thought, and all that saw me did beleive, it would have bin my last night, beeing surprised with a violent paine in my head and stomacke, causing a great vomitting and sicknesse at my heart, which lasted eight houers before I had any intermition. . . . I looked uppon this first bussinesse of my new condition to be a little discouregement, allthough God was able to turne all things for the best, and to my good, that I might not build too much hopes of happinesse in things of this world, nor in the comforts of a loving husband, whom God had given me, but sett my desires more upon the love of my Lord and God. (pp. 83-84)

Her presentiment was borne out, for only three of her ten children survived, and most of her deliveries were attended by great pain and followed by severe illness which often lasted several months. After seventeen years of marriage (a satisfactory union, evidently, although she tells us that her husband was often afflicted with bouts of melancholy), he died leaving her to cope with a great many debts; she never criticizes him, though.

More than any other autobiography of the period, Alice Thornton’s gives a detailed picture of a woman’s life with and devotion to her children. We know she loves them not only because she tells us so but because she devotes so much space to their words and actions. She is virtually unique in presenting her children as differentiated individuals, as in the following passage:

Affter dinner, we were in my chamber at my aunt Norton’s house, St. Nickolas, and my deare Katy was plaing under the table with her sister, (beeing about three yers old, but a very brave, stronge childe, and full of mettle, beeing much stronger than her poore sister Naly, she never haveing had either ricketts nor convoltion fitts to keepe her downe, but allwaies contineued very healthfull and strong, and full of trickes, and indeed apt to fall into dangers,) as she was plaing with pinnes, and putting them into her mouth, her sister see her, and cried out for feare she should doe herselfe hurt. But she would not be councelled with her, and at last she gott a pin crosse her throate, at which her sister cryed out that she had gott a pin in her throte. By God’s pleasure I was just neare her, and catcht her up in my armes, and putt my finger immeadiatly into her throate, and the pin was cross, and I had much to do to gett it out, but, with all the fores I had, it pleased God to strengthen me to do it. I gott beyond the pin, and soe got it out of her throate, but in a great deal of danger; her life was well nigh gon, and she was as blacke as could be, and the blood sett in her face with it. Soe nigh to death by this accident was this my poore childe, for it had stoped her breath. (pp. 129-30)

She also gives us intimate glimpses of her own personality as in this story of a chick she adopted as a pet, which later injured her by pecking her eye:

There was a poore little creature, harmless in itselfe, and without any gall or mallice to doe hurt, a little young chicken not above fourteen daies old, which had bin exposed, and picked out of the hen’s nest that hatched it, and by her was turned out from amongst the flocke she had newly hatched, being about nine in number. All which she broked, and made much of, but this poore chick she had turned out of the nest in a morning when the maide came to see if she was hatched; and finding this poore chicken cast out of the nest on the ground and for dead and cold; but the maide tooke it up and putt it under the hen, to have recruted it by warmth. Butt the hen was soe wilde and mad att it, that she would not lett it be with her or come neare her, but picked it and bitt it, and scratched it out with her feete twice or thrice when the maide put it in soe that she saw noe hopes of the hen to nurse it up as the rest, so she tooke it up and putt it in to me, and tould me all this story with great indignation against the unnaturalnesse of its mother. But I, pittiing this forlorne creature in that case, could not withold my caire, to see if I could any way save the life of it, and carried it to the fire, rapped it in woole, and gott some cordiall waters and opned its bill and putt a drop by little and little, and then it gasped and came to life within an houer, giving it warme milke, till it was recovered and become a fine peart chicken. (pp. 272-73)

Alice Thornton does not tell us directly, as Margaret Cavendish does, about the function which writing plays in her life, but the occasional pictures she presents of herself engaged in writing suggest that the book is part of the way in which she defines herself. Such books are clearly important and represent for her a link with the past. Both her own book and one which her father wrote for one of her brothers operate almost as characters in her story--disappearing, reappearing, affecting the course of events.

It is strange that this book is neglected by Delany and patronized by Ebner in their recent books on seventeenth century autobiography, for it is quite successful in presenting a living, thinking, feeling human being, which is after all what autobiography is all about.

Alice Hayes lived from 1659-1720, and it is possible that her work and that of Marion Fairly Veitch, which follows, were actually written in the early eighteenth century. A Legacy or A Widow's Mite ⁵⁸ is a fairly typical Quaker autobiography and shares most of the virtues and shortcomings of that form. It is brief (fifty-two pages) and not highly literate, but it has some interesting features. Her conversion to the Quaker faith, as usual and conventional, is the focal point of her life as depicted in her autobiography. Before that time she describes her life as one of perpetual uneasiness; even simple small pleasures were disquieted by a conviction of sin:

The Lord in mercy remembered me, and looked upon my affliction in that day, though I was not yet come to the knowledge of the truth; and he followed me in those days with his reproofs in my conscience for the sins of my youth; which were dancing, singing, telling idle stories, and some other pastimes, into which youth are too liable to run. And not being reproved by my parents, nor by the priest, I went on in the same, grieving the just principle of God in myself; not yet knowing what it was that reproved me in secret for these things; though, through the Lord’s great mercy and goodness to me, I was addicted to no worse evils in all my life.

After her conversion, she is subjected to a series of trials; for instance, her husband threatens to leave her:

Soon after I received the TRUTH, I met with other sorts of enemies, that the old adversary raised; but for ever blessed by the God of my life, that gave me power and dominion over my inward enemies, and delivered me also from the outward ones.

Now my going to meeting being known, both in my family and neighborhood, some wicked instruments did the devil raise up, to set my husband against me. My dear husband, that was so tender and loving to me all our days till now, grew very unkind, and his loved turned to hatred and contempt. This was it seemed good to the Lord so to suffer it, "to try me, whether I loved any thing better than himself." Sometimes when I went to dress myself to go to meeting, my husband would take away my clothes; but that I valued not, and would go with such as I had, so that he soon left off that; and many other trials I met with from him, which I think not proper here to mention. But one very seriously spoke to me after this manner: "Now I am come to a resolution in my own mind what to do; if you do not leave off going to the Quakers, I will sell all that I have, and pay every one their own, and go and leave you." This came close to my very life; and then also came the saying of Jesus into my mind: "He that loveth anything better than me, is not worthy of me." Then I was brought to the very proof, whether I loved Christ Jesus best, or my husband; for now one of the two must have the pre-eminence in my heart. Now was the time come indeed, for the full proof of my love to God, "whether I could leave father and mother, brothers and sisters, yea, and a husband that I had loved best of all, for Christ and the gospel’s sake." This was a trial none can tell, but those that experience the same; for those relations are very near; and without an invisible support, the soul cannot be upheld under such trials; but they whose hearts are true to God, being sanctified and made clean by the washing of regeneration, are enabled to deny themselves not of the unlawful things only, but also of the dearest lawful things, for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s.

My husband waiting for my answer to what he proposed, (after some time of weighing the thing in my spirit,) I said, with a true concern upon my heart, after this manner: "Well, husband, if it must be so, I cannot help it;" giving him to understand, that I could not let go that interest I had in God, through faith in his Son, who was come to save me from my sins, by refraining, in compliance with him, from going to worship God amongst that People, whom God so visibly and so fully satisfied me he owned, and among whom I had felt and witnessed his presence. Everlasting praises be given to his name, because when hopes had been raised in me, that through faith in the Son of God, my sins would be pardoned for his name’s sake, I could not let go this interest in my Saviour, for the love of a husband, though nothing else in this world was so dear to me. Many a sore exercise the Lord suffered him to inflict me, which were as wormwood and gall to me, for the time they lasted. I received them as from the Lord’s hand in kindness, to try how constant I would be in my dependence upon him alone, when all in this world, that were near and dear to me, were turned against me: yea, father and mother, brothers and sisters; but nothing came so near me as my husband. (pp. 18-21)

In the end her husband, having had his bluff called, gives over his threats, and in fact eventually embraces the Quaker faith himself. But the erotic component of her religious devotion recurs, interestingly, in metaphorical terms:

I bless God in my very heart that he has counted me worthy to suffer from his name-sake; and of a truth I can say, "He never suffered any exercise, but he assisted me with power and patience to go through it;" and his word have I witnessed to be fulfilled: a husband he hath been to me, and a father to my fatherless children. (pp. 32-33)

She also feels called upon to bear witness in some rather flamboyant ways, as when she disrupts an Anglican service:

Then I stood up, and said to the priest, "Neighbour Berrow, I have a question to ask thee, and I do desire thee and this assembly to hear me;" but he would not, and hastened out, without hearing what I had to say. Seeing him go so hastily away, I applied myself to the people, and said: "John Berrow came to me and said, that the Quakers would tell me that I must deny the man Christ Jesus, that died without the gates of Jerusalem and that I must believe only in a Christ that was within me. And I bore this testimony to all present at that assembly, saying, "We do own the scriptures; and do say, and believe, that there is no other name given under heaven, whereby any can be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ, that died without the gates of Jerusalem, and was buried, and rose again the third day, and now sitteth at the right hand of God, glorified with the same glory which he had with the Father before the world began." Then I stopped, and Francis Stamper stood up, and would have said something to the people, by way of advice; but one of the churchwardens with some others, came and compelled us both to go out. But I stepped upon one of the seats, and acquainted the people, that we should have a meeting that evening at our meeting-house, where all that were so inclined might come; and blessed be God, a large and good meeting it was, where the glorious presence of the Most High was with us, and amongst us. And good service for his God had that faithful servant, Francis Stamper, that evening; as also at many other times here, and in these parts, where a great openness was among the people, and many were convinced. (pp. 29-30)

Before God, and God only, does she abase herself:

God’s care over his children and people is the same in every age. I am a witness of it, a poor worm, an unprofitable servant; for if I have obeyed his command, it is but what was, and is, my reasonable duty: and the scriptures are verified, where it is said: "His eye is over the righteous, and his ear is open to their cry;" for he is God and Father of mercies, and delights to meet with his own to do them good. (pp. 44-45)

The autobiographical impulse finally breaks down altogether, and she ends with a testimonial sermon added several years after the writing of the greater part of the life.

Mrs. Marion Fairly Veitch, wife of a Scottish covenanter in the seventeenth century, has left an autobiographical account running to some sixty printed pages. ⁵⁹ It apparently circulated in manuscript among her acquaintances but was never intended for publication; except for the zeal and piety of The Committee of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland for the Publication of the Works of Scottish Reformers and Divines, we may safely assume it would never have seen print. It is vague and repetitive, and irritating in its limited vocabulary; it compares unfavorably with her husband’s much more lively, extended, and concrete account of the same events. Its primary interest, except perhaps to the most devout of Presbyterians, lies in its tendentious (and conventional) spiritual vocabulary, which neatly turns the normal worldly system of values on its head. Thus, what we would call logic or common sense translates to "carnal reason," actual events are "outward dispensations" (as opposed to the Lord’s true intentions), doubts are misbelief and an ill heart." "Sense, reason, and misbelief their language was," she states (p. 47), "that they [her sons] were killed. But faith, love, and hope they told me, He had delivered and would deliver them, and those that wait upon him, should not be ashamed." Sense and reason, here, are clearly opposed to the spiritual virtues.

Once in a while she captures the reader’s imagination with an evocative description or anecdote, which conveys a feeling for what her life must have been like. An example is the story of her husband’s call to the kirk at Peebles:

. . . it was my desire to him [God], that he might make it appear in his providence remarkable to me, that I might know his mind where to dwell. I cannot but observe how wonderfully he answered me. A friend of mine living thirty miles off the place where I lived, wrote my husband a letter desiring him to come and see her, for she was in a very sad case. He was unwilling to go, but I urged him sore to go; upon which he took horse, and riding all night, when he came near Peebles, being wearied, he asked a herdman on the way, Who kept an inn at Peebles? He directed him to Provost Muir’s, and when he came and sat down, and had refreshed himself a little, he and some other strangers began to discourse about Teviotdale. The Provost hearing, asked if he knew one Mr. William Veitch that lived there? He said he knew him. He speired if he was at home? and he said No, he was not at home. My husband asked at him what he would do with him? He told him, they had a mind to call him for their minister, and they had hired a man, and written a letter, and the man was going to his house with it, to desire him to come and preach to them on the Sabbath-day. My husband told them that they needed not to trouble themselves, for they would not get him at home, nor yet to be their minister, as he thought, for he had several calls in his own country. The Provost not knowing him all this time, but after some more discourse, he asked at my husband if he was the man they were seeking? He told them he was the man, which made them both to wonder at that piece of providence. He took horse, and rode ten miles further west, to see my friend, but they engaged him to come back that way to preach to them, which he did. (pp. 37-38)

But this passage is virtually unique. The real events in Mrs. Veitch’s story are all interior, but her descriptions are stylized, and we miss the interplay with outside events which makes introspection come alive. She opens her account as follows:

It pleased God, of his great goodness, early to incline my heart to seek him, and bless him that I was born in a land where the gospel was at that time purely and powerfully preached, as also, that I was born of godly parents and well educated. But above all things, I bless him that he made me see, that nothing but the righteousness of Christ could save me from the wrath of God. (p. 1)

This is all we hear of her childhood. Her material takes the form of a dialogue in which her doubts and concerns are answered by appropriate Biblical passages. Her account of her marriage is typical in its impersonality and remoteness from all but God.

Some years after, when providence seemed to call me to change my lot, because many suitors came, it was often my earnest supplication to the Lord, that I might be matched in him, and for his glory, which graciously he was pleased to grant me. Yet in this business I met with difficulties; several of my friends dissuading me from it by diverse reasons, and this among others, that it was an ill time, and I might be brought to straits in the world, which bred much trouble to my spirit, and put me many a time to seek His mind in it. At length He set home that word, "Our fathers trusted in thee, and thou didst deliver them" (Psal. xxii. 4); and, "They trusted in thee and were not confounded," (v. 5). Upon this I was inclined to trust Him, both for spirituals and temporals; and these promises were remarkably made good to me in all the various places of my sojourning in diverse kingdoms, which I mention to the commendation of his faithfulness. (p. 2)

If she has any sensuous or aesthetic appreciation of the world, or any common human feeling, she does not betray them in her autobiography. Her second son’s name is Samuel, we learn in the last few pages; the rest of her many children remain nameless. Her concern for the lives of her two eldest sons seems to rest primarily on her feeling that if they live long enough, they will eventually see the light and become ministers; she had dedicated them to the service of God, but their own inclinations seem rather different.

Her soul is like a theatre in which a great drama is enacted; more real than the human beings in her life are her faith, her doubts, her fears, who debate like characters in a miracle play: "Fear and misbelief said he [her son] would die . . ." (p. 49). Or again, "When I began to consider the sad case of Peebles, sense and reason, those two bold creatures, were like to quarrel with God" (p. 50). Her rather astonishing closing words perhaps provide us with the best index to her attitude toward her life:

I can say from experience, They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy. I had more pleasure in praying for the accomplishment of the promises, than ever I had in possession: he made me know, his promise could neither die nor drown. (p. 60)

 

Most of the autobiographies written by women before 1700 fall into one of two general and overlapping categories: they are accounts of either domestic or religious devotion. The women in both camps tend to accept most of the conventional expectations for women; except for Lady Lucy Knatchbull and Anna Trapnel, all are married.

The autobiographies which evince the most secular outlook on life are in general those written by upper-class women, mostly but not exclusively of the Anglican religion. These autobiographies tend to be more interesting, more highly differentiated, and, one might say, more original--perhaps because such works tended to remain unpublished and therefore had less potential for solidifying into a convention. The authors were not, on the whole, restless women; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that in the aftermath of the troubled period of the English Civil Wars, torn by various uncertainties and representing a felt break with the past, these women tended to adhere to traditional values and, insofar as circumstances permitted, to the traditional life patterns. They cheerfully accepted their husbands’ values and opinions as their own and aligned their fates with those of their husbands; their marriage was a central fact in their lives. Only one, Margaret Cavendish, had anything remotely resembling what we would call a career, a circumstance which she herself ascribes to her childlessness.

The autobiographies dominated by their authors’ religious experiences account, predictably, for the majority of the autobiographies, though a less thumping majority than one might expect. Among these the Quakers predominate; indeed, about half of all the autobiographies written by women before 1700 which have come down to us are Quaker. (Whether this large number actually reflects the proportion written by Quakers is an unanswerable question, since they tended to be published and hence were less likely to have been destroyed or lost in an attic.) Because the Quakers were committed to sexual equality in some aspects of life, Quaker policy did not discourage women from either preaching or writing, as long as the subject was religion. These women were restless and independent. Many of them traveled extensively, on proselytizing missions to the New World and elsewhere, often by themselves. Moreover, writing an autobiography was for a Quaker an act of religious devotion and a testimonial; since all were equal in the eyes of God, even (or especially) the life of an ordinary person was considered edifying to others. Thus these accounts were frequently published, and because a kind of standardized conversion experience was either imposed or evoked by the Quaker commitment, they very quickly settled into certain conventional forms. To read one is to be impressed by the refinement of introspection at so early a date; to read several is to realize that they might almost be said to be written according to a formula. For these reasons, the works of women are less easily distinguished from those of their male counterparts, and possibly less true in some respects to their experience as women, than the works of women whose point of view was more secular. To an extent, however, it is clear that religious zeal provides a socially acceptable anodyne to dissatisfaction or boredom with the domesticity which is traditionally supposed to be fulfilling to women, a way for a woman to channel her feeling that something is wrong or missing without attacking the basic structure of her life or undermining the role assigned to her as a woman.

Looking over these works in chronological order makes it clear that they fall into a general pattern. The autobiographies which are primarily secular in orientation, which focus on the private experience of a woman outside the context of religion or upon her relationship with her husband, and which are written by women of the privileged classes, are clustered in the period before the mid-1680’s; the autobiography of Alice Thornton is perhaps a partial exception, but a great deal of her work was evidently written in this period. Most of the religious works, Quaker and otherwise, were produced after this period. Whatever made it possible for women to write the former type of autobiography seems to have lost its force and was superseded by a new element. The secular strain is submerged for a time, and when it reappears in the eighteenth century, we shall find that it has altered and, to some extent, incorporated the independent and self-reliant outlook, as well as the willingness to publish, of the authors of the sectarian religious autobiographies.