In some ways it is interesting that there should be any specimens of autobiography of women before 1700, since most early autobiographies were of the res gestae type, accounts of the lives of men who had made important contributions in the area of politics or religion. The idea that just anyone’s life might be worth recording was not commonly held; the only justification for portraying the life of a person who was not illustrious was to make it somehow an exemplum. Donald A. Stauffer, in The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England, writes as follows:

Before the eighteenth century in England, the prevailing ideas of a hierarchy in Church and State had determined the main course of biography. The lives of ecclesiastical and temporal princes were worthy of record; the lives of their subjects were not. The annals of the Third Estate had been short and simple. Piety, patriotism and family pride produced biographies; when the life of a person humbly born was set forth in print, almost invariably that person was a cleric, and the motive back of the biography was not to present an individual but to present a typical example for the edification of Christian communicants. . . . The breath of egalité and fraternité had not yet blown over England, and there was little speculation in the actual churchyards of the seventeenth century over the village Hampdens, the guiltless Cromwell’s, and the mute Miltons that might possibly rest beneath the stones.¹

This statement applies by extension to autobiography as well. Paul Delany, in British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century, supports Stauffer’s contention that the secular autobiography was even more anomalous than the religious:

In the seventeenth century it was relatively easy to write about one’s relationship with God: the pulpit offered a supply of commonly-accepted images and suggested an appropriate tone, while a long tradition of devotional literature--descending from the Old Testament, and becoming directly imitable with the Pauline epistles and Augustine’s Confessions--made spiritual self-analysis respectable and showed even the most ignorant ‘mechanicks’ how to go about it. But for one mainly preoccupied with secular life the situation was different. Englishmen were still uncertain of the meaning and value of life in the everyday world of getting and spending, and the philosophical justification of ‘life for its own sake’ had not yet been clearly formulated and defended against clerical opposition.²

Since the professions were closed to them and since they were educated from birth to expect to play supportive and nurturing roles in life, most women had no alternative to "life for its own sake," or perhaps for a man’s sake. Moreover, the flurry of intellectual activity among Renaissance women had so exhausted itself that, to quote Myra Reynolds in The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760, "The first half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth seem even more than a hundred years apart in tone and temper."³

Yet suddenly, starting around the middle of the century, several women wrote autobiographies, some of high quality, which have come down to us. More than that: some of them ventured into territory as yet uncharted by comparable male writers. Wayne Shumaker, in English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials, and Form, states that among early autobiographies "the only ‘true’ histories of the mind and emotions with a nonreligious emphasis were those of the Duchess of Newcastle and Lady Halkett."⁴ Stauffer, in English Biography Before 1700, comments on the rarity of extended self-character sketches such as that of Margaret Cavendish.⁵ And Joyce M. Horner, in her work on "The English Women Novelists," refers to Margaret Cavendish’s "True Relation" as "the first work of its kind to be published in England."⁶

How can we account for what seems to be the especial willingness of women (at least a few women) at this point in history to assert the importance of their own subjective experience? Questions of this sort are notoriously reductive and difficult to answer. Why things happen when and as they do is often a matter of speculation and perhaps incapable of definitive solution. Nevertheless, I think an investigation of the background against which women’s autobiography began to take shape may help us to understand the phenomenon itself and the particular form which it took. In this chapter I shall discuss some of the ideas and events which seem to have created a propitious climate for the rise of women’s autobiography in Great Britain. The larger questions of the rise of autobiography in general, of what caused people to develop this genre at this particular time, has to some extent been dealt with by various scholars;⁷ still there is considerable room for good research on the subject. I shall restrict my attention here, however to factors which I take to have had a particular effect upon women, especially English women. Such an investigation has not been undertaken previously, to my knowledge, and if my conclusions are not exhaustive they are at least suggestive.

Probably the most striking and most peculiarly English of the factors affecting the rise of autobiography was the Civil War. Paul Delany comments as follows:

The Civil War especially, like no previous national upheaval, made a powerful impression on the imaginations of virtually everyone who had sufficient education to understand the ideological issues over which the war was fought. In addition to the numerous military or political memoirs which were based directly on their author’s labours for Crown or Parliament, the war had the indirect effect of bringing to many autobiographers a heightened awareness of their particular convictions and predispositions. . . . Awareness of the internal tensions of England’s social structure undoubtedly contributed to the development of a more sophisticated sense of history during the seventeenth century. This deeper understanding of historical forces, through the insight it offered into the origins and significance of personal actions and allegiances, was an important factor in the rise of autobiography.⁸

Perhaps even more unsettling than the ideological split was the sense of uprootedness caused by the breakdown of the underlying political stability heretofore maintained by the more or less orderly succession of monarchs. Indeed, Abraham Cowley, in his charming sketch "Of My Self," makes explicit use of this metaphor:

With these Affections of Mind, and my Heart wholly set upon Letters, I went to the University, but was soon torn thence by that violent publick Storm which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every Plant, even from the Princely Cedars to me, the Hyssop.⁹

Such rhetoric was not limited to the Royalists. Thomas Case, addressing Parliament in 1641, used the same metaphor to describe the Parliamentarians’ program:

Reformation must be universal . . . Reform all places, all persons and callings. Reform the benches of judgment, the inferior magistrates . . . Reform the universities, reform the cities, reform the countries, reform inferior schools of learning. Reform the Sabbath, reform the ordinances, the worship of God . . . You have more work to do than I can speak . . . Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.¹⁰

Author after author communicates a sense of the world turned topsy-turvy. Sir John Reresby, for example, opens his account of his travels thus:

I left England in that unhappy time when honesty was reputed a crime, religion superstition, loyalty treason; when subjects were governors, servants masters, and no gentleman assured of any thing he possessed; the least jealousy of disaffection to the late erected commonwealth being offence sufficient to endanger the forfeiture of his estates, the only laws in force being those of the sword.¹¹

The following incident, recorded by Thomas Raymond in his Autobiography, reveals the depth of feeling on both sides:

Soone after our most gratious King Charles the first was by hellish miscreants sonnes of Belial put to death, it was my chance to be in London at sermon in St. Mary Alder-Maryes Church, it being death then for any man and especially ministers to speake in vindication of that good King. The preacher fell to aggravate the great synnes whereof wee were guilty and haveing instanced in severall greate and crying ones, "Nay," said he, "wee have put to death our king, our most gracious and good king"--at which he made a little pause (the people amazed and gazing aboute expecting the preacher should be pulled out of the pulpitt) but he added--"the Lord Jesus Christ by our sinnes and transgressions."¹²

Women, of course, wrote no military or political memoirs; they were neither soldiers nor politicians. They were not interrupted in their studies at the university; no woman in England received a university degree until the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the lives of many women who wrote autobiographies in this period were greatly altered from their expected courses. They too shared the sense of uprootedness. Alice Thornton wrote:

As all the world stood amaised att our unheard follies and confusions, when the best frame of government was puled downe and destroyed, soe was theire great combinations against us of all sides by our enimies, to have rooted out our name and nation.¹³

The husbands of Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Hutchinson, Anne Fanshawe and Mary Rich were all directly involved in the wars. Some wives were proud and supportive, others, like Mary Rich, "much averse to his engaging in the wars"¹⁴; yet none was allotted the domestic tranquillity her grandmother might have enjoyed. Families were dispersed and patrimonies seized. Margaret Cavendish’s autobiography is larded with heart-rending passages describing the disruption of family life:

. . . for the most part they [her brothers and sisters] met every day feasting each other like Job’s children. But this unnatural war came like a whirlwind, which felled down their houses, where some in the wars were crushed to death, as my youngest brother Sir Charles Lucas, and my brother Sir Thomas Lucas.¹⁵

And again:

. . . though my Lord hath lost his estate, and banished out of his country for his loyalty to his King and country, yet neither despised poverty, nor pinching necessity could make him break the bonds of friendship or weaken his loyal duty to his King or country.

But not only the family I am linked to is ruined, but the family from which I spring, by these unhappy wars.¹⁶

Normal lines of communication among friends and relatives were cut off, Margaret Cavendish, after starting to describe her brothers’ recreation, writes:

But sometime after this war began, I knew not how they lived, for though most of them were in Oxford, wherein the King was, yet after the Queen went from Oxford, and so out of England, I was parted from them.¹⁷

And, as is tragically normal in civil wars, bonds of family and friendship were strained or torn asunder. According to Lawrence Stone, "one in every seven peerage families was fragmented by the war’¹⁸--that is, had members on both sides. Margaret Cavendish’s dispassionate list of her sisters’ husbands conceals the fact that two supported the king while the third took up arms for the Parliament.¹⁹ Mary Rich relates the following incident:

And now when I came to Lees, whatt was believed of the rising in Essex proved true, and being headed by my Lord Goreing and Sir Charles Lucas, they came to Lees for arms that were there, and brought thousands with them; but my Lord Goreing being one of my best friends, I was upon that account used so well that, bating some arms they took, there was not anything touched, and they stayed but only a dinnering time with me, and so marched on to Colchester.²⁰

Alice Thornton speaks poignantly of the prevailing atmosphere of distrust and uncertainty:

In this distraction each man looked uppon other straingly, none knowing whom to trust, or how to be secured from the raige, rapine, and destruction from the soldiery, in whose sole power was both the civill and ecclesiasticke sword since the year 1648.²¹

If the breakdown of the patterns according to which women had been taught to define themselves led to an inchoate reassessment of that definition, it is also true that the upheavals of the civil wars caused many women to be exposed to a broader range of experience than heretofore and perhaps even resulted in lives more decisively differentiated from one another. It also served to divide their own lives into clearly discernible stages or phases, offering more possibilities for the sense of change and development which underlies autobiography. Margaret Cavendish and Anne Fanshawe both spent extended periods abroad. At one period Sir Richard Fanshawe was confined to London and forbidden to go beyond five miles of the city limits, so his family spent a stretch of time in the metropolis. Some of these experiences evoked qualities not ordinarily called upon. Anne Halkett’s remarkable story includes a detailed account of how she facilitated the escape of the Duke of York by disguising him as a young gentlewoman:

When I gave the measure to my tailor to inquire how much mohaire would serve to make a petticoate and wastcoate to a young gentlewoman of that bignese and stature, hee considered itt a long time, and said hee had made many gownes and suites, butt hee had never made any to such a person in his life. I thought hee was in the right; but his meaning was, hee had never seene any woman of so low a stature have so big a wast; however hee made itt as exactly fitt as if hee had taken the measure himself. . . .

. . . after his Highnese had suped, hee imeadiately called to goe to y^e play, and wentt downe the privy staires into the garden, and opened the gate that goes to the parke, treble locking all the doores behind him. And att the garden gate C. B. [Colonel Bamford] waited for his Highnese, and putting on a cloke and periwig huried him away to the parke gate, where a coach waited y^t caried them to y^e watter side, and, taking the boate that was apointed for that service, they rowed to the staires next the bridge, where I and Miriam waited in a private howse hard by that C. B. had prepared for dressing his Highnese, where all things were in a readinese. Butt I had many feares for C. B. had desired mee, if they came nott there precisely at ten a’clocke, to shift for my selfe, for then I might conclude they were discovered, and so my stay there could do noe good, but prejudice my selfe. Yett this did nott make me leave the house, though ten a’clock did strike, and hee that was intrusted offten wentt to the landing place and saw noe boate comming was much discouraged, and asked mee what I would doe. I told him I came there with a resolution to serve his High^s, and I was fully determined nott to leave that place till I was outt of hopes of doing what I came there for, and would take my hazard. Hee left mee to goe againe to y^e watter side, and while I was fortifying myselfe against what might arive to mee, I heard a great noise of many as I thought comming up staires, w^ch I expected to be soldiers to take mee, but it was a pleasing disapointmentt, for y^e first that come in was y^e Duke, who with much joy I took in my armes and gave God thankes for his safe arivall. His Highnese called "Quickely quickely dress me;" and , putting of his cloaths, I dressed him in the wemen’s habitt that was prepared, w^ch fitted his Highnese very well and was very pretty in itt. Affter hee had eaten something I made ready while I was idle lest his Highnese should be hungry, and having sentt for a Woodstreet cake (w^ch I Knew hee loved) to take in the barge, with as much hast as could bee His Highnese wentt crose the bridge to y^e staires where the barge lay, C. B. leading him; and immediately the boatemen plied the oare so well that they were soone outt of sight, having both wind and tide with y^m.²²

Later she confronts an unruly mob of English soldiers:

The Army comming now towards Fyvie, some scattering soldiers came in there who had noe officer butt one they made amongst themselves, and called him Major. When they came into the howse they were very rude, beating all the men came in there way, and frighting the weemen, and threatening to pistoll who ever did nott give what they called for. My Lady Dunfermeline, beeing then great with child, was much disordered with feare of their insolence, and with teares in her eyes desired me to goe and speake to them, to see if I could prevaile with them as beeing their countrywoman, butt (says shee,) I know nott well how to desire itt, because I heare say they are informed there is an English woman in the howse, and if they get her they will be worse to her than any. "Madam, (said I,) if my going to them can doe your La^s service, I will take my hazard, and had gone to them before, butt that I thought itt nott fitt for mee in your La^s howse to take upon mee to say any thing to them till I had your La^s command for itt." Then calling my woman I wentt down where they were, and being instructed which was the major (as they called him), who ordered y^e rest as hee pleased (and I beleeve gott that authority by humouring them in all they desired), I made my adrese first to him, beleeving if I prevailed with him the rest were soone gained. As soone as I came amongst them, the first question they asked mee was if I were the English whore that came to meet the King, and all sett their pistolls just against mee. (I had armed myselfe before by seeking assistance from Him who only could protect mee from there fury, and I did so much rely upon itt that I had nott the least feare, tho naturally I am the greatest coward living.) I told them I owned myselfe to bee an English woman and to honor the King, butt for the name they gave me I abhorred itt; butt my comming to them was nott to dispute for my selfe, butt to tell them I was sorry to heare that any of the English nation, who was generally esteemed the most civill people in the world, should give so much occation to be thought barbarously rude, as they had done since there comming into the howse, where they found none to resist them, but by the contrary whatever they called for, either to themselves or horses, was ordered by my Lady to bee given them. . . . They heard mee with much patience; and att last flinging downe there pistolls upon the table, the major gave mee his promise that neither hee nor any with him should give the least disturbance to the meanest in the family, only desired meatt and drinke and what was nesesary that they called for. . . .²³

Mary Rich courageously continues her journey to the country, despite her husband’s warning that the fighting has rendered her passage unsafe:

When I was met by him he told me he feared it might not be safe for me to go on; and some other Parliament-men that were in the coach with him, absolutely advised me to return and not to hazard myself. Though I found in myself a loathness to deny going with my husband (having never before left him hardly, when I could conveniently be with him), yet my desire to go to be quiet at Lees prevailed so much with me, as I desired by husband to leave me to myself, which he did, and I then told him I would go on, for I was very confident there was no danger for me, and so parted from him, not without wondering much at myself when I had done so. . . .²⁴

This act of self-assertion is a significant one for her, and she comes to see the country almost as a symbol of purity and piety; she feels it must have been "a good providence of God"²⁵ which enabled her to take such a step. Anne Fanshawe, ill and pregnant, is set ashore with her husband after having been robbed by mutinous sailors. Later, she joins her husband on deck during an attack by a Turkish galley:

. . . my husband bade us be sure to keep in the cabin, and the women not to appear, which would make the Turks think that we were a man-of-war, but if they saw women they would take us for merchants and board us. He went upon the deck, and took a gun and bandoliers, and sword, and, with the rest of the ship’s company, stood upon deck expecting the arrival of the Turkish man-of-war. This beast, the Captain, had locked me up in the cabin; I knocked and called long to no purpose, until, at length, the cabin boy came and opened the door; I, all in tears, desired him to be so good as to give me his blue thrum cap he wore, and his tarred coate, which he did, and I gave him half a crown, and putting them on and flinging away my night clothes, I crept up softly and stood upon the deck by my husband’s side, as free from sickness and fear as, I confess, from discretion; but it was the effect of that passion, which I could never master.

By this time the two vessels were engaged in parley, and so well satisfied with speech and sight of each other’s forces, that the Turks’ man-of-war tacked about, and we continued our course. But when your father saw it convenient to retreat, looking upon me, he blessed himself, and snatched me up in his arms, saying, ‘Good God, that love can make this change!’ and though he seemingly chid me, he would laugh at it as often as he remembered that voyage.²⁶

When her application for a passport is refused, she cleverly deceives the passport office and secures passage to Paris in compliance with her husband’s wishes:

I could not go without a pass, and to that purpose I went to my cousin Henry Nevill, one of the High Court of Justice, where he was then sitting in Whitehall. I told him my husband had sent for me and his son, to place him there, and that he desired his kindness to help me to a pass: he went in to the then master’s and returned to me, saying, ‘that by a trick my husband had got his liberty, but for me and his children, upon no conditions we should not stir.’ . . . . I was ready to go, if I had a pass, the next tide, and might be there before they could suspect I was gone: these thoughts put this invention in my head.

At Wallingford House, the office was kept where they gave passes: thither I went in as plain a way and speech as I could devise, leaving my maid at the gate, who was a much finer gentlewoman then myself. With as ill mien and tone as I could express, I told a fellow I found in the Office that I desired a pass for Paris, to go to my husband. ‘Woman, what is your husband, and your name?’ ‘Sir,’ said I, with many courtesies, ‘he is a young merchant, and my name is Ann Harrison.’ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘it will cost you a crown:’--said I, ‘That is a great sum for me, but pray put in a man, my maid, and three children. All which he immediately did, telling me a malignant would give him five pounds for such a pass.

I thanked him kindly, and so went immediately to my lodgings; and with my pen I made the great H of Harrison, two ff, and the rrs, an n, and the i, an s, and the s, an h, and the o, an a, and the n, a w, so completely, that none could find out the change. With all speed I hired a barge, and that night at six o’clock I went to Gravesend, and from thence by coach to Dover, where, upon my arrival, the searchers came and demanded my pass, which they were to keep for their discharge. When they had read it, they said, ‘Madam, you may go when you please;’ but says one, ‘I little thought they would give a pass to so great a malignant, especially in so troublesome a time as this.’²⁷

Though their claims to cowardice are so frequent as to appear almost a conventional pose, part of the feminine image which society demanded that they project, there can be no question that these women are beginning to experience themselves as independent agents and to take pride in their acts of bravery and their coolness under stress. When real crises impose and real action is required, these women rise to the occasion without fainting or swooning. And with broadened experience comes broadened awareness of matters outside the family circle. Lucy Hutchinson, for example, not only displays an astute if partisan knowledge of political affairs, she in part defines her own identity in terms of her political heritage.

More difficult to articulate precisely is the jarring effect which the civil wars had upon established values. Values sanctioned by tradition could no longer be assumed; their validity depended upon the willingness and the ability of the individual to assert them successfully. One could not define himself--or herself--by ties which no longer existed or depended for their existence upon personal acts of the will. That is not to say that there was a sudden collapse of all which Englishmen had held dear. On the contrary, familial and especially marital bonds still represented for women the principal locus of their own identities. But the winds of change are starting to blow. Many of our autobiographers insist that their marriages were acts of choice. Mary Rich, indeed, quite blatantly defied her father in selecting her husband, though he finally capitulated and though she came to repent her willfulness. Most of the others are more assiduous in courting parental approval; but again and again we come across declarations of desire or intent to remain single, followed by a meeting with the one man who could make her swerve from this plan--the implication being that had not love fatefully intervened, no consideration of finance or expedience could have induced her to marry. She is in effect the mistress of her own fate: she has made her own marriage though she might not have done so.

Withal, the reader senses a deep strain of disillusion, latent but beginning to rise to consciousness. Thus Margaret Cavendish, in her Memoirs of her husband:

I have observed, that those that meddle least in wars, whether civil or foreign, are not only most safe and free from danger, but most secure from losses; and though heroic persons esteem fame before life, yet many there are, that think the wisest way is to be a spectator, rather than an actor, unless they be necessitatted to it; for it is better, say they, to sit on the stool of quiet, than in the chair of troublesome business.²⁸

Here is no common cynicism, but rather a deep-seated ambivalence about the old ideas of heroism. From here it is but a short step to the notion that honor is not a matter of soldiers sacrificing all for king and country but rather something which can occur within the inner recesses of any individual, male or female.

Faced with such a disordered world, the act of writing may itself represent an attempt, heretofore unnecessary, to reassert the old values. The civil war was for these women, in effect, what Frank Kermode has called a kairos, a crisis, an event which organizes time and forces a reinterpretation of the past.²⁹ The women who wrote secular autobiographies in this period tended to be representatives of the older order; but because of the civil war they were precipitated out of the old prelapsarian chronicity of life into a world which charged their lives and actions with a new significance. The old values could no longer be taken for granted (One thinks of the change which the political environment wrought in Marvell’s poetry). And so women who had not heretofore felt called upon to write found, both within and without themselves, in the need to affirm threatened values, subject matter for autobiography. Anne Fanshawe, addressing her son, describes

The most remarkable actions and accidents of your family. . . . I would not have you be a stranger to it; because, by the example, you may imitate what is applicable to your condition in the world, and endeavour to avoid those misfortunes we have passed through, if God pleases.³⁰

We have noted that the autobiographies by women who accepted the traditional values and defined their role in accordance with them were largely written between the 1650’s and the 1680’s. It is tempting to speculate that the accession of King James in 1685 and subsequent bloodless revolution in 1688 settled once and for all that the re-establishment of the old values was tenuous and humanly rather than divinely ordained. Puritanism had by now been absorbed into the fabric of English life; the new climate was more hospitable to expressions of religious diversity, and the remainder of the century saw a preponderance of works expressing sectarian religious values.

As far as women were concerned, the growing influence of Puritanical thinking upon English life can only be described as a double-edged sword. Doctrinally, it was by and large a step backward, since it represented a reversion to the Old Testament misogyny so lovingly refined by St. Paul--Paul who said:

3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. . . .

7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

8 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.

9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.³¹

and again:

11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.³²

The godhead itself was masculinized, stripped of the Virgin and saints who stood ready to intercede for women.

The Puritans to be sure had no monopoly on antifeminism; it is intrinsic to the whole Judeo-Christian tradition, and the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Anglican faith hardly proclaim an enlightened attitude towards women. Even so orthodox (and happily married) a divine as Richard Hooker, in his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Policy, practically the definitive statement of moderate Anglicanism, endorsed the custom of the bride’s father giving her away in marriage because

. . . it putteth women in mind of a duty whereunto the very imbecility of their nature and sex doth bind them, namely to be always directed, guided and ordered by others. . . .³³

And John Donne, after writing the libidinous poetry of his youth, sermonized in his older graver days on the necessity for female subordination, even suggesting self-deception if necessary:

If she think her self more than a Helper, she is not so much. . . . I know there are . . . some of the weaker sexe, stronger in fortune, and in counsell too, than they to whom God hath given them; but yet let them not impute that in the eye nor ear of the world, nor repeat it to their own hearts, with such a dignifying of themselves, as exceeds the quality of a Helper.³⁴

I have chosen these quotations for the eminence of their authors, but scores of examples from equally orthodox prelates, many more rancorous than these, could be adduced. Nor can these men be identified as woman-haters beyond the rest of their sex; they are merely parroting the conventional opinions of their age.

But Puritanism tended to place even greater emphasis on the teachings of Paul and to dwell upon woman’s responsibility for the Fall (and all subsequent masculine falls), upon the need for female subordination, and upon the unsuitability of women as rulers. In 1558, John Knox issued his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, in which he declaimed against "this monstriferouse empire of woman, (which amongst all enormities that this day do abound upon the face of the hole earth, is most detestable and damnable)."³⁵ Thus history treats us to the spectacle of Mary, Princess of Orange, daughter of James II, refusing to accept the throne until her husband, William of Orange, is permitted to share the throne equally but with precedence over her. The Puritans exalted marriage, but their conception of marriage included no idea of an equal partnership. All these Puritanical tendencies are superbly illustrated in the writings of Milton. Katharine M. Rogers, in The Troublesome Helpmate, comments of Milton that "While he extolled marriage in the loftiest terms, he insisted with unnecessary emphasis and obvious satisfaction on the wife’s inferiority and subjection to her husband."³⁶ In Paradise Lost, the perfection of Adam and Eve’s marriage before the fall is inextricably bound to Eve’s subordination. It has been pointed out that the Marriage Hymn stands in explicit contrast to the idea of courtly love, in which the woman is exalted and set above the man; indeed, Satan in the guise of a serpent assumes the posture of a courtly lover when he is trying to seduce Eve by persuading her to aspire to a dominant position.³⁷

Despite the regressive, antifeminist bias which Puritanism carried over from Catholicism and refined (a bias which found its most repugnant expression in the brutal witch-hunts which resulted in the violent deaths of thousands of innocent women in the seventeenth century), Puritanism in some of its aspects did have a liberating influence, in most cases unintended, upon the lives of women. The anomaly of the position of women, indeed, lies at the heart of Puritanism, for, as the Marxist historian Christopher Hill observes,

in this world of male economic dominance, the small Puritan voice still whispered that women have souls, that salvation is a matter of direct personal relationship to God. Women should by co-operation with the divine purpose be as capable as men of receiving the grace that makes free, even if their attainment of this freedom would shatter the standards taken over by patriarchal society from an earlier age.³⁸

Thus, the priesthood of all believers permitted women, in theory, to rely on themselves rather than upon the mediation of husbands or male priests to secure their salvation. The splintering tendencies of left-wing Protestantism, too, must have lifted some of the oppressive weight of the old Anglo-Catholic traditions and at least made it possible to question their sanctity, however little this was actually done in this period. Moreover, the Puritan insistence on a single standard of morality tended to undermine the ideology of subordination. And the Puritan emphasis on education and the use of the vernacular had as a side effect the making of literary expression increasingly accessible to women. According to Lawrence Stone:

One of the most striking characteristics of English Puritans was their belief in the value of education as a weapon against the three great evils of Ignorance, Prophaneness and Idleness. . . . [I]t was puritan thinkers who proposed schemes for universal elementary education.³⁹

During the prolonged educational depression which began in the second half of the seventeenth century, there was still a rise of education in the Dissenting Academies.⁴⁰ Women, directly or more often indirectly, were among the beneficiaries of this interest in education.

The more radical left-wing sects spawned by Puritanism flirted much more openly with the idea of equality of the sexes. The one which had the most significant effect on women’s autobiography, and on autobiography in general, was of course the Quakers. One of the most provocative issues was the question of women preaching, on which Samuel Johnson so snidely commented a century later. The Friends’ creed declared explicitly:

As we dare not encourage any ministry but that which we believe to spring from the influence of the Holy Spirit, so neither do we attempt to restrain this ministry to persons of any condition in life, or to the male sex alone; but as male and female are one in Christ, we hold it proper that such of the female sex as we believe to be endued with a right qualification for the ministry should exercise their gifts for the general edification of the Church.⁴¹

The locus classicus for the injunction against women preaching was St. Paul, who was often cited in support of attacks on the practice. We have already noted the direct and spirited protest which women such as Elizabeth Stirredge and Joan Vokins made against this doctrine, for they rightly interpreted it as a threat ultimately to the freedom of women to speak out on religious issues, whether verbally or in writing. Thus, the Quaker position and policy provided a context for women speaking out; the strong strain of egalitarianism in the Quaker faith, combined with a young and vigorous tradition of religious autobiography (based on the premise that since all are children of God, everyone can profit from the experiences of even an ordinary person whose life has been touched by God), clearly was responsible for the outcropping of Quaker autobiographies by women and contributed to the independent spirit which pervades these works.

What can we say in particular about the relation of new currents of philosophical thought to the rise of women’s autobiography? Most women’s knowledge of the actual opinions of specific philosophers was probably sketchier than that of men of their own social stratum, although Margaret Cavendish, to be sure, was acquainted with Hobbes and, after a manner of speaking, with Descartes (they had no common language). But various changes in the general philosophical climate could hardly fail to affect them. Although the meaning of these changes has of course been the subject of much discussion and some controversy, it is probably safe to state at least that there was a gradual shift of interest from scholastic to scientific habits of thought, from deductive to inductive modes of reasoning, from a heaven-centered, theological point of view to a more earth-centered, secular one. What was thought of as real had changed in its very definition from abstractions to concrete entities immediately available to sensory perception. These factors were undoubtedly implicated in the rise of autobiography in general and affected women more or less as they did men, though perhaps more indirectly in some respects.

If it is possible, however, to isolate any one outgrowth of these changes as having a particular relevance for women’s autobiography, it is probably the upsurge of interest in private life and a concomitant increase in the possibilities for privacy. Indeed, such an interest is for women, much more than for men, a precondition of autobiography, since most women had no other life than a private life. Bacon saw the accumulation of facts about the lives of men (he explicitly did not intend only essentially public personalities such as kings and princes) as a kind of data-collection, stating

With regard to lives, we cannot but wonder that our own times have so little value for what they enjoy, as not more frequently to write the lives of eminent men.⁴²

Locke’s whole system of government was predicated upon the existence of a self independent of and preceding social and public institutions such as church, family, or monarchy; so, with a different emphasis, was Hobbes’. The circumstances of women’s existence had always demanded that their attention be devoted predominantly to the fact and concrete details of private domestic life; to have their sphere of influence elevated in importance from the inconsequential to the essential, from the ancillary to the central, must have been a liberating experience; if their lives did not change in and of themselves, they were at least developing anew a more honorific way of seeing and evaluating what they were doing. Empiricism invested the patterns of their lives with a new dignity.

The consequences of this burgeoning interest in private life were not entirely theoretical. Virginia Woolf wisely perceived the importance of "a room of one’s own," and though women could hardly command the privacy and the extended uninterrupted periods of time that men could (remember, for example, Richard Fanshawe’s returning home and retiring to his study with his papers as a matter of course), the very architecture of the houses was changing to permit and promote a greater degree of privacy than had heretofore been available. Ian Watt makes the following observations in The Rise of the Novel:

In the medieval period nearly all the life of the household went on in the common hall. Then gradually the private bedroom and separate dining quarters for masters and servants became current; by the eighteenth century the final refinements of domestic privacy had fully established themselves. There was much more emphasis than before on separate sleeping quarters for every member of the family, and even for the household servants; a separate fireplace in all the main rooms, so that everyone could be alone whenever they wished, became one of the details which the up-to-date housewife noted with approbation. . . .

Another characteristic feature of the Georgian house is the closet, or small private apartment usually adjoining the bedroom. Typically, it stores not china and preserves but books, a writing desk and a standish; it is an early version of the room of one’s own which Virginia Woolf saw as the prime requisite of woman’s emancipation. . . .⁴³

Watt is speaking of the eighteenth century, to be sure, but the process was a gradual one and was certainly well underway by the end of the seventeenth century, as is clear from the following words of Roger Hart:

The "hall house" was a traditional type of design . . . consisting of a central hall or chamber around which the smaller rooms and offices were placed. The hall was the heart of family life, dinners, entertainment, and servants’ activities.

During the seventeenth century people began to demand smaller and warmer rooms, each designed for a particular purpose rather as in modern houses. In large manorial homes, the family preferred to eat in privacy, away from the demands of dependants, servants, and others for whom the house was the pivot of local life.⁴⁴

Perhaps this is a good place to observe that Watt’s general thesis, much debated when his book first appeared, has been subject to "serious reflections" (by Watt himself)⁴⁵ and more recently to being "reconsidered" (by John Richetti).⁴⁶ These second thoughts are probably justified with respect to the novel, which Watt seems too inclined to separate from prose fiction in general; but many of his sociological observations are valid in and of themselves and, interestingly enough, are perhaps more useful to the student of early autobiography, especially that of women, than to the student of the novel.

The literary antecedents of these early autobiographical works cannot be specified with certainty. Undoubtedly there was some French influence. The marriage of Charles I to Henrietta Maria of France in 1625 increased cultural communication between the two countries, and of course the return of Charles II and his court in 1660 from exile in France greatly (and to some, notoriously) enhanced English interest in things French. The French had evolved a strong tradition of memoir-writing rather earlier than the English, and by the seventeenth century many of these works achieved a more intimate tone than generally characterized English autobiography. Whether any of the English women who wrote their lives had read any of the French productions in their original language we do not know; although Margaret Cavendish could not converse with Descartes in his own language, and her childhood education did not emphasize "prating of several languages,"⁴⁷ several other autobiographers noted that they had been taught French as children. A more likely route of influence was through English translations, a large number of which were published, especially during the later half of the seventeenth century. One of the early examples to appear in English was the autobiography of Marguerite de Valois, first wife of Henry IV, translated by Robert Codrington in 1641; this captivating book shares many of the qualities we later find in English women’s autobiography--e.g., attention to domestic detail and a tendency to treat historical events mainly as ancillary occurrences in their own lives. In addition to the possible influence of specific works, we should bear in mind the female-oriented salon culture which flourished in France during this period; women were often encouraged and applauded for fictional efforts at intricate analysis of emotions, and such a propitious atmosphere for women’s literary development may have made itself felt on the other side of the channel.

The authors of two recent books on English autobiography in the seventeenth century allude to the possible relation between the early novel and early autobiography, although, as Ebner adds, a "thorough examination of the relationship between the early English novel and autobiography must still be written."⁴⁸ Undoubtedly there was a great deal of cross-fertilization between the two genres; Delany, in fact, sees the autobiographical writings of women as a possible direct link between the two forms:

In general, female autobiographies have a deeper revelation of sentiments, more subjectivity and more subtle self-analyses than one finds in comparable works by men. The sociological reasons for this difference are obvious, and have existed since antiquity; yet it is not until the seventeenth century that what we now call the ‘feminine sensibility’ enters the main stream of English literature--before then it was usually ignored by the male writers who dominated literary life, or obscured by a narrow and stereotyped anti-feminism. The expression of this sensibility in seventeenth-century autobiography deserves study both in its own right and for the light it may shed on the appearance of the novel soon after.⁴⁹

I have already discussed Anne Halkett’s use of "novelistic" techniques in her autobiography. And it is perhaps significant that Margaret Cavendish’s autobiography is the last of eleven pieces which she collected in a volume entitled Nature’s Pictures Drawn by Fancy’s Pencil to the Life; the other ten are fictional works. It is interesting to speculate about what relationship she perceived or intended between the autobiography and the other stories. Fiction--continental fiction in translation, at least, was probably already embarked upon its task of educating its readers to certain habits of thought and to an acceptance of emotion and interpersonal relationships as appropriate matter for elaboration in prose; women, perhaps because the world of emotion and interpersonal relationships were the main if not only sphere in which they move, may have been particularly receptive to this influence. On the whole, however, I think we must be fairly circumspect in drawing conclusions about the effects which the novel may have had upon autobiography. At the time when the most introspective seventeenth century women’s autobiographies were being written--before Defoe, let us remember--English fiction had not reached the state which most theorists would dignify with the term "novel." Richetti, writing on Popular Fiction before Richardson, chooses 1700 as his terminus ab quo. As Delany implies, the autobiography at this stage probably contributed more to the novel in the way of formal and narrative techniques than vice versa. Later the relation between the two forms more clearly becomes a two-way affair; as we shall see when we come to examine autobiographies of women in the eighteenth century, the impact of the novel upon autobiography is quite striking.

Although many of the early autobiographies went unpublished, we cannot entirely discount the possibility that conventions were already beginning to develop within the form itself, and that some of the earlier works influenced later productions. In the case of Quaker and sectarian autobiographies, which were often printed either shortly after they were composed or shortly after the death of the author, there is no question that various conventions developed and in fact rapidly became quite rigid. The autodidactic intention, the centrality of the conversion experience, the quasi-Biblical, "incantatory" (to use Jackson I. Cope’s term⁵⁰) style have all been discussed at some length in various contexts by such scholars as Cope, Luella M. Wright,⁵¹ William York Tyndall⁵² and G. A. Starr.⁵³ More difficult to assess is the contention of A. H. Upham that Lucy Hutchinson was directly influenced by the work of Margaret Cavendish.⁵⁴ Most of his examples are taken from Hutchinson’s biography of her husband. Upham finds it "difficult to understand why Mr. C. H. Firth, concerning himself with both these biographies, and publishing scholarly editions of them in successive years, should have given no notice to these relation"⁵⁵--but this apparent failure should perhaps make us wary of agreeing too readily with Upham. Though Upham’s examples of parallel passages describing the authors’ husbands are, in the aggregate, fairly convincing (a few are not really very close at all), it may well be that both were drawing on the same tradition of character portrayal. In the seventeenth century, when historians began, as they had not done previously, to describe the recent past and current events, contemporary historiography emphasized the "character" as the locus of history. It is by no means uncommon to find, in these characters, descriptions of the subject’s wit, his demeanor, even, though less often, his physical appearance. And if both men were found by their wives to be of medium stature and well-proportioned, it may be because they really were of medium stature and because to be well-proportioned was important in the contemporary aesthetic. Likewise, in the autobiographies, the similarities in their descriptions of the education may stem from the fact that authors had similar experiences; and need we conclude that it is a case of influence if both claim to hate their needles? One might also make a case, though in less detail, for Margaret Cavendish’s having influenced Anne Fanshawe. Here, for example, are two passages cited by Upham (from Cavendish and Hutchinson respectively):

As for tutors, although we had for all sorts of virtues, as singing, dancing, playing on music, reading, writing, working, and the like, yet we were kept strictly thereto, they were rather for formality than benefit. . . .⁵⁶

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. . . .⁵⁷

And here is one from Fanshawe:

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. . . .⁵⁸

Alice Thornton, we may recall, describes her education in similar terms. I do not, however, mean to dismiss Upham’s argument altogether, though I suspect he has overstated his case. Actually, Margaret Cavendish was quite notorious in her day, and she may well have established, to some extent, certain expectations for the kinds of material to be included in autobiography, as well as giving autobiography by upper-class women a kind of marginal respectability.

Perhaps in some ways the most pervasive literary development involved in the rise of women’s autobiography is the occurrence of certain changes in prose style, still not entirely understood or defined, which made the seventeenth century a transitional period between the various rhetorical excrescences of sixteenth century prose and the classic English prose style which was achieved in the eighteenth century. This is not to say that good prose ceased to be rhetorical, but there was an active effort to abandon the elaborately balanced style which was labeled "Ciceronian" and to cultivate a syntactically looser, asymmetrical, apparently more natural style which was thought to be "Senecan"--to portray, in the words of Morris Croll, "not a thought but a mind thinking."⁵⁹ Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society, published in 1667, a kind of bellwether of the changes that were taking place, denounces "Tropes and Figures"⁶⁰ and deplores "this vicious abundance of Phrase, this trick of Metaphors, this volubility of Tongue, which makes go great a noise in the World"⁶¹; he applauds the Society’s resolution

to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver’d so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness: bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars.⁶²

Clearly such a style was, by its very nature, well suited to the requirements of autobiography. As an example of its adaptability to the fine emotional or spiritual distinctions which autobiography tends to demand, let us look at a passage from the anonymous autobiography of a relative of Cromwell’s, part of which has been quoted already:

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)

The next evening at Prayer I did indevor to set myselfe in a more reverend Manner than formaly: &, oh, Behold the goodness of God to me miserable sinner, (being without God in the World:) my Thofts where as before: I was blind. I began now & see, & aprehend thay prayed to an invisabel God, & with al found my Hart ernestly joyning with the Minister in Prayer, & that with great Ernestness; but yet I knew not Jesus Christ. . . .⁶³

This passage is a good illustration of the Senecan style: syntactic connectives between the elements are either absent or are "used in such a way as to bind the members together in a characteristically loose and casual manner."⁶⁴ The style is flexible enough to carry us with the author through the small discrete steps of the process by which she comes first to believe that there is a God and then, gradually, to refine this perception to a belief in Christ. It reflects the increasing accuracy with which the author is able to pinpoint her spiritual progress ("I was much troubled, or rather ashamed of it"). The paradox of blindness to the invisible and subsequent ability to see the invisible is presented to us not as a foregone conclusion, as it might emerge in a balanced, Ciceronian sentence, but as a gradual unfolding which occurs within time. Such a style works well with a form whose subject defines itself as a function of time. Moreover, it was also more accessible to women. Even women who were well-educated by the standards of the times did not receive the kind of rigorous education which was likely to have initiated them very deeply into the mysteries of highly artificial prose styles. Rather their educations were dilettantish, as is clear from the passages which I have just quoted from Cavendish, Hutchinson, and Fanshawe, and were evidently meant to provide them with accomplishments which would be adornments to husband and homes. Moreover, the new style was more closely related to the subliterary forms open to women, particularly letters, whose purpose was generally to present "not a thought, but a mind thinking." We cannot be sure how many of the women autobiographers consciously embraced the new style, but Margaret Cavendish, in the preface to her biography of her husband, is most explicit:

Thus I was forced by his Grace’s commands, to write this history in my own plain style, without elegant flourishings, or exquisite method, relying entirely upon truth, in the expressing whereof. I have been very circumspect; as knowing well, that his Grace’s actions have so much glory of their own, that they need borrow none from anybody’s industry.⁶⁵

A couple of pages later she repeats:

Thus am I resolved to write, in a natural plain style, without Latin sentences, morel instructions, politic designs, feigned orations, or malicious exclamations, this short history. . . .⁶⁶

Lucy Hutchinson echoes the words of Sprat even more closely:

. . . I need not gild [her husband’s memory] with such flattering commendations as the fired preachers do equally give to the truly and titularly honourable. A naked undressed narrative, speaking the simple truth of him, will deck him with more substantial glory, than all the panegyrics the best pens could ever consecrate to the virtues of the best man.⁶⁷

Illiteracy is not the same as a Senecan prose style, of course, and the merit of the autobiographies of some of the less well educated women lies elsewhere than in their literacy; but the work of, say, Anne Fanshawe gives an indication of the kind of beauty which this style can achieve.

It is possible,
ugh the suggestion may be heretical, that given all the other elements which generated a climate that encouraged at least a few women to write autobiographies, their very lack of a male education enabled women to move in directions which men did not. They were less tied to the old forms and less aware of the "reasons" why they shouldn’t be doing what they were doing. Moreover, because they received less outward intellectual stimulation, they were forced to turn inward to the personal and to the domestic drama for material to ponder. And finally, to quote Stauffer:

Ingenuousness in an autobiographer frequently serves the same purpose as the most sophisticated self-knowledge, and, as in Cellini or Pepys or Bunyan, the autobiographer stands revealed in spite of himself.⁶⁸

Women, being generally less sophisticated than men, were perhaps more likely to reap whatever benefits accrue from ingenuousness.

While there is much material which could probably be added to this list, I have touched upon those which I take to be the most significant factors involved in the rise of women’s autobiography in the seventeenth century. I should like now to turn my attention to the eighteenth century and to take a look at some of the changes which women’s autobiography underwent over the course of the century.