"The Fittest Closet for All Goodness." Authorial Strategies of Jacobean Mothers' Manuals
Kristin Poole
Summary:
The mothers' manuals of 17th century Jacobean
England , which are among the earliest
examples of women's writings in England, gave
motherly advice on worldly and spiritual
matters to children.
Among the early women's texts published in England was a small group of
advice books known as mothers' manuals. In texts such as Dorothy Leigh's The
Mothers Blessing (1616) and Elizabeth Jocelin's The Mothers Legacie to her
unborne Childe (1624), the authors/mothers provide their children with
domestic, worldly, and spiritual counsel. The evident popularity of these
texts (The Mothers Blessing went through at least fifteen editions between
1616 and 1640(1)) invites us to reconsider the perception and reception of
women's writing in Jacobean England; Jocelin and Leigh were not only
accepted as authors, but as advisors. The mothers' manuals, in which the
authors repeatedly clarify their position as writing women, also illustrate
the justifications, the claims of authority, and the strategies that enabled
women to publish. In addition, the potential familial ties between Leigh and
Jocelin, and the citation of their texts by other presumably female authors,
point to a degree of literary interaction among Jacobean women outside of
the court.
The origin of the "mother's manual" genre is perhaps a text by a male
author. In 1601 Nicholas Breton published an advice book to a young man
named Thomas Rowe. While Breton's manual is not extraordinary in its
content, echoing the Polonius-like counsel typical of advice books, it is
highly unusual in its mode of presentation. In a genre dominated almost
exclusively by fathers advising sons, men advising women, and (male) friends
advising friends, Breton chose to assume the voice of Mr. Rowe's mother,
Lady Bartley. Styling his text as maternal advice, Breton entitled it The
Mothers Blessing. Breton's unusual choice of authorial stance points to
several issues concerning female literary agency and authority in early
seventeenth-century England. Despite an introduction in which Breton
establishes himself as spokesman for the deceased Lady Bartley, and despite
a title which seemingly points to a female presence, Breton's The Mothers
Blessing soon abandons all references to the maternal, either in tone or in
content. The facade of maternity thus seems to function as part of Breton's
strategy for entering the discourse of advice. If, as we have often assumed,
the female public voice held little authority and transgressed the social
boundaries between private and public spheres, why would Breton
intentionally choose to write from the female perspective (at least
initially)? This choice, seemingly an odd one for a male author writing in
any Renaissance genre, is especially puzzling when we consider the dynamics
of advice literature, a genre which overtly commands and instructs. However,
Breton's text and the popularity of texts such as Leigh's suggest that the
Jacobean readership was ready to accept the female, maternal, literary
voice. The phenomenon of the female voice offering advice in a public forum
invites us to reconsider not only our traditional notions of Jacobean
patriarchy, according to which women silently, obediently, and
unquestioningly acquiesced to the directives of the head of the
family/state, but to rethink the very assumption that a clear distinction
between the public (male) and private (female) spheres was popularly
understood and accepted.
Directly or indirectly, Breton's work paved the way for women to enter into
the same discourse of advice which, ironically, had produced prolific
manuals dictating feminine chastity, modesty, and silence. As the vast
numbers of advice books, marriage manuals, and sermons delineating the
boundaries for feminine behavior suggest, women's roles were anything but
clearly defined in Jacobean England.(2) Indeed, such manuals are indicative
of a larger process of cultural self-definition occurring in the early
seventeenth century, in which the very concepts of "private" and "public"
were being worked out; Richard Sennett and Jurgen Habermas both point to
this century as a time of transition leading toward a more "modern" notion
of personal and social space.(3) Sennett defines the terms as they were
developed during the seventeenth century: "'Public' meant open to the
scrutiny of anyone, whereas 'private' meant a sheltered region of life
defined by one's family and friends."(4) The home, a geographical space that
vividly represents the concept of the sheltered social space, provided a
locus for this discussion of the private/public in the way that the more
abstract arenas of the public sphere (the marketplace, government, the
press) could not; defining "home" (the private) became a way of defining
"not home" (the public). Thus the abundant conduct literature aimed at
defining the proper role of gentlewomen, and more specifically the social
place and function of domesticity, was just as concerned with defining the
public. In the early years of the seventeenth century, however, these
spheres were not yet determined. The intense discussion surrounding the
division of public/private, male/female social spheres in Jacobean England
led to a flexibility in the use of these terms which actually facilitated,
rather than hindered, some women's writing.
At the heart of the shifting and often contradictory notions of proper
feminine behavior lay the debate over the parameters of a woman's social
space, or the constraints to be placed on her actions and speech in
marriage, family, and commonwealth. This debate, while potentially limiting
the entrance of Jacobean women into the literary (hence public) sphere, in
effect created a socially indeterminate space which enabled many women to
write. As Ann Rosalind Jones points out, gender debates "established a
horizon of expectations that had to be confronted by any woman who wanted to
write"; yet in order to negotiate between these expectations and their own
supposedly transgressive behavior, female Renaissance poets adopted
"strategies for maneuvering within restrictions and turning the
contradictions among different discourses of femininity to their own
advantage."(5)
Leigh and Jocelin follow this pattern as well, each employing the ambiguity
over the division between public and private, male and female social spaces
to authorize their literary activities. Indeed, claiming and defining the
terms of their social space becomes one of the key strategies by which these
women enable themselves to write. Writing as mothers, they accentuate the
duality of their private and public roles, Elaine Beilin notes, "While the
role of loving mother instructing her children may seem to be a safe persona
for a woman writer, instead it highlights the conflict between private and
public status, and since publicity always endangers chastity and modesty,
ironically a mother who wrote threatened the essence of her womanly
virtues."(6) Perhaps in an effort to reassure us of the author's virtue, for
the most part these texts seem to support the predominant models of the
family or the ideals of the proper feminine and maternal roles (as defined
in marriage manuals by such authors as William Gouge, Robert Cleaver, and
John Dod).(7) Yet the very act of writing in support of conventional
domesticity paradoxically takes these women beyond the traditional
boundaries of the domestic sphere. Rather than ignore or negate their
conflicting roles as private mothers and public authors, however, Leigh and
Jocelin capitalize on this apparent discrepancy, often calling attention to
the duality of their position. They seem to share a common strategy of
creating a space of public privacy, a space which hinges between the worlds
of the home and of the "worlds eie" (to use Elizabeth Jocelin's phrase) (p.
11).
The genre of the mother's manual, or perhaps of the advice book more
generally, lends itself easily to this authorial space. Unlike female poets,
the authors of these maternal advice books are not writing in an overtly
public genre, one which explicitly assumes an external audience. The
mother's manual is a literary form which, despite its function of giving
general advice, remains ostensibly private, supposedly containing the
intimate words of a mother to her children. In publishing such a manual, the
author presents it to an external audience in order that the public eye may
be drawn back into the private realm of the mother-child relationship. The
reader is placed in the position of a passive onlooker observing a mother's
loving advice. Yet the very fact that there is a reader, that these intimate
communications have reached the general populace in the form of print, calls
attention to the text's public nature.(8) As a textual strategy, the
creation of a liminal authorial space which is neither private nor fully
public seems successfully to deflect opposition to women writing. Placed in
a voyeuristic role, the reader is denied the right to criticize female
authors in the way that overt claims to public voice might legitimate.
This is not to suggest, however, that the authors of mothers' manuals
refrain from directing the socially dominant sex. While these advice books
are ostensibly aimed at young children, in reality these women advise a more
powerful audience, comprised of husbands and soon-to-be grown sons.
Elizabeth Jocelin, for example, allegedly addresses the child still in her
womb, yet her text primarily directs her husband in that child's upbringing,
with extended passages discussing the education of children in general.
Likewise Dorothy Leigh offers her sons guidance on how to choose a wife and
run a household, advice geared more for adults, and advice which extends
beyond her own home. Neither of these texts specifically targets a maternal
or even a female audience; in fact, since most of the advice is geared
toward an immediate male readership (husband or sons), we might assume that
the intended buyership would also be predominantly male. Such mothers'
manuals do not simply contain directives for toddlers: they engage in a
discourse which in part determines the politics of the home, advising the
adult males who supposedly dominate both the private and public spheres.
This public advice is made possible only through the assumption of a private
voice.
In order to determine the parameters of the social and authorial space these
women establish for themselves, we can examine the explicit justifications
and citations of authority which pervade the mothers' manuals (perhaps more
extensively than in any other Renaissance genre used by female authors). The
strategies that Leigh and Jocelin employ to diffuse, negate, or bypass the
social obstacles against their writing reveal what those perceived obstacles
were. From these boundaries, we can better reconstruct how Jocelin and Leigh
conceive of the social space in which they live and write; the various
sources of authority they choose to support their writing - ranging from the
private sphere of the home and nursery to the public domain of the state -
indicate where they place themselves relative to their society. Dorothy
Leigh justifies her literary activities by citing both private and public
responsibilities, while Elizabeth Jocelin authorizes her work primarily by
the mandates for women to remain in the confines of the home. Yet both share
a common strategy of constructing a domain of public privacy, a space which
is simultaneously open and closed to public scrutiny.
In The Mothers Blessing Dorothy Leigh avoids clearly positioning herself in
relation to the ostensible audience of her sons; she is at once the intimate
nurturer and a social spokeswoman, the biological mother and a transcendent
spirit. While her writing could be construed as a form of public
self-display, she claims that it is intended for the intimate audience of
her family. Leigh states she has been forced to publish her book out of a
fear that her children - all three of them - would be unable to share a
manuscript (an unlikely excuse used to justify her publishing).(9) Leigh's
motivations and justifications for writing stem primarily from religious and
maternal obligations. She quotes extensively from the Bible, and she
continually emphasizes the pain of childbirth. From these different sources
of authority, Leigh creates a shifting spatial dynamic in which she resists
classification in either the public or the private realms. Writing from such
an ambiguous social situation, she does not negotiate gender boundaries or
"horizons of expectations" so much as she transcends them.
Dorothy Leigh is perhaps best seen standing in a doorway, simultaneously
functioning within her home and without. Simon Schama notes the prominence
of the doorway in early seventeenth-century Dutch art, signifying the
importance and the tensions surrounding this mediating, liminal space.(10)
As a woman who apparently had puritan leanings, Leigh finds it difficult to
distinguish the moral boundaries of her private domain: the social dictates
for feminine silence conflicted with a moral obligation to proclaim
outwardly her "light within." This paradox results in her movement between
the intimate edification of her children and public preaching. She often
supports her literary activities by biblical authority: those, she claims,
who have received the "light within" are "commanded to write it upon the
walls of [their] houses, and to teach it to [their] children" (p. 25;
marginal note cites Deut. 11:9, 20). But while using such passages to
authorize her writing, she does not overtly claim to be entering the public
sphere. The "walls of her house" are translucent, mediating between the
private space of the domestic interior and the public space of the worldly
exterior; contrary to expectations, Leigh does not perceive the boundaries
of her domestic sphere as an impermeable barrier to the public arena.
Rather, the writing on the wall is read from both sides, the family within
and the audience without. Her "public" mission can be performed while not
(ostensibly) extending beyond the audience of her sons.
The ambiguity of her position, publicly speaking out yet only to her
children, is epitomized by the full title of her work: "The Mothers
Blessing; or, the godly Counsell of a Gentlewoman, not long since deceased,
left behind her for her children. Containing many good exhortations and good
admonitions profitable for all Parents, to leave as a Legacy for their
Children." Leigh is at once the individual mother of three and a role model,
a paradigm of the Christian mother whose words become a legacy for all
children, the words of all parents. Her work becomes a showcase of maternal
morality - shown to the public while encased in the home.
Leigh portrays this mediation of private and public, or internal and
external, through pervasive references to birth. Indeed, her biological
maternity serves as another key source of authority for her literary
activities. Leigh continually reminds her audience of the process of labor
she underwent to bring forth her sons: "The holy Ghost saith by the Prophet,
Can a Mother forget the Childe of her wombe? (Esa. 49: 15) As if he should
say, Is it possible that shee which hath carried her Childe within her, so
neere her hart, and brought it forth into this World with so much bitter
paine, so many grones and cries, can forget it? . . . Will shee not instruct
it in the youth, and admonish it in the age, and pray for it continually?"
(pp. 9-10). The child "so neere her hart" becomes not only a rhetorical term
of endearment, but a biological reality. Lest we forget the intimate nature
of the relationship between mother and child, Leigh continually alludes to
the fact that she and her sons were once one and the same body. Such a state
heightens the sense of intimacy and reaffirms Leigh's position of authority
to write for her children: she writes to what was once her own self. The
recurring image of birth creates a sense of transition or mediation. During
labor, the child is no longer comfortably in the womb, yet has not arrived
in the world. Like Leigh's text, the child is seen to be momentarily
suspended between internal and external spheres.
Stylizing her text as the "honey" on which her children, or "industrious
bees," will feed after her death, Leigh claims authority as biological
mother. She tells her sons that her goal is to "make you labour for the
spirituall food of the soule, which must be gathered euery day out of the
Word . . . By the which you may see it is a labour . . . A pleasant labour,
a profitable labour: a labour without the which the soule cannot liue" (p.
5). Although "labour" in the last few lines may refer to the children's task
of gathering "spirituall food," the antecedent to "it" is vague and
ambiguous: "it" could just as well refer to Leigh's own writing, which
reenacts childbirth. The repetition and insistence on life-giving "labour"
(as well as the frequent use of words such as "paine," "grones," and
"cries") recalls the physical labor she herself suffered to bring forth her
children. Leigh claims a position and authority which men cannot hold, and
cannot easily refute without great disrespect. As the bestower of life,
Leigh places herself in an authoritative position, just as those who are
able to bestow power ultimately hold the most power themselves.
The Mothers Blessing contains numerous indications that Dorothy Leigh was a
puritan, or at least had puritan leanings: she quotes extensively from
Scripture (including biblical citations which are favorites of puritan
pamphleteers); she gives advice strongly reminiscent of puritan marriage
manuals (such as the insistence upon marriage as a union of "helpmeets");
she emphasizes teaching children and servants to read the Bible; and she
insists throughout upon hearing sermons as the way to salvation. Providing
"spiritual food" for her offspring, then, Leigh also performs what puritans
considered "the prime duty of the patriarchal household" - the "inculcating
of godliness."(11) The responsibility of providing a godly education was not
limited to the patriarch, however; as the anonymous puritan author of The
Office of Christian Parents (1616) emphasizes, the "chief labour" of the
children's education belongs jointly to mother and father.(12) Women were
morally required to contribute actively to their children's edification, and
given the pervasive analogy of the structure of family and state, this and
other household duties "may be accounted a publike work," according to
Gouge.(13) Continually emphasizing this sense of religious obligation, Leigh
once again simultaneously authorizes her entrance into the public sphere of
the written, published word while still maintaining her position within the
household. Leigh fulfills her Christian/maternal duty through her book, the
avenue by which she guides her children to the ways of God and urges them to
private prayer. She writes that "Sermons, and reading good Bookes, are the
onely meanes to bring a man to prayer" (p. 95), and "I will tell you what
good writing of Bookes doth: It makes the way to Christ easie to those that
desire to go in it" (p. 91). She clearly conceives of her own book serving
this function: she "write [s them] the right and ready way to Heaven" (sigs.
A[2.sup.v]-A3), that is, the "way that [she] had truly obserued out of the
written Word of God" (sig. A[2.sup.v]).
Yet even while offering direct, pointed advice to her children on how they
should manage their spiritual and domestic concerns, Leigh still distances
herself from her work, disclaiming an active or public role as advisor.
While she speaks briefly of "mee and all the Writers in the world" (p. 89)
(clearly positioning herself as an author), and draws a parallel between
"good Bookes" such as hers and sermons (perhaps the epitome of the
authoritarian, public male voice), the focus quickly shifts back onto the
book itself, not the author. Like the child that becomes separate from its
mother after birth, the text becomes an independent entity that functions on
its own, without its female author: "Reading good Bookes, worketh a mans
heart to godlinesse; for euen as the fire warmeth the Wax, and maketh it fit
to receive a good fashion; even so good Bookes . . . are the way to Christ"
(pp. 90-1). The text itself becomes active and public, while the author
remains passively hidden in the privacy of the home, that "house [that]
keepe [s] her warme,/A place where softly shee may rest, and be kept from
all harme."(14) Paradoxically, then, Leigh's authority to write stems in
part from a separation from the book she has produced, an implicit denial of
responsibility for her text.
Similarly, Leigh continually deflects attention away from herself and onto
the heavenly realm. It is from heaven that she finds much of her authority
to write; she often portrays herself as merely fulfilling the dictates of
her own heavenly advisors. Chief among these is, of course, Jesus Christ,
who mandated his followers to proclaim his Word to the world. Consequently
The Mothers Blessing often functions as a version of the conversion
narrative, a religious testimonial that brings deeply personal experience
into the public arena of the congregation.(15) As a devout Christian, she
must speak of Christ, and her literary activities are a material extension
of that: "Maruell not why I write: for I wonder, that euery one which hath
heard of him [Christ], doth not write what Christ hath done for vs" (p. 87).
Beyond obeying the directions of Christ, through writing Leigh also adheres
to the orders of her deceased husband. The children's "father in heaven" (an
ambiguous term which seems to collapse the figures of the mortal father and
God himself) had desired that the children "should be brought vp godily"
(sig. A5), and to fail to do so would be to disobey his wishes. As a wife,
she had been "charged in his Will by the loue and duty which I bare him, to
see [her children] well instructed and brought vp in knowledge," and she
"could not chuse but seeke (according as [she] was in [her] duty bound), to
fulfill his wil in al things" (sig. A[5.sup.r-v]). The responsibility, as
well as the authority, for the text ultimately rests in heavenly hands, as
Leigh absolves herself of any indiscretion or violation of gender
boundaries.
Throughout her text, Leigh allies herself with heavenly forces: Christ, her
deceased husband, and even the "Protectress" of her book, a heavenly vision
of Princess Elizabeth (newly arrived in the German Palatinate and still a
symbol of the puritans' political hopes) seated on her "angelicall Throne"
(sig. A[3.sup.v]). Leigh, like her image of the distant princess, appears to
exist not in the public or the private earthly sphere, but in the
transcendent realm of heaven. Leigh not only writes from a position between
the public and private, but even between heaven and earth, life and death:
The Mothers Blessing is, after all, styled as the last will and words of
wisdom from a dying mother. This transient, liminal status Leigh has created
enables her to write freely. The stance also confers authority: Leigh's
insistence on her ethical obligation to fulfill the terms of her husband's
will implies that her own testament must be respected and obeyed as well.
In The Mothers Legacie Elizabeth Jocelin places more emphasis on her
private, secluded position, primarily citing maternal affection and the
intimacy of the mother-child relationship as her authority to write. She
seems to exemplify the concept of maternity presented in many Jacobean
tracts on the family, a type of motherhood Mary Beth Rose describes as "a
private, almost pre-social interaction" between mother and child.(16)
Indeed, Jocelin's relationship is not only presocial, but even prenatal. The
erudite granddaughter of William Chaderton, Bishop of Lincoln, Elizabeth
Jocelin wrote The Mothers Legacie during her first pregnancy at age 26.
Jocelin addresses the work to her unborn child to provide for it the
spiritual and moral guidance she feared she would be unable to deliver if
she died in childbirth. (Jocelin's premonitions proved true, as she died
nine days after the birth of a daughter, Theodora.(17)) The text contains
directives to avoid sloth, pride, evil and obscene speech, and to adopt a
life of prayer and godly living. Despite her extensive education in secular
as well as religious learning, Jocelin uses primarily biblical references to
support her gracefully written prose. (In reference to her strictly biblical
allusions, Jocelin's editor Thomas Goad writes approvingly: "In the whole
course of her pen, I obserue her piety and humility: these her lines scarce
shewing one sparke of the elementary fire of her secular learning: this her
candle being rather lighted from the lampe of the Sanctuary" [sig.
A[6.sup.v]].) Produced in the privacy of her chamber, like the child born of
her "confinement," the manuscript was reportedly found and published by
Jocelin's husband after her death. Despite the intense, almost excessive
insistence that her text is strictly private, there are indications that
Jocelin envisioned her work entering the public domain. Although she does
not directly advance the publication of The Mothers Legacie, Jocelin hints
that her text is fit for the "world's eie," suggesting that she was reaching
to a larger audience than that of her husband and child.(18)
Ostensibly, however, The Mothers Legacie is intended solely for Jocelin's
child. Her text is the product of her "motherly zeale" (sig. B), the natural
result of maternity. This outpouring of maternal affection had been used as
an authorization to write by other female authors in the period.(19)
Elizabeth Grymeston, for example, prefaces her Miscelanea. Meditations.
Memoratives. (1604) with a letter to her son, explaining how her motherhood
enables and requires her to write: "There is no love so forcible as the love
of an affectionate mother to hit naturall childe: There is no mother can
either more affectionately shew hir nature, or more naturally manifest hir
affection, than in advising hir children out of hir owne experience, to
eschew evill, and encline them to do that which is good" (sig. A3). With her
insistence upon affection and "nature," Grymeston seems to present the text
as a loving interaction between mother and child, not as a text offering
counsel and religious guidance to a broader readership. Similarly, Jocelin
claims the maternal bond, one which is "forcible" and unavoidable, as her
primary authority and instigation to write.
The unique maternal relationship creates a division between the external,
public world and the internal, intimate world of the child which enables
Jocelin to write without compromising her modesty. Noting that she "may
perhaps bee wondred at for writing . . . considering there are so many
excellent bookes," Jocelin justifies her actions: "I confesse it, and thus
excuse my selfe. I write not to the world, but to mine own childe" (p. 10).
Writing to her child, Jocelin remains not only within the proper physical
boundaries of home and nursery, but within appropriate intellectual
limitations as well. She explains the origins of The Mothers Legacie thus:
I thought of writing, but then mine owne weaknes appeared so manifestly,
that I was ashamed and durst not vndertake it. But . . . I encouraged my
selfe with these reasons. First, that I wrote to a Childe, and though I were
but a woman, yet to a childs iudgement, what I vnderstood might serue for a
foundation to a better learning.
Againe, I considered it was to my owne, and in priuate sort, and my love to
my owne might excuse my errours.
(sigs. A[12.sup.v]-[B.sup.v])
Jocelin, the woman whom Bishop Thomas Goad, in writing the approbation of
her book, describes as accomplished in languages, history, and the arts,
seemingly confines herself to the small, intimate world of the nursery, a
private realm beyond the criticism and censure of the public. She may only
write to her own, "and in private sort" (sig. B).
Since (as we are continually reminded) Jocelin's child is as yet unborn, the
author seems to write not only to her own, but even to herself. The
expectant mother's ostensible audience, the child in her womb, does not take
the author or her text beyond the domestic sphere in which she is required
to remain. Indeed, Jocelin appears to be taking the mandate to remain in
private domestic seclusion to the utmost extreme. Writing to her unborn
child, Jocelin does not simply remain within the walls of her home, but
within the very limits of her own body. She repeatedly states that the
"other" of her audience is self-contained: "Who would not condemne mee if I
should bee carelesse of thy body while it is within me?" (p. 10). Here the
division between "I" and "thy" collapses, and the child "within" and the
mother occupy the same physical, bodily space; thus Jocelin's communication
does not extend outward but is reabsorbed into her own identity.
In depending upon the authority of motherhood, Jocelin's text ultimately
closes around itself and its author. Throughout The Mothers Legacie, Jocelin
and Goad present the text as a product of cloistered privacy; this very
privacy seems, ironically, to be the greatest authorization and
recommendation for the book. The architectural space vividly evoked in the
text emphasizes this sense of confinement. Goad comments that "priuately in
her Closet betweene God and her, [Jocelin] wrote these pious Meditations"
(sig. A[9.sup.r-v]). Jocelin claims that she is obliged to work secretly in
her chamber because the mention of death is so distasteful to her husband.
Goad approves of her feminine reticence, emphasizing that Jocelin left the
manuscript in the confines of a desk drawer, to be found and made public by
others: she herself apparently had no agency in bringing the text to the eye
of the reader.(20) Goad continues to highlight Jocelin's enclosed space even
after death, alluding to her sepulchre, and Jocelin also refers to the
narrow walls of her tomb. The "closet," the drawer, and the tomb construct a
world of seclusion, a graphic realization of Jocelin's feminine modesty. The
implicit parallels between the closed "closet" and the womb further
reinforce the concept of female sexual chastity. As a chaste woman, her
person and her words remain encapsulated and removed from the public view.
In this position, Jocelin seems to epitomize the ideal of womanhood as
presented in marriage manuals and advice books, where, as Peter Stallybrass
notes, "silence, the closed mouth, is made a sign of chastity. And silence
and chastity are, in turn, homologous to woman's enclosure within the
house."(21)
Yet Jocelin turns this position of being closed and enclosed to her own
advantage. As an exemplar of contained femininity, enclosed not only within
the house but seemingly within the space of one room (her "closet"), Jocelin
would appear to lose her voice - and her agency - as well. Indeed, the
"confinement" in her chamber (as both seclusion and childbirth), the
manuscript in the drawer and the winding sheet by her bed create a sense not
only of closeness and privacy, but even of imprisonment. Yet this
containment ironically functions as a means for Jocelin to enter the public
discourse. First, as a voluntary "prisoner" of the home, Jocelin
relinquishes control over her voice and her text. Her seclusion (as well as
her impending death) absolves Jocelin from any blame in publishing her text.
Despite strong hints to her husband that her text could (should?) reach the
public (the "world's eie"), and despite the general tone of the text, which
is similar to that of many other published treatises of religious
instruction,(22) Jocelin herself cannot be held directly responsible for the
public distribution of her text. She seemingly remains passive,
relinquishing her agency to her husband (and Bishop Goad). Through her
emphatic insistence on privacy and denial of agency, then, Jocelin
facilitates the entrance of her text into the public sphere.
Secondly, Jocelin's self-presentation as a paragon of womanly virtue
paradoxically authorizes self-display. Through her domestic seclusion and
wifely/motherly virtues, Jocelin becomes almost emblematic of the feminine
ideal set forth in many Jacobean marriage manuals. Indeed, she presents
herself at times almost as a visible manifestation of this ideal. She
invites the gaze that her private confinement supposedly prevents. In a
fascinating passage in which Jocelin apparently denigrates the very learning
which qualifies her to write, her self-depiction vacillates between modesty
and pride, and she describes the female position as ideally both private and
public:
I desire [my daughter's] bringing vp may bee learning the Bible, as my
sisters doe, good houswifery, writing, and good workes: other learning a
woman needs not: though I admire it in those whom God hath blest with
discretion, yet I desired not much in my owne, hauing seene that sometimes
women have greater portions of learning, than wisdome, which is of no better
use to them than a main saile to a flye-boat, which runs it under water. But
where learning and wisdome meet in a vertuous disposed woman, she is the
fittest closet for all goodness. She is like a well-balanced ship that may
beare all her saile. Shee is, Indeed, I should but shame my selfe, if I
should goe about to praise her more.
(sigs. B[3.sup.v]-B[4.sup.v])
From this last sentence, it is clear that Jocelin herself is the woman
"blest with discretion" that she so admires. It is also evident, ironically,
that her discretion and modesty position her as an object of public
admiration. The coexistence of her two images of womanhood, the closet and
the ship, points to the underlying strategy of Jocelin's work. As the
exemplary "vertuous disposed woman" of her own description, Jocelin is the
"fittest closet" - the ideal of close, confined femininity. Yet it is
exactly this seclusion that enables her to embark upon a task which, like
the ship, cannot be hidden from public view. Remaining within the most
private of spaces, she is enabled to enter the most public.
As the publishing history of these two texts indicates, the authorial
strategies Leigh and Jocelin employed successfully enabled them to enter the
public sphere of print without compromising their womanly virtue. Indeed,
they were not only accepted as writing women, but their best-selling texts
suggest that they were esteemed in their roles as mothers and counselors.
Citing religious and social obligations to justify their texts, Jocelin and
Leigh created a space in which they could write without incurring the
censorship of men. Leigh explicitly demands:
And can any man blame a Mother (who indeede brought foorth her Child with
much paine) though she labor againe till Christ be formed in them? Could S.
Paul with himselfe [be] separated from God for his brethrens sake? and will
not a Mother venture to offend the world for her childrens sake? Therefore
let no man blame a Mother, though she something exceed in writing to her
Children, since euery man knowes that the love of a Mother to her children,
is hardly contayned within the bounds of reason.
(pp. 11-2)
With the rather cryptic introduction of Saint Paul at this point (Romans
8:38-97), Leigh expertly averts potential criticism: to prevent a mother
from writing becomes as serious an offense as stifling Paul himself.
Likewise, a woman keeping her words and thoughts to herself would be as
selfish as Paul maintaining an antisocial, unchristian silence. It is
therefore not only permissible, but desirable that mothers should write.
Furthermore, like Paul's epiphanous conversion and subsequent writings,
zealous maternal writing is unavoidable, uncontainable within the bounds of
(primarily male?) reason. But while such mothers' manuals do not flagrantly
dismiss male authority, they do make subtly subversive claims. In a chapter
on the importance of choosing good names for one's child, for instance,
Leigh launches into a vindication of women, explaining how Mary has absolved
the sins of Eve, and compares the chastity of Susanna with the deception of
Judas. Elizabeth Jocelin's conventional statements against education for
women are undermined by the example of her text and her own person.
The elaborate justifications which these women felt compelled to present in
order to legitimate their writing ultimately made them authorities in their
own right. Their own texts would soon serve as authorization enough for
other mothers who wrote following their example. The anonymous (presumably)
female author of A Mothers Teares over hir seduced sonne (1627), for
example, specifically cites Leigh's and Jocelin's texts as her authorization
to write, entering into a religious debate under the guise of motherly
advice.(23) In "A Mothers Epistle to hir Child," the author writes, "here
are two books that goe under a mother's name: A Mothers Blessing; A Mothers
Legacie: now thou see'st A Mothers Tears." She seemingly places her own work
in this genre, identifying it with both Leigh's and Jocelin's, in that
"according to the patterne of wholesome words, call it A Mothers Blessing.
And because thy Mother, almost worn out with yeares and teares, is now lying
downe in sorrow, and not likely to see thy face, unlesse thou wilt hasten;
shee bequeathes this unto thee as her last will and Testament. Call it A
Mothers Legacie" (sig. A2). Leigh's text was most likely influential in the
production of another mother's manual of doubtful female authorship, M. R.'s
The Mothers Counsell, or, Live within Compasse (1623). Susanna Bell's The
Legacy of a Dying Mother to her Mourning Children, Being the Experiences of
Mrs. Susanna Bell (1673) also follows in the footsteps of Leigh and Jocelin,
as does the anonymous text The Mothers Blessing: BEING Several Godly
Admonitions given by a Mother unto her Children upon her Death-bed, a little
before her departure (1685). Leigh's and Jocelin's texts created an
important precedent, legitimating the maternal voice and creating an opening
through which women could enter into the public, predominantly male
discourse of advice literature. They provided an authoritative stance which
could be adopted by female - and even male - authors writing in this genre.
The influence of Dorothy Leigh on Elizabeth Jocelin may have been even more
direct; if the two women did not know each other directly, it is probable
that they were connected to the same Leigh family circle. Little is known
about the life of Dorothy Leigh. The daughter of aristocratic parents from
Essex, Dorothy Kempe married one Ralph Leigh, "a Cheshire gentleman and
soldier under the Earl of Essex at Cadiz,"(24) with whom she had three sons,
George, John, and William. A search for this gentlemanly Ralph Leigh of
Chester reveals only one likely candidate, the fourth son of Thomas Leigh of
Adlington and his wife Sybel.(25) Ralph's older brother Urian was knighted
at Cadiz by Essex, and the younger brother was perhaps there with him. Ralph
himself was slain in Newry, Ireland in 1597.(26) His date of birth is
uncertain, but he was living in 1573.(27) Assuming that The Mothers Blessing
is addressed to grown children, this Ralph Leigh could be the father of
Dorothy's children; some sources, though, cite him as being "s.p.," without
issue.
Whether or not this particular Ralph was Dorothy's husband, in marrying a
Leigh from Chester Dorothy entered a family in close geographical proximity
to, and in close social interaction with, the influential Brooke family of
Norton - the family of Elizabeth Brooke Jocelin. According to Daniel King's
chorographical description of the county in The Vale Royall of England
(1656), the Brooke estate at Norton was nestled between estates belonging to
the Leighs of Adlington, the Leighs of Lyme, and the Leighs of High
Leigh.(28) Not surprisingly, family records indicate that generations of
Brookes had business dealings with various branches of the Leigh family.(29)
The Brookes and Leighs also intermarried; indeed, two of Elizabeth Jocelin's
aunts (half-sisters to her father Richard Brooke), Frances and Thomasine,
married two Leigh half-brothers, George Leigh of Barton and Thomas Leigh of
East Hall, High Leigh (next door to the Leighs of Adlington).(30) King
claims that although "so many houses . . . carry this name," the Leigh
families all come from High Leigh, which is the original seat of "all the
renowned races of that name in this County";(31) though of many branches,
the Leighs appear to have been considered one family.
Thus if Dorothy Kempe Leigh married into any of the landed Leigh families of
Chester (especially the most likely Leighs of Adlington), there is a high
probability that the Brooke family, both through its proximity and marital
connections, would have become familiar with The Mothers Blessing. Perhaps
the presumably younger Jocelin, who by her own account was leading a rather
sheltered life, had through family connections heard of or even seen Dorothy
Leigh's text. And perhaps it was this text which inspired or gave her
confidence to write The Mothers Legacie six years after the publication of
The Mothers Blessing.(32) Although the two texts are distinct in tone,
Jocelin may have emulated - consciously or not - Leigh's precedent and
strategy of addressing her children as a means to write freely. It is
tempting to think that the two women may even have had direct contact; we
will probably never know. It does not seem implausible, however, that
Leigh's text had a strong impact on Jocelin's decision to write. Ultimately
the chief authorization and justification for Jacobean women to write, and
even to publish, may have been the writings of other Jacobean women.(33)
NOTES
1 The STC lists twelve extant editions of Dorothy Leigh's The Mothers
Blessing between 1616 and 1640. The 1630 edition was called the "fifteenth
edition," and four unnumbered editions followed; thus there may have been as
many as nineteen editions before 1640. Four more editions appeared between
1640 and 1674. Elizabeth Jocelin's The Mothers Legacie was likewise well
received; the STC lists seven impressions between 1624 and 1635. Other
English editions followed, and it was eventually translated into Dutch and
German (according to Frances Teague in Paul and June Schleuter, eds., An
Encyclopedia of British Women Writers [New York and London: Garland, 1988]
p. 258). I will be citing parenthetically the 1633 edition of The Mothers
Blessing and the 1624 edition of The Mothers Legacie.
2 Many recent critical studies have rendered unstable the notion of
patriarchy. Margaret J. M. Ezell, for example, challenges the standard
conception of Renaissance patriarchy in The Patriarch's Wife: Literary
Evidence and the History of the Family (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina
Press. 1987); chap. 3 is especially pertinent to this essay in light of the
familial connection of Jocelin and Leigh. Judith Newton also questions our
conventional view of patriarchy in "Making - and Remaking - History: Another
Look at 'Patriarchy,'" in Feminist Issues in Literary Scholarship, ed. Shari
Benstock (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 124-40.
3 See Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: W. W. Norton,
1976), especially chap. 1, and Jurgen Habermas, The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge MA: MIT
Press, 1989), chap. 3.
4 Sennett, p. 16.
5 Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros (Bloomington: Indiana Univ.
Press, 1990), pp. 12, 15. The phrase "horizon of expectations" comes from
Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti
(Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1982); see especially p. 79 and Paul
de Man's introduction.
6 Elaine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 266-7.
7 See William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (London, 1622), and Robert
Cleaver and John Dod, A Godly Form of Household Government (London, 1598).
8 Habermas notes this dynamic of public privacy in the eighteenth century,
commenting on its contribution to the success of novels such as Pamela.
"Subjectivity, as the innermost core of the private, was always already
oriented to an audience (Publikum) . . . Thus, the directly or indirectly
audience-oriented subjectivity of the letter exchange or diary explained the
origin of the typical genre and authentic literary achievement of [the
eighteenth] century: the domestic novel, the psychological description in
autobiographical form" (p. 49). The genre of the mother's manual continued
through the end of the seventeenth century, and further study might well
reveal that the evolution of this genre contributed substantially to the
development of the novel.
9 Leigh writes: "when I had written these things unto you, and had (as I
thought) somthing fulfilled your fathers request, yet I could not see to
what purpose it should tend, unlesse it were sent abroad to you: for should
it bee left with the eldest, it is likely the youngest should have but
little part in it. Wherefore setting aside all feare, I have adventured to
shew my imperfections to the view of the world" (sig. A[6.sup.r-v]).
10 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch
Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), pp. 565-612.
11 John Morgan, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning,
and Education, 1560-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), p. 142.
As Morgan notes, the metaphor of the parents providing "spiritual food" was
used by other puritan authors such as William Ames, who maintains that the
parents' responsibility is to (spiritually) nourish their children until
they are able to care for themselves (p. 150).
12 The Office of Christian parents, shewing how children are to be governed
throughout all ages and times of their life (Cambridge, 1616) frequently
stresses the importance of joint parental responsibility for the children's
education: "And truly if the parent did advisedly consider the manifold
profit, and the wonderfull honour, which floweth out of the good education
of children, they would spend all their strength, and make it their chief
labour, to bring them up in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in
the constant exercises of Christian pietie, godliness, and honesty" (sig.
A3). It is significant that in this tract parents are never referred to
individually, but jointly as "father and mother" or "parents" throughout.
13 Gouge, p. 18; cited in Margo Todd, "Humanists, Puritans and the
Spiritualized Household," Church History 49 (1980):18-34, 30. Todd discusses
the didactic obligation of puritan mothers and "the constant urging by
Puritan authors of domestic conduct manuals that parents catechize their
children and conduct daily prayer and Bible-reading sessions in the home"
(p. 24). She also notes many examples of puritan women actively educating
their children; see pp. 23-31.
14 From Leigh's introductory "Counsell to my Children" (sig. A7). 15 A late
seventeenth-century mother's manual by Susanna Bell, The legacy of a Dying
Mother to her Mourning Children, Being the Experiences of Mrs. Susanna Bell,
who Died March 13, 1672 (London, 1673), is in fact a deathbed conversion
narrative relating the trials and triumphs of life in both Old and New
England puritan settlements.
16 Mary Beth Rose, "Where Are the Mothers in Shakespeare? Options for Gender
Representation in the English Renaissance," SQ 42, 3 (Fall 1991): 219-314,
300.
17 Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p.
69. The daughter's name appears in the funeral certificate of Thomas Brooke,
Elizabeth's grandfather (John Paul Rylands, ed., Cheshire and Lancashire
Funeral Certificates, 1600-1678 [London: Printed for the Record Society,
1882], p. 44).
18 Maureen Bell, George Parfitt, and Simon Shepherd note that Jocelin also
left a manuscript treatise on education, which would provide further
evidence that she was writing for a larger, more public audience (A
Biographical Dictionary of English Women Writers, 1580-1720 [London:
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990], p. 117). Unfortunately, the Biographical
Dictionary does not state where this manuscript is located, and I have not
been able to find any other evidence or mention of its existence. The entry
for Elizabeth Jocelin in this volume also states that five editions of her
Letters were published between 1624 and 1684; again, I have been unable to
locate any record of these letters in the STC, Wing Catalogue, or elsewhere.
19 Pre-Renaissance women also used their maternity as a justification for
writing. See, for example, the ninth-century manual written by Dhuoda for
her son; discussed in Clarissa W. Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation: Christian
Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), pp.
96-100.
20 Keeping one's writing secret, even from one's husband, was apparently
considered a sign of virtuous, gentlewomanly conduct. The writings of
Elizabeth Egerton, countess of Bridgewater, were apparently also discovered
by her husband only after her death. This private production became one of
the greatest recommendations of her writing, if the inscription on her
monument is any indication of how and why her texts were valued. The tomb
proudly proclaims that Egerton produced "divine meditations upon every
particular chapter in the Bible written with her own hand, and never (till
since her death) seen by any eye but her own, and her then dear and
sorrowful husband" (cited in Betty S. Travitsky, "His wife's prayers and
meditations," The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print, ed. Anne M. Haselkorn
and Betty S. Travitsky (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1990), p.
244.
21 Peter Stallybrass, "Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed," in
Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early
Modern Europe, ed. Margaret Ferguson et al. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1986), p. 127.
22 In writing religious guidance for her offspring, Jocelin may also be
following the (primarily puritan) mandate for parents to educate their
children spiritually. While Jocelin's text does not bear the familiar
hallmarks of a puritan tract, it is most likely she was influenced by
puritan theology. Jocelin was educated in part by her grandfather, William
Chaderton, Bishop of Chester (and later of Lincoln), who appears to have
been a strong advocate of the reformations proposed by puritans, especially
the installation of a strong preaching ministry. See Patrick Collinson, The
Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 170,
210-2. Jocelin also appears to have been educated in the humanist tradition
(as her extensive knowledge of languages indicates); as Margo Todd reminds
us, the Christian humanists had also encouraged a didactic role for women in
children's upbringing.
23 A Mothers Teares over hir seduced sonne: or a disuasive from idolatry
(London, 1627), sig. A2. Although the opening of this text implies that it
is a mother's manual in the same vein as Jocelin's and Leigh's, the actual
content of the work is not so much advice as a religious debate between
mother and son over the merits/pitfalls of Catholicism.
24 Schleuters, p. 291.
25 For genealogical histories, see George Ormerod, The History of the County
Palatine (London, 1882), p. 662; J. P. Earwaker, East Cheshire: Past and
Present; or A History of the Hundred of Macclesfield, in the County Palatine
of Chester, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, 1877), p. 251.
26 Earwaker, p. 251.
27 Ibid.
28 Daniel King, The Vale Royall of England, or, The County Palatine of
Chester; A Description Historicall and Geographicall of the Countie Palatine
of Chester (n.p., 1656), pp. 90-5.
29 Papers of the Brooke family of Norton (stored at the Cheshire Records
Office in Chester) include, for example, a Deed of Covenants dated 17
November 1555 between Elizabeth Jocelin's great-grandfather Richard Brooke
and a Thomas Leigh. The marriage settlement for Richard Brooke, Elizabeth's
father, mentions property in Lyme (home of the Leighs of Lyme) and mentions
Richard's half-sister Townsend (of Tomasyn) and her husband Thomas Leigh.
Other Leighs, such as a John and Richard, appear in these papers. (Also
included is the record of financial dealings and settlement of debt [1606/7]
between Jocelin's father Richard and William Chaderton, his father-in-law.)
30 Frances's and Thomasine's marriages are noted in Arthur Adams, ed.,
Cheshire Visitation Pedigrees 1663 (London: Publications of the Harleian
Society, 1941), p. 64; George J. Armytage and John Paul Rylands, eds.,
Pedigrees Made at the Visitation of Cheshire, 1613 (London: Mitchell,
Hughes, and Clarke, 1909), p. 45; and in John Paul Rylands, ed., Cheshire
and Lancashire Funeral Certificates, 1600-1678 (London: Printed for the
Record Society, 1882), pp. 44-6. See also Ormerod, p. 462. The son of
Elizabeth's half-brother Henry, another Richard Brooke, also married a
Leigh, the sister of Richard Leigh of Lyme (Brooke family records, 8 March
1655/6).
31 King, p. 95.
32 Although Jocelin's text was published in 1624, she died shortly after
childbirth in October 1622. As Jocelin states she is writing during her
pregnancy, 1622 is presumably the year of composition.
33 I am grateful to Anthony Hoskins, Reference Librarian, Smith Family
Genealogy Center at the Newberry Library, Chicago, for his valuable guidance
in the genealogical research for this project. I would also like to thank
Barbara Lewalski and Heather Dubrow for their insightful comments on drafts
of this essay.
Kristen Poole is a graduate student at Harvard University, currently
completing her dissertation, a study of religious sectarianism and the trope
of the grotesque puritan in seventeenth-century drama and prose literature.
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