Bluestocking Oxford

By Ursula White

The destruction of female religious communities is an often overlooked, yet incredibly significant, result of the English Reformations. As the dissolution of Nunneries, Anchorholds, or Priories left religious women without an equivalent position in the Protestant Clergy, an alternative avenue of expression for the religious women of Early Modern England had to be found. 

In Christianity, the mother has always been a powerful symbol.  The Church is frequently presented as a maternal nurturing force, Mary venerated as mother and early educator of Christ Incarnate, and Christ himself depicted as a mother feeding his children in multiple Medieval texts. With the married clergy at the heart of the new Protestant regime, however, an increased significance on the family came with the English Reformation, and particularly the mother as an authoritative religious educator. This is highlighted in the development of a religiously active feminine voice through the genre of Death Bed Legacies, texts which purport to fulfil the maternal duty of education after the death of the mother. Two particularly significant examples of this genre are Elizabeth Grymeston’s Miscellanea, Meditations, Memoratives (1604, hereafter ‘Miscellanea’) and Dorothy Leigh’s The Mothers Blessing (1616, hereafter ‘Blessing’), both of which foreground the pedagogical feminine voice, as the two authors use maternity as an identity that allows them to write. 

Maternal love is privileged at the beginning of both Blessing and Miscellanea, and presented as a powerful natural phenomenon at the heart of the relationship between mother and child. As Leigh highlights the physical labour of the parent, describing ‘some wearing their bodies with labour, some breaking their sleeps with care, some sparing from their own bellies…’ (Ch1), she goes on to note that her own love is powerful enough not only to endure physical labour, but to persuade her to abandon her traditional feminine role in order to write her Blessing. Similarly, Grymeston evokes maternal love in her epistle noting that ‘there is nothing so strong as the force of love; there is no love so forcible as the love of an affectionate mother to hir naturall childe’ [my italics], imbuing it with a power which transcends all other love.

This ‘force’ becomes the defining factor of the two women’s writing, as they present education as part of the natural role of the mother, central to raising one’s child and dictated by maternal love. This is most notably apparent in Blessing, as Leigh explicitly states that ‘it was the motherly affection that I bear unto you all which made me now – as it hath done heretofore – forget myself in regard of you’ (Ch2), admitting that to write is to ‘forget’ her traditionally feminine role, whilst reminding the reader that her ‘motherly affection’ permits her action in doing so. Grymeston likewise describes her writing as an act of maternal love, resolving to ‘break the barren soil of my fruitless brain to dictate something for [her sons] direction’ (epistle). As she links her writing to Edenic imagery, presenting herself as a husbandman growing religious ‘direction’ from her love, the desire to educate her child becomes a natural force beyond her control, mirroring the ‘force’ of maternal love as it authorises her writing. 

Indeed, religious education is presented as a mother’s central duty within both texts. The writing of legacies is viewed as an essential part of maternity, allowing the teaching of children to continue after death. Stating that there is no way that a mother can ‘more affectionately shew hir nature, or more naturally manifest her affection, than in avising her children’, Grymeston highlights the importance of the maternal pedagogical role, placing ‘avising’ at the heart of a mother’s ‘affection’, thus making her ability to advise her son through her writings essential in light of her impending death. Leigh likewise uses the suggestion that religious education is at the heart of a mother’s role to justify her writing, claiming that ‘I know not how to perform this duty so well as to leave you these few lines’, again making the act of writing an acceptable form of expression. It is thus the role of the pious, pedagogical mother that allows the two writers to develop their religious voices outside of an established clergy. 

The role of the maternal voice is further established in the imagery relating to food throughout the two texts. Both writers present their religious subject as a nurturing substance, constructing the act of writing as the educational counterpart of the mother’s ability to feed her child. Grymeston evokes the metaphor of the bee making honey to describe the relationship between the Christian repenter and Christ, stating ‘let our repentant thoughts, like bees, suck at the flowers of his passion and make honey to delight ourselves and provoke others’ (Ch9). In this manner, she highlights the way in which religious teaching can nourish the reader, allowing her own teaching to feed her son’s mind. This is mirrored in Leigh’s work, in which she repeatedly refers to the word of God as ‘food for your souls’, warning her children that ‘if you desire any food for your souls that is not in the written word of God, your souls die with it even in your hearts and mouths’ (Ch2). Her warning is compounded and contrasted by her statement that, through her religious teaching, she wants to nourish her children, writing ‘but one sentence which may make you labour for the spiritual food of the soul’ (Ch2). In this manner, the two women further construct their religious advice as maternal care, authorising their words as the way in which they perform maternal duty. 

Through their engagement with maternal education, Grymeston and Leigh transcend the silence traditionally expected of Early Modern Women, gaining the platform through which to model devotion, provide secular guidance, and spread their own political ideals, placing the feminine voice at the heart of religious debate.

References and Further Reading

For an exceptional collection of Early Modern Women’s writing, including excerpts from Grymeston and Leigh alongside other Legacy Writers see: 

• Martin, R. (1977) Women Writers in Renaissance England 

For further writers on Early Modern Religious Women and Motherhood see: 

• Heller, J. (2011) The Mothers Legacy in Early Modern England 
• Crawford, P. (1993) Women and Religion in England 1500-1720 
• Hannay, M. (1985) Silent but for the Word
• Charlton, K.(1999) Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England