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The forgotten literary canon

By Cireena Simcox - posted Wednesday, 28 December 2005


When Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, wrote her play Antonie in 1592, she became the first woman in England to have a play published. In the second year of the new century (1602) her Thenot and Piers in Prase of Astraea became the first original dramatic verse written by a woman to appear in print. Once the door had been cracked open, however, other women were quick to try to wedge themselves through the magical doorway.

Although the history of English literature has accorded Ben Jonson the honour of being the first poet to write what became the genre of “Country House” poetry in his oft-quoted To Penhurst, Aemelia Lanyer (1569- 1645) empirically pipped him to the post. Her country house poem The Description of Cooke-ham predates Jonson by six years. Scholar Barbara Lewalski, among others, has argued that, through the links of family connections, it is possible Jonson was familiar with Lanyer’s work before his own was penned.

Lanyer struggled into print in the face of outrageous odds but, by using the cunning device of dedicating her work Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum to “the Queene’s most excellent Majesty”, and by writing of biblical characters her opus could be seen as a religious tract. However even this was a departure, as part of her “dedication” tells us:

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Vouchsafe to view that which is seldom seen,
A woman’s writing of divine things.

Additionally though, Salve Deus was used as a vehicle to protest the prevailing theory advanced for the marginalisation of women as a result of Eve’s sin. Lanyer is the first woman publicly to point out that theory as flawed. For, if men claim patronage over all woman as the superior sex then, argued Lanyer, they must also claim the greater fault in eating the apple of original sin:

No subtle serpent’s falsehood did betray him [Adam];
If he would eat it, who had power to stay him?

There is significant conjecture that Elizabeth Cary's play The Tragedy of Mariam, which pre-dated Milton’s Samson Agonistes, also provided him with inspiration, much as Lanyer may have done for Jonson. Modern research also posits her as the writer of the political history The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II, and thus the first Englishwoman to write a full-scale history. Cary, like Lanyer, used a biblical theme to frame her discourses. For the first time we hear a woman’s opinion on the right to seek divorce:

Why should such privilege to man be given?
Or given them, why barred from women then?
Are men than we in greater grace with Heaven?

Throughout the troubled and turbulent 17th century women were braving social ostracism, divorce, public condemnation and even jail, in order to make their voices heard. Through their works we have proof that, 400 years ago, women were as outraged by the inequalities brought about by gender constraints as the most ardent present-day feminists. The things they railed against and fought for were pretty much the same things that women today engage themselves with: including, very often, other women’s seeming compliance with the status quo. Indeed, as Hannah Wooley (1621-1676) disdainfully sniffed, “Most in this depraved later Age think a woman learned and wise enough if she can distinguish her husband’s bed from another’s”.

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They also brought with them the wry sense of humour most women relate to in gender issues. Instead of remonstrating publicly about the sickly-sweet pseudo-classical pastoral forms which proliferated during the period, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) wrote in perfect classical form a poem of her own. I defy any modern woman to read this classic poem and not to laugh at the denouement: the lusty young god, seizing upon an innocent maid in the correct fashion finds himself the prey instead of the predator - and is unable to perform. In another verse, making oblique reference to the underserved reputation as a whore her writing had bestowed upon her, she wrote a pretty thank-you verse to a rival - then inquired sweetly how his recently contracted venereal disease was progressing.

Regardless of the fact women’s contributions and their fashioning of new genres changed forever the canon of English literature, the consequences of the deliberate suppression of this body of works still reverberates through society. Until “her-story” is included in the copious “his-tories” that frame our society, women, not only in the writing and academic fields, but from all walks of life, have no knowledge of their forebears or of the traditions they helped to forge. Our historiography is flawed.

In conclusion it is necessary to point out our entire frame of reference for what constitutes “literature” and what does not, has been promulgated as a male construct. The voices of female writers were effectively quashed and discredited, and women writers still struggle for acceptance today. And we, as a society, remain ignorant of the true complexity of the forces which helped shape our society.

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Article edited by Virginia Tressider.
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About the Author

Cireena Simcox has been a journalist and columnist for the last 20 years and has written a book titled Finding Margaret Cavendish. She is also an actor and playwright .

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