While Milton may have been the first seventeenth-century canonical English writer to advance an arguably egalitarian view of woman,¹ he is preceded and in some instances surpassed in this achievement by a number of early seventeenth-century women writers. Following Mary Nyquist's initial analysis of the contrast between Milton and Speght, I will contrast Milton's views on gender with those of Rachel Speght, whose work appeared approximately thirty years before Milton's divorce tracts. Although Speght's writing is qualified and complicated by contemporary gender restrictions imposed on women writers in this period, her notion of gender equality, especially in marriage, is still more “advanced” than Milton's. I must emphasize, though, that I do not intend to discount Milton's enlightened view of woman. It cannot be denied that the depth of subjectivity Milton grants Eve in Paradise Lost is certainly progressive for its day (as well as for Milton). Among the most compelling aspects of Eve's portrayal is the attribution of language, thought and intellect to a female character. Eve has her own history and is allowed to express it in her own words and using her own hermeneutic capabilities. However, apologies for Milton's patriarchal depiction of women such as “[Milton] lived in the seventeenth century, and it seems pointless to complain that he was of his age” (Webber 21) rely on a limited and biased notion of historical accuracy. While attempting to be more historically accurate, Milton apologists have in fact overlooked the egalitarian and, in my opinion, “feminist” portrayals of woman in existence during the period and written by members of society outside the dominant masculine culture. Contrasting Speght's mutual-egalitarian interpretation of creation and marriage with Milton's presubordinationist view establishes a point of contention in their work that ultimately yields a more historically inclusive view of the gender politics implicit in the ongoing debate on the nature of woman waged in England during the seventeenth century. In addition, such a contrast provides readers with an opportunity to consider complex ways in which Milton's “enabling perspective” (Wittreich 158) may itself have been enabled by the accomplishments of his literary predecessors. …

When analyzing the notion of woman's spirituality one must reunite the religious aspect of spirituality with its political and social components, which are of particular consequence to the daily lives of early modern women. Woman's spiritual equality in the religious sense was readily accepted by Catholics and Protestants (both orthodox and reformed) alike. For the most part this merely implied that women were acknowledged as having souls and as being as capable as men of attaining salvation—both facts being rather difficult to deny even by the most cursory reading of Scripture (see Mendelson and Crawford 31-34). However, while woman's spiritual equality in the religious sense could not credibly be rejected, limits were imposed on the egalitarian impact such equality had on women's lives. The spiritual equality women were granted was based primarily on the belief that they possessed an immortal soul; therefore, their equality was affixed strictly to the realm of potentiality. Theirs was the promise of eternal salvation, not the attainment of earthly liberation.

Attempts at limiting woman's equality in society by rejecting her mutual-egalitarian creation were not lost on Rachel Speght, the first female contributor to the Jacobean querelle des femmes—a pamphlet war waged over woman's proper place and role in society, and, more specifically, in marriage, based on her creation. Speght's 1617 polemical tract, A Mouzell for Melastomus, was written in response to Joseph Swetnam's The Araignment of Lewde, idle, froward, and unconstant women published in 1615. The purpose of Speght's response, as she notes in the preface, is to denounce Swetnam's libelous, misogynistic, and ultimately anti-Christian depiction of women's (and, in particular, wives') inherent evil nature. Speght accomplishes this task not by discounting the existence of patriarchy, but by denying “any essential basis for it in nature or in the spiritual order” (Lewalski xxxi).

Speght's treatise provides a defense of woman's spirituality by arguing for the equality of woman's creation—unlike Milton, Speght announces that woman, like man, is created in God's image. Speght also defends woman's spirituality by arguing for mutual equality between the sexes in marriage—man may be woman's head and guide, but for Speght this implies neither subjection nor inferiority:

Yet a truth ungainesayable is it, that the Man is the Womans Head [1 Cor. 11.3]; by which title yet of Supremacie, no authority hath hee given him to domineere, or basely command and imploy his wife, as a servant; but hereby is he taught the duties which hee oweth unto her … For he is her Head, as Christ is the Head of his Church [Eph. 5.23], which hee entirely loveth, and for which hee gave his very life; the deerest thing any man hath in this world; … This president [sic] passeth all other patternes, it requireth great benignity, and enjoyneth an extraordinary affection, For men must love their wives, even as Christ loved his Church.

(Speght 23)

Speght's egalitarian reading of Genesis 1.26, “Furthermore God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness …,” enables her to interpret Ephesians 5 above to mean that man, as woman's head, is to love, teach, and protect her, not subject her to his commands. Speght argues that woman is man's equal because she was created (like man) to glorify God, her creator, directly, and not God in man²—“in the Image of God were they both created” (19). Alternatively, Milton's reading of Ephesians 5 in Tetrachordon denies woman mutual equality in marriage. Privileging Genesis 1.27, “Thus God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him; he created them male and female,” over Genesis 1.26, Milton views woman as a secondary being created from and for man:

The head of the woman, saith he [Paul], I Cor. 11 is the man: he the image and glory of God, she the glory of the man: he not for her, but she for him. Therefore his precept is, Wives be subject to your husbands as is fit in the Lord, Coloss. 3.18. In every thing, Eph. 5.24.

(589)

In Speght's account of the proper relationship between husband and wife she qualifies Paul's designation of the man as head by emphasizing man's duties towards his wife resulting from this “privileged” appellation. Speght insists upon love being owed to a wife by her husband, in the same quantity and of the same quality as Christ's love for his church; while not denying gender hierarchy in marriage, Speght's writing implies no physical or mental inferiority in women. And, unlike Milton who espouses woman's “subjection” (a term, along with “inferiority,” not to be found in Speght's tract), Speght reminds men of their responsibilities as “head” by drawing on the misconceptions they seem to have of their actual authority:

if men would remember the duties they are to performe in being head, some would not stand a tip-toe as they doe, thinking themselves Lords and Rulers, and account every omission of performing whatsoever they command, whether lawfull or not, to be matter of great disparagement and indignity done them.

(Speght 24; emphasis added)

Speght's view of man's headship in relation to woman, through her exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5, once again enables her to draw different conclusions than Milton does about man's proper relationship to his wife. Speght notes that a husband must protect and defend his wife; he must not argue with her but “live with her lovingly, and religiously, honouring her as the weaker vessell”; also, he must instruct her about God “that so she may be a fit stone for the Lords building” (24; emphasis added). …

In order to continue contrasting Speght and Milton while dispelling the notion that “Adam and Eve are equals and that the perception of a hierarchy between them is a misreading caused by ascribing fallen values and prejudices to their innocent state” (Peczenik 29), I have chosen to analyze Milton's presubordinationist viewpoint in Paradise Lost by focusing on Speght's aforementioned command to men to honor their wives, albeit as the weaker vessel. Milton's use of the word “honor” in relation to Eve in each of only three times it is used in the poem implies both sex and subjection, whereas in Speght no such gender subjugation is inferred. And while Speght does specify that woman is to be honored “as the weaker vessel” (Speght 24), this reference does not imply inferiority for a number of reasons. Among the various progressive ways Speght denotes man must honor his wife, her acknowledgement of woman as the weaker vessel can be understood as an example of her use of the popular modesty topos used by early modern women writers to ward off unwarranted criticism and possible censure. In fact Speght announces such efforts in her dedication when she proclaims that, “in regard of my imperfection both in learning and age, I need so much the more to impetrate [entreat] patronage from some power to sheild mee from the biting wrongs of Momus [Greek mythological figure of censoriousness], who oftentimes setteth a rankling tooth into the sides of truth” (5). Speght also qualifies her reference to woman as the weaker vessel by establishing a correlative metaphor for man. In her treatise Speght refers to man as “the stronger vessel” who is expected, as such, to help his wife with the “burthen of domesticall affaires” (20). Thus, as Mary Nyquist has astutely pointed out, by using the terms “stronger vessel” and “weaker vessel” to apply respectively to man and woman, Speght accepts traditional gender hierarchies while at the same time “deploying a linguistic stress on balance and mutuality to neutralize hierarchical oppositions” (Nyquist 108). Speght's use of correlative gender metaphors also radically offsets the implied gender differences of each respective metaphor by identifying both women and men as God's vessels—a biblically unprecedented bi-gender identification.³

In addition, one must also consider the biblical source—1 Peter 3.7, as noted in the text's margin—of Speght's appeal to man to honor his wife, as in her argument, “no more must the husband with the wife, but expelling all bitterness and cruelty hee must live with her lovingly, and religiously, honouring her as the weaker vessell” (Speght 24; emphasis added). Examining the source verse in its entirety, along with the accompanying Geneva Bible glosses, enables one to appreciate the extent to which Speght both maintains and deviates from the verse's literal meaning. 1 Peter 3.7 reads as follows: “Likewise ye husbands, dwell with them as men of knowledge, giving honour unto the woman, as unto the weaker vessel, even as they which are heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not interrupted” (emphasis added). The Geneva Bible gloss informs us that the reason “man ought to love his wife” is “chiefly because that God hathe made them as it were felowe heires together of life everlasting,” and that this reason supersedes the two other reasons given in the gloss, namely that they share a life together and that woman is the weaker vessel. Speght accentuates the Geneva gloss by noting that “husbands should not account their wives as their vassals, but as those that are heires together of the grace of life …” (22; emphasis added). Moreover, by insisting that wives are “heires together of the grace of life,” Speght effectively emphasizes the most egalitarian of the three reasons offered in the Geneva annotation. Speght further promotes the reciprocal relationship between husbands and wives stated in the biblical verse by arguing that God rests mankind's salvation on woman's seed “wherefore, that she might not of him, who ought to honour her, be abhorred” (15; emphasis added).

1 Peter 3.7's opening rhetorical gambit, “likewise,” connotes a considerable amount of reciprocity between husbands and wives. “Likewise” suggests that the honor husbands are reminded to grant their wives is also being granted to them by their wives, and this, we are told, maintains the uninterrupted nature of their prayers. In addition to the inherent mutuality between husbands and wives stated in the verse itself, there is also a linguistic correlation to 1 Peter 3.1: “Likewise let the wives be subject to their husbands that even they which obey not the word, may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives” (emphasis added). Here Peter calls for the controversial subjection of a wife to her husband, but he qualifies this recommendation by noting that a wife's subjection ensures that husbands lacking in belief (“without the word”) will be dutifully pursuaded to embrace religion through “the conversation of [their] wives.” Speght, I believe, intended her audience to recall implicitly 1 Peter 3.1's announcement of a wife's ability to restore her husband's faith in God through conversation by referring explicitly to 1 Peter 3.7 because the promulgation of women's speaking for religious purposes precisely captures the essence of her work's intent—that is, to qualify a woman's right to partake publicly in the proclamation of her faith and in the denunciation of anyone's, e.g., Swetnam's, attempt to blandish Scripture, the cornerstone of her Protestant faith. …

Speght's emphasis on the gendered reciprocity of 1 Peter 3.1-7, as noted earlier in her explanation that God privileges woman with mankind's salvation in order to ensure that her husband who should honor her does not abhor her, is furthered in her acknowledgment of God's role in sanctioning women's religiosity; a position which contrasts sharply with Milton's views on the subject. Whereas Speght constructs her argument by providing numerous examples evidencing God's selection of women to convey his word and do his service—“as Marie Magdalen, Susanna, and Joanna the wife of Herods Steward, with many other, which of their substance ministered unto CHRIST” (Speght 20)—one is hard pressed to find any such example in Milton. Speght clarifies her point that God actively privileges women by noting that “he is a Saviour of beleeving women, no lesse than of men, that so the blame of sinne may not be imputed to his creature, which is good; … his mercie was equivalent to both Sexes; so that by Hevahs blessed Seed (as Saint Paul affirmes) it is brought to passe, that male and female are all one in Christ Jesus [Gal. 3.28]” (16). Speght's reference to Paul's egalitarian statement in Galatians 3.28 contrasts with Milton's lack of reference to it anywhere in his prose or poetry. In fact every example that Speght offers to support the view that women are as deserving as men to be favored by God seems almost deliberately overlooked by Milton in Paradise Lost. Speght claims that:

… God is no respect of persons [Rom. 2.11], Nations, or Sexes: For whosoever, whether it be man or woman, that doth beleeve in the Lord Jesus, such shall bee saved [John 3.18]. And if Gods love even from the beginning, had not beene as great toward woman as to man, then would hee not have preserved from the deluge of the old world as many women as men; nor would Christ after his Resurrection have appeared unto a woman first of all other, had it not beene to declare thereby, that the benefites of his death and resurrection, are as availeable, by beleefe, for women as for men; for hee indifferently died for the one sex as well as the other. …

(23)

In conclusion, Milton does not share Speght's commitment to promoting woman's spiritual equality to man. Whereas Milton is interested in improving the condition of “mankind” by restoring marriage “to that serene and blissful condition it was in at the beginning” (DDD 240), Speght explores the theology of woman's creation to improve the social condition of women's lives, or, as she states, “to comfort the minds of all Hevahs sex, both rich and poore, learned and unlearned” (Speght 4). Milton's masculinist and Speght's feminist readings of Genesis and Paul's epistles ultimately betray the self-interested, supra-theological motives driving their individual arguments. Far from being implausible, as some supporters of Milton's progressive representation of women believe, mutual-egalitarian interpretations of woman were not only possible, they were also in existence during the seventeenth century. And early modern women writers such as Rachel Speght, I believe, became the vanguard of this tradition by recognizing the potential of mutual-egalitarian interpretations of Scripture to revolutionize the concept of woman.

Notes

1. Throughout this essay the word “woman” is used to denote womankind, particularly in a theological, spiritual context as originally represented by Eve, whereas “women” is used to denote “real” women in a historical, secular context.

2. “For as God gave man a lofty countenance, that hee might looke up toward Heaven, so did he likewise give unto woman”; “… women are enjoyned to submit themselves unto their husbands no otherwaies then as to the Lord; … for if a wife fulfill the evill command of her husband, she obeies him as a tempter.”

   (Speght 19, 24)

3. The radical implications of Speght's creation and use of the correlative male metaphor, “stronger vessel,” are accentuated by recognizing that the 1602 edition of the Geneva Bible annotation of 1 Peter 3.7 strictly limits the use of the term vessel to women only: “The woman is called a vessell after the maner of the Hebrewes, because the husband useth her as his fellow and helper, to live faithfully before God.”

Works Cited

The Geneva Bible. A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition. Ed. Lloyd E. Berry. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1969.

The Geneva Bible (The Annotated New Testament, 1602 Edition). Ed. Gerald T. Sheppard. New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1989.

Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Introduction. Speght xi-xxxvi.

Milton, John. The Complete Poetry of John Milton. Ed. John T. Shawcross. Rev. ed. New York: Doubleday, 1971.

———. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Milton, Complete Prose Works, vol. 2.

———. Tetrachordon. Milton, Complete Prose Works, vol. 2.

Nyquist, Mary. “The Genesis of Gendered Subjectivity in the Divorce Tracts and in Paradise Lost.” Re-membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions. Eds. Mary Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson. London and New York: Methuen, 1988. 99-127.

Peczenik, Fannie. “Fit Help: The Egalitarian Marriage in Paradise Lost.” Mosaic 17 (1984): 29-48.

Speght, Rachel. The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght. Ed. and introd. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.

Swetnam, Joseph. The Araignment of Lewde, idle, froward, and unconstant women. London, 1615.

Webber, Joan Malory. “The Politics of Poetry: Feminism and Paradise Lost.” Milton Studies 14 (1980): 3-24.

Wittreich, Joseph. “‘Inspir'd with Contradiction’: Mapping Gender Discourses in Paradise Lost.” Literary Milton: Text, Pretext, Context. Eds. Diana Treviño Benet and Michael Lieb. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1994. 133-60.