… Rachel Speght's self-consciousness as a literary woman manifests itself both in the subject of her first work, A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617), a defense of women written in direct response to Joseph Swetnam's Araignment of Lewde, idle, froward, and unconstant Women and in the persona of her second, a poem, Mortalities Memorandum, with a Dreame Prefixed (1621). In the dream portion of this second work, Speght presents an allegorized version of the struggles of an avowedly pious woman to gain access to knowledge, whether earthly or divine. Here Speght composes a countermyth to Eden in which, instead of following Eve's desire for forbidden knowledge, the poet seeks to banish her own ignorance, find knowledge of good, and use it for the spiritual profit of her godly audience. As a prose polemicist, Speght had devoted herself to the cause of women, but as a poet, she commits herself to the public role of ministering to the souls of all her Christian readers.

Dedicating Mortalities Memorandum to her godmother, the “vertuous Gentlewoman,” Mrs. Marie Moundford, Speght immediately points to the crucial distinction between women creating in the private sphere and in the public sphere, and cites the desire for public good as the most valid reason for moving from one to the other: “Amongst diversitie of motives to induce the divulging of that to publique view, which was devoted to private Contemplation, none is worthy to precede desire of common benefit.”¹ To save souls in the hour of death, declares Speght, is the only motive for the publication of this present work. The considerably less controversial nature of Mortalities Memorandum results perhaps from her “having bin toucht with the censures” of “criticall Readers” of A Mouzell for Melastomus and her attendant recognition of “that apothegme which doth affirme Censure to be inevitable to a publique act” (A2v). Indeed, Speght's writing career measures a woman writer's sensitive response to adverse criticism, for she seems to reply to censure by withdrawing from the open battle of the “woman question,” adopting instead the proven strategy of redeeming Eve by less direct tactics. Now she aims not for an audience of “ignorant Dunces,” but for the “courteous Reader” who will correct her faults “with judgement” and approve “what pleaseth thy Minde” (A3v). Revealing a developing sense of her own literary vocation, Speght, more than any writer thus far, explicitly ponders the central issues for a woman selecting and addressing her audience.

As we have seen, the continuous attempts to please, to write what is appropriate, and to avoid censure derive from the woman writer's sense that by being publicly articulate, she simultaneously represents and endangers her sex, and that in the public eye, she must actively prove her virtue. In Speght's case, her self-consciousness results in the creation of a new myth of woman's intellectual experience, which is directly connected to her pious mission to save souls.

The psychodrama that Speght presents in “The Dreame”—a device that objectifies her experience by placing it in an essentially literary rather than a personal context—details the progress, or pilgrimage, from natural ignorance to divine knowledge. At the beginning, the poet describes herself as “disconsolate,” stricken by “griefe,” “sadnesse,” “disease,” and the “maladie” of “Ignorance.” To the figure of Thought who suddenly appears, she describes her state as not knowing bad from good, and continually falling into unnamed “evils,” and she begs Thought “to tell me how my cure I may obtaine” (3). Thought declares herself unable to help in this case and recommends that the poet seek Experience to whom Age will direct her. Experience immediately prescribes the aid of Knowledge, but only the good sort which “by labour is attained,” and she in turn directs the poet to “Eruditions garden” (4), to which she will be guided by Industrie. Unlike Eve, who merely plucked her knowledge from a tree, the poet must labor for hers, guided by worthy Experience rather than by Satan. Yet, a counterforce to this positive progress appears in the figure of Disswasion, who fills the poet with perplexities and fear by offering the hindrances of “dulnesse, and my memories defect; / The difficultie of attaining lore, / My time, and sex, with many others more” (4). To her defense spring Industrie, who promises to cut away all obstacles by encouraging the poet's own diligent labor (Labor omnia vincet!) and Truth who denies the poet's sex is a hindrance. Beginning with Biblical authority, Truth cites Paul that both men and women possess the three faculties of “the mind, the will, the power” (5), and that God could not have given women intellect in vain, since “All parts and faculties were made for use.” Moving on to examples, Truth names the precedents of Cleobulina, Demophila, and Tilesilla for poetry, Cornelia for eloquence, Hypatia for astronomy, Aspatia for rhetoric, and Areta for art.² Turning to the poet, she exhorts her to keep a constant mind to forestall Disswasion, for if she remains steady and industrious in her purpose, she will gain the knowledge she desires.

The climax of “The Dreame,” expressed in its most lyric, exalted language, is the poet's arrival in “Eruditions garden,” where, simply, she learns of matters human and divine:

Where being come, Instructions pleasant ayre
Refresht my senses, which were almost dead,
And fragrant flowers of sage and fruitfull plants,
Did send sweete savours up into my head;
And taste of science appetite did move,
To augment Theorie of things above.
There did the harmonie of those sweete birds,
(Which higher soare with Contemplations wings,
Then barely with a superficiall view,
Denote the value of created things.)
Yeeld such delight as made me to implore,
That I might reape this pleasure more and more.

(7)

The joyous release of long pent-up frustrations recalls the drive and desire of generations of women before her to know, to reach the restricted source of power. And most notably, the poet's fulfillment occurs in a garden, a counter-Eden where she partakes only of “good” knowledge, the very knowledge, Speght reveals, by which God confers essential humanity. Truth tells the poet, “by it Gods image man doth beare, / Without it he is but a humane shape, / Worse than the Devill …” (8). In other words, as the humanists had always agreed, to deprive women of learning only makes them more vulnerable to ill, for “by vertue of it evils are withstood; / The minde without it is not counted good.” But going further than the humanists ever did in women's cause, Speght contends even more specifically that “True knowledge,” “the mother of faith, hope and love” leads to immortality: “'Tis life eternall God and Christ to know.” As Eve's Eden introduced death, Speght's new garden leads to Christ and salvation.

But despite its vital role, the lifelong pursuit of knowledge cannot be an occupation for this poet, for without detail, she recounts, “some occurrence called me away.” Now she must “rest content with that I had, / Which was but little,” and without hope for continuing her study, “I my time must otherwayes bestow” (9). Quietly, she accepts her destiny outside of the realms of thought and scholarship. The history of uncounted women authors exists in these few poignant lines describing the physical and mental circumscription seemingly imposed by the circumstances of sex.

Referring to her previous work, A Mouzell for Melastomus, Speght alludes to it as an accomplishment of her brief time of freedom, although she also acknowledges the criticism she received, particularly from Ester Sowernam, whose work, Ester hath hang'd Haman continued her own response to Swetnam, to be shortly followed by Constantia Munda's A Soppe for Cerberus. While she does call Esther Sowernam a “selfe-conceited Creature” (having a high opinion of her own qualities), Speght modestly accepts criticism and deprecates her own “weake exployt.” Speght nevertheless cites her work and that of her successors in the defence of “Eves sex” as examples of how knowledge contributes to the proper restoration of women to their full humanity. Admission into the ranks of learning not only redeems the individual soul, but authorizes the rehabilitation of the entire discredited sex.

Such authentication of her knowledge leads Speght to her present task in the common good of all believers, a poetic memento mori conceived during a dream-vision of Death who slew “With pearcing dart my mother deare” (10). Waking, she finds her mother is indeed dead “though of her life it could not her bereave, / Sith shee in glorie lives with Christ for aye.” Accordingly, to show Death for what it is, the poet proceeds with Mortalities Memorandum for the “profit” of her readers.

To trace the genesis of Death in the world, Speght must of course return to the Eden story. Following her evocation of a redeemed “Eruditions garden,” in which a woman may truly learn, her characterization of Eden is brief, perhaps to avoid the delicate issue of Eve's guilt. Compressing all the historically troublesome parts of Genesis into two lines—“And Sathan thinking this their good too great, / Suggests the Woman, shee the man, they eate,”—Speght concludes, “Thus eating both, they both did joyntly sinne” (13). Death enters the world because both Adam and Eve displeased God, and Speght barely hints that Eve may have started the trouble by listening to Satan. Having redeemed Eve in her “Dreame,” she cannot dwell on Eve's traditional role, even if the rest of her poem relies on received doctrine.

While A Mouzell for Melastomus and Mortalities Memorandum seem to be very different works—the first a prose polemic championing woman's character, and the second a poem describing Death from the traditional Christian perspective celebrating resurrection and immortality—together they reveal in the author's pose and relation to her writing the growth of her consciousness as a woman artist. By responding to Joseph Swetnam's attack, by making woman her subject, Speght courageously assumed that such an assault should be faced openly and refuted openly, but in the resulting work, her topical limits and rhetoric are in fact established by the male author to whom she responds. As radical as this work may seem in publicly defending women, its real roots are in the reactionary language and ideas of Swetnam himself. But in “The Dreame,” Speght's garden myth justifies woman's right to knowledge as part of her human inheritance from God, crucial to her individual salvation. As a preamble to the traditional doctrine of Mortalities Memorandum, “The Dreame” firmly includes women in the poetic search for salvation.

Speght herself uses her laboriously won knowledge, even if it be “little,” for the “common benefit” of all who face death, that is, of all humanity. Her poetry, addressed now to a wider audience, entrenches her, without apology, as a minister to and a teacher of her flock of readers. Contrasting earth with heaven, she emphasizes the “sicknesse, want, and woe,” the “maladie” here with the “melodie” there. Joyously, she creates the heavenly scene:

There Saints are Crown'd with matchlesse majestie,
Invested with eternall roabes of glorie;
There Sunne doth shine, and suffers no eclips,
Earths chiefest joyes are vaine, and transitorie.
Unconstant, fading, fickle, and unsure,
But heavens pleasures permanent endure.

(18)

In her ministerial role, Speght retreats from the woman question as defined by men, and instead conceives of herself fully contributing to the Reformed effort to awaken humankind to its plight and potential salvation—in its way, a more radical role to assume. …

Notes

1. Rachel Speght, Mortalities Memorandum, with a Dreame Prefixed, imaginarie in manner: reall in matter (London, 1621), A2. Hereafter cited in the text.

2. Speght uses remarkably learned women for her exempla: Cleobulina, celebrated for her learning, judgment, and courage, composed enigmas; Demophila was a sibyl of Cumae; Hypatia, a mathematician, teacher, Platonist, and astronomer of Alexandria; Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, saved her sons with her eloquence.