The Really Dead Women Writers Meme

This meme was started by Bardiac. I found it thanks to Heo Cwaeth. I tried to do this cheater thing where I had Heo Cwaeth email me the html she used to post her entry, but it didn't translate well for whatever reason. Her version is better than mine because it has links to ALL the various texts, not just the ones she added. I'm sorry, but I'm too lazy to do that for you; if you want to learn about these other texts, you'll have to click on the link to HER post.

(Note as of Tuesday, April 11, Bardiac has compiled a list of all the contributions)

Starter Five from Bardiac:
Behn, Aphra - Oroonoko
Christine de Pisan (aka Pizan) - The Book of the City of Ladies
Julian of Norwich - Revelations of Divine Love
Locke, Anne (aka Ane Lok, etc) - A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner
Marie de France - The Lais of Marie de France

Dr. Virago then adds:
The Paston Women - The Paston Letters
Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe
Anonymous - The Floure and the Leafe(Her reasoning for this is on her blog)
Lady Mary Wroth - Poems

La Lecturess then adds:
Anne Askew - The Examinations of Anne Askew
Mary Sidney - Psalms
Anne Finch - Poems
Katherine Phillips - Poems
Teresa of Avila - Life

Amanda at Household Opera then adds:
Bradstreet, Anne: collected poems
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Fama y obras póstumas
Lanyer, Aemilia: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Wroth, Lady Mary: Urania

Medieval Woman then adds:
Trotula - The Diseases of Women
Female Troubador Poets:- La Comtessa de Dia - "A chantar m'er" & other Trobairitz poetry excerpted.
Hrostvitha of Gandersheim (c.930-c.1002) - Plays Gallicanus & Dulcitius

Heo Cwaeth then adds:
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) Scivias and Liber Divinorum Operum
Rachel Speght (1597 - Some time after 1621) Mouzell for Melastomus and Mortalities Memorandum
Anna Comnena (1093-1153) The Alexiad
Frau Ava (1060-1127) First named German poetess. "Johannes," "Leben Jesu," "Antichrist," "Das Jüngste Gericht" (That's in MHG)
Dhuoda (9th century, inexact dates) Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son (at Sunshine for Women) and a dual-language version from Cambridge UP

Continuations of this meme have occurred all over; check the comments on the various blogs listed above to find other early women writers. Dr. Crazy was the one who brought up the most obvious entry of all: Sappho. (I admit I hadn't thought of Sappho myself, and I admit I was ashamed. Doh!)

One of my favorite continuations is courtesy of Natalie at Philobiblion; she adds:
Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (A lady in waiting to the Japanese empress c. 965AD)
Eliza Haywood The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless (1751) (and much else)
Chen Tong, Tan Ze and Qian Yi, authors of The Peony Pavilion: Commentary Edition by Wu Wushan's Three Wives (1694) They were his successive wives, by the way...
Isabella Whitney, The Copy of a Letter, lately written in meeter by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her unconstant lover (1567) and A Sweet Nosegay, or Pleasant Posy: Containing a Hundred and Ten Philosophical Flowers (1573)
Elizabeth Elstob, The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue (1715).

Given that several of the early women writers I'd add have already been mentioned, I thought I'd discuss the early women writers I personally would recommend. Bardiac suggests the list focus on women who have been dead for 300 years, but she also mentions the scarcity of attention in college courses to women who wrote before 1800, and people seem to have interpreted that as the cutoff date as well. I'm going to follow suit in a couple of cases, because it makes the list easier and more fun for me to compile.

1. Elizabeth Tudor (1533-1603): My first great historical crush. The woman wrote some great letters and gave some truly eloquent speeches, AND she wrote poetry.

2. Margery Kempe (c. 1373-1440), The Book of Margery Kempe: MK is my favorite illiterate author. She dictated the story of her life to a scribe--perhaps her confessor. She cried a lot (she was rather proud of that fact) and was probably really annoying to be around, but the story of her spiritual development is fascinating.

3. Aphra Behn (1640-1689): I read several of her plays 20 years ago but don't remember them. What I do remember is reading some scandalously funny poem in an undergraduate lit survey about how some sexy encounter in a pastoral setting was ruined when the hot young shepherd pursuing the hot young shepherdess couldn't get it up.

I also remember wandering around Westminster Abbey 20 some-odd years ago, looking down, and realizing I was standing on Aphra Behn's grave--except that it wasn't in poets' corner; it was out in some vestibule. I wonder if this is a legitimate memory, or one I made up? I will have to ask Natalie at My London Your London if she can verify where in the abbey AB's tomb is.

(Note: Natalie got back to me with this passage from Maureen Duffy's biography of Behn:

Natalie also posted the question on Philobiblion; check there to see if any discussion has been generated on the topic, and also to find a link to a picture of the tomb. The engraving on the tomb reads, "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality.")

4. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672): the first North American poet, and my personal favorite Puritan poet. (And I admit I have a soft spot for Puritans, having been one for many years without really realizing it--not in the sense of being a prude but in the sense of being "an iconoclastic, language-fetishizing, constantly self-scrutinizing, fiercely individualistic, hard-working lover of The Word who is pretty sure God isn't very nice and doesn't much like me and that it's MY FAULT, and who has therefore been subject to bouts of despair, bleak and desolate despair, which I don't much talk about because when I do, most of the world tends to assume my descriptions are inflated, exaggerated, melodramatic and not especially sincere," as I once stated elsewhere.)

5. Mary Rowlandson (1637-1710): A History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, also known as The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. (You can download the whole thing here.) Rowlandson was a 17th century New England housewife who was captured by Narragansett Indians during King Philip's War, then wrote an account of the ten weeks she spent traipsing through New England in the winter as a captive before she was finally ransomed. She was very much a product of her time: racist, provincial, convinced that the events of her life were orchestrated by a god who cared about nothing so much as teaching her a lesson. Nonetheless, I find her text remarkable for its uncensored honesty, even down the gratitude she feels that makes her grasp the hand of an Indian and weep with happiness, because he has brought her good news--which she instantly regrets, for proper Puritan housewives do not grasp the hands of Indian men while weeping tears of joy. I am also always moved by her account of the death in her arms of her six-year-old daughter, who has been exclaiming for days, "I will die, let me die." I am fascinated by her discussion of her tobacco addiction and her discovery that profound hunger and fear of starvation changes forever your relationship to food--you are always afraid of hunger after that, she says. There is also some cool prose: people are "knocked on the head" (a mildly nicer term for having one's skull cracked open) and when they misbehave, told to straighten up or someone "will break my face." Students find the text thoroughly problematic, which of course is just one more reason to teach it.

In order to be acceptable to Puritan audiences, Rowlandson's text required an introduction by an upstanding Puritan male assuring readers she was writing this only to show the sovereignty and goodness of God (hence the name) and not to sensationalize her own sensational experience. Nonetheless it was hugely popular and spawned all kinds of imitators. In fact, Rowlandson created the first uniquely American literary genre: the captivity narrative, a story in which a person (generally a woman) is captured by Indians, tormented in various ways, then released or ransomed or able to escape by her wits.

6. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784): one of America's most remarkable poets. Born in Africa in 1753, she was kidnapped into slavery at age seven. English was not even her first language, she didn't possess (as Alice Walker points out, borrowing from Virginia Woolf) ownership of her own body, much less a room of her own, and she still managed to write "hymns, elegies, translations, philosophical poems, tales, and epyllions-including a poignant plea to the Earl of Dartmouth urging freedom for America and comparing the country's condition to her own."

7. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823): Radcliffe is acknowledged as one of the great innovators and popularizers of the Gothic novel; one website I looked at claims that The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) "was the world's first 'best-seller.'" I admit I've read more about her than by her, but one of these days I'll do it.

8. Fanny Burney (1752-1840), Evelina. I read this 22 years ago in a survey course on the 18th century novel (a class I liked so well I almost focused on that period for my graduate work) and REALLY liked it. I keep saying I'm going to read it again.... Maybe I should just read some of her other novels instead.

9. Jane Austen (1775-1817): OK, OK, I know this is kind of cheating, because none of Austen's works were PUBLISHED before 1800. But several of them--Lady Susan (special for its deliciously wicked main character), Northanger Abbey and First Impressions (which was the first draft of Pride and Prejudice), were almost certainly written BEFORE 1800. I just think it's important to remember that not only did she write really great novels, she helped shape our expectations of what a good novel should be, back when it was still rather a new form.

note (several hours later): I got an email from Spike, asking, "Where's Mary Wollstonecraft?"

Doh! So now I'm adding

10. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797): One of the most important feminists in Western history, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women. A new biography of her was published last year, Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon. I haven't read it but a friend has and says it's fabulous.

OK, that's what I've got now. If I think of someone else I should add, I will.