Rachel Speght

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Rachel Speght (b. 1597) was a poet and polemicist. She was the first Englishwoman to identify herself, by name, as a polemicist and critic of gender ideology. Speght, a feminist and a Calvinist, is perhaps best known for her tract, A Mouzell for Melastomus (London, 1617). It is a prose refutation of Joseph Swetnam’s misogynistic tract, The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women, and a significant contribution to the Protestant discourse of biblical exegesis, defending women’s nature and the worth of womankind. Speght also published a volume of poetry, Mortalities Memorandum with a Dreame Prefixed (London, 1621), a Christian reflection on death and a defense of the education of women.

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[edit] Life

Speght was born into a middle class, Calvinist family in London, England in 1597. Her writings reveal that she was well educated in rhetoric, logic, classical and Christian texts, and Latin, and that she had a thorough knowledge of Christian scripture.

Biographical information about Speght is scarce; nothing is known of her life after her marriage in 1621.

The identity of her mother is unknown, but she seems to have been a profound influence on Speght’s life, as her mother’s death is referenced by Speght as the inspiration for Mortalities Memorandum.

Speght’s godmother Mary Moundford was another influential woman in Speght’s life. Moundford is thought to have been a supporter of Speght’s education; Speght dedicated Mortalities Memorandum to her.

Speght’s father, James Speght, also assumed to have supported his daughter’s education, was a Calvinist minister and the rector of two London churches, St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street (1592-1637) and St. Clement, Eastcheap (1611-1637) and was also an author of religious tracts.

From Speght’s work it can be discerned that her mother died after the publication of Mouzell in 1617 and before the publication of Mortalities Memorandum in 1621; Speght’s father was remarried in February, 1621.

Speght herself was married at age 24, in August, 1621, to a Calvinist minister named William Procter. Nothing more is known of Rachel Speght’s life or death after her marriage except that she bore two children, Rachel (1627) and William (1630). James Speght died in 1637. William Procter died in 1653.

[edit] Work

Rachel Speght is considered the first Englishwoman to identify herself, by name, as a polemicist and critic of gender ideology. Speght published twice in her lifetime.

[edit] A Mouzell for Melastomus

At age 19, Speght published A Mouzell for Melastomus (London, 1617) (the title means: a muzzle for the black mouth), a prose refutation of Joseph Swetnam’s misogynistic The Araignment of Lewde, idle, froward, and unconstant women (London, 1615).

Out of three responses to Swetnam’s tract, Speght’s was the first response, and the only published under the author's real name. Ester hath hang’d Haman was written under the name Ester Sowernam, (S[ou]rnam is a pun of Swe[e]tnam) and condescends to Speght as a young, inexperienced, minister’s daughter. The Worming of a mad Dogge, written under the name Constantia Munda, praises Speght and assumes a defensive stance against an anticipated attack on Speght from Swetnam. Swetnam did not, in fact, write a response to Speght; Araignment of women remained popular enough to require ten editions by 1634.

Swetnam’s tract was first published under the pseudonym of Thomas Tel-Troth. In Mouzell, Speght reveals Swetnam’s identity by way of a clever acrostic poem on Swetnam’s name; thereafter, his tract was reprinted with his name. His tract is typical of the tradition of misogynist writing at the time; it is full of rowdy jokes, anecdotes and examples of women’s lechery, vanity and worthlessness. The conventions of the polemic controversy over women in the English Renaissance are said to be more rhetorically based than ideologically based, as is Swetnam’s style; writers participated in a game of wit for their own amusement, rather than a moral or ideological debate.

Faithful to her stated intention, Speght attacks Swetnam’s logic and grammar. She uses satire, and witty word play to denounce his character and his arguments, calling him “Irreligious and Illiterate” (Speght, title page). But Speght also breaks convention by refusing to engage in polemical gaming. She develops her own, logic-based arguments on the basis of scripture in a serious attempt to change gender ideology.

Perhaps most remarkable was Speght’s interpretive, gender-focused approach to biblical exegesis. She re-interpreted Christian scripture, notably the Creation-Fall story in Genesis. Her approach, both logic-based and re-interpretive, influenced both the Protestant discourse of biblical exegesis, and the writings and activities of some Jacobean women who were posing challenges to gender hierarchy (for example, female cross-dressing), at the time.

Historically, Speght’s tract is significant on many levels. It was rare that an early modern woman would write or publish at all, let alone that the writing would be learned, logic-based and rhetorically refined. Her authorship was also rare in that Speght was an unknown, middle class, unmarried, young woman. Unlike the other writers that entered the debate, Speght was also willing to attach her identity to her writing that directly attacks a male author and his work. Speght was confident in her intellect and had a strong sense of self proven by her courage to launch herself into the public sphere.

Speght boldly uses the bible, historically used to subjugate women, to argue that it is indeed God’s will that women be treated with equal respect to men; she goes as far as to warn men that they may be punished by God if they speak or write against good women (note: she specifies ‘good’ women), whom, Speght says, “God hath made equall with themselves in dignity, both temporally and eternally” (Lewalski, 26).

[edit] Mortalities Memorandum with a Dreame Prefixed

At age 24, Speght published Mortalities Memorandum with a Dreame Prefixed (London, 1621), a volume of two poems that urge and offer a Christian meditation on death, and defend the education of women.

Speght gives more insight into her sense of self in her volume of poetry. The first poem called The Dreame, which is one of only two published dream visions written by a woman in the early modern period, defends the education of women with an allegory of the writer’s struggle to enter the world of learning and her devastating departure from it. According to The Dreame, women’s education is necessary to both improve women’s minds, and most importantly, to save their souls. It claims that women and men are suited to education on the same basis – the equality of intellect and that God requires the use of all talents from both sexes. Near the end of the poem, an unnamed event related to gender causes her to cease her educational pursuits, after which, her mother dies, and her writing must cease.

Mortalities Memorandum is a Christian meditation on death written in the conventional Protestant style of moral essay. Speght uses both classical and scriptural references in her poem to urge the reader to meditate on and prepare for death.

The two poems are most often studied separately as unrelated works because of their differences in style, tone and stated purpose. However, as a preface, some say that The Dreame cannot help but influence the reader’s interpretation of Mortalities Memorandum. Because Speght believed, as a Calvinist, that one’s god-given talent must be used for the benefit of the common good, Speght believed writing to be her true Christian vocation. Drawing the themes of the devastating and damning cessation of her true vocation together with a meditation on death perhaps reflects that Speght viewed life as a “prison which denies women the liberating salvation of education for their minds and their souls” (Vecchi, 3).

[edit] Links to Speght's texts

[edit] Links to related texts

[edit] References

  • Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght. New York; Oxford: OUP, 1996.
  • Speght, Rachel. A Mouzell for Melastomus
  • Vecchi, Linda. “’Lawfull Avarice’: Rachel Speght’s Mortalities Memorandum and the necessity of women’s education”. Women’s Writing (8:1) 2001, 3-19.

[edit] Further reading

  • Heertum, Cis van. A Hostile Annotation of Rachel Speght’s A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617). English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature, vol. 68, no. 6, pp. 490-496, December 1987.
  • Lewalski, Barbara K.: "Rachel Speght." In (pp. 174-84) Woods, Susanne; Hannay, Margaret P. (eds)., Teaching Tudor and Stuart women writers. New York: Modern Language Assn, 2001. pp. x, 433. [2001:259]. (2001)
  • Polydorou, Desma: "Gender and spiritual equality in marriage: a dialogic reading of Rachel Speght and John Milton," Milton Quarterly (35:1) 2001, 22-32. (2001)
  • Schnell, Lisa J. "Muzzling the Competition: Rachel Speght and the Economics of Print," Huntington Library Quarterly: Studies in English and American History and Literature, vol. 65, no. 3-4, pp. 449-63, 2002.
  • Speight, Helen: "Rachel Speght's polemical life," Huntington Library Quarterly (65:3/4) 2002, 449-63. (2002)
  • Sunshine for Women. Women's History Month 1999 Feminist Foremothers 1400 to 1800