De Paul University, MALS Program
Perceptions of Reality, MLS 402
3-19-95
Pat Anderson
Grade A-
See examples of original sources at the end
Abstract
In this paper I look at the life and writing of Katherine Philips, (The Matchless Orinda), illustrating how Philips manipulated her writing to fit acceptable standards set up for women during the Renaissance.
Her eloquent writing was appreciated by women and men of her day. Some recent researchers suggest that her female friendship poems were erotic in nature. I will argue that whether platonic or erotic, she was a talented poet. And despite having to use great care, she was successful in communicating life experiences from a woman’s perspective. I can only imagine what her writing might have been like if her spirit had been free to write without consideration of gender.
Historical Context
In the seventeenth century women not only had to have just the right circumstances to enable them to write, but they had to develop strategies about how to do so in keeping with the rules set up by men (Mermin 336). They had to be careful not to elicit men’s anger (Mermin 336). Women had to make their writing seem spontaneous, without artfulness and had to be sure to communicate that they were not in competition with men (Mermin 336)
Women generally avoided iambic pentameter, formal odes or epics, classical allusion or exalted diction (Mermin 336). Women wrote relatively simple fables, understated small and ordinary themes, spoke of themselves in self-depreciating, low-key terms and kept their tone conversational (Mermin 336).
Men wrote as if their words were genderless, but women could never forget they wrote and would be read as women (Mermin 336). They had to be on their best behavior because failures of breeding or temper would discredit their whole sex (Mermin 336). The gentlemanly amateurism in the Renaissance tradition provided a framework for women to write in a time when simply appearing in public was viewed as taboo for women (Mermin 336), (let alone being published). Until well into the nineteenth century publicity to a woman was assumed to defile her virtue (Mermin 338).
I like Ann Messenger’s (Williamson 23) description of women writers that Williamson provides:
Women may begin writing to deal with loss, but they end writing to survive it. Because poetry is more public than private expression in the seventeenth century, we can also observe the degree to which contemporary discourse shapes women’s writing, just as it does men’s, but also the degree to which women transform the discourse to their purposes as a group (Williamson 23). Women writers had to use enormous care to avoid posing any threat to male egos. In spite of the limitations placed upon them by their social realities they were able to express their female perspectives.
Early Orinda
Katherine Philips was influenced as a small child by her grandmother Oxenbridge’s interest in writing poetry (Limbert 179). She loved poetry at school and actually started writing verses there (Limbert 179). Her father John Fowler, a prominent London merchant, brought her up with strong Puritan connections (Limbert 179). She read the Bible at age four and wrote down sermons verbatim at age ten. As a child she used to pray for an hour at a time (Limbert 179). She was against the bishops and prayed that God would take them to him (Limbert 180). She started to attend Mrs. Salmon’s School in Hackney at age eight. (Limbert 180)
The earliest of her work known to survive was found in an unpublished manuscript in the uncatalogued Orielton Collection of the National Library of Wales. It illustrates that Philips was practicing poetry as early as age fourteen (Limbert 179) It’s not surprising that this manuscript was found in Orielton (three miles southwest of Pembroke, Wales) as it was once the home of Anne Lewis Owen, referred to as Lucasia by Philips, in her most intense friendship poems (Limbert 182).
The Orielton manuscript contains two poems and a short prose receipt that are unpolished compared to her later works, yet are informative about the author’s early years (Limbert 181-182). It is suggested that the manuscript was written when Philips was between fourteen and sixteen years old, after her mother’s marriage and before her own (Limbert 181-182). Excerpts from the two poems are quite telling in relating her attitudes about marriage and romance:
No blooming youth shall ever make me err
I will the beauty of the mind prefer
If himans rites shall call me hence
It shall be with some man of sence
…
Faithful in promise & liberall to the poor
…
Ready to serve his friend his country & his king
Such men as these yout say there are but few
…
Butt if I ever hap to change my life
Its only such a man shall call me wife” (Limbert 186).
Excerpts from the poem on the reverse side:
A marry’d state affords but little Ease
The best of husbands are so hard to please
…
No Blustering husbands to create y’r fears
…
Few worldly crosses to distract y’r prayers
Thus you are freed from all the cares that do
Attend on matrymony & a husband too
… (Limbert 186).
These early poems clearly illustrate her very early feminist thought and insight into conditions women faced.
Hageman views Philip’s two juvenilia poems above as an example of how thoroughly the young poet assimilated the values of seventeenth-century neo-classical poetry (570). Philips was able to transform the loyal, sensible and moderate friend, advocated by poets like Ben Jonson, into a description of a model husband (Hageman 570).
These tiny glimpses into Philips’ early creativity show that she was familiar with composition and was approaching a feel for heroic couplets; they also illustrate her interest in talking to women through her poetry (Limbert 185). Her poems clearly reveal a young woman with unromantic ideas about marriage, not usually seen in English literature (Limbert 185). Philips does not speak as a character imagined by a man, she actually speaks for herself (Limbert 185).
It is believed that she lived in London until her widowed mother married Sir Richard Phillips (sic) of Picton Castle in Wales; she moved with her mother to Wales at that time (Limbert 180). At 16, Philips married Colonel James Philips, a fifty four year old widower and prominent Puritan Parliamentarian (Limbert 180). They moved to her new husband’s home in Cardigan where he was active in politics (Limbert 180). After seven years of marriage she had a son who died at six weeks of age (Williamson 76).
Philips and the Renaissance
Women’s literary output began in England, around 1640 (Williamson 16). Katherine Philips was the first English woman to publish a volume of poetry (Williamson 16). Women became the subjects and developed their own perspectives, rather than being objects of male perception and expression (Williamson 16). They wrote from positions that were self-defined (Williamson 16). Before this time in history women’s poetry was not distinguishable from men’s (Williamson 18). Around the seventeenth century one can truly start to hear female voices who take female pseudonyms, address their needs and created their own conventions and themes (Williamson 18).
Williamson says that Philips was a model for women poets; she used two current discourses, retirement tradition and libertine ideology, to show women how to use the codes of the culture to write about their life predicament (14). It took great courage to write about gender relations for these women; their poetry can give us a clue about what they were thinking and what their biases were (Williamson preface). Women writers of the Renaissance viewed each other as models and obtained inspiration from each other; they created their own traditions and usually wrote for other women (Williamson 14).
Philips characterized commonalties of women writers after 1650 in that they were artistically, politically, and socially conservative (Williamson 21). They were married to supportive husbands, were usually childless, and were reserved about sexuality (Williamson 21). They had their own coterie audience and their writing forms included poetry, occasional plays, novels, essays and autobiographical letters (Williamson 21). They seldom wrote for money, hesitated to call attention to themselves by publishing, and used undoing to excuse their gall to publish (Williamson 21). Philips felt obligated to justify her privilege to write, sought freedom, yet at the same time sought community too, especially with other women, frequently in intimate relationships (Williamson 22). She tried to tread the ambiguous line between being a silent, submissive woman and her energy and ambition as a writer (Williamson 65).
Seventeenth-century women writers’ conservatism did not allow them to advocate for radical changes, but they wanted better lives for women as a group (Williamson 22). In adapting the retirement tradition they avoided threatening their readers and illustrated a way, within their social constraints, to escape their social lot that could not be changed (Williamson 22).
Philips’ unblemished reputation served as encouragement to other women (Mermin 335). She feared publication as it might be seen as sexual self-display (Mermin 335-336). Philips claimed that her poems were printed without her consent and compared women’s publication to exposing their bodies (Mermin 335-336). She claimed to have written for her own entertainment, yet at the same time prepared her work in manuscript form (Mermin 338).
Women sought to demonstrate how they could survive in a male universe, largely through bonding with other women (Williamson 31). They took male indifference for granted and sought to compensate for it rather than challenge it (Williamson 31). Philips sought respect and consideration for wives, but saw equality as only available in female friendships (Williamson 32).
Philips took the privilege to write without social sanction for her doing so (Williamson 35-36). As a result she had to develop strategies to get beyond societal messages to remain silent (Williamson 35-36). Writing served the purpose of raising women and men’s consciousness about their oppression (Williamson 35-36).
Philips provides confirmation of her humility in what she wrote Sir Charles Cotterell (her editor):
I am so far from expecting Applause on account of any thing I write, that I can scarce expect a Pardon: And sometimes I think that to make Verses is so much above my Reach, and a Diversion so unfit for the Sex to which I belong, that I am about to resolve against it forever…..the Truth is, I have always had an incorrigible inclination to the Vanity of Rhyming, but intended the Effects of that Humour only for my own Amusement in a retir’d Life” (Williamson 64).
Because translation was thought of as “feminine” (it was non-original), it was viewed as being well suited for women. Renaissance female translators, despite being discouraged from creating their own original work, did inject their own translations, thus adding or shifting emphasis, coining new terms, extending metaphors, omitting phrases and made the vernacular fit (Wilson xxx).
Philips’ translation of Corneille’s “Pompey” was enthusiastically received at the new Theatre Royal in Dublin, in 1663 and was later published in Ireland and London (Limbert 180). Philips also left behind a partial translation of Corneille’s “Horace”, which was later completed by Sir John Denham; it became a favorite of the court of Charles II (Limbert 181).
Friendship Poems
Shortly after her marriage her poems began to be circulated widely by her coterie of friends who were also the subjects of her verses (Limbert 180). Her best works were platonic friendship poems about other women; she used symbolic trappings of fire, water and twinned spirits to elevate them to goddess status (Limbert 180). No evidence exists to show that any of the women responded in a similar fashion (Limbert 180).
During the time of the Renaissance, gender was bound in a hierarchy in which men and women could not be equals (Mueller 114). Thus men and women could not be friends (Mueller 114). Separate education and socialization for the sexes functioned to reinforce limits on how human equality could be perceived (Mueller 114).
Philips’ friendship poems provided an acceptable form for women to experience equal relationships. It makes sense to me that women might attempt to share intellectually with other women since the men in their lives didn’t perceive them as intellectual equals. It seems quite logical that people would naturally gravitate toward egalitarian relationships.
The theme of platonic friendship is found throughout Renaissance literature (Hageman 573). The English writer, George Turberville, described two friends as, “two in bodies twaine/Possessing but one heart” (Hageman 573). The classical assumption made by Renaissance writers was that friendship poems were celebrating the relationships between men (Hageman 573). When women were present in friendship poems they were portrayed as seductresses who separated male friends (Hageman 573). Philips’ friendship poems took for granted that women could be friends with each other as well as with men (Hageman 573). Philips also modeled the male style of uniting spirits and bodies.
Like many female writers of the seventeenth century, Philips took a traditionally male convention and applied it to female experience, thus providing a forum for their female voices to speak (Mermin 343). Mermin sees the results as revolutionary because Orinda:
… speaks as a woman, to a woman, usurping the position of the male speaker rather than responding to a man or a male tradition that has spoken first” (Mermin 343).
In writing about female friendship, Philips gave them value, not only in a literary sense, but in the realm of human relationships. By following the male poetic traditions in her friendship poems, Philips avoided being perceived as threatening to the powers that be. And yet she actually gave power to women by valuing their relationships. New scientific knowledge about the placement of the planets was seen as threatening to current religious beliefs. Through Philips, women found a way to value each other and to speak without posing a threat to patriarchy.
Most women can probably relate to taking “back seat” status when a woman friend obtains a boyfriend. Her friend is willing to forfeit much of the female relationships to make herself totally available to her lover, thus devaluing the female relationships. Devaluing our relationships is a part that we ourselves play in perpetrating patriarchy.
Many of Philips’ poems were romantic in nature. I think that many women view romance in a magical sense. The white knight in shining armor ideology is not dead and could be seen as a woman’s magical thinking, especially since science was not perceived to be within the realm of possibilities for women in the seventeenth century. (Teacher – in what sense) It doesn’t seem far fetched to imagine that women writers might use romantic friendship poems with other women as a way to fantasize about what an equal romantic relationship might be like and as a way of coping with their lower social status.
“To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship”
Mermin refers to Donne’s and the Cavalier poets’ work as aspiring to a perfect, paradoxical union of souls, canonization of their lovers, casual elegance, along with Metaphysical hyperbole and wit (343). She compares Philip’s amatory poem “To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship” with this traditional male style:
“I did not live until this time
Crown’d my felicity,
When I could say without a crime,
I am not thine, but Thee.
…..
No bridegroom’s nor crown-conqueror’s mirth
To mine compar’d can be:
They have but pieces of this Earth,
I’ve all the World in thee” (Mermin 343).
Mermin says Philip’s amatory poems lack the dramatic tension between flesh and spirit present in Donne’s amatory verse (Mermin 343). Mernim describes Philips’ work as asexual and respectable, despite the quasi-Sapphic theme and did not give rise to any societal sanction because of the blindness to the possibility of female homosexuality at the time (Mermin 343). She claims to perceive Philips as speaking the language of courtly love without hearing any “unseemly” overtones (Mermin 343).
Stiebel views “To My Excellent Lucasia…” as Philips’ soul actually becoming Lucasia not simply that Lucasia gave life to her soul (157). As united immortal souls the speaker is given similar attributes as a “bridegroom” or a “crown-conqueror”, while at the same time, remain innocent because they are females (Stiebel 157).
Stiebel compares “To My Excellent Lucasia…” with Donne’s “The Sun Rising”:
“She’s all states, and all princes I / Nothing else is” (Stiebel 157).
Stiebel claims that Donne forces the reader to view their relationship as traditional courtly desire that goes through a transformation to a sacramental union where soul-mates share the divine (Stiebel 157). Donne as speaker invokes spirituality and innocent design to justify the use of excessive language (Stiebel 157). This is further illustrated in the poem:
“As innocent as our design,
Immortal as our soul” (Stiebel 165-166).
Stiebel further claims that traditional readings of Philips’ friendship poems have either ignored or denied the lesbian sexuality of her verses, dismissing them as asexual examples of the current literary vernacular (Stiebel 153). Stiebel says that Mermin’s use of “unseemly” relates her attitude about female homosexuality (153).
Stiebel discusses Faderman’s study in which she insists that “historically there was no such thing as a `lesbian” (Stiebel 154). Another reason that Philips could claim that love between two women was innocent is because, as Queen Victoria asked, “What could women do?” (Stiebel 158). In a culture that defines sexual behavior with linkage to male anatomy, sex without men was not only unthinkable, it was impossible (Stiebel 158).
Since the Renaissance had no concept of lesbianism, female poets were free to let their creativity flow within the acceptable framework of female friendship poetry. Women writers today couldn’t write the same poetry without homosexuality being questioned, simply because the concept of homosexuality is a part of our public discourse – it is a part of our reality.
As I see it, women were trying to use men as role models, but of course the fit is not always appropriate. It was not socially acceptable for women to be assertive with love for men, so they directed themselves toward something they had experience with, intimate friendships with other women. I think that any woman today could relate to the level of intimacy and level of acceptance that you can share with a woman friend. It seems to me that Philips did a splendid job modeling traditional male amatory style in the above poem to Lucasia.
I think that both authors’ perceptions make valid points. Society certainly has tried to ignore and/or deny homosexuality in general, so it wouldn’t seem surprising that seventeenth century readers wouldn’t “see” the possibility in Philips work. I can also see that her friendship poems could easily be read as asexual, modeling male conventions. One’s perception might originate from one’s attitude and comfort with the topic of homosexuality. From my feminist perspective, I think that it is certainly possible that Philips was a lesbian. For me, it’s not an issue. What I value is her talent and courage as a woman to write at the time she did, and the fact that her voice was and is being heard. She gave value to women’s life experiences, which realistically does include heterosexual and/or homosexual perspectives.
“Orinda To Lucasia”
Philips compared herself to nature in “Orinda to Lucasia”:
“Observe the weary birds ere night be done,
How they would fain call up the tardy Sun,
With feathers hung with dew,
And trembling voices too,
They court their glorious planet to appear,
That they may find recruits of spirits there.
The drooping flowers hang their heads,
And languish down into their beds:
While brooks more bold and fierce than they,
Wanting those beams, from whence
All things drink influence,
Openly murmur and demand the day” (Mermin 344).
Mermin claims that Orinda compares herself to nature awaiting the fecundating sun, the image of male sexual force, frequently used my women poets (344).
Stiebel says Lucasia is the sun who will restore the light and energy of the day (life) to Orinda, who calls for her friend to appear like the birds, flowers and brooks call for their own rebirth at a delayed sunrise (156-157). Lucasia means more to her than the sun to the world and if Lucasia doesn’t arrive soon she will see her die rather than be able to save her (Stiebel 156-157). The conventional oxymoronic terms such as light versus dark, day versus night, presence versus absence and life versus death are what Orinda used (Stiebel 156-157). Elements of nature were used to reflect her state of being, and in a reversal of the magnitude of traditional significance, illustrated microcosmically in relation to the macrocosm of Orinda’s feelings (Stiebel 156-157).
Since I believe that artists are unconsciously relating a sense of their time, I don’t necessarily think that Orinda was referring to a sexual power. Why not the innate power of her spirit to be free in the controlled time in which she was part. I get an image of her definitely using nature to illustrate powerful hierarchy, like the brooks being more powerful than the flowers and yet all desiring the beams to “drink” in influence (which IS power).
Mermin labeled the sun “fecundating”; other definitions of the word are: to make fruitful, prolific, to fertilize, to impregnate, fertile, and rich in inventive power. I think Mermin was really making a stretch in relating it to male sexual power.
I agree Orinda probably saw herself as a flower compared to the brook, but I fail to see any sexual reference. Any woman who was bold enough to write at that time was a strong woman for whom power would not only rest within a sexual frame. I value the power to write freely what your spirit (your unconscious voice) brings to you from the universe, rather than having to write artlessly and avoid fracturing any male egos. As a woman who likes to write I can identify with Orinda’s “demanding the day”. She wanted her voice to be heard, she wanted to be taken seriously, I cannot begin to see how Mermin makes sexual connections. I can see that women did identify themselves with nature.
Male Responses
Mermin says that women writers were praised easily, if not condescendingly (336). She provides an example of what one of Philip’s editors said in a preface of her published poems: would be no disgrace to the name of any Man that amongst us is most esteemed for his excellency in this kind, and there are none that may not pass with favour, when it is remembered that they fell hastily from the pen but of a Woman (Mermin 336). Abraham Cowley said that Philips was, “the only genuine woman poet known to history” (Mermin 337).
Cowley wrote of her in verse:
We allow’d you beauty,
and we did submit
To all the tyrannies of it,
Ah cruel Sex!”
will you dispose us too in Wit? (Mermin 336).
The Earl of Orrery wrote to Mrs. Philips:
In me it does not the least trouble breed,
That your fair sex does ours,
in verse exceed (Mermin 336).
Even a century and a half later Keats prefaced his praise for her poems with a nasty snarl at intellectual women (Mermin 337).
An anonymous woman commented felicitously:
Thou glory of our sex, envy of men,
Who are both pleas’d and vex’d with thy bright pen (Mermin 337).
Philips’ physical person, her beauty, was generally the prime target of criticism (Mermin 338). Henry Vaughn said of her:
language Smiles, and accents rise
As quick, and pleasing as your Eyes,
The Poem smooth, and in each line
Soft as your selfe (Mermin 338).
The beauty and virtue of her poetry are the same as her body; they are thus both exposed (Mermin 338).
The quotations certainly illustrate men’s attitudes towards Philips.
Conclusion
Around 1663 a group of Philips’ poems fell into the hands of a London publisher Richard Marriott; he filed to print a pirated edition on November 25, 1663 (Limbert 181). Philips was in London at the time to do business for her husband and to see that her friends were able to suppress the pirated edition (Limbert 181). While still in London, she died of small pox on June 22, 1664 (Limbert 181). Philips’ legacy included publishing one volume of verses, one of letters, and the translation of two plays (Williamson 19).
Philips claimed for women the ability to build and sustain friendships, to voice healthy skepticism about love and marriage, to realize identity and integrity in private worlds, and to write about their personal experience (Williamson 78). For a woman of middling background who died at thirty-three in a chaotic age, this was not a meager achievement (Williamson 78).
I am willing to bet that many people today, not having studied women’s history, have an image of women as quite passive historically. Many people today if asked might say that feminists’ voices came about in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s – the modern feminist movement. I know that women have been trying to scream out for equality, in whatever way they could, since time began.
In conclusion the words of Wilson seem to sum it all up:
Participation – any participation – in the shaping of language is social power. The written word as a signifier of status and power, is capable of bestowing parity to male and female in that privileged space. The literary labor of Renaissance women writers thus articulates a desire, however subliminal, for the status and power which that equality implies. Assuming the voice of a poet, engaging in the shaping, defining and ordering of experience, participating in constructing and creating, women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could temporarily offset the hierarchies of gender and become the equals of men in the act of creation (Wilson xxxii).
Works Cited
Hageman, Elizabeth H. “The Matchless Orinda: Katherine Philips.” Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Ed. Katharina M. Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. 566-608.
Limbert, Claudia. “Two Poems and a Prose Receipt: The Unpublished Juvenilia of Katherine Philips” (text) Women in the Renaissance. Ed. Kirby Farrell, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Arthur Kinney. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988, 179-186.
Mermin, Dorothy. “Women Becoming Poets: Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch.” English Literary History 57.2 (1990): 335-356.
Mueller, Janel. “Lesbian Erotics: The Utopian Trope of Donne’s `Sapho to Philaenis.'” Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England: Literary Representations in Historical Context. Ed. Claude J. Summers. New York: Harrington Press, 1992. 103-134.
Stiebel, Arlene. “Not Since Sappho: The Erotic Poems of Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn.” Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England: Literary Representations in Historical Context. Ed. Claude J. Summers. New York: Harrington Press, 1992. 103-134.
Williamson, Marilyn L. RAISING THEIR VOICES British Women Writers, 1650-1750. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1990.
Wilson Katharina M. Ed. Introduction. Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
“To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship”
“I did not live until this time
Crown’d my felicity,
When I could say without a crime,
I am not thine, but thee.
This carcass breath’d, and walkt, and slept,
So that the world believ’d
There was a soul the motions kept;
But they all were deceiv’d.
For as a watch by art is wound
To motion, such was mine:
But never had Orinda found
A soul till she found thine;
Which now inspires, cures, and supplies,
And guides my darkned breast:
For thou art all that I can prize,
My joy, my life, my rest.
No bridegroom’s nor crown-conqueror’s mirth
To mine compar’d can be:
They have but pieces of the earth,
I’ve all the World in thee.
Then let our flames still light and shine,
And no false fear controul,
As innocent as our design,
Immortal as our soul.” (Stiebel 165-166)
“Orinda to Lucasia”
“Observe the weary birds ere night be done,
How they would fain call up the tardy sun,
With feathers hung with dew,
And trembling voices too.
They court their glorious planet to appear,
That they may find recruits of spirits there.
The drooping flowers hang their heads,
And languish down into their beds:
While brooks more bold and fierce than they
Wanting those beams, from whence
All things drink influence,
Openly murmur and demand the day.
Thou my Lucasia are far more to me,
Than he to all the under-world can be;
From thee I’ve heat and light,
Thy absence makes my night.
But ah! my friend, it now grows very long;
The sadness weighty, and the darkness strong:
My tears (its dew) dwell on my cheeks,
And still my heart thy dawning seeks,
And to thee mournfully it cries,
That if too long I wait,
Ev’n thou may’st come too late,
And not restore my life, but close my eyes.”
(Stiebel 165)
“Friendship’s Mystery. To My Dearest Lucasia.”
“Come, my Lucasia, since we see
That Miracles Mens faith do move,
By wonder and by prodigy
To the dull angry world let’s prove
There’s a Religion in our Love.
For though we were design’d t’agree,
That Fate no liberty destroyes,
But our Election is as free
As Angels, who with greedy choice
Are yet determin’d to their joyes.
Our hearts are doubled by the loss,
Here Mixture is addition grown;
We both diffuse, and both ingross:
And we whose minds are so much one,
Never, yet ever are alone.
We court our own Captivity
Than Thrones more great and innocent:
‘Twere banishment to be set free,
Since we wear fetters whose intent
Not Bondage is, but Ornament.
Divided joys are tedious found,
And griefs united easier grow:
We are our selves but by rebound,
And all our Titles shuffled so,
Both Princes, and both Subjects too.
Our Hearts are mutual Victims laid,
While they (such power in Friendship lies)
Are Alters, Priests, and Off’rings made:
And each Heart which thus kindly dies,
Grows deathless by the Scarifice.” ( Hageman 588-589)
“A Retir’d Friendship. To Ardelia”
“Come, my Ardelia, to this Bower
Where kindly mingling Souls awhile
Lets innocently spend an hour,
And at all serious follies smile.
Here is no quarrelling for Crowns,
Nor fear of changes in our Fate;
No trembling at the great ones frowns,
Nor any slavery of State.
Here’s no disguise nor treachery,
Nor any deep conceal’d design;
From Bloud and Plots this Place is free
And calm as are those looks of thine.
Here let us sit and bless our Stars
Who did such happy quiet give,
As that remov’d from noise of Wars
In one anothers hearts we live.
Why should we entertain a fear?
Love cares not how the World is turned:
If crouds of dangers should appear,
Yet friendship can be unconcern’d.
We wear about us such a charm,
No horrour can be our offence;
For mischief’s self can do no harm
To Friendship or to Innocence.
Let’s mark how soon Apollo’s beams
Commands the flocks to quit their meat,
And not entreat the neighbouring streams
To quench their thirst, but coole their heat.
In such a scorching Age as this
Who would not ever seek a shade,
Deserve their Happiness to miss,
As having their own peace betray’d.
But we (of one anothers mind
Assur’d) the bois’trous World distain;
With quiet Souls and unconfin’d
Enjoy what princes wish in vain.” (Hageman 592-593)
Philips Juvenilia
“No blooming youth shall ever make me err
I will the beauty of the mind prefer
If himans rites shall call me hence
It shall be with some man of sence
Nott with the great butt with a good estate
Nott too well read nor yet illetterate
In all his actions moderate grave & wise
Redyer to bear than offer injuries
And in good works a constant doer
Faithfull in promise & liberall to the poor
He thus being quallified is allways seen
Ready to serve his friend his country & his king
Such men as these yout say there are but a few
Their hard to find & I must grant it too
Butt if I ever hap to change my life
Its only such a man shall call me wife.
Humbly Dedicated too Mrs. Anne Barlow
C. Fowler” (Limbert 185-186)
Excerpts from the poem on the reverse side:
“A marry’d state affords but little Ease
The best of husbands are so hard to please
This in wifes Carefull faces you may spell
Tho they desemble their misfortunes well
A virgin state is crownd with much content
Its allways happy as its inocent
No Blustering husbands to create y’r fears
No pangs of child birth to extort y’r tears
No childrens crys for to offend your ears
Few worldly crosses to distract y’r prayers
Thus you are freed from all the cares that do
Attend on matrymony & a husband too
Therefore Mad’m be advised my me
Turn apostate to loves Levity
Supress wild nature if she dare rebell
Theres no such thing as leading Apes in hell” (Limbert 186)
POLITICAL POEM
Orinda wrote to a private audience, about private life; she even pretended to do so when her subject was quite public and political:
“I think not on the State, nor am concern’d
Which way soever the great helm is turn’d.”
She says this despite the fact that she was writing about the most political event of her time, the regicide of King Charles I. Which she claimed justified, “the breach of Nature’s laws” – her writing. (Mermin 341) The great power in the ideology of women’s lower status in the fact that women themselves believe it too, as the above illustrates.
One might compare Philips with McClintock in that she was without question excellent, was recognized as such by male peers, but lacked acclaim, acceptance and privilege of style afforded to men. One way she differs from McClintock is that she “played the system” using her womenly wiles to get men to act in her behalf; this was not McClintock’s style.
INVITATION TO THE COUNTRY
In writing of friendship Orinda had Francis Finch as a role model. She compared his “Discourse of Friendship” which served as inspiration to her, to the Northern Star, guiding men, like wandering mariners, to their happiness. (Williamson 71)
“Invitation to the Country” was a poem that illustrates Philips linking retirement poetry with friendship (a popular style at the time). The speaker says tells Rosania that the country life allows understanding of the true values of the world, nature, and the Deity:
“Man unconcern’d without himself may be
His own both Prospect and Security.
Kings may be slaves by their own Passions hurl’d,
But who commands himself commands the World.
A Country-life assists this study best,
Where no distractions do the Soul arrest;
There Heav’n and Earth lie open to our view,
There we search Nature and its Author too.
…………………………………….
There (my Rosania) will we, mingling Souls,
Pity the Folly which the World controuls.” (Williamson 71).
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2-12-95
Paper Topic and Preliminary Bibliography
I want to learn about Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn, both seventeenth century poets. I plan to learn about historic poetry and at the same time serve one of my feminist goals, to assist in bringing women’s voices to the center of intellectual public discussion. I want to learn how they perceived the reality of the seventeenth century differently than those I have already studied.
Bibliography in progress:
Farrell, Kirby., Hageman, Elizabeth., Kinney Arthur. ed Women in the Renaissance. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press: 1988
Gallagher, Catherine. Rev. of The Works of Aphra Behn v1 Poetry, by Aphra Behn. The Times Literary Supplement. v. no 4719, Sept 10, 1993: 3-4.
Goreau, Angeline. Reconstructing Aphra. New York: Dial Press., 1980.
Limbert, Claudia. “The Poetry of Katherine Philips: Holographs, Manuscripts, and Early Printed Texts”. Philological Quarterly. v. 70 Spring 1991: 181-98.
Limbert, Claudia. The Collected Works of Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda v1 The Poems, by Kathrine Philips. Philological Quarterly. v. 70, Fall 1991: 503-5.
Loscocco, Paula. “`Manly Sweetness’: Katherine Philips Among the Neoclassicals”. The Huntington Library Quarterly v. 56, Summer 1993: 259-79.
Mermin, Dorothy. “Women Becoming Poets: Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Anne Finch”, English Literary History. 57.2 1990: 335-56.
Mueller, Janel. “Lesbian Erotics: The Utopian Trope of Donne’s “Sapho to Philaenis.”” Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England: Literary Representations in Historical Context Ed. Claude J. Summers. New York: Harrington Press., 1992. 103-134.
Mulvihill, Maureen, E. Rev. of The Collected Works of Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda v1 The Poems, by Katherine Philips. Eighteenth-Century Studies. v. 26, Winter 1992\93: 346-9. 700.5 E34
Souers, Philip Webster. The Matchless Orinda. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1931.
Stiebel, Arlene. “Not Since Sappo: The Erotic Poems of Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn.” Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England: Literary Representations in Historical Context Ed. Claude J. Summers. New York: Harrington Press., 1992.
Summers, Montague, Ed. The Works of Aphra Behn. London, 1915.
Williamson, Marilyn L. RAISING THEIR VOICES British Women Writers, 1650-1750. Detroit: Wayne State University Press., 1990.
HAVE:
Cerasano, S.P., and Marion Wynne-Davies. Ed. GLORIANA’S FACE Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance. Detroit: Wayne State University Press., 1992.
Travitsky, Betty. Ed The Paradise of Women Writings by Englishwomen of the Renaissance New York: Columbia University Press: 1989.
Migiel, Marilyn and Juliana Schiesari. Ed Refiguring Woman Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 1991.
Wilson, Katharina, M. Ed Women Writes of the Renaissance and Reformation Athens: The University of Geogia Press: 1987.
Williamson, Marilyn L. RAISING THEIR VOICES British Women Writers, 1650-1750 Detroit: Wayne State University Press., 1990.
The reality of lesbianism tried to be perceived as the reality that it was. Lesbian spirits longed for freedom, acceptance and expression.
They faced great difficulty being just another accepted reality of life. More difficult than “the breaking of the circle”, more difficult than Harvey’s new ideas about circulation.
Only man’s ingrained ATTITUDES and inability to easily rise above them prevents faster human knowledge and growth. Lesbians tried to come out in the Renaissance – their world refused to perceive it.
Gayness not a moral question, just a part of reality, a part of nature.
Man seeks to generalize our minds try to correlate with what we already understand to make things “fit” in our already molded attitudes. Why such barriers to the continuum of sexuality and\or preference? As Nicholson said, Old habits die hard”.
Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the 14th Century Chicago: University of Chicago Press., 1980. Recently (1-95) died of Aids (Winner: American Book Award for History, 1981)
Saslow, James. Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art & Society. 1986
Bray, Alan. “Homosexuality in Renaissance England”. 1982
Saslow, James. Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art & Society. 1986