Constructing Wifely Identity: Prescription and Practice in the Life of Lady Sarah Cowper

Abstract

July 25, 1700. My Custom hath been of late, to be in Bed from Nine to Six, the other 15 Hours I am 12 at least, alone. When I arose this Morn: I mett with a snare laid for me by an Instrument of the Enemy of Souls. … Since it is not possible for me to redress these Domestick greivances, I wou'd notice them to no other purpose, but to find by what means to sustain and bear them well. What if I try this expedient? Never to speak any thing but what is necessary to be said for some Use or End. that so my Mind may be kept more Close to the One thing Needfull, from which these vexations too much Distract it.So began Lady Sarah Cowper's sixteen-year enterprise in self-justification. Between 1670 and 1700 this English gentlewoman had already filled a dozen commonplace books with extracts from poems, sermons, scripture, and essays, consciously searching for an emotional and intellectual outlet. But in July of 1700 with the added impetus of family scandal alongside long-term marital friction and financial instability, Lady Sarah started keeping a diary in which she reacted to her position—initially middle-aged and unhappily married, then elderly and widowed—and to events in her world. When she finally stopped writing because of ill health in September 1716, her daily entries totaled roughly 2,300 pages in seven volumes. This remarkable diary offers a specific link between the ideologies that institutions and authorities were concerned to promulgate and the outlook of the individual.