Identifying as (Women) Writers

Abstract

Did early modern women writers see themselves as having a particular identity? In this chapter I trace some of the possible identities available to early modern women who wrote. It might make more sense, in this context, to talk of ‘identifications’ rather than identities. In general it is true to say that the category ‘early modern women writers’ is a modern concept that would have had no meaning for the writers under consideration here.1 Many women who wrote in the seventeenth century would not have seen themselves as ‘writers’, especially those who produced diaries, letters, advice to children, receipt/recipe books, or even religious works of many kinds. On the other hand, a number of early modern women did see themselves as authors who might have a literary career. In a suggestive article on the question of authorship and early modern women, Susanne Woods et al. show how Anne Dowriche, Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer, and Margaret Cavendish ‘presented themselves as authors’.2 However, it is difficult to determine whether they saw themselves specifically as women authors, and if that category may have been empowering. In the case of Cavendish, one could argue that there was a dis-identification with other women writers, while for Mary Sidney, the identification was with her brother Philip, rather than with a notion of female authorship. But, as I will discuss later in the case of Mary Wroth, there were some women who appear to have seen themselves as part of a tradition of female authorship, amongst other identifications.KeywordsSeventeenth CenturyBritish WomanLiterary CareerWoman WriterFemale CommunityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.