Women during the English Reformations: Renegotiating Gender and Religious Identity ed. by Julie A. Chappell and Kaley A. Kramer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Women during the English Reformations: Renegotiating Gender and Religious Identity ed. by Julie A. Chappell and Kaley A. Kramer Jaime Goodrich Women during the English Reformations: Renegotiating Gender and Religious Identity. Edited by Julie A. Chappell and Kaley A. Kramer. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2014. Pp. ix, 198. $95.00. ISBN 978-1-137-47473-5.) Recent scholarship on the English Reformation has been revitalized by a new focus on the intersection between gender and piety. Yet while critics have generally treated Catholic and Protestant women separately, this collection of essays edited by Julie A. Chappell and Kaley A. Kramer is a welcome exception to the rule. By presenting six case studies of women with diverse religious beliefs, Women during the English Reformations offers a tantalizing glimpse of how female agency operated across confessional lines in early modern England. The first three chapters explore the cultural significance of female piety during the Henrician and mid-Tudor eras. Drawing attention to printed books that were dedicated to Tudor royal women, Valerie Schutte deftly explains the perplexing [End Page 367] lack of English translations of Erasmus's Institution of Christian Matrimony by noting the book's relevance to the divorce proceedings of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. In the standout chapter that follows, Janice Liedl considers the autonomy of Margaret Pole, one of the most powerful women of the early Henrician period. Liedl cogently demonstrates that Pole's femininity was not a sufficient defense to avoid execution for treason, despite her attempts to use gender stereotypes as a means of self-protection. Rebecca A. Giselbrecht then surveys thirteen letters sent to the Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger by women such as Jane Grey and the Belgian wife of John Hooper, revealing that these women drew on their familial connections and reformed piety to participate in an international Protestant network. Chapters four through six shift to the seventeenth century, investigating how women gained personal and political agency by negotiating the competing demands of gender and religion. Lisa McClain argues that Elizabeth Cary, largely known as the first Englishwoman to write an original play, developed "an alternative model of Catholic womanhood" (p. 69). Probing the differences in Cary's portrayal of marriage before and after her conversion to Catholicism in the 1620s, McClain provocatively contends that tensions between faith and femininity helped reshape English culture. In a particularly accomplished essay, Amanda L. Capern explores how Eleanor Davies similarly balanced gender and piety in order to achieve political agency within her prophecies. By identifying strands of Calvinist theology within Davies's inscrutable writings, Capern illuminates the political relevance of these texts to the social upheaval of the Stuart era and Civil Wars. Sharon L. Arnoult then examines the way that Elizabeth Delaval's meditations depict godly femininity, offering a compelling analysis of how one woman's search for worldly fulfillment clashed with gender stereotypes informed by religion. In a somewhat puzzling twist, the final chapters focus on later representations of early modern women's responses to the Reformation. Kaley A. Kramer discusses the representation of Mary Stuart's fictional daughters in Sophia Lee's The Recess (1783–1785), locating later myths about Catholics within a space between historiography and hagiography. Finally, in a survey of Tudor royal women on screen, William A. Robison provides ample evidence that film and television shows distort history by ignoring or misrepresenting the religious views of these influential women. The intended readers of this volume would seem to be scholars working on early modern history, literature, and religion. This audience will find much of interest in the volume's initial six case studies, which offer a useful introduction to several lesser-known women whose responses to the English Reformation deserve further consideration. [End Page 368] Jaime Goodrich Wayne State University Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press