Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain - Hardcover

Herbert, Amanda E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300177402 ISBN 13: 9780300177404

Publisher: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014

Synopsis

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, cultural, economic, and political changes, as well as increased geographic mobility, placed strains upon British society. But by cultivating friendships and alliances, women worked to socially cohere Britain and its colonies. In the first book-length historical study of female friendship and alliance for the early modern period, Amanda Herbert draws on a series of interlocking microhistorical studies to demonstrate the vitality and importance of bonds formed between British women in the long eighteenth century. She shows that while these alliances were central to women’s lives, they were also instrumental in building the British Atlantic world.

About this title

About the Author

Amanda Herbert is assistant professor of history at Christopher Newport University. She lives in Williamsburg, VA.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Female Alliances

Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain

By Amanda E. Herbert

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2014 Yale University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-300-17740-4

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................
ix
Introduction...............................................................
1
1. "Small Expressions of My Passionate Love and Friendship to Thee": The 
Idioms and Languages of Female Alliances...................................
21
2. Noble Presents: Gender, Gift Exchange, and the Reappropriation of 
Luxury.....................................................................
52
3. Cooperative Labor: Making Alliances through Women's Recipes and 
Domestic Production........................................................
78
4. Hot Spring Sociability: Women's Alliances at British Spas...............
117
5. Yokemates: Female Quaker Companionship in the British Atlantic World....
142
6. Reconciling Friendship and Dissent: Female Alliances in the Diaries of 
Sarah Savage...............................................................
168
Epilogue...................................................................
194
Notes......................................................................
199
Index......................................................................
253

CHAPTER 1

"Small Expressions of My Passionate Loveand Friendship to Thee": The Idioms andLanguages of Female Alliances

Between 1685 and 1691 Anne Dormer composed a series of ardent letters to her mostbeloved confidant. Addressing the recipient of her letters as "My Deare Soul," Dormerconfessed, "I love you dearer then my owne life." She reassured her companion of herconstancy, stating that she did "not pass any houre without thinking of yow" and expressedher joy in the relationship, exclaiming, "Ah my deare heart ... you make me infinitelyhappy." Commenting explicitly on the messages conveyed in her fervid letters, Dormer thenbegged her correspondent to "kindly accept those small expressions of my passionate loveand friendship to thee." These letters were not written to a husband, nor did they allude to aforbidden relationship; instead, Dormer was writing to her sister Elizabeth Trumbull, and sheclosed one of the letters with her wish to "tell thee never sister loved more than thy faithfullfriend Anne."

The expressions of sororal love and fidelity expressed by Dormer in her letter were notempty conventions, nor were they peculiar to Dormer herself. Dormer's letter insteadreflected one dimension of early modern British women's complex and rich understanding ofwomen's alliances. This first chapter examines textual representations of female alliances.The sentiments and statements about female alliance which elite women expressed in theirwritings were an emotional praxis, drawn in part from therelationships themselves and in part from canonical works that elite women utilized inorder to give value and meaning to their homosocial relationships. Through their descriptionsof female alliances, literate women worked simultaneously to express their feelings ofconnectedness and solidarity and to construct and maintain social networks with their family,neighbors, and friends.

In their recent work Love, Friendship, and Faith in Europe, 1300–1800, the editors,Laura Gowing, Michael Hunter, and Miri Rubin, argue that the term friend had "copious andspecial meanings to early modern people." Early modern friends were tied together in manyways: economically and philosophically, in business, in family, and in faith. Gowing, Hunter,and Rubin decry the fact that "social and cultural historians have been slow to take up thechallenges of taking friendship seriously" and urge future scholars to examine each of themany meanings of early modern friendship carefully, suggesting the need for "historicalstudy of female friendship." Such an exploration of some of the meanings of femalefriendship is my aim here: to the early modern women examined in this book, friendship andalliance had overlapping and sometimes mutually reinforcing meanings. I will explore someof the major dimensions of the words that were chosen by women themselves to articulatetheir friendships and alliances, and I will flesh out some of the central ideas that shapedfemale sociability. Several key features of female friendship are identified by tracing theimpact of five literary forms and traditions that influenced elite women's understandings ofsociability, alliance, and friendship: first, writings on idealized, classically inspired friendships,a kind of relationship that early modern men often denied as being possible for womenbut, as we will see, was explicitly claimed by some women as constitutive of their ownalliances; next, spiritual discourses on Christian friendship, which were used by women toexplain and justify the ties they shared with other women, often in ways which challengedwomen's subordination to men; third, vernacular, cheap-print medical pamphlets on suchemotions as affection and love, said to be involved in women's friendships; fourth,correspondence and epistolary guides, which helped to structure and inform women's lettersto their female friends, relatives, and neighbors; and finally—and critically for this book,because of their impact on constructions of gender identity—works of prescriptive literatureabout female behavior, which recounted how women were expected to act toward theirfriends.

Much of the manuscript evidence cited here, especially the evidence in the section onepistolary guides, comes from women's manuscript letters. Early modern women's personalcorrespondence is an invaluable resource for understanding female alliances. The lettersthemselves provide concrete evidence of female relationships, as each missive represents anact of communication between two women. But these letters commonly offer insights as wellinto the languages and ideas with which women spoke about their alliances. In theircorrespondence, literate women were particularly open and forthcoming in describing theirrelationships. Study of the idioms and languages that women used to characterize theirhomosocial friendships provide evidence of an essential dimension of women's socialnetworks. Combined with analysis of the many crucial nonliterary methods by which womenforged social connections—for example, women's gift exchanges, practices of health care,activities in domestic labor, and experiences in travel, all of which are explored in subsequentchapters of this book—such a study can begin to afford a basis by which to recognize thecomplexity and intricacy of female alliances in early modern Britain.

Classical and Neoclassical Texts

Classical and neoclassical descriptions and definitions of friendship were circulated widely inearly modern Britain. In their book Discourses and Representations of Friendship inEarly Modern Europe, Daniel Lochman, Maritere López, and Lorna Hutson identify "theworks best known" for discussing friendship in early modern Europe as "Plato's Lysis,Symposium, and Phaedrus, Aristotle's two works on ethics (the Eudemian and theNicomachean), and Cicero's De amicitia and De officiis." Many contemporary scholarshave provided manuscript evidence that supports this assertion, tracing the extensive use andrepetition of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Ciceronian ideas on friendship among literate, earlymodern British men. These classical male philosophers, theologians, and scholars deniedwomen's capacity to participate in the type of allegedly perfect friendship practiced by men.But some literate women explicitly rejected this supposition, and themselves drew uponclassically and philosophically inspired ideas about friendship in articulating their alliancesand friendships. Refusing to accept that women were incapable of conducting or appreciatingperfect friendships, literate women engaged with philosophically inspired texts in order tojustify and strengthen the bonds they shared with others.

One of the central ideas employed in classical texts and in early modern neoclassicaldiscourses on friendship was that perfect unity could be achieved by people who wereintellectual and social equals. The Greek term philia and the Latin terms amicitia and arêtewere used most often to articulate this type of friendship. When two such similar peoplebecame friends, it was said that their identities merged, to the supposed benefit of both. Thesefriendships were seen as self-sustaining as well as permanent, in that they were based on thevirtues shared by the two friends. This idea of friendship was employed by many educatedmen in early modern Europe; in 1580 the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne portrayedhis bond with his friend Étienne de la Boétie in his essay "On Friendship" as one in which"our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam thatjoined them, and cannot find it again." References to female–female friendships in classicaltexts do exist. David Konstan shows in his Friendship in the Classical World that women'srelationships were depicted in generally positive terms by authors like Antiphon,Aristophanes, and Josephus, in whose works terms like philen and philai were used todelineate female–female friends. But early modern women were often deliberately excludedfrom understandings and practice of neoclassical styles of friendship. Early modern malephilosophers like Montaigne defended sublime friendship as solely the purview of men,arguing that "the ordinary capacity of women is inadequate for that communion andfellowship which is the nurse of this sacred bond ... nor does [woman's] soul seem firmenough to endure the strain of so tight and durable a knot."

Although most early modern women were discouraged from studying the ideas in Latinand Greek texts, many elite women nonetheless read classical works, and some maintainedthat they were indeed capable of such deep friendship. Elite and middling women in bothBritain and its colonies read Aristotle, Cicero, Homer, Horace, Livy, Ovid, Plato, and Virgil,sometimes in their original languages but most frequently in translation. Although earlymodern women were imagined to be inferior to early modern men mentally, legally,educationally, and physically, in matters of the soul they were often acknowledged to beequals; following the intellectual traditions of Aquinas and Augustine, John Donne famouslysaid that, like men, women were "in possession of a reasonable and an immortal soul." Andsome literate women in early modern Britain employed the idea of "shared souls" inarticulating their alliances. In her discourse of 1667 on friendship the female philosopher andpainter Mary Beale characterized "friendship [as] thenearest union, which distinct Soules are capable of." Beale's ideal centered on thebonds between a husband and wife, but in the autobiographical portion of her Memoirs ofthe Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Lucy Hutchinson drew upon the neoclassical idea ofshared souls when portraying the bond between two sisters, her mother and aunt, "who hadcontracted such an intimate friendship ... that they seemed to have but one soul." Somewomen were so confident of their capabilities and understandings of neoclassical friendshipthat they even bragged to men of their knowledge of these ideas. Dorothy Osborne chastisedher lover William Temple in 1653 for his misunderstanding of ideal or perfect friendship,writing, "In my opinion you doe not understande the law's of friendship right; 'tis generalybeleeved it owes it's birth to an agreement & conformity of humours ... tis wholly Governdeby Equality." Osborne then powerfully asserted her right to practice and embody this rarifiedtype of friendship, writing to Temple, "I have always beleeved that there might bee afriendship perfect like that you discribe and mee thinks I finde something like it in myselfe."

Some early modern British women thus explicitly rejected the idea that they wereincapable of forming the types of friendship advocated by neoclassicists, and, though theircomments were often brief literate women indirectly or directly referenced the idea of sharedsouls when explaining their female–female alliances. Mary Eliot assured her mother, JohanaBarrington, that "I can truelye saye though [you are] absent in the body yet [you are] presentin the soul." Constantia Fowler wrote of her friend Katherine Thimelby in the 1630s that "Ihave reson to love her equall with my soule." Mary Lewis Leke addressed her sisterElizabeth Hastings in a late seventeenth-century letter as "Deare sole" and assured her againlater in the missive that "thare is nothing in the world can love you so nearle as [I do] dearsole." And in Anne Dormer's letters to Elizabeth Trumbull in the 1680s (quoted at thebeginning of this chapter), Dormer expressed her love for her sister in the same terms, bytelling her that, "I love thee as my own soule."

Religious Texts

In addition to drawing upon classical and neoclassical works to depict their relationships,women's descriptions of female alliances derived from their understandings of theology,faith, and religion. Identifying faith as one of the most central themes in early modernfriendship, Gowing, Hunter, and Rubin argue that religion "not only bound people toeach other, but also marked those who were outside the circle of amity."Early modern British women often cited ideas about spiritualized friendships andreligious alliances in many of their writings and in doing so adapted these ideasto label not merely their marriages but also their homosocial relationships.

Whereas neoclassical friendships were supposed to be built on the mutual and identicalesteem that two men held for one another's virtues, early modern Christian fellowshipstressed that approbation of friends should be balanced by humility, modesty, and evenservility. Early Christian discourses written by Augustine, Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, andJohn Cassian pronounced true friends as men who were united in their love of Jesus Christ,members of the same brotherhood of Christian followers. Instead of using terms like philiaand amicitia to designate bonds between friends, these authors employed the Greek agapeand the Latin caritas, both of which were intended to explain a universal, brotherly, andcommunal love. In many cases, the men who articulated these ideas about early Christianbrotherhood and spiritually inspired friendship borrowed from familial models. Speaking ofearly Christian philosophers, Konstan avers that "the preferred metaphors for Christiansolidarity were derived from kinship ... rather than from the domain of amicitia or philia."Within the family of Christian believers not everyone was equal, but they didn't need to be.By embracing caritas, or charity, followers of Christ were prompted to love one anotherdespite their differences and inequalities and to beneficently and charitably offer succor to allmembers of the Christian community.

In early modern Britain women were not excluded from agape or caritas as they oftenwere from philia and amicitia. Early modern philosophers and theologians generallyconsidered women to be inferior to men, but, because Christian caritas was predicated ondifference, it was held that women could engage in this sort of fellowship by joining areligious organization for women, such as a convent or a priory. By the 1530s, however,Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries prevented early modern British women fromjoining religious communities of the sort envisioned by early Christian and medieval authors,unless they left for convents on the Continent. But early Christian theologians and the earlymodern philosophers who drew on their works also argued that women could participate incaritas through marriage. In marriage, women were held to be subservient to their husbandsbut were believed to enjoy a special Christian friendship withthem. Constance M. Furey shows in her article "Bound by Likeness: Vives and Erasmuson Marriage and Friendship" that sixteenth-century male philosophers used Augustine'smarriage treatise De bono coniugali, in which Augustine states that a "true union offriendship [has] one governing and the other obeying," to categorize early modern Europeanmarriages as friendships between nonequals. As Augustine writes, "Women should be chaste,obedient, and subservient ... recognizing that the man is the head of woman just as God isthe head of man." In the mid-seventeenth century these ideas were adapted for ProtestantBritish audiences by the highly influential Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor, who wrote a letterto his friend the poetess Katherine Philips on the subject; this tract was later published andwidely circulated, appearing in print seven times between 1657 and 1684. Taylor positedthat women could participate in what he called "noble friendship": "I differ from themorosity of those cynics, who would not admit your sex into the communities of a noblefriendship. I believe some wives have been the best friends in the world ... [but] I cannot saythat women are capable of all those excellencies ... a female friend in some cases is not sogood a counselor as a wise man, and cannot so well defend my honor; nor dispose of reliefsand assistances." According to Taylor, female friends were not to be trusted for theprovision of advice, the defense of honor, or the disbursement of charity. They could,however, "love as passionately, and converse as pleasantly, and retain a secret as faithfully"as male friends. For Taylor, women's alliances were marked by love, sociability, andtrustworthiness, and women themselves embodied a gendered type of friendship, as "virtuouswomen are the beauties of society and the prettinesses of friendship." But Taylor believedthat women's best and truest friendships were realized only in the marital relationshipbetween husband and wife. Calling marriage "the queen of friendships ... made sacred byvows and love, by bodies and souls, by interest and custom, by religion and by laws, bycommon counsels and common fortunes," Taylor privileged the bonds between husband andwife. In this partnership, women were placed under the guidance of their husbands; areflection of caritas, marital pairs could in theory offer a pure, spiritual—and distinctlyunequal—friendship to one another.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300177402
• ISBN 13: 9780300177404
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 271