Redeeming Eve: Women writers of the English Renaissance (review)

132 Reviews Review in 1955, remains one of the best introductions to the subject. It is also difficult to understand the omission of any reference to the works of Raftis, but especially his Assart Data and Land Values. Meanwhile, however, this volume will stand as a useful interim guide until the appearance of the second and third volumes of the Cambridge Agrarian History of England and Wales [Ed. note: vol. II has now been published]. John Walmsley Department of History Macquarie University Beilin, E.V., Redeeming Eve: Women writers of the English Renaissance, Princeton, Princeton U. P., 1987; pp. xxiv, 346; R.R.P. A U S $74.50. This is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on women writers in the early modern period. In recent years, there have been detailed studies of individuals such as Aphra Behn by Angeline Goreau and by Sara Mendelson, of Mary Astell by Brigid Hill and by Ruth Perry, and reprints of texts, such as those by Mahn and Koon, and Henderson and McManus. Beilin, a literary scholar, is sensitive to historical context and her work is accessible lo historians. She eschews the simplicities of arguing that women were oppressed in the past or that their subjugation was more theoretical than real. She seeks to show how the conventional assumptions about women's natures affected individual women differently. For example, Margaret More Roper, daughter of the Lord Chancellor, was a gifted and respected translator. Yet in choosing to translate a Latin exposition of the Paternoster by Erasmus, Roper was able to be a humanist scholar while remaining within the family circle. Beilin argues that the key lay in the importance of her relationship with her father, w h o m she sought to please by her acceptance of the contemporary ideas of female virtue. The case of Anne Askew is more interesting. In one of the best chapters in the book (previously printed in the valuable collection Silent but for the Word), Beilin uses Askew's autobiographical writings to show how her self-image is related to the concept of women in her society. Bale published Askew's work after her death and praised her as a strong woman, a defender of the faith, a teacher, a visionary, a fighter, and the spiritual equal of any man. Beilin suggests that in her reading of the Scriptures, Askew found a way of seeing herself as directiy inspired by God's word. Beilin discusses other writers, such as Mary Sidney, Aemilia Lanyer and Mary Wroth, and also the female participants in the controversy over the nature of woman. She also discusses the writings of women better known for other activity, such as Queen Elizabeth. The latter group raises problems about the category of 'writer'; for Elizabeth it seems an odd epithet. It is not clear what distinguishes some women as 'writers'. There were many w o m e n who wrote in Reviews 133 early m o d e m England and there was an element of accident about which of those writings were printed and which remained in manuscript. Beilin is less interested in the mechanics and politics of publication, yet this might make her more sceptical about the attribution of a work such as A Mothers Counsell to a female author. I a m also uneasy about the label 'writer of the English Renaissance' being applied to Anne Askew or, indeed, to a number of the mothers who wrote advice books. But these are minor points. Beilin's strength is that she succeeds in demonstating the influence of ideology and the significance of religious belief in shaping the ideas and voices of intelligent women in the past Patricia Crawford Department of History University of Western Australia Brennan, M.G., Literary patronage in the English Renaissance: the Pembroke family, London, Routledge, 1988 (distributed in Australia by the Law Book Company); pp. xiv, 251; 2 tables; R.R.P. A U S $105. The Wilton circle, comprising Sir Philip Sidney and other writers, and their patrons the Herberts, earls of Pembroke, have become almost a cliche of literary history, and an investigation of the extent and nature of that patronage is timely...