"The Wantt of health": An Early Eighteenth-Century Self-Portrait of Sickness

The suffering and illness central to Elizabeth Freke's narrative of her life reflect a sensibility new to early domestic autobiography. Unusually sensitive to the realities of sickness and infirmity, she fashions a sense of self meaningful in immediate personal and physical rather than spiritual terms. In the misfortunes of illness and death Elizabeth Freke sees confirmation of herself as a long-suffering yet defiant wife, mother, and widow.