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Reviewed by:
  • Biblical Women's Voices in Early Modern England
  • Jennifer Clement
Osherow, Michele , Biblical Women's Voices in Early Modern England (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2009; cloth; pp. x, 189; 11 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £50.00; ISBN 9780754666745.

Michele Osherow has written a fascinating book on the ways in which the words of biblical women challenged Early Modern injunctions for female silence. Osherow argues that Old Testament narratives featuring women offered rhetorical models for both male and female writers who wanted to assert [End Page 258] the power of female speech and, thus, contradict the traditional association between women's virtue and their silence. Such an argument allows Osherow to examine an extensive range of Early Modern texts in her engaging and well-written monograph.

In her first chapter, Osherow analyses the connections between Miriam and Mary Sidney evident in Sidney's translations of the Psalms. As Osherow shows, the parallels between Miriam's status as sister to Moses, and Sidney's status as sister to Philip Sidney, allows Sidney to pay tribute to her dead brother and claim authority for herself. Miriam's praise of the Lord, in what Osherow describes as 'the first example of a biblical psalm' (p. 15), justifies Sidney's own translation activity. However, Miriam's well-known punishment for resisting her brother's authority - she is stricken with leprosy, shamed and silenced - makes her a less-than-ideal figure of female speech, a problem Sidney circumvents by presenting herself as more humble than Miriam. Unlike Miriam, then, Sidney successfully performs humility in her translations and dedications, avoids shame and claims authority in a way that other Early Modern women writers praised and emulated.

Osherow's second chapter turns to the story of Hannah, who successfully petitioned God for a son and dedicated that son, Samuel, to service at the Temple. Osherow argues that Hannah's story modelled a redefinition of prayer as a private negotiation between the self and God that appealed strongly to English Protestants. Preachers such as John Donne drew a connection between Hannah's humiliation at her childlessness and the ideal, humble position of Protestant ministers. And while Hannah's silent prayers were also used to reinforce calls for female silence, her song of thanksgiving was used to justify female speech by a range of women writers, including Margaret Fell and Elizabeth Brooke Joceline.

In Chapter 3, Osherow discusses Deborah as a definitive example of female authority. Elizabeth I's accession produced numerous invocations of Deborah as a model of female power, and the first section of this chapter focuses especially on the queen's coronation pageant to illustrate how Deborah's status as a prophetess of Israel allows the pageant to praise England, as well as the queen. But as Osherow goes on to explain, the pageant also silences Deborah, thus removing one of the most important aspects of Deborah's story. The second section of the chapter shows how Deborah's speech is both praised and critiqued by writers such as Thomas Heyworth and William Shakespeare. In the final sections of the chapter, Osherow examines Deborah's role as exemplar [End Page 259] to writers such as Rachel Speght and Ester Sowernam in their anti-misogynist writings, and Amelia Lanyer, who uses Deborah to justify praise not only of God, but also of other women.

I found Chapter 4 the most interesting in the book. In this chapter, Osherow focuses on David, surely an anomaly in a book devoted to biblical women's voices. But no. Osherow convincingly suggests that Early Modern representations of David associated him with traits that were gendered feminine, such as weakness, obedience and lust. Osherow argues against the common critical assumption that 'the use of prominent male figures to represent Early Modern women consistently aims to transfer masculinity onto female subjects' (p. 112, italics in original). Instead, Osherow claims, women who represented themselves - or who were represented - as David engaged in a kind of rhetorical cross-dressing, in which David became feminized. This claim is borne out by Osherow's examples, which include John Aylmer's description of Elizabeth in his An Harborowe for...

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