Women-Learning.

I have a somewhat proprietary view of Early Modern women. This stems from the turn of the century -  when there were only four other people in Australia who had discovered Margaret Cavendish; everyone still got marks for citing Ben Johnson as the writer of the first 'Country House'  poem; Jonathan Swift was credited with having introduced the fiction & satire genres; and reference books assured us that it was the dawn of the 20thC before any woman was invited to the Royal Society.

So while I'm pleased that we've challenged history and found so much more truth in it than other generations have been able to; it still saddens me that so little of this information has seeped through as mainstream knowledge.

Take, for an example, the mysterious, much speculated-about Amelia Lanyer - who was named before spelling became uniform; so I'm sticking with the first spelling of it I came across back in 2004.

There are many academics whose only real interest in Amelia (am on first name terms with all my Early Mod. women) was in shooting down the idea that she was the Dark Lady of the Shakespearean sonnets. Those who thought she wasn't haven't changed their minds over this; but then those who still think it possible weren't swayed much either: what a cornuccopia of possibility that leaves available for writers of historical fiction! Or for documentary writers who like to propose 'mysteries' in their titles; or for a lavish BBC period movie.

At a time when Ladies were bewigged and powdered, pale & ethereal, languid & decorative; Amelia would indeed have been regarded as a "Dark" lady. Her family was Italian, and, though she was born in England, her father, Baptiste Bassano came from Venice. Thus it's probable that she had olive skin, black eyes, black, thick hair, and well, ate garlic! For which reason *Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun") is regarded by the "Dark Lady" believers as giving credence to the theory that the vivacious Amelia was his muse.

I threw in the subjective adjective "vivacious" based not upon her Italian heritage, but because her family were Court Musicians in both the Elizabethan and the Jacobean Courts during Shakespeare's time in London. Though, like Shakespeare, Amelia was not born into the Gentry, her families position at Court gave her the kind of societal status Shakespeare seems to have craved; and they would have moved in the kinds of circles Shakespeare's work brought him in contact with. Though she was not, of course an actor, (female actors were not invented until Charless II took back the throne.) anyone involved in the entertainment of the Monarch would have, of necessity, had a slightly larger-than-life public personality, and not been shy - if for nothing more than Early Modern good publicity.

Amelia Lanyer was, therefore, an interesting woman; part Courtier, part musician; unconstrained by many of the contemporary strictures towards women; glamorous, well connected, well educated and well-travelled: unique for her place and time.

Yet all of this is merely the background to the Amelia Lanyer I first stumbled upon in a quiet backwater of the Arts Library: Amelia the proto-feminist.

In the early months of my original studies I was so relieved to have been able to move on from the rather insane Julian of Norwich with whom I shared no fellow-feeling; that I spent the entire following year immersed in Margaret Cavendish. I was consumed by the eye-popping evidence of which side of the Querelle des Femmes she had the evidence, the education, and eloquence to put forward. So gob-smacked was I to encounter an Early Modern woman who had all the passion of the early Suffragists, it was a while before I began to wonder if she was unique among women of her time in protesting the role of women in Society publicly.

Until, quite by chance, I encountered the lines:

"But surely Adam can not be excused,

Her [Eve's] fault though great, yet he was most to blame;
What Weakness offered, Strength might have refused,
Being Lord of all, the greater was his shame: 
Although the Serpent's craft had her abused,
God's holy word ought all his actions frame,
For he was Lord and King of all the earth,
Before poore Eve had either life or breath."

and met Amelia who - Society be damned - was taking on that behemoth of women's marginalisation: the Church!

My proprietorial attitude to Early Modern women sprang into full force a few weeks ago when I came across not merely one, but subsequently a number of commentators, deconstructing this very passage. Each one of which interpreted her words as an 'admission', an 'acceptance' a 'capitulation' a 'confession' that women were the weaker vessel. And I found myself expostulating loudly with each of these luckless scholars: "Are you crazy?" "Don't you have any imagination?" "Do you think every woman drank the Cool-Aid?" "Are you now stereotyping E.M. women as a quiescent, vacuous whole: upholders of the status quo?" "Can you seriously not see how far her tongue is inserted in her cheek?"  "Do you think she was constrained, because Swift had not yet been pronounced the progenitor of satire, from being satirical?" 

Which was when it struck me that I should, very probably, never have the opportunity to engage in musings, conversations or speculation about Amelia unless I dug up the relatively small cadre of Early Modern scholars who have happened to have studied her.

 Because 21stC women are largely unaware of their own history: they have no role models from previous centuries; they have no idea of the role women have played in our collective history. And it made me want to stamp my feet and shout with all the crusading zeal of the 18yr old me who first began to campaign for the inclusion of women in general historical studies.

I'm (much) older now, and it pisses me off more than somewhat that, as I said earlier, so little of the progress we've made across my lifetime in the field of women's history has yet filtered through to the 'average' woman. 

So here's just the bare bones of the story of Amelia Lanyer. For those who have not yet encountered her, there's an awful lot more to find out: it's an exciting adventure. And perhaps when you've done so you too could share her story with someone else? It's taking far too long for contemporary women to feel comfortable in their own female skin; we need to share and learn our own history so that we all become aware of all that women have contributed - in Science, Medicine, The Arts, Sociology, Warfare. 

 We're pretty amazing, really. We've not had much success convincing men of that, though.  So perhaps we should concentrate more on convincing ourselves first?

*https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45108/sonnet-130-my-mistress-eyes-are-nothing-like-the-sun