Isabella Whitney

Isabella Whitney (born 1545?; fl. 1566–1573) was arguably the first female poet and professional woman writer in England. More specifically, Whitney is credited with being the first Englishwoman to have penned and published original secular poetry under her own name.[1]


Early life

Isabella Whitney was born in Cheshire, England to parents of low rank. It’s unclear whether she was born in Nantwich, or Coole Pilate.[2] However, these two places are just down the street from each other and their close proximity could be the reason why her exact birth location is unknown. Although, it is known that her brother Geoffrey was born in Coole Pilate, so it is logical to assume that this location would be the place of her birth as well.[3] Whitney was the middle child, having an older sister, Alice, two younger sisters, a younger brother, and a prolific older brother.[4] This older brother, Geoffrey Whitney (named after their father), was a notable author of the time whose works include A Choice of Emblemes and other Devises (1586). [5]Geoffrey died around 1601 without a spouse.[6] Because of Isabella's and Geoffrey's writing abilities, one can infer that the family may have been quite creative.

However, unlike many of the other women writers of the sixteenth century, Isabella Whitney did not come from a noble family. Rather, she was of the middle class and lived on meager finances.[7] Because of this, Whitney herself was sent to London in her youth to live with a wealthy family, which was a common custom for English gentry.[4] Being born into a lower-class family, it was never a bad idea to serve the upper-class until becoming an adult. From this experience as a child, it would be easier to grow up and be more connected to people and exposed to opportunities.[3] It is thought that she served (performing household duties to compensate for her room and board) under Sir Arthur and Margaret Mainwaring, who owned a great deal of land in Cheshire.[4]

Family/Personal Life

Despite having no dowry and coming from a poor family, Isabella believed she had found a romantic match in William Gruffith from Cheshire, who may have worked in the same household.[4] It should be noted, however, that Whitney’s connection to Gruffith has been deduced by scholars based on the attribution of the poems to Whitney, and via connecting those to her earlier work. It is very likely true, but is not an entirely established fact.[8] Furthermore, Gruffith proved to be unreliable and left Whitney. Upon being abandoned by her alleged fiancé, she “was left to fend for herself”.[4] Whitney was heartbroken, but she didn’t give up. Instead, Isabella sent a letter titled “To her Unconstant Lover” to Cheshire as an attempt to win Gruffith back. Gruffith was nonplussed and married Margery Radley on July 4, 1562.[4] Readers can gather that Gruffith was the man being addressed within Whitney’s poem, on the theory that “W.G.”, is in fact William Gruffith. This, as scholar Randall Martin notes, would have meant that Gruffith and Whitney were affiliated.[8]

Between 1566 and 1572 (the specific year is unknown) Whitney was fired at the worst time to be unemployed. “Tens of thousands of rural poor were displaced to the cities” after a shift from farming fields to raising animals that closed off once common land.[4] As a result of the times and a desire to reduce unemployment rates, the government decided to make unemployment illegal and under the new Poor Law of 1572, relatively healthy adults in London who could not provide proof of employment were imprisoned and whipped, sometimes even hanged.[3] It is likely that this newfound unemployment and consequent laws are what led to Whitney selling “two of her poems to the London stationer, Richard Jones” in 1566 or 1567.[4] She sold her aforementioned 1562 epistle alongside an accompanying poem that served as a warning to other women in London in hopes to save them from her recent miseries. These were published by Jones as The Copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her vnconstant Louer. With an Admonitio to al yonge Gentilwomen, and to all other Mayds in general to beware of mennes flattery.[4]

Still unemployed, in the fall of 1572, Whitney again sought out to earn money from her writings.[5] This second work, Whitney’s Nosegay (1573) was a reworking of Hugh Plat’s Floures of Philosophie (1572), specifically focusing on similar motifs.[5] However, Whitney reworked the themes of love, suffering, friendship, and illness with an added feminine perspective that many would call “proto-feminist”.[5] Plat’s maxims contained 883 maxims, but Whitney chose 110 that had particular emphasis on suffering (whether it be from love or poverty), and she rewrote them in verse form.[4]

At this point, in her early twenties, Isabella was ready to end her life, or at least write about ending it; as she alludes to in her poem A Care-full Complaint by the Unfortunate Author. She had fallen very ill and was without any sustainable income, which, adding to her broken heart and being assailed by her creditors, made the thought of ending life all the easier.[4] Whether Whitney actually thought of suicide, or it was merely trope, can be left up to the interpretation of the reader.

In late 1573, Whitney began packing to move back to Cheshire from Abchurch Lane, London. Before leaving she wrote two farewell greetings (in verse) to her siblings, either displaced or living in London, and to her friends. She also penned a “detailed farewell to a beloved who had not been very kind to her: the City.”[4] This farewell, “Will and Testament,” served both as a goodbye to the city and also “as a tourist’s guide to Elizabethan London, written in Isabella’s characteristic style of cheery grief.”[4]


Career

Isabella Whitney’s career as a writer began after she was a servant in London.[4] This was a very dangerous time not only for women, but especially for unemployed women. Having lost her employment Whitney knew she had to find a way around this law. This struggle can be seen in Whitney's A Sweet Nosegay, where she states that she is "whole in body, and in mind, / but very weak in purse".[9] So, she began selling her poems, and a man named Richard Jones published her works.[3] Whitney wrote for money and says that she settled on a career in writing because she could not find any other way to make an income.[2] Whitney wrote multiple works demonstrating an acute awareness of public taste.[7] This awareness, combined with a sharp satirical tone allowed her to become one of the first professional women writers in Europe. She was also the first woman to write a collection of original poetry, and is thought to be the first professional female poet in England.[10] Prior to her poems being published, no other woman before her had accomplished such a thing. As a result, Isabella Whitney becomes known as the first woman writer to have a book of poems published professionally and in a substantial amount.[7] It was during a hard time that Whitney became a published writer, but fighting through it gave her a great title in the end. Her writing is even described as being her property and partner while she is without both.[7] While not having much in the life surrounding her, Isabella Whitney wrote about those exact things.


Late Life

In 1575, Isabella Whitney’s romantic rival Margery Gruffith died followed by her husband, Whitney’s past lover, William Gruffith two years later. Grief-stricken, and also in failing health herself, Isabella lamented her grief for her ex-lover in verse. This poem, “Lamentation”, and another, “The Lady-Beloved Exclaimeth of the Great Untruth of her Lover,” were Whitney’s last. They were both featured in Thomas Proctor’s A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, which was published in 1578.[4] However, we cannot be certain that Whitney in fact wrote them. It is only through scholar Randall Martin’s careful analysis of the poems, as compared to her earlier poems, that the “Lamentation” can be attributed to Whitney. Martin found that the language, some minor stylistic choices, and the criticism of patriarchal rule all lead to a very high likelihood that Whitney was, indeed, the author.[8]


Death

It’s unknown exactly when she died, but readers didn’t hear from Whitney after 1578. So it’s assumed that she died in 1577, around the same time that her alleged lover (Gruffith) died.[4]


Works





Style/Scholarly Writings

Whitney was a very unusual and progressive woman, especially for the sixteenth century. She was unconventional in many ways. While almost all women writers of the time were well connected and noble, Whitney was not, and because of this, she often criticized the financial situations of her time in her writing, as well as criticizing gender roles. She also hoped that her writings would bring her and her family some sort of income. Some critics claim that Whitney’s poetry proclaimed her as an outsider, or “other,” who pursued her own interests publicly.[14] Whitney was often upfront in the way that she wrote. A common theme in her works were of women in powerless positions and romance. During the time period she was living in, it was important for women to remain modest and under control, however, Whitney did the opposite of this.[3] As Whitney had apologized for borrowing some of her ideas, she is one of a few who named their contemporary sources.[4] Even more importantly, she gave a “public voice to breezily expressed secular concerns”.[5] Furthermore, Whitney was the first writer, male or female, “to exhibit any concern for gender-based phrasing, a practice that took another four hundred years to catch on”.[4] Similarly, scholars have argued that with her use of “complaint, manifesto, satire, [and] mock will,” Whitney was attempting to show a temporal utopia, long before utopia was a generic custom.[14]

According to most critics, Isabella Whitney’s works contained a certain degree of autobiographical material. This can be seen in two of her connected poems: A Communication Which the Author had to London before she Made Her Will and The Manner of Her Will, and What She Left to London and to All Those in it, of her Departing where the writer is not only lacking in finances, but also spends the majority her time amongst "the poor, the imprisoned, and the insane", otherwise known as the commonwealth of London.[15] Her most innovative poems were her verse epistles, many of which were addressed to female relatives.[16] She addressed her poem "Will and Testament" to the city of London, mocking it as a heartless friend, greedy and lacking charity.[17] These works were written in ballad metre and contained both witty and animated descriptions of everyday life. Judging from these popular inclusions, it is likely that the reason for the publishing of her works was simply to supplement her scanty income.[15] As she states in an epistle to "her Sister Misteris A.B." in A Sweet Nosegay, "til some houshold cares mee tye, / My bookes and Pen I will apply," possibly suggesting that she sought a professional writing career to support her in an unmarried state. Whitney's publisher, Richard Jones, was a prominent figure in the contemporary market for ballads, and his purchase of her manuscripts makes sense in this regard, even if little evidence of their relationship survives beyond the front matter to The copy of a letter (1567).[18]

Isabella Whitney pioneered her field of women poets. While a lot of her practices (familiar allusions, exaggerations, the ballad measure) were common for contemporary male authors of the mid-sixteenth century, as a woman she was quite the trendsetter (in both her epistles and mock testament).[5] She published her poetry in a time when it was not customary for a woman, especially one not of the aristocracy, to do so. In addition, her material contained controversial issues such as class-consciousness and political commentary as well as witty satire, and was made available to the upper and the middle class.[15] Whitney’s two best known works are The copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge gentilwoman: to her vnconstant louer written in 1567?, and A sweet nosgay, or pleasant posye contayning a hundred and ten phylosophicall flowers written in 1573.


Titles of Works/Writings

Details and timeline of events are taken from Foster, Donald W. "Isabella Whitney." [4]


Timeline of Events

Works/Writings list is taken from "Whitney, Isabella." Early English Books Online.[2]


External links


References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Travitsky, Betty S. “Isabella Whitney (flourished 1566-1573).” Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic Writers: Second Series. Vol. 136 (1994): 341-344. Dictionary of Literary Biography (accessed 13 Feb 2016)
  2. 1 2 3 "Whitney, Isabella." Early English Books Online [Literature Online Biography]. ProQuest, 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Isabella Whitney." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2016
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Foster, Donald W., ed. Women’s Works: 1550-1603. Vol. 2. New York: Wicked Good Books, 2014. 172-187
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Travitsky BS. 'Whitney, Isabella (fl. 1566–1573)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed 15 March 2013)
  6. ↑ Andrew King, "Whitney, Geoffrey (1548?–1600/01)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed 18 Feb 2016)
  7. 1 2 3 4 Ellinghausen, Laurie (2005). "Literary Property and the Single Woman in Isabella Whitney's A Sweet Nosgay". Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. 45 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1353/sel.2005.0005.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Martin, Randall. "Isabella Whitney's 'Lamentation upon the death of William Gruffith.'" Early Modern Literary Studies 3.1 (1997): 2.1-15. Early Modern Literary Studies.(accessed 17 Feb 2016)
  9. ↑ A Sweet Nosegay or Pleasant Posy: Containing a Hundred and Ten Philosophical Flowers (accessed 2 May 2010)
  10. ↑ To her Cousin, F.W., Isabella Whitney (accessed 2 May 2010)
  11. 1 2 3 Whitney, Isabella. The Copy of a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her vnconstant Louer. With an Admonitio to al yonge Gentilwomen, and to all other Mayds in general to beware of mennes flattery. 1567. Bodleian Library, Oxford. Early English Books Online.(accessed 13 Feb 2015)
  12. 1 2 Whitney, Isabella. A Sweet Nosegay. 1573. British Library, London. Early English Books Online. (accessed 14 Feb 2016)
  13. ↑ Gates, Daniel. Renaissance Quarterly 61.4 (2008): 1399–1401.
  14. 1 2 Bartolovich, Crystal. “‘Optimism of the Will’: Isabella Whitney and Utopia.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39 (2009): 407-432. Web. 15 Feb 2016.
  15. 1 2 3 Whitney, Isabella. "Notes on the Authors." Women Poets of the Renaissance. Ed. Marion Wynne-Davies. New York: Routledge, 1999.
  16. ↑ Spender and Todd, p. 9.
  17. ↑ Clarke, Danielle. Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney and Amelia Lanyer: Renaissance Women Poets. New York: Penguin, 2001, p. xiv.
  18. ↑ R. B. McKerrow, ed., A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books 1557–1640 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1910), 159
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