Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutcbinson is many different things: a love story; a political biography; a war diary; a sociological analysis of English history; and a bitter polemic against the regime of Charles II, with a call to be ready for rebellion when the time comes. This political subversiveness meant that when Lucy Hutchinson wrote the work, soon after her husband had died in prison in 1664, there could be no question of its being printed. The manuscript thereafter fell into the hands of a branch of the family which did not wish to revive memories of republican black sheep, and it was not published until 1806 (when the editor gave it the now-current title). It was immediately recognized as a classic, and has remained more or less continuously in print ever since. The work was early of interest to women writers; in 1861 Jane Williams declared it ‘the most perfect piece of biography ever written by a woman’ ( Williams, 1861 , 91). This Victorian admiration, however, was somewhat double-edged. Lucy Hutchinson was often acclaimed for what was considered a quintessentially female modesty, a readiness to subordinate herself, as wife, to her husband, as man of action. The fact that she addressed the work to her children accentuated this sense of self-limiting domesticity. In the celebrated portrait of her courtship (45–52; Demaria, 331–2), she presents herself as her husband's ... log in or subscribe to read full text