5 research outputs found
Mary Birkett Card (1774-1817): Struggling to Become the Ideal Quaker Woman
This paper is based on The Works of Mary Birkett Card 1774 -1817, an edition of the manuscript collection made by her son Nathaniel Card in 1834. The collection contains different genres and spans Card\u27s life from childhood to near her death, forming a unique record of one woman\u27s experience at the tum of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Themes of self and identity, women\u27s participation in public and private spheres, and ideological differences are apparent in Mary Birkett Card\u27s struggle, in life and text, to become \u27the ideal Quaker woman\u27. One particular focus is on her negotiation of Quaker ideology in relation to her literary creativity. It is argued that dramatic changes in her writing resulted from efforts to contain her literary imagination in line with \u27plainer\u27 Quaker aesthetic values and more restrictive ideas about the most appropriate forms of creativity for her as a woman and a Friend
Work in Progress: Inwardness and Outwardness: Quietism and Evangelicalism in the Life of Mary Birkett Card, 1774-1817
The works of Mary Birkett Card 1774-1817 originally collected by her son Nathaniel Card in 1834: an edited transcription with an introduction to her life and works in two volumes
This thesis makes available the writings of Mary Birkett Card, a Dublin Quaker,
as collected by her son Nathaniel Card in 1834. It provides an annotated
transcription of the manuscript collection, with textual and editorial notes, and
an introduction recovering her life within her cultural community. The writings
consist of a spiritual autobiography, 43 religious letters, other prose pieces and
over 220 poems. Two poems were published in her lifetime: A Poem on the
African Slave Trade (1792) and Lines to the Memory of our Late Esteemed and
Justly Valued Friend Joseph Williams (1807).
The introduction is in three parts. Part 1 offers a biographical outline and sets
Mary Birkett Card's childhood poems in the context of the Quaker community in
which she grew up. Part 2 explores her autobiography, questioning concepts
of a separate female autobiographical tradition. It then investigates her
encounter with 'deist' thought, and later conflicts, after her marriage. These
concern money (seeking to reconcile the spiritual and material) and issues of
language and gender (a desire for'a pure language', linked to constraints upon
women's speech). Part 3 contrasts her 1790s verse with her later poems, and
epistles, arguing that embedded within these works as a whole lies a struggle
with her literary imagination.
Throughout, the writings are set within the context of contemporary literary
forms in poetry, Quaker writing and women's writing. They are considered in
relation to now current critical debates - on public and private spheres,
autobiography, abolitionist verse, women's intimate friendships, domesticity,
philanthropy and sensibility. It is shown that Mary Birkett Card's literary
creativity was intimately connected with her Quakerism, and, moreover, with
attempts to negotiate an ideal of Quaker womanhood. One important aspect is
the challenge her work poses to assumptions, still generally prevalent, about
Quaker women's far greater autonomy within marriage in comparison to
women in society at large
The works of Mary Birkett Card 1774-1817 : originally collected by her son Nathaniel Card in 1834 : an edited transcription with an introduction to her life and works in two volumes
EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo