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"WITHOUT RESPECT OF PERSONS": GENDER EQUALITY, THEOLOGY, AND THE LAW IN THE WRITING OF MARGARET FELL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2015

Sarah E. Skwire
Sarah E. Skwire*
Affiliation:
Literature, Liberty Fund, Inc.
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Type
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Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , Spring 2015 , pp. 137 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2015 

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References

1 In re Marriage Cases, 43 Cal. 4th 757 (2008), California Supreme Court, S147999.

2 Concurring and dissenting opinion of Baxter, J., 1.

3 http://www.whitehouse.gov/our–government/the–constitution accessed 9/26/13.

4 http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html accessed 9/26/13.

5 Margaret Fell married George Fox, founder of the Quakers, in 1669, after the death of her first husband in 1658. As her major works were written before her second marriage, this essay will refer to her as Margaret Fell throughout. Unless otherwise specified, citations from Fell’s works are to the University of Pennsylvania’s “Online Books Page” accessed through http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/.

6 Fell, Margaret, A Declaration and Information from us the People of God Called Quakers (London, 1660), 7.Google Scholar

7 Fell, Margaret. The Life of Margaret Fox, wife of George Fox: compiled from her own narrative and other sources; with a selection from her epistles, etc. (Philadelphia: Book Association of Friends, 1885), 21.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 35.

9 Citations from the Bible throughout the text of this paper are taken from the King James Version. Fell herself most often quotes the Bible from memory.

Matthew 5:33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.

36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

James 5:12 But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.

10 Fell, Life of Margaret Fox, 29.

11 Evans, Katharine and Cheevers, Sarah, A Short Relation of Cruel Sufferings..., London: Robert Wilson. 1662.Google Scholar

12 George Fox, Journal, quoted in Life of Margaret Fox, 50.

13 Ibid.

14 Gerald Gaus’s discussion of LPA societies as being “characterized by a near-obsession of resisting the authority of would-be dominators” seems a pertinent comparison here. See “The Egalitarian Species” in this volume.

15 Fell, A True Testimony From the People of God, 23–24.

16 Fell, Life of Margaret Fox, 23.

17 Ibid., 31.

18 For more on early modern antihierarchical theories of politics, see also Anderson, “Equality and Freedom in the Workplace: Recovering Republican Insights,” in this volume.

19 Fell, Life of Margaret Fox, 42–43.

20 Ibid., 58.

21 Fell, Declaration and Information, 2.

22 Ibid., 3.

23 Fell, Life of Margaret Fox, 23. The Fifth Monarchy Men were another early modern dissenting sect. They were Millenarians who expected the reign of Christ on earth to begin in 1666. Their slogan, “No King but King Jesus” and participation in the regicide made them decidedly unpopular with Charles II.

24 Fell, Declaration and Information, 3.

25 Ibid., 4.

26 Ibid., 6.

27 Ibid., 7.

28 Ibid., 4.

29 Elaine Hobby, Charlotte Otten, Patricia Higgins, Sylvia Brown, Linda Woodbridge, Margaret Ezell, and a host of other literary critics and historians have effectively demonstrated the rise of women’s publications and political and religious involvement when Fell was writing, and Fell’s work is certainly usefully read in that context.

30 Otten, Charlotte F., “Introduction to Part 8,” in English Women’s Voices, 1540–1700, ed., Otten, Charlotte F. (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1992), 359.Google Scholar

31 Higgins, Patricia, “The Reactions of Women, with special reference to women petitioners,” in Politics, Religion, and the English Civil War, ed. Manning, Brian (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), 180.Google Scholar

32 Davies’s claims were met with fines, imprisonment, and the mocking observation that “Dame Eleanor Davies” can be anagrammed as “Never soe mad a ladie.”

33 “The Root and Branch Petition,” 1640. http://history.hanover.edu/texts/ENGref/er97.html.

34 Higgins, 210–11. Higgins quotes from Petition, Feb 4th, 1641 from the Harleian Miscellany, Vol 3, p. 568; from MS Tanner LXIV, f. 190; from To the Supream authority . . . humble Petition of diverse Wel–affected Women (1649); and from To the Parliament of the Commonwealth . . . petition of afflicted women in behalf of Lilburne (1653). Higgins acknowledges that it is hard to say whether the petitions were written by the women who presented them, or were written by men in order for women to present them. Either way, the position of humble submissiveness was clearly seen as the appropriate one for a petitioner — particularly a female one.

35 Fell, Margaret, Women’s Speaking Justified, in English Women’s Voices, 1540–1700, ed. Otten, Charlotte F. (Miami, FL: Florida International University Press, 1992), 363.Google Scholar

36 Fell, Women’s Speaking, 363.

37 Homily on the State of Matrimony, Book of Homilies. http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/ret/homilies/bk2hom18.html, accessed 10/8/2013.

38 Hobby, Virtue of Necessity, 15.

39 A True Copy of the Petition of the Gentlewomen and Tradesmen’s Wives . . . London, 1642. English Women’s Voices, 1540–1700, ed Charlotte F. Otten. (Miami, FL: Florida International University Press, 1992), 96.

40 A True Copy, 96–97.

41 Hobby, Virtue of Necessity, 17. Hobby is quoting from To the Supreme Authority of England the Commons . . . the Humble Petitions of Diverse Well-Affected Women.

42 Channel, Elinor, A Message from God, by a Dumb Woman to His Highness the Lord Protector, ed. Evans, Arise (London: 1653), 7Google Scholar. Cited in Mack, Phyllis, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 32.Google Scholar

43 Thickstun, Margaret Olofson, “Writing the Spirit: Margaret Fell’s Feminist Critique of Pauline Theology,”Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63, no. 2 (Summer, 1995): 275.Google Scholar

44 Fell, Women’s Speaking, 370.

45 Ibid., 371.

46 Ibid., 372.

47 Martin Luther, Freedom of a Christian, 58.

48 Fell is speaking of Old Testament law here, from which early modern Protestants argued they had been freed by the revelations of the New Testament. There is often considerable slippage among definitions of “law” in early modern texts, however, and early moderns were certainly aware of and inclined to explore the ambiguities such slippage opened.

49 Fell, Women’s Speaking, 369.

50 Gen. 3:15.

51 Fell, Women’s Speaking, 366. This argument is one that Fell uses in other places, most notably in The Daughter of Sion Awakened. “So the enmity that god hath put between the Serpent and the Woman, there is no reconciling of it; for where this is any part of the serpents seed or spirit, it is smiting and striking at the Woman and contemning her Weakness” (10).

52 Ibid., 371.

53 Ibid., 371–72.

54 Fell, The Daughter of Sion Awakened and Putting on Strength, 13.

55 Ibid., 16.

56 Fell, A True Testimony From the People of God, 6.

57 Ibid., 18.