WRITING ETIQUETTE

Anne Bradstreet inaugurated American poetry with a disclaimer. In the “Prologue” to her work she concedes that, as a woman poet, she may be “obnoxious” to the many readers eager to cast “despite … on female wits.” But, she goes on, while hers will always and only be an “unrefined ore” in contrast against male “glistring gold,” all she is seeking is a crown of kitchen herbs suitable to her station: “Give thyme and parsley wreath, I ask no bays.”

On this meek note she launched not only her own poetically ambitious project, but a rhetoric that is pursued by women writers through the next centuries. In a feminization of the classical apologia – apology in defense or justification – Bradstreet modestly denies her abilities. In doing so, however, she asserts her right to speak against those who would not even grant her that much. Reassuring her readers that she will not exceed her proper place, she enables herself, at least within these confines, to exercise her powers. But this in turn becomes a method and avenue exactly for broadening the narrow strictures allotted to her.

Modesty, then, serves as an image of confinement, restriction, and boundary. Yet it also represents the instability of that boundary, its revision and even transgression as a feminine mode of entry into a wider world. In this double sense, modesty emerges as a central topos and stance of female writing. (There are comparable topoi for men, especially in the discourses of religious humility. Nevertheless, I would claim that there are distinctions of gender within the uses of these topoi.