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Commonplaces

From "The testimony of Margaret Fox concerning her late husband," from The Journal of George Fox,a0 1694; describing the first...

Commonplaces -- comment #1 from Pamela Dyer-Bennet

Mon, 11 Nov 2002 00:24:24 -0500

Teresa, Teresa, looky!

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~kuenning/fell.html

It's Margaret Fell (pre-Fox, that is), giving pure heck to people who think women shouldn't be able to speak in meeting. Chapter and verse.

It's exhilarating, until one remembers that Dorothy Sayers had to make practically the same arguments all over again hundreds of years later.

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Posted November 11, 2002 12:24 AM by Pamela Dyer-Bennet

Commonplaces -- comment #2 from Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Mon, 11 Nov 2002 19:55:06 -0500

Oh, I like that!

When I was in college, we had a ranting preacher turn up on the main pedestrian mall and yell at everybody for several days. He refused to let women say anything -- just shouted over the top of them. He had an amp, so he won.

Hmmmmf. If God didn't want women to preach, He wouldn't have made me look like I belonged there in every pulpit I've ever stood in.

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Posted November 11, 2002 7:55 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Commonplaces -- comment #3 from Pamela Dyer-Bennet

Tue, 12 Nov 2002 14:34:53 -0500

I'd never heard of Margaret Fell until I started dating a Quaker. Her splendid essay did make me wonder why she got married again, given that some of her arguments boil down to, "Well, it does say that if a woman is married she has to let her husband speak for her, but it doesn't say anything about unmarried women and widows." George Fox must have been quite something.

I am sorry to say that even without his amp the mere tale of your ranting preacher leaves me speechless.

It's not just how you look in a pulpit; you have the voice of the matter too.

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Posted November 12, 2002 2:34 PM by Pamela Dyer-Bennet

Commonplaces -- comment #4 from Celia Marsh

Thu, 14 Nov 2002 12:40:44 -0500

I was raised Quaker, but (possibly because of that) I never read much about it. Then I went to Rome, and stayed at a Jesuit college with very little English fiction, but a big religion collection, even of other religions. And I picked up a book called "Mothers of Feminism," by Margaret H. Bacon, about Quaker women, and loved it. I hadn't read much about feminism either, and I never had realised that Quakerism was equal opportunity from the begining. It was so neat to read about women in the 1700s who would get called to minister, and basically kiss their husbands good-bye and say, "take care of the kids, I'll be back by winter." And their husbands would let them, and their communities would support them. It seems like such a modern thing.

I remember writing to my grandmother about how old the women it was talking about would live to be -- many of them would be 70 years of age or older, travelling from Meeting to Meeting. My grandmother did all but laugh at me. She was 75 or more and had just moved from our small town to Philadelphia to work for the Quaker UN branch for the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

In retrospect, I wouldn't be surprised if reading that book is what made me so interested in the role of women in the Christian Church in my Late Antquity classes when I went back to college, and now that I'm thinking about post grad degrees in history -- because they started out roughly equal in Christianity as well, but instead of being accepted, it was supressed.

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Posted November 14, 2002 12:40 PM by Celia Marsh

Commonplaces -- comment #5 from Jane Yolen

Wed, 20 Nov 2002 09:23:07 -0500

Years ago I wrote the only (still is, I believe) young adult biography of George Fox. And I thought then--and still think now--that Margaret Fell was far and away the best thing about him. He was a ranter and a raver and could walk across the snow in bare feet (literally) and never feel the cold. But she had a true organizing spirit. Modern Quakerism owes more to her than to him, I believe.

Jane

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Posted November 20, 2002 9:23 AM by Jane Yolen

Commonplaces -- comment #6 from Pamela Dyer-Bennet

Wed, 20 Nov 2002 17:42:47 -0500

You know, I was wondering about that very thing.

I started reading Fox's autobiography and had to give up; it made me laugh too much. His young self was so very earnest and easily shocked.

So, you gonna write a biography of Margaret Fell?

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Posted November 20, 2002 5:42 PM by Pamela Dyer-Bennet

Commonplaces -- comment #7 from Jane Yolen

Wed, 20 Nov 2002 18:40:58 -0500

Nah--I don't have the energy to revisit all that research from twenty five years ago. Though I wouldn't be surprised if some avatar of Margaret Fell Fox doesn't invade my stories now and again.
Have Strong Woman, Will Invent.

In fact a character in a new children's novel (which I may or may not ever finish writing) is a Quaker widow with child in 19th century Nantucket where the Quaker ladies were power houses and ran their own all-female meetings (as well as their households and the local businesses while all the men were off whaling.)

Jane

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Posted November 20, 2002 6:40 PM by Jane Yolen

Commonplaces -- comment #8 from Pamela Dyer-Bennet

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 12:25:15 -0500

I certainly understand about the wish not to revisit old research.

I'd love to read that book. It makes me think of Maria Mitchell.

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Posted November 27, 2002 12:25 PM by Pamela Dyer-Bennet