"It is always important to hear a wide range of voices in history if we hope to access the truth about the past and apply historical lessons to the future in pursuit of the best possible world for all."
— Dr. Holly Nelson, Professor of English
Writing can be a tool to help people both record and process experiences of trauma. Siege literature – including diaries, memoirs, letters, and other personal writings of people living through siege warfare – is an example of terror and societal transition captured in writing.
Dr. Holly Nelson explains, “Literary siege space helped early modern men and women capture and work through the residual trauma of siege warfare, especially urbicide, and served as an imaginative instrument through which to wrestle with related anxieties, tensions, and transitions in the period.”
In January 2021, Dr. Nelson, together with her sister Dr. Sharon Alker, a Professor of English at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, published their book, Besieged: Early Modern British Siege Literature, 1642-1722, exploring narratives of urban warfare in early modern British literature.
Dr. Nelson is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University. She has co-authored one monograph, co-edited nine books, and her articles have appeared in journals such as Studies in English Literature, Studies in Philology, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, English Language Notes, the George Herbert Journal, Connotations, Scintilla, Studies in Hogg and his World, and Studies in Scottish Literature, as well as in a wide range of academic essay collections on literature or gender. She cofounded and coedited for eight years (with Dr. Katherine Ellison) Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe & His Contemporaries, an online, peer-reviewed, multi-media scholarly journal. She cofounded the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University, which she has co-directed for over a decade
During Women’s History Month at TWU, we seek to hear from experts across campus about the influence of women in history and society. Here below, we hear from Dr. Nelson about her new book, Besieged: Early Modern British Siege Literature, 1642-1722, and what it reveals about women’s role in society.
Hi Dr. Nelson, what did you notice about women and their roles as you were researching and writing your book?
In early British literature on siege warfare, or on war more generally, there is a tendency to focus on the heroic male experience, especially in literature produced during periods in which an elite ruling class, headed by a monarch, controls the state. The labouring class (frequently referred to as the "masses" or "rabble") and women are often situated in the background of such literary portraits and when they are featured, they are routinely presented as emotionally unstable or a burden. However, when writing our book, Dr. Sharon Alker and I started to see a shift in the British literature of the seventeenth century. The experience of women and members of the labouring class take on more significance in the narratives of warfare: men, women, and children of the town or city are more often shown heroically working together for the common good and/or taking on military roles. Some seventeenth-century women even wrote works that included sieges, such as Lady Elizabeth Brackley and her sister Lady Jane Cavendish who co-authored the play The Concealed Fancies, likely drawing on their own experience of the siege of their home Welbeck Abbey in 1644.
As you teach at TWU, what are some interesting “ah ha” moments that you have seen in your classroom, when it comes to the topic of literature and gender?
When I teach gender and literature, students are commonly surprised that women began to question views on their nature and place in society very early on and did so in sophisticated and persuasive ways. Often students (like most members of the general public) believe that (proto) feminism first appears in the late eighteenth century in, for example, works such as Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). However, this is not the case. In fact, in literature written in English, we hear women persuasively defending their sex from the medieval period onward. Frequently, women of faith, such as Margaret Fell Fox, an early Quaker thinker, relied on Scripture to defend women's spiritual worth and authority.
During Women’s History Month, what do you wish to highlight when it comes to women in history and in literature?
When I was a young student taking classes in my field (Renaissance literature), there was only one woman writer regularly taught in classes. This led me to believe that almost no women actually wrote in the Renaissance. Then I was asked to co-edit an anthology of writers in my field, so I began to research women writers extensively and I discovered that, in fact, hundreds of women were writing in the period, and that some dared to publish their work even when facing criticism or ridicule for doing so. I regularly publish on one of those writers, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who was a poet, dramatist, fiction writer (she is one of the first women to publish a work of science fiction), natural philosopher, and more. Over the past three decades, scholars in the field have brought many previously unknown women's voices to light and have produced significant scholarship on them. Their works are read alongside those of their male contemporaries and are often now given equal weight. It is always important to hear a wide range of voices in history if we hope to access the truth about the past and apply historical lessons to the future in pursuit of the best possible world for all.
About Trinity Western University
Founded in 1962, Trinity Western University is Canada’s premier Christian liberal arts university dedicated to equipping students to establish meaningful connections between career, life, and the needs of the world. It is a fully accredited research institution offering liberal arts and sciences, as well as professional schools in business, nursing, education, human kinetics, graduate studies, and arts, media, and culture. It has five campuses and locations: Langley, Richmond-Lansdowne, Richmond-Minoru, Ottawa, and Bellingham, WA. TWU emphasizes academic excellence, research, and student engagement in a vital faith community committed to forming leaders to have a transformational impact on culture. Learn more at www.twu.ca or follow us on Twitter @TrinityWestern, on Facebook and LinkedIn.
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