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Abby Ruble

EN 265: Inquiries in British Literature

Dr. Assaf Kafantaris

30 October 2022

Quiz 2: Medieval

Throughout this second month of class, we have focused a lot more on women. With that

we have read poetry and stories from lots of women writers, and I have thoroughly been

enjoying this second month of class. We started with Cavendish and Pulter, two women writers

and poets who wrote such gorgeous poetry and I think I might be in love. We also paid lots of

attention to Chaucer and Margery Kempe and one of the biggest takeaways from those is how

they depict women within their stories. Chaucer is a disgusting human, but we still focus on his

Canterbury Tales and through those we looked specifically at the Wife of Bath. Kempe wrote of

a devout Christian woman and how that affected the relationships around her, showing a

different depiction of women throughout the time.

We started this month with talking about Margaret Canvendish and Hester Pulter, talking

about their poetry and the meanings behind them. Cavendish was probably my favorite for her

poem “A World in an Earring”, I really enjoyed this poem just based on its equivalence of

something so big in something so small. I find the lines “There earthquakes be, which mountains

vast down fling, /And yet ne’er stir the lady’s ear, nor ring. / There meadows be, and pastures

fresh and green, / And cattle feed, and yet be never seen,” (lines 17-20). These lines stick out to

me because of the quietness within the earring and the opposition of an earthquake and how

those are almost oxymoronic. The loud and destructive nature of an earthquake is contrasted with

what I would consider to be so dainty and almost ethereal. I think that earrings can be something
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so quiet within a look and to equate the world with something like that is what really sticks out to

me. The description of the earring I also really enjoy within the poem. Describing it as “golden

mines as jewels may they wear” (line 16), is just something that is so gorgeous. Within my own

mind when imagining this earring I see a pearl. Pearls are something that are so expensive and I

view them as this dainty piece of jewelry and I love that. My sister and I both wear pearls a lot

(they aren’t real). Pearls are also valued within society. They are “mined” from clams which I

also find interesting because pearls are basically cancer to clams. I could probably talk about this

poem all day due to the many different angles you can look at it from, but I digress.

Hester Pulter was the other poet we were focusing on during Week 5 and she has her own

rich history. Pulter’s absence within history is something that makes me so upset but happy t the

same time since we now have The Pulter Project. I find her poetry fascinating as well, because I

feel as though she writes so openly and freely within her work. One of her poems called,

“Universal Dissolution, Made When I Was with Child, of my 15th Child, my Son, John, I Being,

Everyone Thought, in a Consumption, 1648”, Pulter equates herself to feels like part of the earth

in a non-animate sense, comparing herself to be a “house of clay” (line 2) because of this

consumption and baby growing inside her. Pulter within the poem is quite morbid and speaks on

the universal truth of death throughout one’s life and how we all eventually die, which I is

interesting because of the title of the poem and her current state of health. I also think it is

interesting that this is her 15th child. We had talked a bit in class about how that is a lot of babies

and that has always stuck with me because of the thought of consumption that Pulter herself had

at the time. I also dug a little deeper into Pulter’s life and this was her last child. She had fifteen

kids and from The Pulter Project found that all of them died before her except two.
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Maybe I’m just obsessed with Margaret Cavendish but throughout Week 6 we also

focused on her book The Blazing World. This work has been viewed as a piece of feminist

science fiction before the genre was a thing itself and shows how her ideas were ahead of her

time. Cavendish throughout the work focuses on these fantastical features throughout and truly

builds a world like no other. With that Cavendish is also able to do a modified Worlding and

Worldmaking throughout the work, giving the book it’s own rich history. The novel deals with a

girl traveling to a brand new world hence the name of the book and I also find that so interesting

due to the time it was written. The imagination of Cavendish is truly incredible within the work

and the class discussion showed that.

Within our eighth week we talked about Marie de France, Chaucer, and Margery Kempe

and how their literature differs. De France wrote about a knight who had met a magical fairy

woman within the forest during the time of King Arthur and that is contrasted with Chaucer’s

telling of the Wife of Bath and her life. De France wrote of this love story about a knight who

loved this women so much that she didn’t want him to tell anyone about her and then since he

didn’t listen she ends up having to save him. I think that de France is so incredible in her writing

too to have the women be the one to save the knight. I find it a little tehe funny. This is

comparatively different to Chaucer’s work where the woman is written so poorly. We had

discussed in class last Thursday how the Wife who is ONLY KNOWN AS THE WIFE, liked her

third husband who ABUSED HER AND MADE HER LOSE HER HEARING, because it was

good sex and that I think really shows the difference between men writing women and women

writing women.
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This past month of class has been really fun for me. I find women’s writing especially

when it is more historical more interesting then men because I feel like we always get a male

perspective on writing and not so much and this has been great for me.