Attending to Sarah Wight: 'Little Writer' of God's Wonders

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 11; p. 94
• Main Author: Camden, Vera J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2003
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Wight explains that her unspecified 'disobethence was not wilful, but she was hurried to it, in the violence of temptation' (p. 24). [...]explicit guilt is located in the incident committed when she was twelve, but, by the time Jessey is telling her story some four years later, she describes a more diffused sense of sin, organized around her rebellion against her mother. (pp. 13-14) Wight's afflictions and extremes keep alive the struggle between mother and daughter, which, one suspects, reaches back to their separation in her early childhood. [...]at an age when Wight might be expected to be transitioning outside of her family unit, into her own adult roles of wife and mother, her suicidality keeps her mother with her and in conflict. [...]while Wight's 'Relator' certainly inscribes her afflictions in terms of the political, theological and social discourse which dominated the day, it is also true that he listened to Wight with some measure of the awe and admiration which attended the medieval fasting girls. [...]if suicidal acts are bids for relationship which, 'if dismissed as manipulative or attention-seeking, often lead to the literal or the psychological death of the girl',59 Jessey facilitates the reconciliation of Wight to her mother, becoming, at the same time, a crucial figure whose serious attention confers upon Wight's experience a lasting importance, with his language of dissent.