Introduction

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 7; p. 5
• 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 01.01.1997
• Subjects: Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Bunyan, John (1628-88)
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Gender has figured variously in these discussions as a site of resistance ('female subjectivity does not always or çprhaps ever "fit" the patriarchal norms of the state and subject regulation'); as a broad determinant of personal and social transformation; and as a reflection, in the radically shifting gender positions available to men and women, of the larger cataclysms of a society in transition, if not in chaos.1 The essays collected in this special issue of Bunyan Studies reflect upon such theories as they take up the legacy of 'dissenting' women in John Bunyan's world and in his work. The holiness and devotion of such women as Mistres Rutherford - as well as her impulse to record her experience - signals the kind of 'experimental' faith which shifted the position of women within Puritanism. [...]while Anna Trapnel and Margaret Fell (both of whose works are considered in this issue) are more easily recognized and celebrated by the post-modern temperament than Mistres Rutherford in her Christiana-like submission to the duties of her sex, her testimony, the record of her sufferings, her conversion and her triumph may be moving to us for all of that. Bunyan's need to distance himself from the commotion she stirred up in her community is notorious and probably instigated the passages which were added to the fifth edition (1680) of Grace Abounding.1 In these later years of his ministry Bunyan writes his A Case of Conscience Resolved (1683) which is addressed to the women of his Bedford congregation, restricting what William York Tindall drily refers to as their 'feminist' movement to hold separate prayer meetings.8 The Pilgrim's Progress II, published a year or two later, shows Bunyan's ideal Christian woman as both constructed and contained by such church authority. Megan Matchinske, 'Holy Hatred: Formations of the Gendered Subject in English Apocalyptic Writing 1625-1651', ELH, 60 (1993), p. 354; Diane Willen, 'Godly Women in Early Modern England: Puritanism and Gender' , Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43 (1992), pp. 561-580; Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (New York, 1972), passim.