Isabella Whitney: A Reconsideration of the Female Author

This paper discusses the work of Isabella Whitney (1566 – 1600) and her relationship to her male contemporaries such as Barnabe Googe, Thomas Howell, and George Turberville. Considered by modern critics as “England’s first professional woman writer” having had her texts printed during her lifetime, her work offers prolific material to investigate the level of mediation by men, particularly by her printer, to have had her texts printed and her role in this process1. Moreover, Whitney’s writing provides a contrast to the works of other women writers of the sixteenth century in three keyways. First, unlike Anne Askew, Margaret More Roper, and Elizabeth Grymeston for example, her works – especially her second publication, A Sweet Nosegay (1573) – were not mediated into print by men, although relations with men and male discourse shape her writing. Secondly, unlike Askew and Grymeston, her works were not published posthumously. Thirdly, and most significantly, Whitney was also writing for print for commercial reasons. She, thus, provides a different perspective on early modern women’s writing. Generically, Whitney was also ground-breaking. She published original, secular poetry. Although religion is threaded through her verse, this is not the kind of devotional writing or religious translations that sixteenth-century female authors, such as More Roper, Anne Lock, or Katherine Parr, tended to produce. In view of this, therefore, this paper explores how through her works, Whitney manipulates established discourses of gender and patriarchy. By placing Whitney in the context of her male contemporaries rather than treating her in isolation as a woman writer, I examine how her poems reveal the limited agency available to women during this era and how she manages to find her own voice by challenging and subverting misogynist tropes. This paper also reflects on how Whitney’s works can be read differently, not only as autobiographical to better her economic situation as some modern critics have suggested, but as a voice which reflects accurately on the precarious position of many early modern women who struggled against a patriarchal society.