Respectability, Profit, and the Modern Gaze upon Dorothy Leigh’s The Mother’s Blessing
In Dorothy Leigh’s The Mother’s Blessing, published posthumously, first by John Budge in 1616, Leigh uses complex rhetorical strategies to gain credibility as a woman. It is only a shame that she did not live to see her words immortalized if they were her words and not written by a man pretending to be a woman to possess a different kind of “maternal credibility.” Leigh addresses her advice book to “all parents” rather than simply to mothers. She does not limit herself by her sex but rather uses the agency that women did have at the time to be mothers and household managers to paint herself as an expert on a subject: the raising of children.
Leigh employs numerous genres of address in her Mother’s Blessing, which is capitalized on by printers from Budge in 1616, to 18th-century versions which are now purchasable on Amazon reproduced and bound by Eighteenth Century Collections Online. This advice book which existed as a pocket-size manual or leisure reading by all accounts is rather beautiful. From looking at a variety of editions, italics lie beside Roman font. The early pages are peppered with intricate woodcuts. This perhaps served as a way to draw readers in. I can imagine myself thumbing through the first pages of Mother’s Blessing and wanting to buy it not only for the promises of its content but also for its aesthetics.
Who might have bought The Mother’s Blessing at the South door of St. Paul’s Churchyard? A mother for her pregnant daughter? A newly widowed father with a babe to rear on his own? A particularly progressive clergyman to recommend to his lay congregation? The true genius about Leigh’s work is that it appeals to many. Labeled in the STC as “Conduct of Life” “Children” “Christian Life,” the early modern reality of a world dominated by heteronormative marriage and Christian ideology which lauds childbearing/rearing, would have likely welcomed such an accessible text. I mean to argue that the text is not only accessible in its substance, Leigh’s inviting prose, but in its accidents: Budge, then Allot, then Crooke’s attention to detail and legibility.
I was unable to find, but wonder how much this advice book might have cost at the time. To whom was it truly accessible. The evidence of its popularity has been proven with over 20 editions produced over a hundred years. I presume that the printers of this work knew it’s worth financial, as it was quickly snapped up by Allot just after the death of Budge. In 1627, Allot prints his first edition of The Mother’s Blessing and, I speculate, comes to find how profitable this work is, but the whole genre of “mother’s legacy” at the time. At the same time that Allot print Leigh’s legacie, he also gains the rights to Elizabeth Jocelin’s The Mother’s Legacie to her Unborn Childe which happens to be the second most widely published mother’s legacy in seventeenth-century England, that we know of, which is also available for purchase bound on Amazon.
To what extend did the works of these women shape Allot’s career or did Allot shape their popularity? Is it exploitative to take the words of deceased mothers and use them for financial gain? Does the culpability lie with the first to print such as Budge and later printers simply having a duty to meet the demands of a reading public? While these two women enjoy legibility in the canon, if you are looking, they did not enjoy this during their lives or likely see any financial benefits of these intimate moments now widely publicized.
The intimacy in Leigh’s text not only in her adept quotation of scripture, but the employment of pathos in also speaking of her dead husband, and somewhat all-knowing tone toward to condition of parenthood regardless of social class make it an engaging read even today—even in the original early printing press type. The intimacy of the book, as pocket-sized in the seventeenth century, or as a humbly bound text which could easily be slipped in a purse or backpack today astound me. I feel as if I have discovered a gem, and a window into another time which, frankly, is not entirely unlike our own. Leigh argues that there is something universal about parenthood, within her Christian cosmology.
I argue that there is something universal about the parent-child relationships spanning centuries. As a child from a traumatic birth moment that could have easily taken both mothers and babies, this (re) discovery of this entire genre of writing troubles me. Childbirth and parenthood are entirely risky and require sacrifice in our current moment. And still men in positions of power are criminalizing women’s reproductive choices. Her Budge, Allot, and Crooke as printers had all the authority to gloss a text to fit into patriarchal, Christian conventions.
While at first glance, it may seem that Leigh lives within these confines, her wit, creativity, and persistence through a near two-page text defy the means to constrain her. But where do we go from here with the work still uncopywrited? Who has the authority to copywrite it? Who will be The Mother’s Blessings’ next printers beyond Eighteenth Century Collections Online? Can children and parents alike learn from it or should it remain preserved in Bibliothèque Mazarine or Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book, and Manuscript Library?
A Close Reading of Dorothy Leigh’s Epistle in The Mother’s Blessing
Dorothy Leigh in her epistle of The Mother’s Blessing uses both pathos and ethos in an attempt to not only comfort her sons but also herself, now grieving the loss of her husband. Leigh frames the ethos of her book to see her sons George, John, and William “instructed and brought up in Knowledge” of the good Christian life. This very much matches the descriptors that we see in the STC of Leigh’s, topically annotated as “Christian Life.”
Leigh sees this endeavor as her duty after her husband’s death: “I was Duty bound, to fulfil his Will in all Things, desiring no greater Comfort in the World, than to see you grow in Godliness that you might meet your Father in Heaven.” A critique that I may pose upon Leigh’s ethos, begs: why does she, here, not aim to discuss both parents’ reward in heaven after death? Perhaps, she is not thinking of her own mortality but rather only that of her beloveds. Perhaps, consumed by her grief, this epistle is a balm to convince herself that her husband has met his eternal reward in heaven: “where I am sure he is; my self being a witness of his Faith in Christ.” This acts to both comfort Leigh and her Sons and also to give Leigh purpose on this earth after her husband’s death—the spiritual welfare and caretaker of her three sons.
Leigh sets up her credibility by adopting a persona of humility rather than hubris to ingratiate herself to her audience: “I know not how to perform this Duty so well, as to leave you these few Lines.” She moves to anxiety about how her written work should be received by her sons, again understanding the network of transmission of written texts of her time, which belies a sense that she meant to publish this text widely (or at least rhetorically functions to do so). She writes: “I could not see to what Purpose it should tend unless it were sent abroad to you; for should it be left with the Eldest, it is likely the Youngest should have but little Part in it.” This makes one wonder, to which of the three sons: George, John, and William was this work primarily addressing? If it addresses all equally, who would have received it first, or were multiple copies made?
As Leigh closes, she increases her credibility as a virtuous wife and mother: “So that herein I may show myself a loving Mother, and a dutiful Wife.” This is echoed again in her signature: “Your fearful, faithful, and careful Mother, Dorothy Leigh.” The fact that Leigh signs off with her full name is perhaps less intimate than if she had concluded with simply “Mother” or simply “Dorothy.” Again, this formality may give weight to which she takes her duty as wife and mother seriously. It could express a desire that she wants these “few lines” to be taken seriously by all her children, the youngest and oldest alike. She sets herself up as a humble servant in the service of the spiritual well-being of her family and the legacy of her husband.
Leigh stresses in her epistle to express her credibility as wife and mother but does more to frame this text as an extension of her dead husband’s legacy rather than as a legacy of her own life. Was this kind of framing behind the shadow of a man necessary for her to gain credibility in the eyes of her reading sons or a reading public? It seems from this epistle that Leigh did not necessarily intend for her few lines to be read by hundreds of readers over a century. It grounds her book in the very present moment of a grieving family simply looking for a place to go after a beloved husband and father’s death.
