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SOLITARY, OPPOSITIONAL, UNCONVENTIONAL: ELIZABETH ASHBRIDGE,
ABIGAIL BAILEY AND THE ASSERTION OF SELF IN EARLY MODERN
WOMEN’S WRITING
By

Hannah Joy Rule

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of English

2007

ABSTRACT
SOLITARY, OPPOSITIONAL, UNCONVENTIONAL: ELIZABETH ASHBRIDGE,
ABIGAIL BAILEY AND THE ASSERTION OF SELF IN EARLY MODERN
WOMEN’S WRITING
By
Hannah Joy Rule
Elizabeth Ashbridge’s “Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth
Ashbridge” (1774) and Abigail Bailey’s “The Memoirs of Abigail Bailey” (1815) are
compelling early American women’s self-narratives, recovered and critically read only
recently. From the emerging criticism on these women’s texts, I participate in this
recovery by drawing out and challenging two common assumptions—ﬁrst, that they rely
on the conventions of conversion narratives, and second, that the self is constructed
relationally. Shifting away from these conventional foundations and instead embracing a
model of oppositional selfhood, I argue that Ashbridge and Bailey accept the authority of
God in a way that allows them to define a self in opposition to their husbands. By
focusing on their violation of critical expectations, I bring to the fore these authors’

struggles to assert a unique self as the very concept begins to emerge in eighteenth-

century America.

Copyright by
HANNAH JOY RULE
2007

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: SOLITARY, OPPOSITIONAL, UNCONVENTIONAL ............... 1
SEEKING IN: ELIZABETH ASHBRIDGE’S “SOME ACCOUNT” (1774) ............... 8
SEEKING A WAY OUT: ABIGAIL BAILEY’S “MEMOIRS OF ABIGAIL

BAILEY” (1815) .................................................................................... 23
WORKS CITED ..................................................................................... 44

Introduction: Solitary, Oppositional, Unconventional

Elizabeth Ashbridge’s “Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth
Ashbridge” (1774) and Abigail Bailey’s “The Memoirs of Abigail Bailey” (1815) are
compelling early American women’s self-narratives, recovered and critically read only
recently. They share several characteristics that make them particularly provoking to
feminist autobiography studies: both are narrative in form, both ﬁnd print publication in a
time when women are rarely published, and both circulate right around the time the term
“autobiography” is coined,l but before the act of writing autobiography becomes a more
deﬁned and common practicez. These narratives also share the more speciﬁc
classiﬁcation of spiritual or conversion narrative, a common form of self-writing in
eighteenth-century America. But even more interesting than the ways these self-
narratives fulﬁll certain deﬁnitions and historical time-lines within autobiography studies
is the way that they exceed them. These self-narratives present unique experiences,
compelling antagonisms, and ultimately an assertion of self not present in other spiritual
or conversion narratives. In other words, these self-narratives are compelling in the ways
that they break conventions—both generic and critical.

As its most basic aim, this paper wants to participate in the recovery of these
women’s self-narratives. Though both have enjoyed modern republication, there have
been only a handful of chapters, articles and one book-length study of Ashbridge, and

even less criticism on Bailey. Thus the core of this paper provides readings of these

 

' According to Donald J. Winslow and a number of other sources, the term “autobiography” was “ﬁrst used
by a reviewer (possibly William Taylor) in the British Monthly Review (1797) and in 1809 by Robert
Southey” (3). See the entry for “autobiography” in the Oxford English Dictionary. That the term itself
constitutes the beginning of the genre is, however, a troubled assertion—that is, some critics disagree with
this date; some argue though the term wasn’t used, autobiography maintains a long history before this date.
2 “The late eighteenth century, according to a number of writers, witnessed the beginning of a tradition of
autobiography” (Folkenﬂick 7).

women’s texts, presenting new perspectives aimed at broadening our critical
understanding of them. In so doing, from the small collection of criticism on these texts, I
draw out two general, foundational claims that have been made about these texts—ﬁrst,
that because they were written by women the self described in them is relational, and
second, that they are conversion narratives—and provide alternative readings that do not
fully accept these claims. Reading against these claims, I argue that these narratives
simply do more than the conversion self-narratives circulating concurrently and they do
more than deﬁne a relational self. Rather, I read these women as asserting a solitary,
oppositional, and unique self in narratives that variously break generic conventions.

Before proceeding with an analysis of the texts themselves, I want to elaborate on
their shared critical situation. What is ﬁrst in need of address is what I may only
inadequately name the ‘question of autobiography.’ I mean by this to simply raise the
question of whether the self-narratives of Ashbridge and Bailey constitute autobiography
or not. This is a quite complex query that I have chosen not to engage strictly. I use the
term “self-narrative” to Side-step autobiographical categorizing, but also to emphasize the
asserted ‘selves’ I read in these texts. Both self-narratives have elements that signal the
uniqueness, the autonomy, and the independence of the ﬁrst-person subjects they depict,
but I leave unanswered whether they are “truly” autobiography or whether they represent
the American autobiography’s “beginning.” Susan Claire Imbarrato’s work on early
American self-writing can assist here as a guide for how I am thinking about self-writing
in a historical period when no one is yet “clearly” writing autobiography (if such a period
is ever deﬁned). Imbarrato’s book, Declarations of Independency, is interested in the

evolution (in the very Ioosest sense) of American self-writing from religious to secular.

While she does not attempt to track a strict progression of changes, she focuses on
representative texts in certain time periods that to her do something new towards the
assertion of self. To describe this subtle and elusive act, Imbarrato deﬁnes the act of
“declaring an independency” as “an intentional assertion of individual expression, a bold
act that conﬁdently embraces the risks of moving in new directions” (xix). About
Ashbridge and Edwards, Imbarrato argues that their “strong assertions of self which
demonstrate a conﬁdence in a ﬁrst-person observation that distinguishes them from
seventeenth-century journals and diaries” (13) is that which signals their value within
autobiography studies. That there is a certain ‘conﬁdence in the ﬁrst-person’ is the kind
of observation about Ashbridge and Bailey’s self-narratives that I am interested in—the
way these women describe themselves through their behavior, the way they use writing
and solitude to deﬁne themselves, the way they forge relationships with their interior and
with God, the way they write both within and without convention. Following Imbarrato,
I want to read these narratives for what they do differently.

Both of these narratives are nearly always classiﬁed as conversion narratives and
yet both break many of the central conventions of that genre. Considering the
conventions of conversion narrative, and more signiﬁcantly the way these women break
them, is important because the self of this genre is often read as less autonomous than a
modern autobiographical self. In many ways, conversion narratives automatically run
counter to the understanding of autobiography—revealing community, communal
experience, and God’s will, rather than an individual, unique experience, and an
autonomous agent. Conversion narratives are often thought simply to compromise the

presence of an autobiographical subject. The self in the typical conversion narrative is

compromised in at least three ways. First, the writer of spiritual self-writing relies
entirely on generic imitation—she simply repeats the narrative form used by all members
of the religious community. According to Felicity Nussbaum, women’s spiritual self-
narratives in particular are built solely upon this imitation: “The religious women
generally adopted the mode of discourse established by their (male) religious leaders. . .or
found their voices usurped by husbands or fathers who formed their biographies into the
expected shape” (151). Second, the writer’s relationship to religious community
compromises the assertion of self. In addition to their typical form, religious
autobiographies tend to be representative of the religious community rather than a unique
individual. As Carol Edkins argues: “For instead of individualistic statements of a life
uniquely lived. . .we hear echoed throughout these documents, whether Puritan or Quaker,
the religious and spiritual experience of the community at large” (40). Even when a critic
ﬁnds evidence of an individual self emerging in religious self-writing, as does Barbara
Bolz, that self is always only one deﬁned in relation to her community: “In short, these
texts do show the individual, but that individual—in the lived life and in the textual life—
is inextricably linked to the community within which she lived and worked” (292).

I will argue that both Ashbridge and Bailey, in violating the conventions of
imitation and communality, assert in each of their narratives a more deﬁned and unique
self. In other words, these are not typical religious autobiographies. These self-narratives
challenge, in very simple but notable ways, the expectations for the genre—the narratives
are not imitative. Rather they focus on unique circumstances, in both cases, primarily on
antagonistic and violent marriages. They are, in other words, not standard conversion

stories with standard conversion events. Further, while both narratives do circulate

around a link with an exterior force, it is signiﬁcantly not a link with the religious
community. Instead both Ashbridge and Bailey are distinctly isolated in their narratives
from their religious communities, and in most every instance choose this isolation—
Ashbridge, for instance, does not discuss her work as a traveling Friend, as most Quaker
narratives do; Bailey’s religious practice consists almost entirely of secret, private
devotions and diary writing. There is indeed an exterior force in both cases—their
husbands; however, these women deﬁne themselves against these force, rather than in
relation to them.

The third and ﬁnal way that the self of conversion narratives is thought to be
compromised is through her relationship with and submission to God. Though I ﬁnd both
Ashbridge and Bailey’s narratives to be clearly unconventional in terms of generic
expectations and their relationship to religious community, it is more difﬁcult to think of
their relationship to God as unconventional and self-asserting. At many points, one
cannot deny these writers’ rhetoric of submission and her seeming relinquishment of
autonomy to God. However, one viable way to read this problem is to consider this
submission instead as a kind of empowered subjectivity. For instance, Roxanne Harde,
one critic who has read Bailey and Ashbridge together, makes the claim that simply
“their very submission to God empowers” them (158). Harde wants to read submission to
God as enabling an autonomous self, rather than a threat to it. Indeed, I want to make this
very same claim. But, for my reading, that submission to God alone does not create an
autonomous, empowered subject. Rather, it is the antagonistic forces in their lives, in
combination with their relationship to God, which enable them to assert their selves. In

both Ashbridge’s and Bailey’s narratives, while a certain kind of submission to God is

expressed, I’ll argue that these relationships with God and with other authoritative
institutions actually become the means to, rather than the impediment to, the assertion of
self3. In Bailey’s narrative, for example, God becomes a kind of weapon wielded against
her violent and manipulative husband; it is her use of the authority of God that enables
her to direct her anger at and deﬁne her self in opposition to her husband, Asa. Thus, the
self-narratives of Ashbridge and Bailey can be read as violating three major conventions
of conversion narrative and, in so doing, working to assert a deﬁned self.

In addition to violating conversion conventions, these texts also break commonly
understood conventions within women’s self-writing. Ashbridge and Bailey serve as
strong counterexamples to a deﬁning characteristic of women’s writing as relational.
Both narratives are oppositional—certain antagonisms compel these writers to turn inside
themselves, to stand and seek alone and in the stark absence of community. Both
Ashbridge and Bailey fundamentally deﬁne themselves against, not in relation to, various
antagonistic forces in their lives and appear to readers as unique selves. As I will show,
critical readings of Ashbridge have emerged from what I see as this assumption of
relationality. And while no such arguments have yet been made about Bailey, 1 want to
counter relational readings for both. Mechal Sobel’s book Teach me Dreams provides an
apt critical tool to relinquish the dominance of relationality for women’s self-narratives in
the early American period. First, Sobel’s general argument about the period in which
both Ashbridge and Bailey write and live is that:

It was in the hundred-year period between 1740 and 1840, the greater

Revolutionary period, that many people in America ﬁrst came to accept that they

had an inner self that controlled their emotions and actions and to believe that
they themselves might alter this self. In this period, and as part of this process of

 

3 In this, I’ll be following the work of Mechal Sobel in this book Teach me Dreams: The Search for Self in
the Revolutionary Era.

change, the churches and then the new state encouraged the written reevaluation
of life experiences in journals and in autobiographies. (3)

Sobel asserts that something begins to happen in the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries that brings the recognition of the interior self to the fore, and hence why self-
writing in this long period increases and diversiﬁes. Sobel generalizes the way in which
these selves begin to emerge, a model highly applicable to both Ashbridge and Bailey’s
narratives: “Only those who accepted an authority that directed their anger and approved
and assisted their own development in opposition to their alien other moved in the
direction of creating a more individuated self” (166). Thus, selfhood in this period is not
radically autonomous; in fact, the assertion of self only comes through the acceptance of
some kind of authority. Hence, Ashbridge’s and Bailey’s relationship with the authority
of God can be thought of not as working against their assertion of selves, but rather as a
necessary relation that allows for “directed anger.” In addition to the acceptance of
authority, this eighteenth-century self is also deﬁned in opposition to an other (with the
aid of that accepted authority). For both Ashbridge and Bailey, God is accepted—in, it
should be emphasized, a more highly personal, rather than communal way—to “approve
and assist” in the assertion of a self deﬁned against another, their husbands. Thus, using
Sobel’s work as a guide, I argue that Ashbridge and Bailey assert a self in relation to
God, and in opposition to their husbands. This perspective, that views early modern
selfhood as primarily oppositional, provides an alternative starting point for reading these
women’s narratives, as it undoes the persistence of the necessarily compromised and
relational self conventionally thought to emerge in conversion narratives by women.
When we consider these texts with this foundation, the ways these women describe

themselves and their experiences as solitary, isolated, and unique emerge centrally in

their texts and we are able to see how they are in fact attempts at the assertion of self in a

new or unique way.

Seeking In: Elizabeth Ashbridge’s “Some Account” (1774)

While Elizabeth Ashbridge’s self-narrative does to some extent conventionally
describe her conversion to Quakerism, critics interested in her can agree that something
more than this is going on. Acknowledging the purpose of Ashbridge’s conversion
narrative, Cristine Levenduski, author of a book-length study on Ashbridge, notes that
“While her narrative reﬂects the genre’s public function, it stands apart in that the
communal voice is neither the ﬁrst nor the only one we hear. Ashbridge combines a
heavy dose of the personal with the public function of her narrative precisely because her
story is so remarkable” (63). As a result of her unique life circumstances, Ashbridge’s
‘personal’ voice comes through at the same time as does the public, communal one.
Further, for Levenduski, Ashbridge’s story is “remarkable”——signiﬁcantly not standard or
imitated. For Roxanne Harde, though Ashbridge’s narrative is limited by general patterns
of conversion narratives and patriarchal ideologies, Ashbridge nonetheless “works within
these circumscriptions to structure a conversion rhetoric that deﬁnes herself as the
empowered speaking subject” (156). Estelle C. Jelinek, pointing out that Ashbridge
violates Quaker narrative form by describing only the time before she becomes a Quaker
misSionary simply and tellingly exclaims, “And what an extraordinary story she tells!”
(64). Plainly, even intuitively, Ashbridge’s self-narrative does something more; it is more
than a Quaker conversion narrative; it does more than represent the collective; it does

more than instruct and edify a religious community. It violates, rather than conforms to,

Quaker narrative convention; it represents a solitary, rather than socially-connected
seeker; it compels readers with both religious instruction and captivating narrative events.
In various ways, it “transgresses the generic limits of spiritual autobiography”
(Levenduski 68) to deﬁne a solitary self, rather than a self in subordination to God or the
religious community.

Ashbridge’s conversion narrative depicts the author’s struggles throughout
tumultuous childhood and adulthood events, culminating in her conversion to Quakerism.
It documents the highly personal and isolative process of deﬁning a relationship with
Quaker spirituality, a religion in which spiritual knowledge emanates from the interior,
the Inner Light. In this way, each narrative event serves as an oppositional force against
which Ashbridge comes to deﬁne her self. The deﬁning of a solitary self against external
forces allows for the eventual climax of the narrative—complete conversion to
Quakerism. My reading of this text begins with a fundamental claim, in accordance with
Etta M. Madden, that Ashbridge “presents herself as a text being read by others” (1). As
such, I argue that Ashbridge is constantly and variously engaged in the misdirection of
knowledge about the state of her interior, or the active creation of a misdirecting exterior.
When she has moments of religious connection, her religious interior surfaces on the
exterior as, for example, a trembling body or uncontrollable tears. Ashbridge actively and
variously tries to hide these effects from others. She creates for her readers a strong and
absolute interior—the site at which the religious conversion must and inevitably will
occur—in opposition to an exterior that misdirects, or hides, or most provocatively,

protects self from exterior inﬂuence. The persistent protection of her interior state is one

important way in which Ashbridge asserts her self in opposition to, rather than in relation
with, external or social forces.

The basic claim I want to make about Ashbridge’s narrative is that, in several
ways, she asserts a self in opposition to external inﬂuence. This reading pushes against
the dominant critical argument that Ashbridge’s narrative is compelled by a cycle of
seeking and subsequent inability to connect socially. Levenduski, one proponent of this
reading, argues that Ashbridge “tells us, she sought attachments, and throughout her life
these efforts failed” (69). Under her reading, the narrative events, demarcated by
Ashbridge’s moves through life, signal attempts to ﬁnd the home and social community
she was alienated from at the start: “Without her family, she feels unconnected and
detached. Her quest for a sense of belonging and attachment, for a surrogate ‘home,’
dominates the narrative” (70). Again, Levenduski sees Ashbridge’s desire for social
community as the impetus for the narrative’s progression. In other words, Ashbridge
wants, or needs, to be in a community through which she can deﬁne herself and seeks this
throughout. William J. Scheick argues something quite comparable: “her life in the
world commences with and replicates this self-wounding insurrection against thralldom
to her father” (“Logonomic” 13). Under this reading, the alienation from her father at the
narrative’s beginning culminates in the uniﬁcation with and submission to the Father in
conversion, which again, as in Levenduski’s reading, emphasizes Ashbridge’s seeking
places in which to belong. Both of these readings also similarly understand Ashbridge’s
external connections as the means to her achievement of voice. For example, as Scheick
claims, after throughout placing emphasis on servitude: “Ashbridge achieves identity and

voice, less from an internal authority than from an extemal authority [God]” and “to some

10

degree the authority of her voice and identity remains ﬁrmly indentured” (Authorship
105)

Levenduski and Scheick see Ashbridge as seeking community in the act of
submitting to others, ultimately achieving this self-deﬁnition and voice, not from her
interior, but though an external relation to both God and religious community. However,
this argument presumes that Ashbridge ever expresses a desire for connection and
belonging and attempts to achieve it. This is not the case. Rather, Ashbridge’s attitude
upon entering each new social connection is extremely critical and secretive. It is the
assertion of a solitary self, not submission to or desire for “belonging,” that both repels
Ashbridge ﬁ'om religiosity in the beginning of the narrative and brings her to it in the
ﬁnal conversion to Quakerism. As I will Show, Ashbridge enters into no social
community with a sense of wanting to belong. Rather, through the active creation of an
isolated interior and of a misdirecting exterior, Ashbridge remains critical and
independent of any association aside from her interior self, and her relationship with God.
Further, following Sobel, I will argue that Ashbridge also uses the authority of her
developing relationship with God to deﬁne herself in opposition, rather than in relation
to, most prominently her husband, but also against general antagonistic external forces in
her life.

It is worth pausing here to situate the above arguments of Levenduski and Scheick
in the wider understanding of relationality in autobiography studies, as I believe this to be
a detriment to understanding a text like Ashbridge’s. One often held tenet is that
women’s and men’s autobiography maintain entirely different characteristics and

traditions. For example, Susan Stanford Friedman argues that “the individualistic concept

1]

of the autobiographical self. . .raises serious theoretical problems for critics who recognize
that the self, self-creation, and self-consciousness are profoundly different for women,
minorities, and many non-Westem peoples” (34). The result of such a viewpoint is the
persistence of opposing deﬁnitions of women’s and men’s autobiography. John Paul
Eakin rehearses this understanding: “If female, then relational, collectivist, and, for some
reason, non-narrative; if male, then autonomous, individualistic, and narrative” (50).
Certainly there is some beneﬁt in employing these distinctions“. For instance, insisting
that non-narrative texts, like diaries and letters, be considered autobiographical rightly
widens the ﬁeld of study to include a number of women who for various reasons write
non-narrative texts. This widening of deﬁnition also would then work to bring
compelling men’s non-narrative texts to critical attention. However, the assumption that
all women’s autobiographical texts are relational does nothing to add to the richness of
the ﬁeld, but rather can simply lead to gross misreadings. This relational/autonomous
opposition seems to persist more strictly along gender lines than the narrative/non-

”5 that women across time have

narrative opposition because psychology has “proven
“employ[ed] their sense of connectedness to discover and even reconstruct a self/selves”

(Coleman 2). Eakin has persuasively deconstructed this gendered opposition by claiming

that all selﬂTOOd is relational, despite gender difference (5), and I am interested in

 

4 Another “reason” for the persistence of this distinction is that the claim for separate traditions has
performed necessary and operative in the work of ﬁrst-wave feminism, helping to bring women’s writing to
the fore. Leigh Gilmore makes this important acknowledgement, as well as one that demonstrates the
effects of such a distinction: “As useful as more monolithic claims about ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s
autobiography have been to feminists during this crucial historical period in the institutionalization of
feminism, generalizations about gender and genre in autobiography naturalize how men, women, and the
activity of writing are bound together within the changing philosophies of self and history” (13).

5 My quotation marks putting pressure on the term “proven” are only meant to undercut this one
psychological claim, not psychology as a discipline or any other such gross claim.

12

performing a similar shift to relationality in my reading of Ashbridge and Bailey6. So
while I argue that the imposition of relationality on Ashbridge’s narrative speciﬁcally
leads both Levenduski and Scheick to misread her as deﬁning her self through connection
to community, a certain notion of relationality still plays an important role in Ashbridge’s
assertion of self. AS mentioned above, Sobel’s notion of the self’s necessary relationship
to some authoritative entity would argue, much like Eakin, that all selfhood in this period
is to some degree relational. Arguments built on gendered relationality, however, can
erroneously conclude that there ultimately is no autonomous self in women’s self-
narratives. This, again, is simply not the case for Ashbridge. Though she does in some
way deﬁne herself relationally to God, it is that relation, along with various other
strategies of solitude, which allow her to assert a solitary self.

From the narrative’s ﬁrst moments, Ashbridge describes her solitary and hidden
religious seeking that persists throughout. The entire narrative is marked by Ashbridge’s
persistent solitude: “As I grew up, I took notice there were several different religious
societies, wherefore I often went alone and wept; with desires that I might be directed to
the right” (148). In this ﬁrst description, characteristic of Ashbridge’s habit of religious
seeking throughout, she plainly establishes this practice as one embarked upon alone. In
addition to being marked as a solitary endeavor, this seeking is further hidden from the

family with which she at the time resides. For example, upon a relation’s attempt to get

 

6 Eakin is not the only one to deﬂate these oppositions and thus not the only inﬂuence in my move to de-
gender the relationality/autonomy opposition. For instance, Linda H. Peterson shows the way the
assumption of relationality puts arbitrary emphasis on certain elements: “Modern literary criticism assumes
that women autobiographers will show a special facility or predilection for domestic themes, for the
exploration of matters relating to marriage, children, or housewifery. This assumption, complemented by
modern psychological theories of women’s ‘relational’ approach to self-deﬁnition, often predisposes critics
to foreground those autobiographical episodes in which women writers touch on familial matters or
domestic details. Of course such details appear, but no more frequently in women’s spiritual accounts than
in men’s” ( 85).

13

her to join the “Holy Catholick Faith,” Ashbridge explains to her reader: “. . .for some
time I frequented their place of Worship, but none of my Relations knew what was my
motive” (149). Not only did she hide her intentions from her family, she also hid from
the group she was associating with, as epitomized by her joining with the Seventh Day
Baptists: she attends their services, “but Did not joyn Strictly with them” (154). Clearly,
choosing to enter religious societies alone and intentionally hiding her motivations in no
way reveals any kind of driving desire for social connection. If such were the case, one
would expect Ashbridge to be more transparent in her seeking and motives; that is, to
reveal her search to those in her family or those in any given religion she tries. As
Imbarrato plainly and quite accurately notes about this solitary habit: “Ashbridge must
construct her support system and explore her spiritual landscape alone. ...Ashbridge thus
introduces herself as an earnest, solitary seeker” (18). Her persona is marked with
guarded and isolative behavior. This initial point is further assisted by Daniel B. Shea’s
characterization: “What the narrative enacts. . .is the writer’s committed refusal to accept
any voice as her own which she has not encountered as central to her own interiority”
(121). Ashbridge’s refusal of exterior inﬂuence, as Shea points out, gives strength to her
own voice. Indeed, as the narrative progresses, Ashbridge suffers tremendously in
coming to her Quaker faith, but she remains solitary: “. . .my Nights and Days were one
Continual Scene of Sorrows: I let none know my Desperate Condition” (156). This
resolute and stoic solitude lends additional strength to her assertion of self. The narrative
is thus marked by Ashbridge’s oppositional, rather than relational, relationship to various
external forces. Being alone, seeking alone, and hiding her interior state is a pattern that

repeats itself in this narrative, rather than the simple desire to belong to a community.

14

It may be said that the relational argument advanced by Levenduski, Scheick and
others is a compelling reading, as it provides a coherent narrative are; it properly orders
the narrative events—each moment of the attempt to bond, or the attempt to ﬁll in the
lack of the father, tidily culminates in Ashbridge’s eventual conversion and submission to
God. However, seeing each narrative event in the opposite way provides a similar
coherence to the narrative, not through the attempt to deﬁne her self relationally, but
rather through her attempt to avoid it. Instead of Ashbridge constantly seeking connection
to an exterior Other, she instead repeatedly turns inside to a connection with and
development of a deﬁned interior. Quite simply, these arguments put too much weight
on her seeking out, when she is markedly seeking in. In other words, Ashbridge “is the
self at the center, the aware and singular self who is known through the conversion
narrative, which becomes the active component in her discourse of subjectivity” (Harde
162). The narrative is constituted by Ashbridge’s constant and various turning in,
constructed in opposition to or hidden from her exterior body and from her social
relations.

A prime example featuring the several ways Ashbridge works to assert a solitary
self in her narrative is the scene where she is seated by the ﬁre with her husband and
company and is suddenly overwhelmed by a Voice and a vision. Preceding this scene,
Ashbridge describes attending a nearby Church of England where She “Dislike[s] some of
their ways” (156), but that at that time a “fresh Exercise fell upon me, and of such a Sort
as I had never heard of any being in the like, & while under it I thought myself alone”
(156). Her disassociation from the Church she attends is signiﬁcant here, and even more

so when it is contrasted with the experience she is about to describe—hearing voices and

15

seeing things. Of this experience, she claims it is unique to her and that when it happens,
she feels “alone.” Ashbridge describes this fantastic visual and aural experience of
hearing a voice like the sound of a trumpet and the vision of a roll of “Black Characters”.
Hearing and seeing things happens several times to Ashbridge, and is again a certainly
isolative experience. Michael G. Ditmore argues that Ashbridge’s reports of hearing
voices serves in part as evidence of conﬁdence in her own: “. . .they indicate her belief in
the absolute ﬁdelity of such voices, including her own” (24). The report of these
experiences contributes to the sense of Ashbridge’s assertion of self. After describing this
voice and vision, she states: “All this while I sat Speechless; at Last I got up trembling, &
threw my self on a Bed: the Company thought my Indisposition proceeded only from a
fright at the Thunder, but Alas, it was of another kind...” (156). The disconnect between
her interior state and her exterior behavior is noted. While she experiences on the interior
a wildly moving and overwhelming experience, she appears to the company as merely
“speechless” and “trembling.” Ashbridge describes her appearance in terms of both what
she sees and what others see of her during this experience in order to reinforce her
solitude—the way that this overwhelming visual and aural experience can be seen by her
company as merely fright at thunder. Further, she diverts attention from the possibility
that others might read her interior through the external sign of her behavior by removing
herself from view. Ashbridge indicates her increasing need to hide all outward, visual
indication of her interior religious experience. She misdirects others from her religious
interior, in order to protect her self from exterior inﬂuence and signal her solitary self.
The familiar scene in the garden is yet another signiﬁcant event on the path to her

conversion during which Ashbridge seeks to be alone and to hide exterior signs of her

16

interior state. Ashbridge recounts being in her Quaker aunt’s home and “seeing a Book
lying on the Table (& being much for reading) [she] took it up” (158). Her aunt advises
Ashbridge of her certain disinterest as the book is a Quaker one, that is, the aunt,
“perceive[d] I was not a Quaker” (158). Ashbridge then wonders to herself what Quakers
could possibly write about as she knows of no textual religious practice. But despite
Ashbridge’s initial disinterest she quickly becomes overtaken by the sight of the words
on these pages:
had not read two Pages before my very heart burned within me and Tears issued
from my Eyes, which I was Afraid would be seen; therefore with the book (Saml.
Crisp’s Two Letters) I walked into the garden, sat Down, and the piece being
Small, read it through before I went in; but Some Times was forced to Stop to
Vent my Tears, my heart as if it were uttering these involuntary Expressions. . ..
(158- 159)
The tears Ashbridge sheds become an uncontrollable outward Sign of her internal state.
As this religious moment surges within her, Ashbridge’s immediate concern is yet again
that others will see her in her state—when the tears begin, she removes herself to the
garden. This is clearly understood as Ashbridge states that upon the tears ﬂowing from
her eyes, she is “Afraid [they] would be seen” by others at the house and she thus
removes her telling exterior. After the experience is over, she expresses concern for
removing the telling physical evidence of her interior experience stating, “After I came a
little to my Self again I washed my face least any in the House should perceive I had been
Weeping” (159). The tears serve potentially as a visual Sign to others of her internal
experience. Levenduski argues that while Ashbridge was indeed isolated and alone
during this experience:
...she came to perceive the truth and to begin her afﬁliation with the group that

would ultimately lead her to prominence and security not when she was
completely alone and isolated, but rather when she was in the fold of a family for

17

the ﬁrst time in the years since she left England. Her discovery of religious
community came with her renewal of familial ties. ...(73-74)

However, this scene is clearly marked by her disconnection from the family that
surrounds her. Ashbridge is overtly concerned with hiding her self from others. Her
religious experiences on the path to Quaker conversion are marked with the clear
preference for solitude and hiding. She refuses to expose her interior to those around her
and rather is pointedly interested in hiding it.

As Ashbridge approaches her full conversion, her exterior is increasingly “read”
by others, though she still attempts to prevent many of those readings. It is signiﬁcant to
note that, within Quaker understanding, “Quaker’s physical bodies, like inscribed texts,
emanated “truths” as well” (Madden 3). This is to say that in the later moments of the
narrative, while Ashbridge still protects her interior, its appearance on the exterior begins
to be inescapable. Once she begins regularly attending Quaker meetings, she is still
resistant to letting herself be read: “All the while, I never Let any know the Condition 1
was in, nor did I appear a Friend, & fear’d a Discovery” (160). Now, beyond wiping
away her tears, or moving to another room, Ashbridge must take more drastic measures
to hide the exterior signs of her internal religious persuasion:

I loved to go to meetings, but did not like to be seen to go on week days, &

therefore to Shun it used to go from my school through the Woods, but

notwithstanding all my care the Neighbors that were not friends began to revile
me. ...alas! I could not bear the reproach, & in order to Change their Opinions got

into greater Excess in Apparel than I had freedom to Wear for some time before I

came Acquainted with Friends. (160)

Ashbridge describes her active engagement in creating a misdirecting exterior. She hides

on a path in the woods, but that is not enough. So she alters her dress, dons an “Excess of

Apparel,” to try to indicate her disassociation from the Quakers, but, signiﬁcantly, this is

18

not enough anymore: “I still did not appear like a Friend, but they all believed I was one”
(161). She is increasingly unable to conceal her interior state; others can read her exterior
as she is no longer able to misdirect them. At the height of this, she must be entirely
removed from the sight of others: “I used to Walk much alone in the Wood, where no
Eye saw nor Ear heard, & there Lament my miserable Condition, & have gone from
Morning till Night and not broke my Fast” (161).

This preference for being alone and revealing herself to no one recurs throughout
Ashbridge’s rather extensive account of her marriage to Sullivan. Indeed, Ashbridge’s
second marriage becomes the most prominent external force against which she asserts her
self. Also, the marriage serves as the main source of conﬂict throughout the narrative—
the drama of this unhappy marriage features prominently and uniquely in the conversion
narrative. From the beginning, Ashbridge emphasizes her distance from and
dissatisfaction with Sullivan, stating that she “fell in love with nothing I saw in him”
(154), emphasizing her solitude yet again. Levenduski argues of Ashbridge’s marriage
that “Sullivan prevented his wife from remaining in one place long enough to form
relationships and, therefore, forced her to rely only on him for emotional support. Her
second marriage thus becomes one more roadblock on her path to belonging” (79).
Indeed, Sullivan is controlling and attempts to isolate Ashbridge, particularly from
suspected Quaker associations. However, rather than representing a “roadblock” to
Ashbridge’s belonging and being the only one she can “rely on,” her disassociation from
all, especially Sullivan, works to assert her self. Ashbridge’s marriage becomes the
strongest and most dramatic force against which Ashbridge struggles to assert herself. In

describing her marriage to Sullivan, she states it was “. . .like two joyning hands and

19

going to destruction, & thereupon Concluded if I was not forsaken of heaven to alter my
Course of Life” (154). At no point does Ashbridge ever suppose, even when she
consents to marry, that this man will provide her any sense of “emotional support.” That
strong conjunction in the passage just cited rather serves to strengthen her resolution to
save only herself, to turn her attention again inside. Her marriage to a faithless and
controlling husband compels Ashbridge’s turning in to herself. She gains the authority
necessary for that disassociation through her developing, interior relationship to God.
This authority also allows Ashbridge to righteously expose the abuses she
suffered at Sullivan’s hand, yet another unconventional element of her conversion
narrative. Ashbridge’s relationship with God empowers her as a subject. Levenduski,
however, sees in relation to the disclosure of her ill-treatment, that “In recounting
Sullivan’s treatment of her, Ashbridge emphasizes an image of herself that resonates
throughout her text: as property or as a commodity to be bought and sold” (83).
Alternatively, the image of Ashbridge as a result of this marriage is not of an objectiﬁed
commodity, but rather a radically subjective actor who, with the authority of God, has
strategically crafted a self independent from Sullivan’s, or anyone else’s, inﬂuence and
control. While both Ashbridge and Bailey often rely on the rhetoric of submission, this
surrender to authority, particularly to the authority of God, is not passive, but strategic.
Ashbridge uses the authority of God to direct her anger at and disassociate from Sullivan.
At the height of Ashbridge’s social inability to acceptably signal her Quaker
religion, Sullivan takes her away. As they are traveling, they stop at a tavern where he
insists that she sing and dance, in order to restore her to her former self, or to shake off

that “stiff Quaker” (162) in her. Signiﬁcantly, her husband believes that if he can force

20

Ashbridge to alter her exterior behavior, then her interior afﬁliation to Quakerism will be
altered. She tells the reader that she “took up the resolution, not to Comply whatever be
the Consequence” (162). Here her developed relationship with God grants her the agency
to act in opposition to Sullivan. The tavern band plays at Sullivan’s insistence, but they
soon stop, because Ashbridge simply stands still, refusing to comply. This scene is a
great example of the way, by the end of the narrative, Ashbridge can assert herself
against and direct her anger towards Sullivan, by virtue of the authoritative power of
God. Shortly after this scene in the tavern, in a quite memorable and powerful line,
Ashbridge succinctly deﬁnes a self in opposition to her marriage: “So I was ready to obey
all his Lawfull Commands, but where they Imposed upon my Conscience, I no longer
Durst” (165-166). The reader here sees the way in which her social obedience and
obligation is deﬁned against the parameters of her “Conscience”—the developed
relationship she has now with God grants her the autonomy to assert herself against
Sullivan.

In a ﬁnal moment of Sullivan’s challenge to Ashbridge’s assertion of an
autonomous religious self (and the point near the end of the narrative in which details of
the marriage, rather than her conversion, really dominate), Ashbridge mentions that on
her path to conversion, the one thing preventing her complete happiness was the
“Reformation of [her] husband” (169), which as a result of his taking to drink, seemed an
impossible wish. During this time, Ashbridge explains that she simply endured his
behavior with the patience granted to her by God, and that only one time she uttered to
him “unsavoury expressions” (169). When Sullivan came home, “a little in drink” and

found her “at'Work by a Candle, came to me, put it out & fetching me a box on the Ear

21

said, ‘you don’t Earn your light;’ on which unkind Usage. . .I uttered these Rash
Expressions, ‘thou art a Vile Man...” (169). Here is another powerful example of the way
Ashbridge uses the authority of God to oppose Sullivan. Quite simply, Sullivan here
challenges Ashbridge’s presentation of a religious self. She opposes him not only through
the authority of her own relationship to God, but also through Sullivan’s own lack of
relationship with God—in other words, she stands on the authoritative moral high-
ground. Further, she discloses the truth of this abusive scene by framing it with her
wishes that Sullivan would ﬁnally come to God and save himself. By using these ﬁnal
narrative moments in such a way, she further relies on the authority of God to righteously
deﬁne herself apart from him. She adamantly wishes for his “Good End” (170) even after
he has left her. The ﬁnal paragraph expresses Ashbridge’s “duty” to say what she could
about him that was good, as she was “obliged” to say all the bad things about him. The
end of Ashbridge’s conversion narrative focuses frankly on the end of her marriage and
the demise of her husband. It is signiﬁcant that, just like Bailey, Ashbridge’s story ends
when she is free of Sullivan. Using the authority of God, Ashbridge can confess some
details of her unhappy marriage, documenting the emergence of her self both in relation
to God and opposition to her husband.

Ashbridge’s self is asserted in opposition to various external forces, particularly a
violent and controlling husband. Her interior is similarly protected from those forces by
the misdirection of her exterior and her often solitary behavior. In subtle ways,
Ashbridge’s conversion narrative does more. Her conversion narrative is marked by
peculiarities—she does not describe herself as actively seeking a community to which to

belong; she is instead critical of anyone’s voice and direction but her own. She does not

22

choose to document her public Quaker life, as so many narratives in this genre do, but
rather transgresses convention to depict the unique and abusive circumstances of her
married life. She speaks out, no matter how apologetically, against the domestic abuses
she suffered. While many of the events are depicted in a conventional way, Ashbridge’s
narrative does more than imitate Quaker narratives that have come before her. In various
ways, she asserts a more deﬁned self. In her solitary and secretive behavior, in her critical
attitude towards external inﬂuences and communities, in her intentional misdirection
from her interior, and her use of God’s authority to deﬁne her self in opposition to and to

direct her anger towards her violent husband, Ashbridge asserts her self in a unique way.

Seeking a Way Out: “Memoirs of Abigail Bailey” (1815)

Abigail Bailey’s “Memoirs of Abigail Bailey” (1815) is a fascinating narrative;
engrossing and dramatic, it unﬂinchingly documents Abigail’s violent marriage to Asa
Bailey. Her self-narrative, like Ashbridge’s, is only “one of a small handful of
autobiographies written by women during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”
(Taves, Introduction 1)7 and it too can be characterized as a spiritual, or even conversion
narrative, as much of it consists of Congregationalist Bailey’s musings on the power of
God. In addition to its spiritual aspects, the memoirs represent “the ﬁrst autobiographical
account of family violence published in the United States” (Taves 1). It is a revealing
portrait of an abusive, volatile, adulterous marriage, whose height of cruelty is Asa
Bailey’s incestuous abuse of their daughter and whose result is Bailey’s long deliberation

on and apprehension towards obtaining a divorce. Indeed, these two narrative foci—

 

7 I rely on the work of Ann Taves, editor of the republication of Bailey’s memoirs, quite a bit for my
reading of Bailey as she is the only critic thus far who has written extensively on Bailey.

23

portrait of an abusive marriage and religious devotional—compete for primacy in the
narrative. In spite of, or perhaps merely alongside of, the spiritual elements, the narrative
begins when Abigail marries Asa and ends when she becomes divorced from him. In
other words, though Abigail’s relationship with God is not separate from the narrative of
her marriage, what distinguishes this text is the focus on this troubled marriage.

Bailey’s narrative shares several similarities with Ashbridge’s. As already
mentioned, it puts much emphasis on the events of her marriage. Bailey also is always
alone, protective of her interior, and enjoys a highly individual relationship with God. In
this way, Bailey emerges as a similarly solitary, rather than communal or relational, self.
Also, Bailey uses her relationship with God to act as an autonomous agent in her
marriage and direct her anger at her husband. But Bailey, facing perhaps an even more
dire situation of abuse, also draws on the authority of covenantal marriage and Asa’s own
authority to assert her agency. Perhaps the biggest distinguishing feature between
Ashbridge’s and Bailey’s narratives is the role of writing itself. Most provocatively,
because of her legal disempowerment, Bailey also assumes the authority of writing to
deﬁne herself in opposition to her husband. For all of these reasons, Bailey’s narrative
works to assert a unique self. Her narrative challenges relational subjectivity by asserting
a solitary self in opposition to her husband, and presents complications to generic
conventions in its focus on her marriage.

Bailey’s narrative reﬂects an interesting set of possible generic inﬂuences.
Roxanne Harde sees Bailey’s narrative as relying on the rhetoric of conversion, even
though Bailey has already been accepted in the Congregational church before the

narrative begins (164). Harde ﬁnds the trials Bailey faces in her marriage to Asa as

24

presenting a test of faith that requires Bailey to reexamine and redeﬁne her relationship
with God. Through this process, and relying on the conventions of conversion narrative,
Bailey, empowered not compromised by this reevaluated relationship with God, “gains
the authority needed to separate herself from her role as wife and to reconvert herself in
her relationship with God” (164). Ann Taves sees Bailey as, in addition to the using the
Bible to interpret her experiences, also relying “on the Indian captivity narratives popular
in New England at the time” (Introduction 16). Taves identiﬁes this other narrative
inﬂuence most prominently through Bailey’s use of the enemy/captive terminology.
Similarly to Harde, Taves sees most signiﬁcantly the edifying and religious practice
elements of the narrative’s intent: “By maintaining her faith and trust in God throughout
her ordeal, she ensured both her own salvation and, through her memoirs, provided an
example for others” (Introduction 17). Thus both Harde and Taves place emphasis on the
narrative’s adherence to conventional and accessible forms, which no doubt inﬂuenced
the shaping of Bailey’s story. But, though these inﬂuences cannot be denied, I would like
to focus instead on the narrative’s violation of those conventions.

First, the introduction makes a point to stress that Bailey has already joined the
church: “In the eighteenth year of her age, being of a serious turn of mind, and of an
unblemished moral character, she applied to the Rev. Mr. Walker to join herself to his
church, and was received Sept. 4, 1763” (55). Thus, like Ashbridge, though it is
conventional to write a spiritual self-narrative in this period, Bailey’s text breaks that
convention immediately in terms of experiences recounted. Further, and more
signiﬁcantly, the narrative progression of the text is driven much more by the events

recounted in Bailey’s marriage than in her faith. For example, the narrative begins with

25

the ﬁrst dated entry of the memoirs as her marriage to Asa at age twenty-two (56).
Moreover, the narrative ends when Asa and Bailey part for good: “Mr. B. and Iparted. I
had no expectation, or wish ever to see him again in this life. I petitioned for a bill of
divorcement, and readily obtained it” (178). I underline the primacy of the marriage to
focus on how this narrative begins to do more; Bailey’s narrative moves even beyond
Ashbridge in terms of its violation of convention. It might be said that this is ﬁrst a story
of a dramatic marriage, and within that drama emerges a self deﬁned in strong
opposition, with the aid of God.

Aside from the various ways that Bailey herself sets up the memoirs to emphasize
the drama of the marriage, there is further evidence of this dual topic to be found in the
preface written by the editor of the memoirs, Reverend Ethan Smith. Smith ﬁrst records
his belief of the memoir’s utility: “On reading the manuscripts, I was of the opinion, that
they are richly worthy of being given to the public” (25). Indeed, this is the very familiar
introduction to a religious self-narrative—the events of one’s life serve only to instruct
the community in the trials and triumph of faith. However, as his description progresses,
his emphasis and repetition in describing the circumstances out of which Bailey’s faith
appears creates a kind of equal interest in the religious meanings and the events

themselves. Of the events depicted, Smith calls them separately: “uncommon, and

,9 ‘6 ,9 6‘

interesting events, such singular providences, piety, under a series of most pressing
trials,” and “rare materials” (52). The preface advocates the compelling nature of the
memoirs; it indicates there is something more here than the familiar course of faith.
Biblical lessons are certainly learned within, but within a particularly compelling story:

“These things are presented in a detail of events, and unexaggerated facts, which arrest

26

the attention; and which are singularly calculated to exhibit the detestable nature and
consequences of licentiousness and vice” (52). The readers’ attention is arrested, and
within that interest, religious lessons can be learned. The preface reinforces the interest in
the narrative for religious ediﬁcation, but also in the confession of a scandalous drama.
Because my reading emphasizes the narrative’s focus on Bailey’s marriage, it is
important to pause and consider marriage in Bailey’s historical moment. The ﬁrst
indication of what the expectations for marriage were come from Bailey herself, in the
very ﬁrst pages of her memoirs:
I now left my dear parents—hoping to ﬁnd in my husband a true hearted and
constant friend. My desires and hopes were, that we might live together in peace
and friendship; seeking each other’s true happiness till death. . ..As, while I lived
with my parents, I esteemed it my happiness to be in subjection to them; so now I
thought it must be a still greater beneﬁt to be under the aid of a judicious
companion, who would rule well his own house. It had been my hope to ﬁnd a
companion of a meek, peaceable temper; a lover of truth; discreet and pleasant. I
thought one of the opposite character, would be my greatest disappointment and
trial. (56)
Bailey’s expectations are for a “judicious” companion who will lead their house well and
to whom she can happily subject her self. Taves notes, “Submission, however, did not
necessarily mean passive acceptance” (“Self and God” 61). Bailey hopes for a companion
with whom she can live in religious truth and seek eternal happiness, thereby
emphasizing the religious implications of the relationship. To assure her salvation, Bailey
hopes her husband is meek, pleasant, and of peaceful temper—all the characteristics of
course not evident in Asa, which as emphasized in that last line above, will be her worst
disappointment. Her expectations for a peaceful, religious partnership are immediately

dashed, setting up the main conﬂict of the narrative—religious devotion against the

horrid realities of her marriage.

27

Shortly after Bailey presents the hopes for her marriage, she emphasizes the
power of the marriage covenant. Though marriage in Bailey’s historical moment was
borne of submitting, it was not exactly domineering—marriage was a contract in which
both husband and wife had responsibilities to uphold; the subordination of the wife was
contingent, in other words, on the husband’s upholding his duties in the marriage (Taves,
Introduction 12). And when Bailey begins to describe some of the ways Asa violates his
end of the deal, she is sure to emphasize her ﬁdelity, in spite of his inﬁdelity: “It was not
an enemy; then I could have borne it. . ..But it was the man mine equal, my guide, my
friend, my husband!....He has broken his covenant” (73). Asa’s breaking of the covenant
becomes part of the force with which she can oppose him. Not only does the covenantal
nature of marriage in Bailey’s view give her the religious authority to eventually break
with Asa, but it also has an effect on the legal understanding of marriage:

The contractual character of the covenant also meant that in New England

marriages were not viewed as indissoluble, but could be broken if either party

failed to fulﬁll their responsibilities. Adultery, incestuous marriage (marriage to
legally designated relatives), cruelty (wife beating), and desertion were all
considered breaches of the marriage covenant and thus, especially in combination,

grounds for divorce. (Taves, Introduction 12)

The religious understanding of marriage, as Taves suggests, made divorce a possibility in
theory. Because the religious and legal understanding of marriage was not entirely
distinct, and as we will see, Bailey cannot access the authority of the legal system, she
throughout emphasizes her maintenance of the (religious) covenant, in spite of Asa’s
violations of it.

Another aspect of eighteenth-century marriage to be considered was the incidence

of divorce. Quite simply, as Joan Gunderson points out, in the eighteenth century:

“Women did not enter the divorce process lightly and spent years in terrible situations

28

before seeking a way out” (59). Though the reality of divorce in this time period and the
regularity with which women endured such violence remains fairly unclear, Taves pieces
together some picture of divorce in Bailey’s moment. First she offers that Bailey could
have petitioned for divorce in theory before the incest began, on basis of cruelty and
adultery (Introduction 11); however, as the narrative itself repeats, this was not a
desirable option for many reasons. Because “cruelty was grounds for divorce, but only in
combination with other grounds” and accusations of adultery had to produce two eye-
witnesses (Taves l3), Bailey had a hard time collecting certain legal proof. As she makes
clear herself, getting legal proof would necessitate that her daughter Phebe testify against
her father. Abigail constantly frets over a contested divorce and simply wants Asa to do
the right thing and make a settlement. Taves makes an important point on this: “The fact
that she did obtain a divorce in 1793 indicates that her fear was not of divorce per se, but
of a contested divorce” (Introduction 15). Thus it is not that Bailey, through the long
silence and toleration of the violence, cannot become a sufﬁcient agent to remove herself
from the situation, but rather that she attempts to work the systems in which She is
variously the less powerful subject to her advantage, and the legal system happens to be
one where she cannot make the authority work for her.

To begin thinking about the several ways Bailey asserts a unique self, it should
ﬁrst be noted that there is a strong accord with Ashbridge in Bailey’s tendency to seek
isolation and silence. Perhaps the most recurrent act Bailey describes in this text is her
going off alone, bearing her situation all alone, and only sometimes taking singular
refuge in God. Supporting the sense that this narrative divides its attention between faith

and focus on the marriage, Bailey describes her solitude in two distinct ways. First, she

29

often describes her solitude in terms of only having God to sustain her. For instance,
when she ﬁrst has suspicion that Asa is having an affair with a woman who lives in their
home, the ﬁrst transgression described in the narrative, Bailey claims conventionally: “In
my distress, my only reﬁrge was in God my Saviour...” (5 8). Just as often however,
Bailey describes her distressed solitude with the stark absence of God’s presence: “But I
saw no way to put a stop to the evil, under which I was oppressed. And I seemed unable
to open my difﬁculties to any one: I must bear them all alone” (74). Bailey expresses a
similar sentiment of isolation, but here solitude does not rely on God. In facing her
antagonistic marriage, Bailey becomes a solitary subject; her husband forces her into
situations in which she must assert herself, in ways that potentially isolate her further. As
she describes her escape back to her family after Asa has tricked her into following him a
great distance away, she considers the social implications for her traveling alone: “I
thought it was so uncommon to see women riding journies alone, that I should naturally
be taken for some base contemptible creature, and people would not think it much matter
how I was treated. But in all such fears, I found relief in ﬂying to God my reﬁrge” (153).
Here, Bailey’s being alone is the result of her actively taking steps to oppose her
husband—she chooses a dangerous escape and long arduous journey alone in an attempt
to return to and protect her children. As a result of having to proceed this way, she is
vulnerable to the perceptions of others. In fear of her bold and unique actions, she relies
on God to embolden her strength in opposition to others’ perceptions of her. Thus,
Bailey’s narrative, much like Ashbridge’s, is marked by isolating behavior and a strength

of an interior will.

30

Part of the power in being alone that Bailey emphasizes is not only the habit of
just being alone, but also taking refuge in the act of writing alone, and often secretly. As
Taves notes, “Bailey worked out the religious meaning of her husband’s disturbing
behavior in the context of her regular private devotions” (Introduction 10). These writing
sessions, which served the double purpose of religious practice and protective refuge,
create a space where Bailey interprets her faith and her marriage together. In the
memoirs, comprised in great part by the ordering of these diary entries, the act of writing
itself is emphasized by the start of each entry:

July, 1773, Alas, I must again resume my lonely pen, and write grievous things
against the husband of my youth!...(60)

May 26, 1774, l endeavored to console my afﬂicted heart with my pen, by writing
as follows. ...(62)

What is interesting here is the way the pen is so prominently described—ﬁrst that it’s
lonely, emphasizing Bailey’s solitude and second, that the pen consoles, putting a strong
emphasis on the act of writing itself as coping mechanism. Though the potential purpose
of these writing sessions is to work out a connection between the experiences she faces
and her faith, the act of writing, of being alone, and of consoling oneself with the pen is
expressed, rather than simply God’s good grace. One could easily expect her to say ‘I
endeavored to console my heart with God, by writing as follows.” But the fact that the
pen repeatedly features as an agent of aid seems to widen the purpose of writing these
devotions—this is not rote religious practice, this writing does something more for Bailey
and potentially something unique. As Taves points out: “Given the difﬁculty which
Abigail had in attending church services regularly and her husband’s lack of a conversion

experience, it“ is clear that these secret devotions, rather than public worship or family

31

prayer, were at the heart of Abigail Bailey’s religious life” (Introduction 10). Taves
emphasizes the very individual practice that marked Bailey’s religious devotion——
because of the circumstances of her life, including the fact that her husband was not
faithful, Bailey’s religious practice was highly personal and secret. Writing alone,
recording her feelings, negotiating her relationship with God, maintaining a secret
practice, having discourse with herself—however this act of private devotion is
emphasized, what becomes clear in Bailey’s narrative is the prominence and power of
writing in the events of her self-narrative. Bailey is simply compelled to write: “Some
vent to my private grief I found in writing it. . .I give vent to the feelings of my broken
heart, as follows” (5 8).

More prominently than Ashbridge, Bailey wields the power of God to direct her
anger towards and deﬁne herself in opposition to Asa. This reliance on the authority of
God to direct anger at an other and to assert the self is seen in the way Bailey describes
the sources of her actions and declarations in standing up to Asa. At one point, having
“determined, to adopt a new mode of treatment with Mr. B” (77), Bailey records herself
telling Asa: “I told him I should no longer be turned off in this manner [by B’s angry
words]; but should pursue my object with ﬁrmness, and with whatever wisdom and
ability God might give me” (77). Bailey clearly and actively asserts her will in the ﬁrst-
person—in a plain declaration, she stands up to Asa. Simultaneously, however, Bailey
seems to give the power to act over to God. Bailey asserts both that she will be ﬁrm and
that God will give her ﬁrmness, separately. In this way, it is both God and Bailey that
assert authority in the situation. Though Bailey does here, and in other moments in the

text, seem to give up control of her self over to God, I focus on this passage to show that

32

Bailey’s relationship with God doesn’t necessarily compromise her autonomy. For
instance, Harde argues that Bailey is “able to remove. . .her husband’s control over her by
giving up control of her self to God” (167), but there is ample evidence in the text to
challenge the notion that she relinquishes control to God. This relation to God is much
more nuanced, in other words. Indeed, she subscribes to the authority of God, but
remembering Sobel’s understanding of the self in this period, authority is necessary to
deﬁne the self-in-opposition. More than submitting to or sacriﬁcing her autonomy for
God, Bailey uses the relationship she has forged with God against Asa, and one way she
does so is, as above, invoking God’s will while attempting to gain control over a
confrontation in the relationship in which she is in other ways the powerless one.

Bailey actively uses the authority she gains from her relationship with God.
Clearly exemplifying Sobel’s argument about the self, at one point in the narrative, when
Asa inquires about Abigail’s prayers, she comments that, “It was very evident that the
greatest fear he had of me was from my prayers, seeking and obtaining help from God.
He had discovered evident fear of this” (105). Here, quite simply, is the recognition of the
authority Bailey holds in deﬁning herself against Asa—though Asa has other forms of
advantage, like legal power for instance, Bailey again recognizes that her submission to
and faith in God gives her, in part, the authority she needs to righteously direct her anger
at and to separate herself from her husband. Bailey’s faith is a kind of weapon that Asa
fears. In another example, near the end of the narrative, God becomes a force through
which Bailey can thwart Asa’s manipulative designs. In one of his last attempts to regain
control over Bailey, Asa sends her children away, fully expecting, after Bailey had

traveled so long to reach them that she would abandon the legal proceedings she had

33

ﬁnally taken up against him in order to chase them. But Bailey recognizes this scheme
and uses her faith in God to stay and proceed, but also to protect her children: “And I
believed God would give me ﬁrmness to pursue my object with him; and also, that God
would take these children out of his cruel hands, and restore them to me. Mr. B. appeared
to feel mortiﬁed and in some measure defeated” (174). Once again, God here is a force
wielded by Bailey in situations in which her autonomy is threatened. She relies on the
authority of God to deﬁne herself in opposition to Asa.

Though God is the most prominent source of authority Bailey calls upon to
separate herself from Asa, she also relies on the power of the covenant, which has both
religious and legal ramiﬁcations. As mentioned previously, Bailey thoroughly documents
her attempts to uphold the marriage covenant, in spite of Asa’s violent behavior. This can
be then understood as Bailey’s attempt to maintain the authority of that covenant to then,
as with God, assert her opposition to him. This is clearly exempliﬁed in the following:

But I told Mr. B he knew he had violated his marriage covenant; and hence had

forfeited all legal and just right and authority over me; and I should convince him

I well knew it. I told him I was not in any passion. I acted on principle, and from

long and mature consideration. . ..he had compelled me to undertake this most

undesirable business—of stopping him in his mad career; and that I now felt

strength, courage and zeal to pursue my resolution. (78)

Bailey, through the power of the covenant, claims the relinquishment of Asa’s authority
over her—the power of the marriage covenant is invoked to give Bailey the space to act
as an agent. In the ﬁnal phrase, she emphasizes that it actually Asa who “compels” her to
act; it is his violations of the contract that force her to stop him and it is in this action that
she speaks autonomously from the ﬁrst person. She is again using the systems of

authority which have her submit to both religious and legal authority in order to gain

autonomy in opposition. The construction of the ﬁnal phrase in the passage cited above

34

serves as ﬁrrther example of this emerging self—Bailey ﬁrst claims to be submitted to
Asa’s own demands as the covenant calls for her to do, but that it was his will to break
that covenant. As a result of this, she earns the strength and courage to pursue her
resolution, to actively assert her will. Ironically, it is the submission to the authority of
the covenant that grants her agency to assert herself. Finally, as in her invocation of the
power of the covenant, Bailey uses Asa’s own authority over her to assert her self against
him: “But, said I, you have done all in your power to bring about such a separation, and
to ruin and destroy our family. And I meet it as my duty now to do all in my power to
save them from further destruction” (79). Here, again, Bailey points out the ways his
actions have created the necessity for separation. She even goes so far as to say she
“meets it as her duty”, again relying on the rhetoric of submission, to become powerful
and an active agent to save her family. In a violent situation, Bailey is in many ways
powerless and seeks spaces where she wields certain authority to deﬁne herself in
opposition to her husband. She becomes a deﬁned self by actively and strategically
committing to authoritative power.

Yet another compelling instance of Bailey’s relying on the authority of the God
and the covenant comes in the letters she writes to Asa and sticks in his clothes after he
has agreed to remove himself from their home. Most forcefully, within these letters,
Bailey asserts her disconnection from Asa, and her resolve: “But I never desire your
return to me. This point is decided!” (93). This command resounds with the assertion of
self and active agency, and it only comes after careful arguments from inhabited
authoritative positions. Bailey can be so forceful here because she relies on the authority

of her relationship with God. She demonstrates in the letters all the ways Asa has violated

35

his own relationship with God, as well as their covenant. She directs her anger and desire
for separation by relying on the authority of her faith and his disregard for that authority:
“This solemn testimony against your wickedness, and this last call to repentance, I leave
with you. Let me be clear from the blood of your soul” (94). To uphold her faith and
relation with God, she must be free from Asa. Thus, by addressing him through the
authority of the rules of God and the authority she gains from writing, Bailey works to
assert her self.

Though Bailey demonstrates her ability to wield the power of God, the covenant,
and Asa’s own authority, one place where Bailey is unable to use authority to assert her
self is the legal system. But, as Bailey is sure to note throughout, there are many reasons
why the legal system is not set up to grant her a position of authority. While she was
convinced of the grounds for separation, she acknowledges that proving that in court
would be difﬁcult: “It may appear surprising that such wickedness was not checked by
legal restraints. But great difﬁculties attend in such a case. While I was fully convinced
of the wickedness, yet I knew not that I could make legal proof. I could not prevail upon
this daughter to make known to me her troubles; or to testify against the author of them”
(76). She cannot or will not make her abused daughter speak publicly—for Bailey, this
disclosure is not (yet) a position of power. Indeed, as the narrative itself wants to
emphasize, the legal system is one authoritative system that makes Bailey a passive
subject and for that, the narrative highlights her guilt. But, it seems that there was no way
for Bailey to gain an authoritative position, and hence her inaction. This recognition is
evident in the following, where Asa returns to plead with Bailey that he will change:

“Had the way been prepared, by due adjustment of our property, to be sure it would have

36

been best to have decided the point at once with a ﬁrm tone, and told him he must
immediately ﬂee and be gone! But no proper settlement was yet made. And I was
sensible he had it in the power of his hands to injure and distress us” (100). This
highlights how Bailey was unable to access a position of authority within the legal system
and her resulting passivity. Bailey can only suppose what her course of action would be,
should she have any legal authority on which to rely. But because their matters were not
yet settled and because she was aware of her disadvantaged position, Bailey must take a
different course. Bailey has to hope Asa will be the one to dissolve the marriage without
a long proceeding, because the process itself, though resulting in the separation, puts
Bailey in a position through which none of her own control can be asserted. Overall, legal
authority is not one that Bailey can wield from her position in an autonomous way, so she
doesn’t choose it. She tries instead the above means—God, the covenant, Asa’s own
authority—to urge Asa to pursue a settlement.

Adding another layer of complication to this is Bailey’s staunch refusal to
disclose her situation to anyone, as this isolating behavior becomes questionable, both
legally and religiously throughout the narrative. In the description of events, Bailey is
clearly aware of readers’ potential dissatisfaction with her choices: “And such were my
inﬁrmities, weakness and fears, (my circumstances being very difﬁcult) that I did not
dare to hint any thing of my fears to him, or to any creature. This may to some appear
strange; but with me it was then a reality” (71). In this reﬂection on the events, Bailey
admits her isolative tendencies were perhaps a mistake. In the only footnote in the entire
narrative, editor Smith steps in at this point to say: “The discreet reader will repeatedly

wonder that this pious sufferer did not look abroad for help against so vile a son of Belief,

37

and avail herself of the law of the land, by swearing the peace against him. Her
forbearance does indeed seem to have been carried to excess” (72). Smith then gives
reasons as to why Bailey would have chosen secrecy and isolation. There is guilt to be
laid on Abigail for her silence, solitude and legal inaction: “After all, it will be difﬁcult to
resist the conviction which will be excited in the course of these memoirs that Mrs. B did
truly err, in not having her husband brought to justice” (72). This admission would seem
to depict Bailey as less of an agent, but instead, I think, it actually works to underline
Bailey’s subtle autonomy in an otherwise powerless situation. As previously noted, she is
aware of the limits in certain courses of action, that she for instance would be entirely
disempowered in the legal arena. While it is perhaps not ideal, Bailey ﬁnds more control
in isolation, silence, and relationship with God, at least at this point in the narrative. And
while this legal inaction could be read as detracting from Bailey’s assertion of self, I
argue that in fact this refusal is another way Bailey asserts herself in the situation.
Because in the course of narrative events Bailey does not pursue legal action more
immediately, she assumes guilt. And in some way, this guilt becomes at least one reason
for writing and publishing the memoirs. She says:
I ever meant to let all my friends, and the public, by and by, know the uttermost
of my trials. But I was led to think it would be well to get my concerns with Mr.
B. (as to the property) ﬁrst settled. I meant that they should understand, (and I
supposed they did understand,) that I never designed to live with Mr. B. any
more. But I had not been very explicit with them relative to the thing. (125-6)
Reﬂected here is ﬁrst the characteristic reserve Bailey has for disclosing her situation—
she prefers to settle the situation legally before ﬁlling everyone in on the details. It is

ironic that throughout she repeatedly refrains from letting others know of her situation,

considering the highly public nature and the detail with which the memoirs are

38

comprised. Also of note is the way that the time for disclosure is the time when the legal
proceedings are settled. Among the other reasons for writing this memoir, Bailey desires
to take a position of textual authority in lieu of the legal authority she could not inhabit.
Writing itself indeed begins to give Bailey authority and strength, just as God
does. As previously noted, the power of writing itself comes through in various ways in
this narrative. Although there are times when words fail her, when she laments (for
instance) that there are no words to describe her situation, there is a clear moment in the
text when words become a powerful tool of disclosure and simultaneously a powerful
weapon against Asa. This one instance is when Bailey decides to describe just one scene
of Asa’s abuse of Phebe. This becomes an intensely powerful description as the rest of
the story is at best suggestive of the realities of abuse she and her family suffer. She
begins by saying, “Among the many instances of his wickedly correcting her, I shall
mention one” (75). She goes on to document a scene too long to fully document here,
where Asa reprimands and violently beats Phebe for not immediately coming to him, a
miscommunication:
He seized his horse whip, and said, in a rage, he would make her know that when
he called her, she should come to him. He then fell to whipping her without
mercy. She cried, and begged, and repeated the assertion, that she did not know
he called her to come to him. ...He continued to whip her, as though he were
dealing with an ungovemable brute; striking over her head, hands, and back; nor
did he spare her face and eyes, while the poor girl appeared as though she must
die. No proper account could he ever be prevailed on to give of this conduct. (75-
76)
To reiterate, Bailey generally takes great care to avoid many details of the violence she
and her family endures. But here is a strikingly powerful example of the power of

writing. Unlike Ashbridge’s less detailed account of the violence she suffered at the

hands of Sullivan, Bailey does not here apologize for exposing Asa’s cruel nature and

39

thus once again the power of writing is suggested. This plain description of the violence
Phebe faced was throughout the events themselves the kind of legal disclosure Bailey
feared, but in her memoirs she is able to use unﬂinchingly the authority of writing to
righteously direct her anger at her husband and assert her self in opposition to him.
There are several possible reasons Bailey chose to write this narrative. And one
clear one was to protect her name and her actions. There are hints of this within the
narrative itself. When Asa convinces Bailey to leave for New York, under the pretense
that he will take legal steps for their separation, the community knows about the incest
and violence and also knows that Bailey has taken him back in repeatedly (because, as
shown above, she had no empowered legal recourse). When the trip extends to over two
months, much past the time Asa said they would be gone, Bailey worries that she should
have sought her church ﬁ'iends’ advice and also Asa suggests to her that people in the
community are saying that she ought to leave town too:
They would now see, that I was gone off with Mr. B. and did not return as I
promised my family. . . .I well knew that appearances against me, (if I did not
soon return) must be exceedingly dark. And as I had professed religion, and had
been a great advocate for experimental and practical piety, I thought this
appearance of absconding with Mr. B. and leaving my family, would bring a
great wound to the cause of Christ. This I knew not how to endure. (126)
Regretting having not told anyone the details of her situation, she recognizes the power
she has given away to Asa in deﬁning her—as Asa’s threat indicates, there is a fear that
she will be perceived just as poorly as he. Not only does her silence as a result of not
pursuing legal course threaten her image in the community, it also here potentially

damages her relation to God, a source of authority integral to Bailey’s selﬂiood. Thus

because Bailey is unable to access an authoritative position in the legal system through

40

the course of the narrative events, she chooses to wield the authority of the ﬁrst-person
narrative to regain that power lost. As Taves similarly notes:

Given her church’s strict enforcement of its disciplinary standards (undoubtedly

one of the reasons why Abigail liked the church) and her fears that her friends,

especially her church friends, believed she had been unwise and perhaps even
deceitful, the memoirs, as opposed to the diaries, may have been written to justify

her actions to them. (Introduction 1 1)

Taves places emphasis on the writing of the memoirs as religious obligation, an
obligation to set herself right in the eyes of her religious community, and certainly it is.
As Bailey notes above, the one thing she could not endure was damage to the perception
of herself as a pious woman. But I would place more emphasis on her legal
disempowerment as compelling her to write.

Divulging the details publicly, something she is unwilling to do in the court of
law, is ultimately the power she wields in penning this memoir. Once she has gotten the
divorce, just as she wanted, without a considerable process, she is then able to assume the
authority of the pen and of the act of writing, to clearly and resoundingly deﬁne her self
in opposition to a cruel and violent husband. The writing of her story and of herself then
becomes the ultimate authority wielded against her husband. Both the creation of the
memoirs and the habitual, private diary writing become the master space of authority
through which Bailey deﬁnes herself. Writing then takes the top of the list of authorities
Bailey uses to deﬁne herself above, I would contend, even God. And this is then why

Bailey’s narrative does something more; it is an instance in which the act of writing itself

becomes an agency-granting authority.8

 

8 This writing to defend oneself—the act of writing as assertion of authority and agency can be more
clearly exempliﬁed in slightly later women’s self narratives particularly in The Narrative of K. White
(1809) and the Memoirs of Elizabeth Fisher (1810). Stephen C. Arch argues in fact that these two

narratives may be among the ﬁrst autobiographies in America, as these women present themselves as

41

I want to reemphasize the complications that Bailey and Ashbridge’s narratives
present. Bailey’s, like Ashbridge’s, is a narrative that straddles critical divisions. It is
really exemplary of no established period, or genre, or convention. Rather, both
narratives present challenges to the limits of our systematization. For Bailey, allegiance
to available forms—the conversion and captivity narrative—«is certainly evident. But
while acknowledging those inﬂuences, I have been interested in emphasizing how Bailey
is also doing more than simply mimicking those forms, and how, haphazardly, she
contributes to the development of autobiography. For instance, unlike Ashbridge,
Bailey’s narrative places much signiﬁcance and authority on the act of writing itself.
Further, in many ways isolated and alone like Ashbridge, Bailey uses systems of
communal authority to inhabit a position of power and deﬁne herself in opposition to her
husband. She demonstrates a self seeking empowerment through the authority of her
private devotions to God, her covenantal marriage, her violent and oppressive husband,
and most signiﬁcantly the act of self-reﬂection and self-writing itself.

One of the reasons to write a self-narrative in the eighteenth century is to ﬁrlﬁll
obligation to religious community, to set an example, to instruct others. Though these are
certainly reasons both Ashbridge and Bailey write about themselves, these are not the
only reasons they are compelled to write. Ashbridge breaks the convention of Quaker

spiritual narrative by addressing none of her public life as a preacher; in fact, she does not

 

independent and possibly original agents. He says of White’s narrative: “Indeed, White’s narrative is so
insistent about the protagonist’s agency, and so willing to ﬁnd purpose and meaning in isolation—what
White calls “my solitary situation” (127)—that it could be considered one of the earliest autobiographies
written in the West” (146). Sobel also uses Fisher and White as examples. He claims that Fisher “provides
an example of an women [sic] with a powerful male alien other who had no institution to focus her hatred
and support her self-development” (186). White, on the other hand, is able to call on the authority of the
gender system (through her ability to be mistaken for a man) to empower herself and be deﬁned more
autonomously (204). Aside from a minor admission of White’s taking solace in God, both narratives lack
the religious content that makes Bailey’s narrative seem to many to represent a less autonomous self.

42

discuss at all her involvement in the religious community. As with Bailey, the majority of
her narrative documents her violent and tumultuous relationship with her husband. Her
narrative ends, like Bailey’s, when Ashbridge is ﬁnally rid of Sullivan. For Bailey, the
reasons for writing abound—to protect her name, to protect herself legally, to save face
with her church friends, to save face with God, more provocatively, to expose the truth
about her husband, to set the story straight, to deﬁne herself assuming the authority of
writing. What is missing in Bailey is the necessity to write about herself only as a
religious obligation—Bailey seems compelled to record her life narrative because of its
extremity, just as she is compelled to seek her diary to take solace in both God and her
own self. These narratives present both bold assertions and strong denials of self, in a
historical moment where the self is just beginning to be imagined. While these emerging
autobiographical selves can be read as utterly compromised, this paper instead imagines
them as bold attempts at self-assertion. When these women’s self-narratives are examined
for the ways they begin to break, rather than align with, generic and critical conventions,
we see the ways in which they struggle to assert unique selves as the very concept itself

begins to emerge in eighteenth-century America.

43

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