Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

[cahn]

Not only are these posts still going, there is now (more) original research going on in them deciphering and translating letters in archives that apparently no one has bothered to look at before?? (Which has now conclusively exonerated Fritz's valet/chamberlain Fredersdorf from the charge that he was dismissed because of financial irregularities and died shortly thereafter "ashamed of his lost honor," as Wikipedia would have it. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Comments

Jane Barker, Jacobite and author of femslash

[luzula]

I am impressed by all the original research you guys are doing! : D Meanwhile, have a book review.

A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies by Jane Barker (1723)
Jane Barker (1652–1732) was an author and a Jacobite who converted to Catholicism and followed James II into exile and lived at St Germain until 1704. She learned Latin, anatomy, and herbal medicine from her brother who had gone to university, and she never married. Besides novels, she apparently also wrote a collection of poems about education for women and female single life. Also she managed a farm.

This novel is similar to other 18th century novels I've read in that it has a frame story and various digressions. It is a sequel to a previous book which I might read at some point (Love Intrigues). The frame story in this case has a lot of similarities to Barker's own life: the older narrator, Galesia, is in the previous book walking in the garden at St Germain and retelling adventures of her young life where she was courted by a man (Bosvil) who proved false. In the present book, she is traveling in England, telling and listening to various stories with fellow travellers. Later on Galesia has an accident and ends up at the house of some lady and retells her own earlier life after the incident with Bosvil (which has given her a lifelong distaste for marriage) with lots of digressions, side stories, poems, and narrow escapes from marriage.

The most interesting of the side stories is a woman who leaves her husband for love of a servant woman. It is called ‘The Unaccountable Wife’ and the woman portrayed as unreasonable--she would rather beg for money in the street and stay with her servant woman, than leave her and get a pension from the queen (the husband is dead at this point). But the unreasonableness seems to be as much about inversion of social station as about gender, I think--much stress is laid on how highborn the wife is and how weird it is that she is doing housework for the servant. Her husband at first sleeps with the servant woman and gets children on her, but the wife was 'extremely kind to the woman, to a degree unheard of' and they 'lay all three together every night'. Then the husband, trying to put a stop to the wife's attachment, tries to send the servant away, but the wife goes with her instead... : D

In Galesia’s own story, I enjoyed most the parts where she is learning medicine from her brother (like Barker herself!) and rhapsodizing on anatomy in poems. She takes such delight in it! Later on when she is living in London, she also apparently practices medicine, at least among her acquaintances, and there is a proud poem On the Apothecaries Filing My Recipes Amongst the Doctors':

The Sturdy Gout, which all Male Power withstands,
Is overcome by my soft Female Hands,
Not Deb’rah, Judith, or Semiramis,
Cou’d boast of Conquest half so great as this

Re: Jane Barker, Jacobite and author of femslash

[selenak]

Now that's a delightful poem! And the femslash one is intriguing. How does it end, is the wife punished by fate or does she get a happy ending with her servant? And do we ever find out what the servant woman thinks of all this?

Bosvil, him? I know Boswell the biographer had a cousin Miss Bosville, so it's an actual Scottish name. But I don't think there were any Jacobite Boswells, either false or real. :) (I mean, Boswell's Dad Alexander was no fan of Team Hannover, either, but he loathed the Stuarts.)

Re: Jane Barker, Jacobite and author of femslash

[luzula]

That's only part of the poem! I didn't have the energy to write the whole thing down.

The wife lives out her life with the servant woman, but they have to beg on the street. We are never really given the servant woman's POV...

Re: Jane Barker, Jacobite and author of femslash

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wow, she sounds neat! I second Selena's questions about how the story turns out.

Re: Jane Barker, Jacobite and author of femslash

[cahn]

but the wife was 'extremely kind to the woman, to a degree unheard of' and they 'lay all three together every night'. Then the husband, trying to put a stop to the wife's attachment, tries to send the servant away, but the wife goes with her instead... : D

This is awesome!! It's too bad they have to beg on the street :(

Aw, I love that she practices medicine and writes poems about it <3333