The Mothers Legacy to Her Vnborn Childe

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

As Jean LeDrew Metcalfe points out in her introduction, the recovery of
women’s history from the primarily male-dominated historical record
has been a long and difficult process for feminist scholars. It has been
largely through the archival work of academics who have sought to
restore women’s writings to the traditionally androcentric English
literary canon that women’s own accounts of their lives and
experiences have finally emerged. Elizabeth Joscelin’s The Mothers
Legacy to her Vnborn Childe is one such neglected text—despite its
popularity during the 17th and 19th centuries—that reveals
contemporary attitudes toward women’s conduct and education from a
woman’s perspective.

Written in 1622 during the course of her first, and only, pregnancy, by
the well-educated and devout Joscelin, The Mothers Legacy belongs to the
popular Renaissance female genre of the mothers’ advice book. In the
text, the author offers both spiritual and temporal guidance to her
unborn child, touching not only on issues of Christian and filial duty,
but also on matters of deportment, education, dress, and relationships.
Published posthumously in 1624, the text was reprinted seven times in 11
years and widely read for its representation of an exemplary model of
Christian womanhood. Rediscovered in the 19th century, the text again
was reprinted several times and praised for its touching depiction of
loving conjugal and maternal relationships. While a modern reader may
find the advice restrictive and the expressions of love and duty
unfamiliar, the text remains as a testament to one woman’s belief in a
mother’s unique relationship with her child.

The presentation of the work as a parallel edition, in which
Joscelin’s original text (with annotations to indicate editorial
emendations) is placed opposite the 1624 edition, provides an excellent
means of observing the influence of a 17th-century male editor upon a
woman’s text. Although Metcalfe’s introduction does not attempt an
in-depth critical analysis of the work, it provides a concise and
informative overview of the text’s critical reception, and offers an
insightful discussion of the devotional and rhetorical aspects of
Joscelin’s writing. This scholarly edition makes a valuable and timely
contribution to the study of early modern women’s literature.