Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England

by Phyllis Mack

This study of radical prophecy in 17th-century England explores the significance of gender for religious visionaries between 1650 and 1700. Phyllis Mack focuses on the Society of Friends, or Quakers, the largest radical sectarian group active during the English Civil War and Interregnum. The meeting records, correspondence, almanacs, autobiographical and religious writings left by the early Quakers enable Mack to present a textured portrait of their evolving spirituality. Parallel sources on men and women provide a unique opportunity to pose theoretical questions about the meaning of gender, such as whether a "women's spirituality" can be identified, or whether religious women are more or less emotional than men.

Genres: History, 17th Century, Religion, Nonfiction, Gender, Womens, Christianity

488 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mack is an empirical rather than a theoretical historians, and as such presents various types of evidence, including lots of anecdotal material which is interesting even to readers like myself who don't care much about seventeenth-century religious history.

At the most basic level, here argument is that even though Quaker women prophets did change the gender role system of their community, they did not try to escape from or alter established structures (in in some cases reinforced these). They used male language and symbols.

Quakers strove to escape from the self; women were not trying to free themselves from gender-based oppression. Women preached in the same mode as men, i.e. as visionaries subsumed by the Holy Spirit. Women preached and wanted to have their visions published (despite male opposition) because of piety, not women's lib. Quakerism only gives women religious equality, not equality in the family or political structure.