Elizabeth Carey
Elizabeth (Tanfield) Cary is an important literary figure worthy of study in the 21st century because she was a rebel with a cause for women's rights, especially within marriage; because she became a rebel with a religious cause; and finally, because she was the first Englishwoman to write and publish a drama, The Tragedy of Mariam (1613).Elizabeth (Tanfield) Cary was born in 1585, was the only child of Judge Sir Lawrence Tanfield (Weller), and was provided a strict but extensive education (Krontiris). Cary's life was characterized by her constant struggle between the pressures of conformity and submission and an inner imperative to resist and challenge authority. Societal expectations of women at this time were that women were to be nominally educated, if at all. Women were to be quiet and meek, to be subservient to men in all regards, to be used as an asset when arranging marriages. Women were to be a beautiful ornament on the arm of their husband in society, to bear and raise his children, and were expected to have no thoughts or opinions on matters of politics or religion. Women had no power to choose their own futures,
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th Ed, Vol. Both plays have forceful women protagonists who insist on preserving the integrity of their own emotional lives in regard to marriage and who otherwise flout the prevailing gender expectations; both queens are murdered by jealous men who then go mad (Abrams and Greenblatt). She bore him eleven children between 1609 and 1624; and continued to expand her education by reading continually in history, poetry, moral philosophy, and the Church Fathers (Beilin). Mariam offers an unusual account of the Herod-Mariam relationship in that it is seen from the woman's perspective. It is also directly related to a major and controversial event of the Reformation - the divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine and the consequent split of the Church of England from the Church of Rome (Weller). She has also been credited with writing The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II (c. Although Cary was raised within this environment, she dared to step outside the bounds of societal and gender expectations and undertook much of her own education, learning 5 languages, translating classical texts and writing verse (Weller). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994. It is because she exercised the right of self-determination, challenged the status quo by becoming well educated, and chose her own religion, and because she was the first Englishwoman to write and publish a drama, that makes Elizabeth Cary an important literary figure worthy of study in the 21st century. This conflict reached a head in Ireland where she witnessed his cruel suppression of Catholics, bringing her to make an open conversion to Catholicism in 1625. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
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