Speght, Rachel (1597–c. 1630)

English polemicist and poet who wrote in support of women's spiritual equality to men. Born in London, England, in 1597; died around 1630; daughter of Reverend James Speght; married William Procter (a gentleman), in 1621; children: two.

In 1613, Joseph Swetnam published a notorious attack on women entitled An Araignment of Lewde, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women. In 1617, at age 20, Rachel Speght, the daughter of Reverend James Speght, was the first to publish a response and refutation. Her A Mouzell for Melastomus: The Cynicall Bayter of, and Foule Mouthed Barker against EvahsSex was dedicated to "all vertuous Ladies Honourable or Worshipfull and to all other of Hevahs sex fearing God." In it, Speght used scripture to emphasize women's traditional virtues and to establish them as men's spiritual equals. She was careful not to confuse this spiritual equality with social or political equality. The work apparently met with enough approbation that some readers accused her of publishing her father's work as her own.

In 1621, Speght published a second work, Mortalities Memorandum, with a Dreame Prefix'd, Imaginarie in Manner, Reall in Matter. The dedication is an allegorical poem intended to prove her detractors wrong. In this work, the central female character journeys from natural ignorance to divine knowledge, leading to full humanity and immortality, with the help of Thought, Experience, Knowledge, Industrie, and Disswasion. Except for her marriage at age 24 to William Procter in 1621 and the birth of two children, nothing is known about Speght's life after the publication of her second book.

sources:

Buck, Claire, ed. The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature. NY: Prentice Hall, 1992.

Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Malinda Mayer , writer and editor, Falmouth, Massachusetts