Abstract
It is not surprising that Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, and his sons Roger and Robert have been the subject of much scholarly attention. The ruthless ambition of the father, the political achievements of one son and the scientific brilliance of the other sit comfortably within the ‘great man’ tradition of history. Unusually, however, two of the earl of Cork's eight daughters have been the subject of significant research. Michelle DiMeo's recent intellectual biography of Katherine Jones, countess of Ranelagh, shines a light on her contribution to her brother's scientific work, as well as her own active involvement with the Hartlib Circle. This sits alongside a number of articles and book chapters interrogating Ranelagh's ‘incomparable’ life and mind, while the Corks’ youngest daughter Mary Rich, countess of Warwick has also received attention, as a diarist. In taking the Boyle women as her subject, Ann-Maria Walsh is not treading old ground, but is repositioning and expanding the focus of enquiry. Walsh does this by ‘opening up’ the family's archive ‘in order to retrieve and consider the manuscript writings of the wife, daughters, daughters-in-law and granddaughters, of the first earl of Cork’ (p. 13). The value of applying literary approaches to early modern women's writing is fully in evidence. Walsh employs a cultural materialist framework to identify the ‘symbolic markers and cues’ through which the Boyle women conveyed meaning in their writings. Walsh also takes a ‘multi-centred approach’, defined as ‘a critical formation that seeks to privilege peripheral regions of the British Atlantic’, to contextualise the Boyles’ writings (p. 26). Walsh thus explores identity through multi-perspective close readings of the texts produced by the Boyle women and builds a narrative around five themes: place and belonging; the gendered realities of early modern society; the Boyle women's response to civil war; their articulation and practice of Protestant female piety; and their role as creators and arbiters of personal and familial legacy. Through this approach, Walsh provides significant insight.
In the chapter on place and identity, Walsh demonstrates the shared attitudes and practices of different branches and generations of Boyle women and, in so doing, weaves the individual into the fabric of both family and dynasty. Walsh foregrounds the local, observing that ‘The Boyle women write place in highly localised terms’, allowing ‘the presented life’ to assume ‘greater specificity and a more purposeful character, while also improving the chances of being remembered into the future’ (p. 31). The first countess of Cork, for example, used her knowledge of and engagement with the local places and people in Munster, to promote the Boyles’ interests; her letters to her husband highlight the importance of her knowledge and activities (p. 34). This approach was adopted too, by Lady Frances Courtenay, the daughter of the second earl of Cork, whose correspondence demonstrates an active involvement in managing the Courtenays’ Limerick estate and with the politics of west Munster (p. 36). The close reading of texts is also fruitful in examining the Boyle women's gendered experience of the life cycle; in understanding the formative experiences of their early life and how they met the challenges of motherhood, marriage and widowhood, using their writing as a means of ‘self-presentation’. As Walsh contends, the Boyle sisters responded ‘to the changes in their lives by embracing the impulse to write, recognising that it allowed them some control over how they wished to portray themselves and their intended courses of action in a particular light’ (p. 54). Walsh examines the letters written by Lady Ranelagh and her younger sister, Dorothy Loftus, to their brother, the second earl, each of which provided details of marital breakdown. These letters, as Walsh observes, are carefully crafted by Loftus and Ranelagh to elicit the sympathy of their brother, using ‘truth’ as ‘the force that authorises and motivates’ them ‘to look afresh at their married lives and to consider the possibility of change’ (p. 66). By looking closely at the writings of the Boyle women, through the lens of the life cycle, Walsh demonstrates the way in which ‘the familial epistolary network operated as an important emotional and practical lifeline… facilitating the women as they wrote in response to crisis’ (p. 76).
While the navigation of personal crises informed some of the Boyle women's writings, so too did the numerous political crises of the seventeenth century. The Boyle archive contains evidence of the family's responses to the violence and upheaval of civil war, including three letters from 1642, written by sisters Joan, Alice and Katherine. These letters, as Walsh argues, evidence the ‘subtle signs of female autonomy’ that resulted from the disruption of rebellion and war (p. 80). The Boyle women used their letters to cast themselves as survivor (Joan), besieged (Alice) and advocate (Katherine), with all three employing early modern conventions of letter-writing to achieve their aims. The sisters, Walsh contends, ‘separately recognized the potential of the siege experience as a literary construct which allowed them to demarcate their individual roles in the rebellion’, while concomitantly ‘projecting’ a collective identity (p. 102). The Boyles understood well how to use letters to project a particular version of themselves and their circumstances into their writings, often to elicit a particular response from their reader. In examining female piety through the lens of the Boyle women's writings, Walsh interrogates one of the principal features of elite women's lives and legacies in the early modern period. As Walsh notes, the Boyle women's ‘religious zeal was most pronounced within both their own households and local communities’ (p. 104). The performance of piety was an important tool in the arsenal of a Protestant settler family and the Boyle women understood the social and political importance of the exemplary practice of faith. Once again, the personal and local – provinces of women – become significant in the wider context; in the public and the national. The role of women as creators and arbiters of personal and familial legacies is considered in the concluding chapter, with Walsh paying particular attention to ‘the defining feature of the Boyle woman's persona, her status as an heiress … considering how that aspect of her identity is voiced, enacted and preserved through the process of writing and remembering family’ (p. 130). This chapter is chiefly preoccupied with the memorandum book and will of Elizabeth Boyle, countess of Burlington. The memorandum book was, as Walsh contends, a way for Elizabeth to record and edit her family's history, to keep track of the Boyle dynasty, and to centre herself as a matriarchal figure therein. Similarly, Elizabeth's will-making and will-changing represents an exertion of power through property-ownership and demonstrates a concern for the vertical bonds of family and for personal and familial legacy.
The close reading of texts always carries the risk of decontextualisation and it could be argued that there is room to expand upon the world that the Boyle women inhabited; however Walsh does a very good job of situating the micro within the macro. There is real power in the elaborate, yet nuanced ways that generations of Boyle women used writing as a tool of self-identification, self-presentation and self-contextualisation. The Daughters of the First Earl of Cork is a fantastic piece of scholarship and a highly valuable addition to the field.