"I have written the things which I did hear, see, tasted and HANDLED": Selfhood and Voice in Katherine Evans’ and Sarah Cheevers’ A Short Relation of Their Sufferings (1662)

Abstract

This article analyses the representation of selfhood in a major Quaker autobiography, A Short Relation (1662), written by Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers; the analysis will try to assess, through a detailed discussion of the voices in the text, the dynamic female selfhood that emerges from it and its main constitutive elements. Secondly, and with the help of Evans’ and Cheevers’ private correspondence, the article contextualises this notion of selfhood in the social space of early Quakerism in order to assess the extent to which it was informed by the Quaker emphasis on gender equality before God and women’s relationship to the divine. At the same time, this analysis invites us to regard A Short Relation as a major early modern autobiography that may be particularly challenging to present-day Gender Studies.