Rebecca Cox Jackson, Sojourner Truth, and Florence Nightingale, all 19th Century women essayists, have perhaps almost as much in common with the 15th century women Julian of Norwich and Margery Kemp as they have with the 19th C. Poets and fiction writers that we've seen. Indeed their themes and methods seem closer to those of the earlier women. One might almost ask if Nightingale would find it easier to speak to Margery Kemp than to Kate Chopin. Nonetheless, women's issues were different in the 19th century than they were in the 15th, and these three women were representative of their times.

Much speaking and writing in the 19th century was for moral edification (as it was in the 15th). Moreover women of the 19th century, like their male contemporaries and like the earlier women, were steeped in Biblical knowledge. Their manner of speech, their style, and their descriptions are very much influenced by it. But the bible is not the source of their authority.

The questions I gave on Friday suggested the direction we'll take today to consider these women. Turn to the people around you for a few minutes and consider those questions.

Summation:
The women we've discussed today drew their authority from the same sources as the medieval women--perhaps because they were in the same situation. That is, the only source of power open to them was from religion. All three had private revelation that empowered them. All three used that power for teaching/preaching. Nonetheless, important differences in their lives and their teachings signal a difference in women's situation. Jackson moves into a religion that gives women the same rights and priveleges as men. Truth and Nightingale are very aware of women's issues in ways that the medieval women could not have conceived. Truth demands political equality with men for women. She asserts her ability to do any work that a man could do. Nightingale, taking a stand somewhere between Wollstonecraft who argues for the education of women and Woolf who demands the opportunity to put that education to use, argues for the social equality that women should have with men.