Lady Cowper an 18th century Kinbote?

[pynchonoid]

...of possible interest to those discussing Kinbote:

[...] Anne Kugler invites readers to meet cranky,
self-righteous, Lady
Sarah Cowper and to hear her tales of "forty-two years
of wedded
misery" [...] Sarah's more orthodox strategy for
coping
with an unhappy marriage was to record a lifetime of
reading and
writing, first in commonplace books, later in a
seven-volume,
2,300-page diary written between 1700 and 1716. [...] 

What makes this study so rewarding for historians and
literary
critics is that Kugler has uncovered Sarah's method of
seamlessly
incorporating passages from the books that she read
into her own
personal observations.  What at first seems an
informal account is
actually the product of the selection and intertwining
of her own
thoughts with specific conduct manuals, sermons,
periodicals, and
other prescriptive texts.  In effect, Sarah speaks in
the voice of
others, without signaling that fact.  "I account
Stealing," she
declares, "to be when we altogether Transcribe out of
any Author,
but to borrow and alter is what most do" (p. 3).  This
method allows
Kugler to examine closely the relationship between
prescriptive
literature and actual practice.  She finds that
Sarah's own
interpretations of her texts constantly subverted the
intentions of
their original authors.  Sarah clearly read and
employed
prescriptive literature to support her own views.  As
she did so,
however, she reshaped the words and meanings of those
in authority.

[...]  Though so much is revealed, the reader still
misses clues as to what
Sarah looked like, illustrations of her handwriting, a
page of her
diary, and a portrait, if not of her, of her husband. 
What is more
pressingly lacking, however, are other persons'
perspectives of
Sarah and her husband.  Did others see her as she saw
herself?  Were
her negative views and feelings of being wronged
justified?  Knowing
that, like all historians, Sarah selectively
interpreted texts to
support her arguments, the reader misses multiple
viewpoints gleaned
from family correspondence.  Dialogues with her
husband are
apparently absent, except in one instance, where he
appears to be
quite reasonable.  Only at the end of the book, do we
get a hint of
another's view of her, when her son William expresses
pity for her
dependency in old age.  As Kugler herself notes when
dealing with a
troubled annuity payment, without the other side of
the story it is
difficult to decide whether Sarah's anger against her
family was
appropriate.

Kugler herself calls for caution in weighing
autobiographical
evidence. Indeed, she makes us understand that through
her diary,
Sarah was consciously "building a case to prove to God
that she
deserved to be saved on Judgment Day" (p. 63).  Though
she never
contemplated publication, Sarah also hoped that her
writings would
posthumously vindicate her actions, in the eyes of her
descendants.
Sarah's journal does live on in Kugler's fine book. 
Historians and
literary critics will want to read it and make their
own conclusions
about this complaining, self-righteous, but very human
woman. [...] 

from:
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion at h-net.msu.edu (June 2003)

Anne Kugler. _Errant Plagiary: The Life and Writing of
Lady Sarah
Cowper, 1644-1720_. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2002. viii
+ 288 pp. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00
(cloth), ISBN
0-8047-3418-6.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Susan E. Whyman
<swhyman at monmouth.com>,
Princeton University



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