Mother's Advice Books

The three works included in this volume are variants of a category identified by Elaine Beilin as "Mothers' Advice Books". One of the sub-genres of courtesy literature, they are written by mothers instructing their children in religious, educational and, occasionally, worldly matters. Although many advice books survive from the 16th and 17th centuries, most of these were written by men and were concerned with policy and polite conduct. Many men also wrote books of advice specifically for their children, including Sir Walter Raleigh - "Instructions to his Sonne and to Posteritie (1632) and Francis Osborne - "Advice to a Son" (1656). Mothers' advice books were more unusual. Written by women speaking from their authorized positions as mothers, they offer an alternative to the many male-authored conceptualizations of the family from the period. They are important because they provide an example of women writing within a socially sanctioned area. The fact that they were mothers (as well as the fact that most of them died before publication) gave them an authority to write not granted easily to others. Although they feign a private voice, many of the works were clearly written with an eye to publication. In a period that sought to limit female authority to the domestic sphere, it was precisely the domestic role of mother that allowed women entrance into the public sphere represented by publication. The author, then, shows the mothers' advice book as a genre which at once violates and yet replicates patriarchal dictates.