Forgotten Female Poets: Hester Pulter
Hester Pulter (c. 1607-1678): An exciting cosmological poet of the Renaissance
If you’ve never heard of Hester Pulter, that’s not surprising – her poetry was hidden away in a university library for hundreds of years! The mysterious manuscript, titled ‘Poems Breathed Forth by the Noble Hadassas’, was discovered accidentally in 1996. After some historical detective work, the author’s identity was revealed: ‘The Noble Hadassas’ was Lady Hester Pulter, a fascinating forgotten poet of the English Renaissance.
Hester Pulter was privileged, well-educated and deeply interested in modern science, politics and literature, yet her identity as a woman kept her both geographically and intellectually isolated. Although she occasionally visited family and friends in London, her many pregnancies (15!) and illnesses meant that she had to stay confined to her distant country estate for long periods of time.
Why must I thus forever be confined,
Against the noble freedom of my mind?
Whenas each hoary moth, and gaudy fly,
Within their spheres enjoy their liberty?
Despite her isolation, Pulter used poetry as a way to express her emotions, ideas and opinions on a wide range of topics: from the raging English Civil War, to religion, to modern Galilean astronomy. Her body may have been confined, but her mind was free! Writing whilst lying sick in 1648, Pulter imagined her thoughts as free to fly beyond her, up into space to meet the moon (‘night’s pale queen’) and the sun:
They, overjoyed with such a large commission,
Flew instantly, without all intermission,
Up to that sphere where night’s pale queen doth run
Round the circumference of the illustrious sun.
Pulter’s isolation did not stop her passion for learning and her deep interest in the world and universe around her. Although she was unable to travel and make discoveries herself, she was still able to think freely about science and astronomy. And so, just like her fellow poet John Donne (1572-1631), she used modern geographic and cosmological language and ideas in her poetry.
John Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ describes two lovers as a pair of compasses, with one stationary foot and one travelling foot:
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
Just like the two lovers, Donne and Pulter are linked, but different in a big way: their poetry has similar themes, but he is free while she is not. This difference is important as it means she sees the world in an original way – she gives a rare female voice to the poetic language of discovery. For example, in ‘The Eclipse’, Pulter imagines the earth as a weighed-down mother, a powerful metaphor for her own body:
And thou, sad, pond’rous, passive globe of earth,
Though, for thy weight, thou canst not mount above,
And though, from thee, my baser parts took birth
Although Lady Hester Pulter’s isolation caused her problems, it also gave her a unique poetic viewpoint. The re-discovery of her poetry brings to light a great, underappreciated poet, who found freedom despite the odds through her thoughts and her writing.
For I no liberty expect to see
Until to atoms I dispersed be;
Then, being enfranchised, free as my verse,
I shall surround this spacious universe,
Until, by other atoms thrust and hurled,
We give a being to another world.
To explore Lady Hester Pulter’s poetry further visit The Pulter Project online:
By Chilla (English and Italian, University of Oxford)
Looking for a Degree-level Literature Tutor?
We have a large team of Oxbridge-educated graduates like Chilla specialising in English literature. Learn from a subject expert!