Jessica Gaul

Elizabeth Ashbridge: A Life That is Anything from Ordinary

I wasn’t sure where to begin when I started working on my research post for this class, so I asked my friend Victoria. She absolutely loves American Literature, so I knew if I needed help with a topic, she would definitely come in handy! She recommended the author Elizabeth Ashbridge. I had never heard of her until that moment, and right away, Vicky sent me the biography of her life that Elizabeth wrote. Before I even read the story, I caught the introduction that someone else wrote about her life. ‘"Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much." Luke, vii, 47’ It caught my attention because it sounded like she did a lot of wrong in her life, and I wanted to know what exactly she did that would have someone say her sins were many. The introduction to Elizabeth’s story made me think she had committed a murder of some kind when she said, ‘“I have often had cause, with David, to say, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted;" and most earnestly I desire that they who read the following lines may take warning, and shun the evils into which I have been drawn.”’ (Ashbridge) What could she have done that she would warn the reader before they read her story?

Elizabeth’s writing took me off guard because I understood everything she was writing! Usually authors from the 1700’s confuse me entirely because their language is so much more eloquent then ours, but Elizabeth’s writing flowed like air through my lips and kept me on the edge of my seat. Her life was full of sorrow in the beginning. At the age of 14 she fell head over heels with a guy and eloped. Elizabeth describes the pain she had to go through after her eloping in her narrative, ‘Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge...Written by her own Hand many years ago.’ ‘I was soon chastised for my disobedience and convinced of my error…and my father was so displeased that he would do nothing for me.’ (Ashbridge) Reading that paragraph hinted at me that this is the reason she warned her readers about her narrative. Could it be that she was ashamed for eloping and marrying a guy for a mere couple of months and becoming a widow, all the while having her family hate her?

 Reading more about her life gave me more possible answers to why she warned readers. Another possible answer was embarrassment. She went through three different marriages, something that was very unusual during that time. I asked my friend Victoria about re-marriage in the 1700’s and how common or uncommon it was for woman to do it. She replied back with, “Most times when a woman's husband died she didn't marry again, so it was very rare that she did. Usually it was only when the girl was very young that she would marry again.” It could be very embarrassing and shameful to know that you couldn’t hold one marriage down, let alone two others. Elizabeth might have warned us because she didn’t want people to think badly of her.

Elizabeth’s writing and story touched my heart in a way words could not describe! The suffering this young woman had to go through was indescribable, her family never talking to her again, being kidnapped as an indentured servant, and marrying two violent men would have taken the toll of anybody. Yet here was Elizabeth, defying the odds and never giving up! In her book called, ‘Awakening the Inner Light: Elizabeth Ashbridge and the Transformation of Quaker Community’ Julie Sievers describers Elizabeth’s story saying, ‘It dramatically recounts a young female immigrant’s troubled life and eventual conversation in the Protestant American colonies, which, sociologically, were fast changing.’ (Sievers, 235)  After I finished reading her story, I thought about the question I asked, and I was still stumped. Not much is known about Elizabeth Ashbridge, so instead of going with my first answer, embarrassment, I asked Vicky. She replied back with an answer that I would never had thought of. “Biographies back then weren't really "biographies", they were stories of their life, and not everything was included…She wrote it for her own personal satisfaction, for the sake of ‘maybe there is someone else out there who can prosper from my story.’ After all, she became a Quaker, and they are forgiving people. They learn from their lives and make it better. I think that is why she wrote it, not for the purpose of wanting people to read it, but maybe for someone to find some comfort in knowing that not everything in like if easy.” I agree entirely with Vicky’s response, because it makes a lot of sense. With everything that happened to her, why would she not want to write it and let someone else understand what she went through? Someone who read her story could have gained comfort in knowing that someone else went through the same thing they went through.

I wish we could learn more about Elizabeth in American Literature! It’s true that she only wrote one story, but there are much more than words in her story. There is depth and deepness that grabs the reader and entangles them into the world that is Elizabeth Ashbridge. In the end, I did not get one answer, but two, my own answer to my own question and Vicky’s answer to it as well. I have never really been interested in women writers until I read Elizabeth’s story. Liahna Babener  and Wendy Martin describe the importance of reading Elizabeth’s story as such, ‘For its candor and emotional power, for the integrity of the religious sensibility it conveys, and for its illuminating portrayal of domestic relations in colonial America, the narrative merits a significant place in our literary history.’ (Babener, Martin)

References:

Sievers, Julie. Awakening the Inner Light: Elizabeth Ashbridge and the Transformation of the Quaker Community. 2nd ed. Vol. 36. University of North Carolina, 2001. Pp. 235-262. Early American Literature. University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Web. 27 Mar. 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25057232>

Babener, Liahna, and Wendy Martin. "Elizabeth Ashbridge (1713-1755)." Heath Anthology of America. Cenage Learning, 2005-2008. Web. 26 Mar. 2010. http://college.cengage.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/eighteenth/ashbridge_el.html

Ashbridge, Elizabeth. Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge. Philadelphia, 1807. Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge. Early Americans Digital Archive, 2002. Web. 6 Mar. 2010. http://mith2.umd.edu/eada/html/display.php?docs=ashbridge_account.xml