From Female Complaints to Women’s Complaints: A Critical Overview of Early Modern English Female Complaints

This article surveys the critical landscape of the literary genre of English female complaints in the early modern period, specifically the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Critics have primarily focused on how male poets in the 1590s appropriated female voices complaining about the loss of social status after illicit love affairs. They have particularly problematized the use of these female figures as cautionary examples of moral transgression. The Ovidian tradition of depicting abandoned female voices can also be found in religious counterparts focusing on Mary Magdalene's lamentations over the death of Christ. Religious female complaints written by women authors demonstrate how they utilized biblical authority and psalmic voices to express their religious and political concerns. The scarcity of studies on religious and political complaints compared to amorous ones has led to calls for greater attention to the former, particularly those written by women. Also, recent criticism reevaluates women's agency in crafting female voices through complaints, especially in the historical context of early modern publication. This article contends that focusing on women's agency in complaints across broader genres Encompassing their involvement in publication sheds light on how women employed their voices in English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.