Introduction
Women were a significant part of early modern science and recipe making. There lacked institutional approval for many women’s work because the patriarchal structure often did not give women the room to experiment, learn, discuss, etc. However, this did not stop the female recipe makers of the time. Women created their own spaces, annotated, wrote, and influenced recipes, as well as, formed intimate connections to their learning processes. In this paper I explore these women through an ecofeminist lense. I define ecofeminism as a branch of feminism that understands the connection between women and nature. For women to be able to craft their recipes, they had to be in tune with the environment around them. This relationship is what I strive to understand in this paper. Women were recording their thoughts and experiences of recipe making as understood from their exploration of their materials, tools, etc. They were also forming their own areas to experiment due to the institutional gatekeeping. Finally, this leads to an intimate learning process since they grew, traded, and crafted all of their resources. These intimacies and connections are tied to a relationship with the Earth. In this paper I explore women in early modern science and recipe making through the lense of ecofeminism by recovering their voices and activities through written texts, developing a broad understanding of their experimental spaces, and researching intimacy in their learning process.
Recovering Voices and Activities of Women Through Written Texts
To understand whether these women may be considered eco-feminists, I must first discern how and where they were expressing themselves. Unfortunately there was not a rich representation of female published authors in early modern science. Despite the lack of institutional approval, women found their way to make, annotate, and influence recipes. Women may not have had the means to publish their work, but they left their voices for us to recover in these written texts.
Lady Ranelagh was an enormous influence on her brother, Robert Boyle, and this can be found through their letters and even in his work. An important aspect to note here is that Lady Ranelagh was the influence, meaning Boyle looked to her as a sort of authority on subjects (DiMeo, 23). That is not to discredit Boyle’s impact on Ranelagh as they had collaborative moments by exchanging recipes and discussing experiments (DiMeo, 25). To recover Lady Ranelagh’s voice is to understand that she was just as much, if not more, of an expert on her interests in comparison to her brother. She read drafts and offered criticism of Boyle’s work as it was discussed through various letters (DiMeo, 24). Not only did she make technical changes to her brother’s work, but she also greatly impacted his interests. “Her zeal for recipe collection and active promotion of chemical medicine may have sparked Boyle’s own interests in the subjects” (DiMeo, 27). Lady Ranelagh’s voice and actions not only made great strides in her own recipes, but changed the field of chemistry by encouraging and helping another great mind into the exploration of early modern science.
Anna Maria Zieglerin was yet another, excellent scholar who was able to obtain her own laboratory despite the opposition of Duchess Hedwig (Nummedal, 81). Zieglerin was at first an alchemical assistant, but through the persuasion of Duke Julius and her book of recipes she established herself. She had an impressive confidence in alchemy as evident in her letters and once she presented her book of recipes to Duke Julius she was ready for her recognition (Nummedal, 80) . “By the fall of 1573, Anna had established a laboratory of her own near ‘Wolfenbtittel Palace, with at least one Laborant to assist her operations, and she had successfully produced some preliminary materials” (Nummedal, 81). Zieglerin’s voice was visible in her text as she displayed her alchemic authority. The fact that she had one assistant demonstrates her ability to act, dictate, and preserve for the sake of her interests. While even women in the time period (Duchess Hedwig) were against female scientists, Zieglerin demanded her importance by persuading the Duke for a laboratory. Her efforts lead her to wonderous discoveries in her laboratories despite push back.
Finally, Anne Clifford presents the perfect example of how annotations are a way for women to communicate their thoughts, opinions, and experiences with a recipe. Clifford used personal journals and annotated notes to deepen her understanding of a text. It was a way to personalize another work. For instance, she took reading notes of Gerad’s work (a male botanist) and labeled it ‘The Epitome of Gerad’s Herball’, “[Clifford’s decision to describe the volume as an epitome suggests that the work is a personalized summary or extract” (Leong, ‘Herbals she peruseth’: reading medicine in early modern England, 561). She has infused her own knowledge, thus changing the context of the original text. The text has turned into a conversation between Clifford and Gerad. Her voice adds to discussion of botany. Unfortunately she does not have the luxurious ability to join discussions between scholars in the same way men at the time were, so her writings were the avenue for which to find her voice. While there may not have been an institutional stamp of approval, Clifford, along with the other women mentioned, are vital to the development of early modern science.
Lady Ranelagh, Anna Maria Zieglerin, and Anne Clifford are just three examples of how women shared their knowledge through unconventional ways. An important takeaway from uncovering women’s voices is that while I may be attempting to understand these women as ecofeminists, this was not a term circulated in that time period. Their relationship to science and the exploration of natural materials for medicine, botany, etc. may hold a modern day interpretation for ecofeminism. To investigate this inquarary I move beyond their written works to examine how their experimental spaces informed their relationship with their work.
A Broad Understanding of Different Experimental Spaces
Not all women were able to work in laboratories like Anna Maria Zieglerin. The exploratory spaces for recipe making were kitchens, home gardens, and more. To contextualize women in science there must be an understanding of where they worked and what it may have been like. Kitchens had heat sources, an essential tool for chemical experimentation. Gardens were not only the source of materials for the kitchen explorations, but also experiments in their own right, as women cultivated different plant species for the hopes of successfully growing their desired herbs and spices. This section aims to understand all of the ways in which everyday things and spaces are repurposed for experimental use.
Elizabeth Freke demonstrates how common household herbs and spices could be used in the kitchen for experimentation. “Angelica, rosemary, lavender, saffron, and clary were all recommended by the authors of contemporary gardening manuals as “helpful” herbs that were suitable for the kitchen garden” (Leong, Making Medicines in the Early Modern Households, 160). What Leong brings to light in this quotation is the existence of kitchen gardens, cultivation specifically for a female-dominated part of the household. These herbs and spices were used in cooking and baking, but were repurposed for experimental use. As previously discussed, women were making, annotating, and influencing recipes of the time period, so books and manuals were crucial to their scientific knowledge. “Not surprisingly, herbals were one of the main sources of information for home-based medical practices and it appears that herbals were fairly common reading matter for early modern women ” (Leong, ‘Herbals she peruseth’: reading medicine in early modern England, 561). Women were conducting their own experiments from the guidance of herbals by repurposing the kitchens and gardens of their home. Women had to understand the nuances of their furnaces, experimental tools (eg. spoons), and other kitchen staples. They had to know how to control heat, rapidly mix/whisk, what tools were necessary, and more. Much of this knowledge could have been applied from previous cooking experience. Women were collecting information and modifying it based on their own trials and experimental spaces. In summary, the human relationship to one’s environment as explored through the act of medicine making is closely intertwined with women and their daily lives.
One’s relationship to the resources and experimental space was intimate and personal. As recipes were exchanged between women, they were interpreted by the user given the conditions of that time and location. Tending to one’s garden for the successful growth of herbs and spices is not just of interest for the food they ate, but for the medicine they made. Numerous variables impacted the process and result of each recipe. From the time of year, humidity of the day, quality of the materials, quantity of resources, and more were all subjective. The way in which these gardens were cultivated was instrumental to the relationship these women had with nature. “…the 18th century was not just about discovering, describing, and explaining natural processes and its conditions, it was more about creating,… redesigning, and redefining nature” (Halm, 23). To yield the results desired, these women had to be greatly in tune with their surroundings and work with nature to cooperate with her will. This means that women had to tend to plots of soil, conduct trial and error to identify what grew best in their environment, determine how to revive a dying or infected plant, and more. Since these relationships with their gardens and kitchens were so intimate, their relationship with nature was also just as personal.
These spaces of exploration were significant because to understand ecofeminism one must understand the historical context of the location that these experiments took place. A traditionally female-dominated space (being the kitchen and kitchen gardens) certainly places a role in discerning the elements of ecofeminism for my modern day interpretation. Women were rarely accepted into institutionalized spaces due to the patriarchal society, so they found an area just for women to connect with nature through experimentation. In the next session I will explore this connection.
Intimacy with the Learning Process
A valuable aspect of medicine making was the learning process. Since women were not allowed to have scholarly discussions in libraries and laboratories with male botanists, herbalists, etc., women had to have a personal relationship with the learning process of medicine making. The learning process included time, patience, and monitoring of the ingredients, as well as, continual practice of their recipes. In their recipe writing they practiced intimacy as a way of having a personal relationship with their work.
Regina Zangmeister represents one woman who recognized the value of intimacy in the process. She understood the process of recipe writing as being essential to the worth of the recipe (Rankin, 61).:
Yet for a recipe to have material value, the recipient generally needed the assurance that it had been made in practice and proven to be efficacious. Regina Zangmeister emphasized both that her recipes originated with high status individuals rather than printed texts (a marker of their exclusivity) and that they had been used to heal poor people (a marker of their practical and pious applicability) to highlight the value of her gift (Rankin, 63).
Women were practicing their recipes until they understood it to be competent. This means that not only were they participating in a highly intensive process of growing, cultivating, and harvesting their materials, but they were also repeating this process multiple times to be able to conduct their experiments continually as to assure their validity and reliability for other users. This repetition was meant so that other women could hopefully use the recipe with as little variation as possible. This, of course, was all in the name of effectiveness. To actually help the individuals that it aimed to help not only did the recipe need to be translated in most households, but also adequately potent. These recipes needed to work on most individuals to gain any popularity (hence the interest in “cure-alls”). Women developed recipes through labor-intensive methods for the benefits of themselves and their community.
Since women passed annotated recipes to one another, they had recorded and circulated their intimate relationships with their materials, experimental spaces, and so on. Ecofeminists, as understood today, examine how social norms exert unjust dominance over women and nature (Miles). Perhaps this personal relationship with the learning process as documented in recipes and annotations can be interpreted as a form of ecofeminist protest. Despite the scientific institution making it challenging for women to participate, women made their own spaces, crafted their own recipes, and exchanged their own knowledge and learning processes.
Conclusion
This paper made an attempt to understand women in early modern science through the lense of ecofeminism. While I use three examples of recovering women’s voices through written texts from Lady Ranelagh, Anna Maria Zieglerin, and Anne Clifford, there are certainly more. The ability to preserve the textual evidence is crucial to revealing the female voice. Understanding their voice is just as important as exploring their working areas. I ultimately took a broad approach to analyzing the experimental spaces, but as previously mentioned, women did have laboratories and other spaces. Even the definition of space is up for interpretation as studies, bedrooms, etc. may have been where women experimented and pondered their recipes. An important aspect of ecofeminism is understanding non-linear structure and organic processes (Miles). To comprehend how women were recipe making, there must be consideration for the fact that where they experimented with organic processes and more could have occurred anywhere. This leads me to my last point of the learning process. Women were surely intimate with the learning process because the process took time, patience, and attentiveness. The philosophy of ecofeminism views the earth as sacred and recognizes the human dependency on the natural world (Miles). These women were dependent on the temperature, soil quality, and more for their recipes. They may or may not have recognized that. These women did not label themselves as ecofeminists, but their actions, words, and thoughts may have been the beginning of the modern day understanding of women’s connection to nature.
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