{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,24]],"date-time":"2025-09-24T19:40:13Z","timestamp":1758742813287,"version":"3.44.0"},"reference-count":54,"publisher":"BMJ","issue":"2","content-domain":{"domain":["bmj.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Med Humanities"],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2018,5,6]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2018,6]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>The relationship between pain as a physical and emotional experience and the concept of suffering as an essential aspect of sanctification for faithful believers was a paradoxical and pressing theological and phenomenological issue for puritan and non-conformist communities in 17th-century England. Pain allows the paradox of non-conformists\u2019 valorisation and suppression of corporeality to be explored due to its simultaneous impact on the mind and body and its tendency to leak across boundaries separating an individual believer from other members of their family or faith community. The material world and the human body were celebrated as theatres for the display of God\u2019s glory through the doctrines of creation and providence despite the fall. Pain as a concept and experience captures this tension as it was represented and communicated in a range of literary genres written by and about puritan and non-conformist women including manuscript letters, spiritual journals, biographies and commonplace books. For such women, targeted by state authorities for transgressing gender norms and the religion established by law, making sense of the pain they experienced was both a personal devotional duty and a political act. Three case studies comprise a microhistory of 17th-century English puritan and non-conformist women\u2019s lived experience, interpretation and representation of pain, inscribed in a series of manuscripts designed to nurture the spiritual and political activism of their communities. This microhistory contributes to a better understanding of pain in early modern England through its excavation of the connections that such writers drew between the imperative to be visibly godly, their marginalised subject position as a proscribed religious minority and their interpretation of the pain they experienced as a result.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1136\/medhum-2017-011407","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,13]],"date-time":"2018-06-13T12:15:56Z","timestamp":1528892156000},"page":"125-136","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/crossmarkpolicy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["\u201cA kind of agonie in my thoughts\u201d: writing puritan and non-conformist women\u2019s pain in 17th-century England"],"prefix":"10.1136","volume":"44","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9672-6353","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alison","family":"Searle","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"239","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.1","unstructured":"Nuttall GF . The Holy Spirit in puritan faith and experience. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Como D . Blown by the Spirit: puritanism and the emergence of an antinomian underground in pre-Civil-War England. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.","DOI":"10.1515\/9780804788120"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ryrie A . Being Protestant in Reformation Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.","DOI":"10.1093\/acprof:oso\/9780199565726.001.0001"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bremer F . Lay empowerment and the development of puritanism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.","DOI":"10.1057\/9781137352897"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lake P , Questier M . Prisons, Priests and People. In: Tyacke N , ed. England\u2019s long Reformation, 1500-1800. London: Routledge, 1998:195\u2013227.","DOI":"10.4324\/9780203214152_chapter_8"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.6","unstructured":"\u2019experience, v\u2019. OED Online. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018. www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/66521. (accessed 12 Jan 2018)."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Blatchly JM . Stockton, Owen (1630\u20131680). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004. (accessed 30 Oct 2017).","DOI":"10.1093\/ref:odnb\/26547"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/past\/129.1.30"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.9","unstructured":"Collinson P . The Elizabethan puritan movement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Waldron J . Reformations of the body: idolatry, sacrifice, and early modern theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.","DOI":"10.1057\/9781137313126"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Silverman L . Tortured subjects: pain, truth, and the body in early modern France. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001.","DOI":"10.7208\/chicago\/9780226757520.001.0001"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/shm\/16.3.367"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"251","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1466-769X.2004.00181.x","article-title":"Understanding patients' lived experiences: the interrelationship of rhetoric and hermeneutics","volume":"5","author":"Finch","year":"2004","journal-title":"Nurs Philos"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"459","DOI":"10.1353\/ecs.0.0015","article-title":"An Account of an Unaccountable Distemper\u2019: the experience of pain in early eighteenth-century England and France","volume":"41","author":"Smith","year":"2008","journal-title":"Eighteenth Century Stud"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"DeLacy M . The germ of an idea: contagionism, religion, and society in Britain, 1660\u20131730. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-137-57529-6"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1045","DOI":"10.2307\/4144121","article-title":"Briget Cooke and the Art of Godly Female Self-Advancement","volume":"33","author":"Winship","year":"2002","journal-title":"Sixt Century J"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Newton H . The sick child in early modern England, 1580\u20131720. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.","DOI":"10.1093\/acprof:oso\/9780199650491.001.0001"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Weisser O . Ill composed: sickness, gender, and belief in early modern England. Yale: Yale University Press, 2015.","DOI":"10.12987\/yale\/9780300200706.001.0001"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.19","unstructured":"Keeble NH . The literary culture of nonconformity in later seventeenth-century England. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.20","unstructured":"Hopper B . Marilynne Robinson in Montgomery. Religion and Politics 2014;22 http:\/\/religionandpolitics.org\/2014\/12\/22\/marilynne-robinson-in-montgomery\/"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lear J . Not at home in Gilead. In: Lear J , ed. Wisdom won from illness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017:269\u201385.","DOI":"10.4159\/9780674973602"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zook MS . Protestantism, politics, and women in Britain, 1660\u20131714. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.","DOI":"10.1057\/9781137303202"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.23","unstructured":"Ablow R . Victorian pain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Toker L , Cohen E . Introduction: in despite. In: Cohen E , Toker L , Consonni M , eds. Knowledge and pain. Amsterdam: Brill, 2012:vii\u2013xviii.","DOI":"10.1163\/9789401208574"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.25","unstructured":"Scarry E . The body in pain: the making and unmaking of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.26","unstructured":"Mueller JM . Pain, persecution, and the constructions of selfhood in Foxe\u2019s Actes and Monuments . In: McEachern C , Shuger D , eds. Religion and culture in Renaissance England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997:161\u201387."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"268","DOI":"10.1111\/hypa.12127","article-title":"The bodymind problem and the possibilities of pain","volume":"30","author":"Price","year":"2015","journal-title":"Hypatia"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"203","DOI":"10.3828\/jlcds.2014.16","article-title":"Recovering a cripistemology of pain: leaky bodies, connective tissue, and feeling discourse","volume":"8","author":"Patsavas","year":"2014","journal-title":"Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.29","unstructured":"Bale A . Feeling persecuted: Christians, Jews and images of violence in the Middle Ages. London: Reaktion Books, 2010."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Smyth A . Introduction: the range, limits, and potentials of the form. Smyth A , ed. A history of English autobiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016:1\u201310.","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9781139939799.001"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.31","first-page":"33","article-title":"Before normal, there was natural: John Bulwer, disability, and natural signing in early modern England and beyond","volume":"132","author":"Bearden","year":"2017","journal-title":"PMLA"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Marriott B . Transnational networks and cross-religious exchange in the seventeenth-century Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2015.","DOI":"10.4324\/9781315549804"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tribble EB , Keene N . Cognitive ecologies and the history of remembering: religion, education and memory in early modern England. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.","DOI":"10.1057\/9780230299498"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.34","unstructured":"Taylor C . Preface. Cayley D , ed. The rivers north of the future: the testament of Ivan Illich as told to David Cayley. Toronto: Anansi, 2005:ix\u2013xiv."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.35","unstructured":"Tribble E , Sutton J . Cognitive ecology as a framework for Shakespearean studies. Shakespeare Studies 2011:94\u2013103."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.36","unstructured":"Gowing L . Common bodies. Yale: Yale University Press, 2003."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Maiese M . Embodiment, emotion, and cognition. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.","DOI":"10.1057\/9780230297715"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.38","unstructured":"Gravenor B . The dissolution of the earthly house of this tabernacle. London: Printed for John Clark, at the Bible and Crown in the Old Change, 1713."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.39","unstructured":"Goldie M . The Hilton gang and the purge of London in the 1680s. Nenner H , ed. Politics and the political imagination in later Stuart Britain. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997:43\u201373."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.40","unstructured":"Hanley H , Hunt J . Aylesbury: a pictorial history. Guildford: Phillimore, 1993."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Whyman SE . The pen and the people: English letter writers 1660 to 1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.","DOI":"10.1093\/acprof:oso\/9780199532445.001.0001"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Daybell J . The material letter in early modern England: manuscript letters and the culture and practices of letter-writing, 1512\u20131635. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.","DOI":"10.1057\/9781137006066"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ahnert R . The rise of prison literature in the sixteenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9781139628846"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.44","unstructured":"Webster J . The Duchess of Malfi. In: Marcus LS , ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2009."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.45","unstructured":"Bonar A , ed. The letters of Samuel Rutherford. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1984."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rivett S . The science of the soul in colonial New England. Williamsburg: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.","DOI":"10.5149\/9780807838709_Rivett"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Whitehouse T . Structures and processes of English spiritual autobiography from Bunyan to Cowper. Smyth A , ed. A history of English autobiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016:103\u201318.","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9781139939799.008"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.48","unstructured":"Dunan-Page A . L\u2019Exp\u00e9rience Puritaine: Vies et r\u00e9cits de dissidents (xxviie-xviiie si\u00e8cle). Paris: Les \u00c9ditions du Cerf, 2017."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.49","unstructured":"Powell V . Spirituall experiences, of sundry beleevers. London: Printed for Robert Ibbitson, 1653."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.50","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mayhew J . Godly beds of pain: pain in English Protestant manuals (ca. 1550\u20131650). In: vans Dijkhuizen JF , Enenkel KAE , eds. The sense of suffering: constructions of physical pain in early modern culture. Amsterdam: Brill, 2009:299\u2013322.","DOI":"10.1163\/ej.9789004172470.i-520.57"},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.51","unstructured":"Schildt J . \u2018In my private reading of the scriptures\u2019: Protestant Bible-reading in England, circa 1580\u20131720. In: Martin J , Ryrie A , eds. Private and domestic devotion in early modern Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012:189\u2013209."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.52","unstructured":"Cambers A . Godly reading: print, manuscript and puritanism in England, 1580\u20131720. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.53","unstructured":"Clarke E . Beyond microhistory: the use of women\u2019s manuscripts in a widening political arena. Daybell J , ed. Women and politics in early modern England, 1450-1700. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004:211\u201327."},{"key":"2025092411584674000_44.2.125.54","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sawday J . \u2018I feel your pain\u2019: some reflections on the (literary) perception of pain. In: Macsotay T , van der Haven C , Vanhaesebrouck K , eds. The hurt(ful) body: performing and beholding pain, 1600-1800. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017:97\u2013114.","DOI":"10.7765\/9781526113511.00011"}],"container-title":["Medical Humanities"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/syndication.highwire.org\/content\/doi\/10.1136\/medhum-2017-011407","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,24]],"date-time":"2025-09-24T18:59:00Z","timestamp":1758740340000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/mh.bmj.com\/lookup\/doi\/10.1136\/medhum-2017-011407"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2018,6]]},"references-count":54,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2018,6,14]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2018,6]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1136\/medhum-2017-011407"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/medhum-2017-011407","relation":{},"ISSN":["1468-215X","1473-4265"],"issn-type":[{"type":"print","value":"1468-215X"},{"type":"electronic","value":"1473-4265"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2018,6]]}}}