Barren and isolated, the biblical figure of Hannah traveled to the temple and privately prayed to God, asking that he give her a child. In doing this, “she became the first person who is not identified as a prophet to be shown addressing God in the sanctuary” (45). Though it is initially interpreted as drunkenness by the high priest, God rewards her act, and she mothers the prophet Samuel. Hannah “is the first and only woman whose prayer is quoted in the Bible … [She] represents for early modern Protestants the character of earnest petitioner, exemplary parent, and enthusiastic celebrant of divine glory” (45).

While churchmen like John Donne lionize Hannah’s story because it highlights “the Protestant obligation to expose the soul in prayer,” early modern women locate a model of resistance in Hannah’s voice (51). She “obeys no one in the narrative, save herself” (60). Hannah is fiercely independent; she takes her earthly and spiritual life into her own hands. Her story offers a unique form of Protestant expression and belief because it counters the dominant Christian idea—one backed by many of England’s ruling men—that women are most pious when silent. Various early modern female writers—Elizabeth Grymeston, Rachel Speght, and Margaret Fell—embrace Hannah’s assertiveness as they challenge ecclesiastic law in an effort to create a discursive space for women in England’s public arena. Paraphrasing Fell, Michele Osherow writes that Hannah’s divinity “is not the result of God’s having spoken to her, as is true of most male prophets, but of her having spoken to God and the evidence of God’s hearing … Fell uses Hannah to legitimize and encourage women to voice their divine messages” (62).

In her book, Biblical Women’s Voices in Early Modern England, Osherow locates female poets and pamphleteers who, in having access to the Bible, “discovered female characters who are bold, dutiful, valiant, and radical” (10). They responded to the Christian Bible’s proclamations that advocate for women to remain silent in public and religious matters by composing prose and poetry that appropriate the politics of celebrated biblical heroines. Liberated by their own literacy and access to print markets, these women were not obligated to interpret the Bible in any one way, and, as Osherow argues, “the freedom of choice amounts at times to a freedom to resist, for concepts such as female silence might be combated by noting the rhetorically powerful women scattered throughout the Bible’s pages” (9).

Osherow’s first chapter is different from her others in that it considers the politics of a single woman’s religious poetry, that of Mary Sidney. Osherow convincingly argues that Sidney’s translations of the psalms seemingly position her as a character isolated from God by her sins and her gender—the repentant poet. At the same time she carves a subject position for herself through her talents as translator—as someone who carefully creates intertextual allusions—and, in doing so, becomes a typological extension of Moses’s sister, Miriam—the Bible’s first psalmist. She is the poetess who sings but does so without bringing shame upon herself. As Osherow argues, “Sidney present[s] herself and her discourse as feminine and authoritative, and inspir[es] others to do so. Herein lies Sidney’s most significant likeness to Miriam: the ability to impart voice to those whom others would leave silent and to do this without shame” (43). Sidney inspires women to find a voice not only through this prophetess but also others, including Deborah and Judith.

In her final and most provocative chapter, Osherow demonstrates how early modern readers interpreted King David—psalmist, prophet, and ruler from 1 and 2 Samuel—as someone who surrendered his masculine identity in favor of one more full of divine promise and, in doing so, saves his people. It is with this in mind that Queen Elizabeth, who saves her people from the Catholic church when she takes the throne, incorporates David into her own mythology. Like their queen, other early modern women looking to develop a liberated subject position eventually adopt David as a type of heroine. “By conferring the entitlements of masculinity onto female subjects, early modern authors bestow upon women privileges their culture denies” (112). Women “put on a Davidic identity in order to position themselves and their issues in a Davidic context. It is precisely this context … that makes a Davidic costume suit early modern women’s purposes” (112).

In becoming Davidic characters, these women—Elizabeth I, Lady Mary Chudleigh, and Rachel Speght, for example—“do not deny … their sex; rather they celebrate the feminine or argue for the female’s right to celebration. … All these subjects either speak, or are spoken of, as women. All are also recognized as Davids” (139). Between 1530–1600, at least seventy English translations of David’s psalms entered London’s print market, many written by women. The genre substantially shaped England’s culture, as numerous female writers locate a political hero in the story of an ancient Jewish king. Osherow concludes: “Women discursively dressed as David not only maintain their femininity, but also increase their associations with their sex, privileging the feminine and consequently feminizing David by referencing his character in these contexts” (141).

Osherow’s work “respond[s] to the cultural requirements for female silence” by locating both canonical and relatively unknown literature written by women with the express purpose of expanding contemporary critics’ understanding of the types of subject positions available to women in Renaissance England (149). What is so successful about Osherow’s work is the way in which she locates a rhetoric model—one often initially defined by powerful women, like Queen Elizabeth—and maps its movement into popular literature, private devotional writings, and beyond. As she notes, “raising a female voice in a world fiercely dedicated to stifling it requires courage” (154). Her scholarship celebrates the women who took that risk. This work will prove useful to both scholars of early modern religious texts and readers interested in the development of protofeminist voices in early modern England.