Legacy

Legacy 19.1 (2002) 18-25

"I don't like strangers on the Sabbath":
Theology and Subjectivity in the Journal of Esther Edwards Burr

Roxanne Harde
Queens University

From 1754 through 1757, Esther Edwards Burr, daughter of Jonathan Edwards and wife of Aaron Burr, Sr. (and mother of the notorious Aaron Burr), wrote a daily letter-journal to her friend Sarah Prince. Burr's journal stands as an account of current events and of her daily activities and interactions with a wide circle of family, friends, acquaintances, and her husband's students and colleagues. Like a diary, the journal records Burr's spiritual and emotional growth and functions as an example of eighteenth-century American women's lifewriting, in accord with William Spengemann's view of all autobiographical practice as a pattern shaped by changing ideas about the nature of the self, interpreting the self, and reporting those interpretations (xiii). Burr interprets her self through the primary cultural institution in her life, the Puritan evangelical church. Her religion shapes her sense of self; everything she is and does, everything that happens to her, she puts within the context of her faith and her God. As Burr discusses her life in accordance with her Bible and her ministers, however, she theorizes about God and faith in new ways that foreshadow the work of today's feminist theologians. My paper discusses the methods by which Burr claims an empowered subjectivity as she articulates a woman's theology. I argue that as Burr theorizes her religion, this busy, devout, loving, acerbic latter-day Puritan comes to understand her own worth and to privilege what she terms her "heart to reflect and improve" (57). ¹

In her 1978 dissertation, Laurie Crumpacker describes the journal as Burr's diary of self-examination and analysis of her own Christian practice. ² In 1984, Crumpacker and Carol Karlsen published a scholarly edition of the journal, which they examine as a historical document and spiritual autobiography. They summarize Burr's concerns as the three paramount themes of religion, work, and sisterhood, and they conclude that "because for Esther Burr religion infused and was the context for every other aspect of experience, these themes appear in her journal in an inextricable connectedness" (23-24). I want to build on Karlsen's and Crumpacker's foundational work and their links between the themes that drive the journal and Crumpacker's conclusion that by its close, Burr had achieved a degree of religious peace and empowerment (21). ³ In Writing a Woman's Life, Carolyn Heilbrun sees empowerment through autobiographical practice as "the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's [End Page 18] part matter" (18). Because Burr took her place in the dominant discourse of her Calvinist church and insisted on her own theorizing about God, her part did matter. To that end, I will first discuss friendship as a useful theological concept for Burr, then examine the methods by which Burr formed her personal relationship with God, and finally turn to Burr's articulations that point to her empowered subjectivity.

Mary E. Hunt argues that female friendship provides insight into living in a world defined by men, even as it works to create the world as women imagine it could be. Hunt begins with a feminist theology that examines women's experiences on their own terms, and she argues that women's friendships allow them agency: to name their experiences in their own voices, to make decisions on the basis of their experiences, to live in relationships, and to form communities of accountability on the basis of those choices (16-17). Given the Puritan mandate that every aspect of life should be in service to God and a means to the reception of grace, Burr's view of their friendship as a "blessed oppertunity" is hardly surprising (49). As Hunt points out, "[F]riendship illuminates questions of ultimate meaning and value" (7), and Burr validates her friendship with Sarah...