Pride Feminized

In making the feminized stately ship an emblem for futile pride, Pulter participates in her culture’s association of pride with women. Male examples of pride were not lacking in sermons and moral treatises of the time, but when personified, pride tended to take on female gender, as in the following examples:

Richard Hooker, A Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride

What harm soever in private families there groweth by disobedience of children, stubbornness of servants, untractableness in them [women], who, although they otherwise may rule, yet should in consideration of the imparity of their sex be also subject; whatsoever by strife amongst men combined in the fellowship of greater societies, by tyranny of potentates, ambition of nobles, rebellion of subjects in civil states; by heresies, schisms, divisions in the Church; naming pride we name the mother which brought them forth, and the only nurse that feedeth them.

Richard Hooker, A Learned Sermon of the Nature of Pride (Oxford, 1612), 13-14. STC (2nd ed.) / 13711. [Modernized and regularized by Sarah E. Johnson]

John Taylor, Superbiae Flagellum, or, The Whip of Pride

Thus Pride is grown to such a height, I say,
That were she banished, many would decay:
For many hundred thousands are you see,
Which from Pride only, have meat, clothes, & fee:
No marvel then she hath so many friends,
When as such numbers on her still depends,
Pride is their Mistress, she maintaines them still,
And they must serve her, or their case is ill.
But as so many numbers numberless,
Doe live and flourish here by Pride's excess:
So are there more upon the other side,
Toiled and tormented still to maintain Pride.

John Taylor, Superbiae Flagellum, or, The Whip of Pride (London, 1621), c1. STC (2nd ed.) / 23796. [Modernized and regularized by Sarah E. Johnson]

Not only was pride, as one of the seven deadly sins, conventionally feminized, but women were often singled out as especially prone to the sin of pride, in part because their actions and comportment were judged according to their supposed inherent position as “subject” to men because of the “imparity of their sex,” to use Richard Hooker’s words. Portrayals of women as tending towards pride appear in other curations on this website. Noting that Arachne “tooke such a pride” in her skill at weaving that she denied being instructed by Minerva and even challenged the goddess, Edward Topsell’s parenthetical remark, “(for you must remember she was a woman),” assumes cultural familiarity with the connection between women and pride (see the Curation The Myth of Arachne). Similarly, while personified Pride in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is not explicitly gendered, Pride highlights its ability to infiltrate women: “I can creep into any corner of a wench; sometimes, like a periwig, I sit upon her brow; or, like a fan of feathers, I kiss her lips; indeed, I do – what do I not?” (See the Curation The Sin of Pride.) Discussing the pride of apparel in her advice to her unborn child, Elizabeth Jocelin combines the stereotype that women were even more tempted than men by this “vice” with an acknowledgment of the particular difficulty women faced of having others set above them:

Elizabeth Jocelin, The Mother’s Legacie, to Her Unborne Childe

Thou art no sooner broke out of the arms of sloth, but pride steps in diligently, waiting to furnish thee with any vain toy in thy attire. And though I believe there are diverse sorts of pride more pestilent to the soul than this of apparel, yet this is enough dangerous, and I am sure betrays a man’s folly more than any other… I desire thee for God’s sake shun this vanity, whether thou be son or daughter. If a daughter, I confess thy task is harder because thou art weaker, and thy temptations to this vice greater, for thou shalt see those whom perhaps thou wilt think less able, exalted far above thee in this kind, and it may be thou wilt desire to be like them, if not to out-go them. But believe and remember that I tell thee, the end of all these vanities is bitter as gall.

Elizabeth Jocelin, The Mother’s Legacie, to Her Unborne Childe (London, 1624), 30-3. [Modernized and regularized by Sarah E. Johnson]

Margaret Cavendish offers a different perspective in claiming that pride is most becoming and appropriate in women:

From Margaret Cavendish, The World’s Olio

Of Pride.
If pride seems handsome, and may be allowed in any, it is in women, because it gives a distance to idle pretenders, and corrupters of chastity. Neither is it so bad in women to be proud of their chastity, and honest affection, as Alexander in his victories, or Helen in her beauty, or Rome of her spoils, and royal slaves: for honesty is their greatest beauty, and they may glory in it as their greatest honour, and triumph in it as their greatest victory...
To The same.
But some are bred with such nicety, and in such innocency, as if they meant to marry some deity: But modesty should dwell in women’s thoughts, wit marshal their words, prudence rule their actions; they should have a graceful behaviour, a modest countenance, a witty discourse, a civil society, a courteous demeanour.

Margaret Cavendish, The World’s Olio (London, 1655), in Digital Cavendish directed by Shawn Moore and Jacob Tootalian. digitalcavendish.org. [Modernized and regularized by Sarah E. Johnson]

Cavendish also makes an explicit connection between “state” and pride, asserting “Pride without State, doth as ill as State without civility” (24 under “Short Essayes” in The World’s Olio). While “state” could refer to “a condition or manner of existing,” it also carried senses relating to high rank, making it synonymous with “stateliness” (see OED “state (n.), senses I and II.i.14.a,” June 2025, doi:10.1093/OED/9694988873 and doi:10.1093/OED/1187630816). This notion that pride is “ill” if it does not take the correct form or does not have status of some order to back it up, as opposed to being a categorical fault, perhaps lends support to the possibility that Pulter’s depiction of the Stately Ship is not a purely condemnatory reflection on pride.