ABSTRACT
Initially, Lady Anne Clifford’s representations of her lifelong struggle to maintain and to exercise her rights as a landowner seem to provide an almost textbook case of Smith’s model. However, her self-representations not only provide historical substance to Smith’s model; they also significantly refine it by revealing that these original subject positions themselves became transformed as she attempted to reconcile their contradictions. On the one hand, rather than subverting patriarchy, she unsettled gender by appealing to class to create herself as one of its dominant members. On the other hand, her portraits reconstitute gender ideology to signify solidarity between female relatives rather than subordination to male authorities, and especially husbands. As these transformations suggest, Clifford remained a split subject, caught in the contradictions between obedient wife and aristocratic heir. Clifford’s perception of God as her ally emerges even more forcefully in what remains of a later diary where she uses biblical narratives to give meaning to her life.
