Sarah Fyge

Sarah Fyge Egerton (1670–1723) was a female poet who wrote in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. She was one of six children born to Mary Beacham (d. 1704) and Thomas Fyge (d. 1706). Her birth date is uncertain, though most scholars believe it to be 1670.

Life
Her father, in addition to being an apothecary in London, was a descendant of the Figge family of Winslow, Buckinghamshire, from which he inherited a plot of land. As the daughter of a landowning apothecary, Egerton had the benefit of living in a relatively wealthy environment. Based on her family’s wealth and references found within her works, it appears that she had some education, whether formal or informal is unclear, in fields such as mythology, philosophy, and geography. While her education helped develop her poetic career, it also damaged her relationship with her family. As Egerton would later recall in “On my leaving London,” her move from London to Winslow was “strongly forc’d” by her father, due to her publication of The Female Advocate (1686). While Egerton felt that her father punished her with the “seemingly horrid pains” of monotonous country life, she also felt that her father’s decision to exile her was an act of rejection.

Egerton’s romantic life contributed to her ability to act as a poet, and increased her notoriety—mostly through infamy. Her father arranged her first marriage with the attorney, Edward Field. However, the marriage was short-lived due to Edward’s death sometime before 1700. The release of Poems on Several Occasions in 1703 signed S.F.E. indicated that sometime between 1700 and 1703 she married her much older second cousin, the Reverend Thomas Egerton, who presided over Adstock, Buckinghamshire. The marriage was well known for its open hostility, and it appears that the couple had filed for divorce the same year as their marriage; though for one reason or another it was not granted. The author Delarivier Manley and Egerton had at one time a genial relationship; however, Egerton’s testimony against Manley in a trial marked the beginning of a period of hostility. By 1709, Manley openly criticized Egerton and her second marriage in The secret Memoirs…From Atlantis with lines like, “Her face protects her chastity.” Manley’s infamous commentary upon Egerton and her marriage appear to mark the end of Egerton’s public life. Few, if any, references can be found about her aside from the inscription of her name on her husband’s burial monument in 1720, and the record of her own death February 13, 1723.

Works
Much of Egerton’s work appears to have been passed amongst a group of female poets as she indicates in her dedication to the Earl of Hallifax in Poems on Several Occasions (1703), “They [her poems] never were abroad before, nor e’er seen but by my own sex, some of which have favour’d me with their compliments.” At times her works were not only reviewed by her peers, but were also part of corroborative pieces like The Nine Muses—an elegiac tribute to John Dryden. However, she is best known for her own works like The Female Advocate (1686), which argue against social customs that she felt restricted female freedom. Although Egerton also writes on the topic of love, “the only proper theme” for women as she says in the dedication to Poems on Several Occasions, her works advocating women’s rights are the center of posterity’s attention.

The Female Advocate
Egerton entered the literary world defiantly with her publication of The Female Advocate (1686), a response to Robert Gould’s Love Given O’re: Or, A Satyr Against the Pride, Lust and Inconstancy of Women (1682). She responds to Gould’s misogynistic endeavors to, “Discover all their [women] various sorts of vice,/The Rules by which they ruine and intice,/Their folly, Falshood, lux’ry, Lust, and Pride.” Her reply in heroic couplets not only challenges the merit of his claim, but goes farther to suggest that women are in fact the superior sex because, when found alone, man is “A barren Sex and insignificant” and “So Heaven made Woman to supply the want,/And to make perfect what before was scant”  Egerton also argued that it was the same God that created both men and women, and in doing so applied generally accepted theological points to counter Gould’s argument. The second edition of her work in 1687 featured the same arguments, but underwent heavy editing and almost doubled in length.

Poems on Several Occasions
Egerton’s Poems on Several Occasions Together with a Pastoral (1703) contains many of her best known pieces. Unlike The Female Advocate, this work consists of 56 individual poems, many of which are loosely biographical pieces. Within the work she continues to challenge gender stereotypes as she did in The Female Advocate, but she also addresses love, especially within the context of her personal life. The most notable works in terms of female advocacy rather boldly address the right for females to receive educations, feminine equality or superiority, and the roles women should have in society; whereas her works concerning love often express doubt, and emotional vulnerability while in love.

Selections
“To Philaster”, consists of twenty-two lines in which the speaker vacillates between fond reminiscence of the love she shared with Philaster (a surname for a lover from her early years appearing in several of Egerton’s other works ) and attacks upon his character as a deceiver. The work begins by exaggerating Philaster’s negative characteristics calling him a “perjur’d Youth” and likening his passion to a “disease.” However, the speaker also fondly recalls that Philaster “had innocence when [he] was mine”, suggesting that perhaps the memory of his passion was, at least to some extent, a comfort to her—as Medoff suggests is consistent with her biographical background. Yet, the tone switches back to remonstration a few lines later, “Perjur’d imposing youth, cheat who you will,/Supply deficit of Truth with amourous skill” (19-20). These lines recognize Philaster as deceiver by acknowledging his capability to lie through his “amourous skill.” When read from an external perspective, the final lines of the poem suggests that while the speaker acknowledges Philaster’s capability to be a deceitful lover, it seems that she also chooses to think herself the exception to his deception because she believes that his “first ardour of thy soul was all possessed by me” (22). Based on the piece, it appears that the speaker does not want to admit that Philaster fooled her like he did any other girl, but rather desires to maintain that she was somehow special because she had his “first ardour.” The piece reveals Egerton’s ability to capture uncertainty and emotional vulnerability in love; feelings that are often absent in her other works.

“Emulation” is a thirty nine-line poem written in heroic couplets that challenges the “tyrant Custom” that makes females “in every state a slave” (4). The speaker indicts males for their social constructs placing women in subservient roles within society: “The nurse, the mistress, parent” (5). She believes that men deliberately place women in such roles to prevent females from receiving educations, because males “fear [that] we should excel their sluggish parts,/Should we attempt the science and arts” (19-20). In other words, she suggests that if given the chance, females would not only equal men in learning, but also surpass them. The piece argues that there is no legitimate reason for women to serve menial roles based on their gender, because they are as capable as men to perform any role requiring intellectual prowess. The poem ends on a positive note, suggesting that women will eventually educate themselves, and that when they do “Wit’s empire now shall know a female reign” (33), ending the monopoly males enjoyed over the intellectual realm.

“To Mariana”, written in heroic couplets, opens with a complaint against Mariana, “Plague to thy husband, scandal to thy sex” (1), who was presumably a woman that spoke against progressive female attitudes—a recurrent argumentative stance amongst Egerton’s group of peers. The speaker complains that the woman “studiest vanity,/And talk’st obscene by rules of modesty” (13-14) and that her “best discourse is but mere ribaldry” (10). The speaker finds that in following society’s rules, Mariana’s speech is restricted to the point that it can never amount to more than rabble. While Mariana’s superficial speech annoyingly reinforces negative stereotypes of women, it also reveals her vanity: “Telling how fond all that e’er see thee be,/ And, loving all thyself, think’st all in love with thee” (11-12). The poem finds that this type of woman acts contrarily to her own nature as a female, and that if her ideas were to be questioned logically, they would have “Baffled [Socrates’] philosophy” (20), meaning there is no reasonable way in which to defend such actions.

“The Liberty” opens with “Shall I be one, of those obsequious fools,/That square there lives, by customs scanty rules” (1-2). This statement suggests that rules of custom are somehow inadequate, and that adherence to such rules is no more than servile obedience. Such customs start with “precepts taught, at Boarding school” (4), and lead to “foolish, dull Trifling, Formality” (5). These lines express frustration with the educational system for inculcating the female youth with customs designed to reflect adherence to proper form rather than intellectual knowledge. The poem is especially sensitive to the customs that dictate the roles women play within society. In the speaker’s case, her license as a writer is confined to “Themes of useful Houswifery” (38), regardless of any skill she may have had. Nevertheless she chooses to break from tradition and instead “secure her virtue”, and in doing so argues that women can act virtuously while ignoring social custom. By separating customs that placed restraints on her sex from the idea of virtue, she suggests that social roles are based upon “scanty rules” (2), not moral truths, and were observed to insure continual female servitude. The original text featured heavily punctuated lines with end stops, which would have been edited heavily for the modern reader's convenience.

Publications

 * Female Advocate or, an Answer to a Late Satyr Against the Pride, Lust and Inconstancy, c. of Woman. Written by a Lady in Vindication of her Sex (1686)
 * Poems on Several Occasions (1703)

E-texts

 * Female Advocate or, an Answer to a Late Satyr Against the Pride, Lust and Inconstancy, &c. of Woman. Written by a Lady in Vindication of her Sex (Women Writers Resource Project)