SOURCE: "Female Writing Beside the Rhetorical Tradition: Seventeenth Century British Biography and a Female Tradition in Rhetoric," in International Journal of Women's Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, March/April, 1980, pp. 143-60.

In this essay, Sullivan compares Cavendish's Life of William Cavendish with Thomas Sprat's "Life of Cowley, " highlighting the influence of gender on the form and style of biographical writing. She asserts that Cavendish's use of extensive detail, heightened emotional pitch, and temporally sequenced narrative creates a human "life story " that contrasts with Sprat's objective analysis of his subject's contribution to society.

The historical difference between the improvised education afforded girls and the highly structured training in rhetoric given to boys reveals at least some of the roots of the female tradition in rhetoric. Seventeenth century Britain can be used to document some of the connection between training and the development of a female mode of writing, for it was...