ABSTRACT
‘Dull, dull, dull. The whole day I mett with nothing but matter for obliuion’, Sarah Cowper wrote in 1713. She was a profoundly unhappy woman. Reviewing her life on her sixty-second birthday, Cowper defined her days as ‘foolish and uneasie, so insipid and unprofitable at best, as affords much matter for shame and sorrow’. While Cowper lived a charmed life by all outward appearances, her domestic life was, in reality, a source of deep disappointment. She found her husband to be incredibly disagreeable. She clashed with him on nearly every matter, including money, politics and the management of the household. They even disagreed about when to eat dinner. The couple’s two sons, William and Spencer, were successful lawyers and politicians, but also proved to be sources of anxiety for the Hertfordshire gentlewoman. One was accused of murder and the other fathered two illegitimate children. 1 They were irreverent and neglectful of their mother, who continually strived for more fulfilling interactions with them. Cowper lived in a comfortable house, but wielded little authority within it, especially when it came to managing the servants. And she possessed a considerable estate ‘of wc [which] I enjoy no more than a bare Conuenience’. The day her son was named Lord Chancellor, she could barely summon the energy to celebrate. She knew she should be pleased, but instead she felt miserable. ‘Discontent and sorrow eat out the spirit and Life of my Soul’, she lamented. Cowper relied upon personal writing to vent her growing frustrations. She began keeping a diary in 1699, and by the time she stopped recording her days in 1716 she had filled over 2,300 pages. 2
