Writing in her mid-fifties, several years after the death of her husband, seventeenth-century autobiographer Lady Anne Halkett chose as the subject of her Memoirs a dozen years out of a life that was to span most of the century (1623-99). Her focus on the turbulent period of the Interregnum provides the text with much of its vivid interest: Halkett helps the young Duke of York (later James II) escape from London, disguised as a woman; meets the king in Edinburgh on his abortive attempt to return to power; nurses soldiers wounded in the battle that ensues; and refers in the course of her text to political schemes and secret correspondence, duels of honor and the rescue of an abducted heiress. No less dramatic than these political intrigues are her personal relationships, in part because of their entanglement in unfolding political events. After her mother's disapproval ends an early courtship with Thomas Howard, Halkett falls dangerously in love with a man who seems, by all accounts save her own, a scoundrel.1 Colonel Joseph Bampfield would eventually desert the Royalist cause, and he appears to have been equally opportunistic in his personal life, telling Halkett he was a widower when, in fact, he was not. Her attempt to determine the truth about his character is made more difficult by the chaotic state of communications during the Civil War (Rose, 271). When she discovers that Bampfield's wife is alive, Halkett reaches the nadir of her experience—her reputation has been compromised and she believes herself unable to enter any new relationship.2 This final knot is untangled with the help of Sir James Halkett, a widower himself, a sensible and sympathetic friend, and eventually, her husband. After Lady Halkett's account of their wedding, in 1656, the Memoirsend abruptly.3 No summary of its events can do justice to the Memoirs. It can only suggest the rich texture and lively intelligence which have led to the work's being singled out for praise, even when women's autobiographical [End Page 340] writing rested, for the most part, in obscurity. But even an abbreviated account of Halkett's role in these adventures confounds any naive notions that women of her time were entirely constrained by dominant cultural stereotypes. Despite the injunctions insistently repeated in contemporary sermons and conduct books, Halkett is neither silent nor obedient,4 and if she remains, in all likelihood, chaste, the events she writes about nevertheless so threaten her reputation that defense of her virtue becomes a central rhetorical motive for her writing. Indeed, I shall argue, the Memoirs are carefully and deliberately constructed to justify behavior that has left Halkett vulnerable. This much will be no surprise to her readers. What is more interesting is the form this defense takes. By appropriating the familiar conventions of the romance to her own rhetorical purposes, Halkett both entertains and wins assent to an unconventional life: she contextualizes her actions in a genre capable of accommodating the shifting uncertainties of her early years, and she constructs a reader sympathetic to the impact of this turbulence on the life of a young, single woman. As a result of Halkett's efforts to fashion an acceptable self, moreover, the Memoirs become a rich source of insight into authorizing strategies available to women writers in this period. One of the challenges posed by the Memoirs is the need to respond both to its deliberate strategizing and to its remarkable frankness, especially about the potentially scandalous matter of Halkett's relationship with Bampfield. As her modern editor notes, "If she leaves much unsaid, at least in the manuscript as it has survived, it is surprising that she wrote so much on the subject" (Loftis, ix). In a narrative where identities are masked and deception figures prominently—in the depiction of...
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