The Hawstead Panels: applied emblematics, Walter Ong, and the discourse of women in early modern England

The Hawstead oratory was thus a visual and verbal memory theater for Lady Drury. Itwas inspired by published emblem books that promoted a particular discourseabout feminine morality, as well as the writings of her rector Joseph Hall. It wascreated not to hone her rhetorical skills, but rather to regulate her outer femininebehavior; its visual imagery was designed to develop her inner spiritual deportmentas a Protestant female and to promote her colloquy with herself as she examined her soul, a colloquy that like in the emblems, took place in theabstract, free of time.