The female pilgrim

It is not well known that John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress in two parts. The first is Christian’s famed, solitary battle through the Slough of Despond, Hill Difficulty and House Beautiful, Doubting Castle and of course, the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

But Bunyan did write a second part, in which Christian’s wife, Christiana, sets out on this same journey. She is accompanied by her four sons, another woman and a warrior named Greatheart, who functions as her protector. Even in a literary dream sequence, with metaphorical foes, a woman could not journey alone. She needed chaperones to protect her from the unspeakable, and perhaps from her own untrustworthy behaviour. 

Pilgrimage, for some, is an, by which was meant a male of relative means and self determination. Women may feel the same drive, but their opportunity for solo journeying is complicated by the additional risk they supposedly face when alone. As a child I was vaguely unsatisfied by Christiana’s story. Emily Starr, heroine of L.M. Montgomery’s classic fiction, was equally underwhelmedEmily never liked Christiana’s adventures half so well as Christian’s. For one thing, there was always such a crowd with Christiana. She had not half the fascination of that solitary, intrepid figure who faced all alone the shadows of the Dark Valley.”