SOURCE: Beilin, Elaine V. “A Challenge to Authority: Anne Askew.” In Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance, pp. 29-47. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Beilin explores Askew's self-portrait in the Examinations and contrasts it with the depiction offered by John Bale.

As much as Margaret Roper seems to define the ideal of the learned and virtuous woman as a private, modest, silent being, Anne Askew seems to diverge from it. Converting to the Reformed church, Askew continually raised her voice in public to bear witness to her faith, and in so doing, defied not only her husband, but the whole hierarchy of Church and State. Her writings movingly document her imprisonment, examinations, and torture, and provide some insight into a woman who recognized the restrictions on her sex, but chose to circumvent them because of her beliefs. In 1546, at the age...