Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Kathleen M. Swaim

Critical Essay by Kathleen M. Swaim

SOURCE: Swaim, Kathleen M. “Mercy and the Feminine Heroic in the Second Part of Pilgrim's Progress.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 30, No. 3 (Summer 1990): 387-409.

In the following essay, Swaim examines Bunyan's handling of his male and female characters in Parts I and II of Pilgrim's Progress, arguing that, despite their differences, the two texts represent two parts of a unified whole.

In 1684 John Bunyan published the second part of Pilgrim's Progress, a sequel in which the wife and children of Christian, the hero of Part I (1678), undertake their successful imitation of the pilgrimage of their husband and father. The sequel is at base a feminine analogue of the masculinist first part, and it operates out of a value system which prioritizes nurturance, compassion, benevolence, generation, and regeneration over ego, power, struggle, and transcendence. Sir Walter Scott draws the contrast in terms which reflect both woman's...
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