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 “weakness” and also...