Katherine Philips

"The Matchless Orinda"

Best friend, lover, wife, mother, and poet. Who precisely was Katherine Philips? Fond of what Harriette Andreadis calls "pseudo-classical" names, she circulated much of her work as "The Matchless Orinda." While many focus on the eroticized friendships depicted in her poetry, she was also a devoted wife and mother. Philips wrote extensively but published only to a small group of friends and expressed a myriad of emotions even though she died at an early age. She is often compared with the classical poet Sappho whose poems contain similar erotic tones (Andreadis 51). Even though her stylings of homoeroticism would fit under the modern day lesbian genre, she is often placed within the male tradition of her time as she had a parallel style expressing typically masculine themes of desire but her use of passionate expression and innocence combined with longing sets her apart. Her style has been referred to as a "verbal formulation of a state of mind" (Hageman 568). Philips poetry is distinctly different, which is why she is often placed in a separate class with Sappho, even though this classical poet wrote around 630 BC and Philips wrote in the mid-seventeenth century..

Katherine Philips and some acquaintances formed the Society of Friendship where they wrote extensively and read each others poems. This stresses the importance she placed on the unique bonds of female friendship. Whether these friendships were strictly platonic or what we now refer to as lesbian in nature is unknown but regardless, they represent important beginnings of women publishing their works past the private sphere and exploring an open means of self-expresion. This society also conjures ideas of a unique female community, a place to express feelings and ideas in a non-threatening environment. Philips remains important to the literary canon of her time in regards to introducing new methods of expression along with creating groundwork for later poets to move past the confines of traditional patriarchal society.

Katherine Fowler Philips was born, according to assumptions from baptismal records, January 1, 1631/32, the daughter of James Fowler and Katherine Oxenbridge. Few definite facts exist concerning her early years but she was of a bourgeois background and cultured enough to be accepted in court circles (Andreadis 35). She received early education at home and later attended boarding school. She was married at the tender age of 16 to 54 year old James Philips, presumably an arranged marriage. Following her love of classical pseudonyms, he will be referred to as Antenor in her poems. They lived apart for much of their marriage but it is evident that there were high levels of devotion in their relationship. She bore a son, Hector, and his early death led to the grief stricken poem, "Orinda upon Little Hector Philips" (Hageman 568). She later had a daughter but no mention is ever made of her in Philips' poems. While her marriage was not lacking in love, the passion she yearned for came through female friendships. These friendships provided a sense of emotional structure for her life. While she expressed erotic themes, the love portrayed is innocent and pure, above earthly level. The chaste expression of her feelings adds emphasis to what she sees as the higher nature of female love with an irrelevance to sex. Her school friend Mary Aubrey is known as Rosania in her poems and the most famous of all is Anne Owen--Lucasia. Both of these friends eventually wed, causing great personal anguish to Philips, who wrote in a 1662 letter to a close friend, Sir Charles, "we may generally conclude the Marriage of a Friend to be the Funeral of a Friendship" (Andreadis 45). The bulk of her emotions seem to fall on Lucasia but another is Elizabeth Boyle, "Celimena," and a close friend "Berenice" is mentioned in letters but has yet to be definitely identified. The Society of Friendship is where the majority of her poems were read and published reflecting how she made advances to move women past the private sphere but was still contained within her specific community. Her poems and letters were published in mass form after her death. Philips died in 1664 of smallpox at age 33.

Sources:
Andreadis, Harriette. "The Sapphic-Platonics of Katherine Philips, 1632-1664." Signs 15 no. 1 (autumn 1989): 34-60.

Hageman, Elizabeth. "The Matchless Orinda." From Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. ed. Katharina Wilson. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987.