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218 Cornelia Connelly and Her Interpreters
century. More robust and complex versions of the lives of our foremothers
in the faith are looked for today if their “life stories [are] to serve as
encouragement and guidance for our own lives in the presence of God.””
My purpose here, therefore, is to raise questions about some of the
accepted interpretations of Cornelia’s story which, because they are rooted
in cultural assumptions that are no longer current, are ceasing to have
relevance or credibility today.
Cornelia’s Family of Origin
Today most biographies verge on the psychobiographical; initial questions,
reflecting popular psychology, are likely to concern the significance and
influence of the subject’s family of origin: “Where should [the biography]
begin? With her birth ... 2? [What] is the subject’s relation—inevitably
complex—with her mother?”" If these are important questions, any
biographer of Cornelia will fall at the first hurdle, because information
about Cornelia’s parents, about her relationships with them, and about her
childhood generally, is extremely sparse. Each biographer in turn explains
that “Of her parents and her early life very little has come down to us ... Of
her childhood little is related.” ’ In spite of this, the biographers all assert
that Cornelia was a beautiful child from an unusually happy home:
All the children were gifted with talents and beauty, but the youngest
daughter [Cornelia] seems to have been the most generously endowed with
both .... It is pleasant to dwell upon her in her sunny childhood, fair and
spirited and joyous, loving and beloved. ...
The little dark-eyed girl grew up lovely and spontaneous ... merry and very
intelligent ... the joy and often the consolation of the household. But very
few details of this happy childhood have come down to us. ...
Cornelia Augusta Peacock, the last of seven children, is born in Philadelphia
into a happy family in comfortable circumstances. ...
5 McClendon, Biography as Theology, 179.
© Heilbrun, Writing a Woman's Life, 27.
uv Gompertz, The Life of Comelia Connelly, 2, 3. Compate Bisgood, Cornelia Connelly, 3, “very few details ... have
come down to us”; Flaxman, A Woman Styled Bold, 8, 9, “What little information there is ... we have only one
anecdote.”