Women’s Writing, Volume 11, Number 3, 2004 331 Counterfeiting Nature: constructing agency in the life writings of Rose Thurgood and Cicely Johnson NAOMI BAKER ABSTRACT Rose Thurgood’s conversion narrative, “A Lecture of Repentance” (1636-37), is one of the earliest examples of autobiographical writing in English. The account is further extraordinary in the fact that it relates the experiences of an impoverished early seventeenth-century woman. Through a discussion of this text, alongside Cicely Johnson’s “Fanatical Reveries” (c.1636-37), I argue that historicised concepts of agency are crucial to an understanding of early modern women’s self-representations. Thurgood and Johnson’s narratives are framed by a Calvinist culture that demanded the “death” of the self. The apparent erasure of agency involved in conforming to such beliefs nevertheless belies the alternative possibilities for agency generated within such historical and theological frameworks. Rose Thurgood’s manuscript conversion narrative “A Lecture of Repentance” (1636-37) contains a vitriolic assault on women “in theise dayes”, who: crispe and curle & cutt their heare, [building] Towers on their heads, nay more, Counterfitt the great Seale of Nature, & walke with artificiall Complexions; theise will shricke & squeake at the leaping of a Frogg, but will not shrinke an Inch for all the Curses in the Bible.[1] Thurgood’s outburst against fashion-conscious women participates in wider cultural anxieties concerning women’s use of cosmetics in the early modern era, as reflected in a body of literature attacking the practice. Traditional associations of femininity with vanity would seem to be the obvious starting place for criticism of women’s increased use of make-up in the period. As Frances Dolan notes, however, anti-cosmetic tracts from the era instead tend to focus on issues of creativity and agency. Made-up women are: