Hutson 1994

Hutson, Lorna. The Usurer's Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of Women in Sixteenth-Century England. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Nosgay is "both self-conscious and ironic about the impropriety of claiming gift-status for the nosegay/text that is, in fact, shamelessly consructed as an artefact intended to initiate a service relation, through its rhetorical demands upon the reader's credit. Whitney goes beyond her male counterparts in admitting to the lack of ability to reciprocate that prevents others from giving her credit, and obliges her to improvise a fiction of ability in print" (122)

Whitney uses metaphor of scent to distribute the gift of her nosegay around, while the material object is still a gift for a single person (126)

"Offering a scent of the printed nosegay int he first of her printed familiar epistles, Whitney draws attention to the function of both (i.e., the book itself) as ambassadors of her merits to the 'vertuous ladye' for whom, lacking a referent, the reader is irresistibly compelled to construct a hypothetical existence which in turn reflects back on, or 'advertises' Whitney's readiness to serve in some virtuous employment." (126)

will is mock-testament (126-7)

"Read in the context of the prodigal anthologies of opetry and iction composed by men int he 1570s, Whitney's text is striking for its awareness that one of the newly emerging social uses of the printed book -- the initiation of a credit relation through indication of readiness for service -- could perfectly well be adapted to women's needs." (128)

shows that male rhetoric of women, using them as credit, didn't always affect how women wrote