Page - 113 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

“As i cannot write I put this down simply and freely” | 113www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 95–122 Flower records: “Across classes the sampler would be a testament to reli- gious learning, discipline, and moral character, as well as a display of basic literacy and fluency with the needle. It was also closely tied up with a girl’s economic future, whether that future rested on her capacity to maintain em- ployment, or the securing of domestic stability through marriage.”37 From the 18th century onwards students also used samplers to learn geography, by reproducing maps or depictions of the solar system through their stitch work (fig. 4 and 5). Nineteenth-century samplers often combined ornamental patterns, deco- rative motifs, and figures and letters. For women who were in service, letters on their samplers could demonstrate their ability to mark lingerie or linens with the initials of members of the family who employed them.38 The genre of the sampler and its embroidery skills, so crucial in the ed- ucation of girls of many classes in 19th-century Britain and also in other countries, was also associated with femininity, humility, and an attitude of submission.39 Embroidering was understood as an indispensable skill and a milestone in female education, as a practice that helped temper the character and inculcate the attitude young women from all social classes were expected to assume.40 To stitch two letters would take about 45 minutes.41 If a character was deemed not satisfactory, the girl would have to undo it and repeat it, doing so as many times as was necessary to achieve a neat result.42 According to this formula, it would have taken Parker eight hours a day for 306 days to stitch her sampler, although as a skilled embroiderer, she may have been faster. She would not have been able to dedicate the necessary hours in one block to the sampler and we can assume that she spent some years writing her autobiographical notes with the red silk thread. When the sampler was made is therefore difficult to establish. While the Victoria and Albert Museum indi- 37 Flower 2016, 304. 38 Goggin 2002, 39. 39 See Flower 2016. The author highlights the tendency in the first half of the 19th century to focus on cross-stitches and repetitive patterns rather than on a capacity to invent new visual motifs (307). See also Browne/Wearden 1999, 11: embroidering samplers “was becoming increasingly a standardised form of unambitious exercise in the early nineteenth century”. 40 Newell 2009, 56. 41 Flower 2016, 308. 42 Flower 2016, 308–309.