Estat/Estate

Abstract

Anne Sexton’s choice of “estate” relies on a general sense of “standing” or “condition,” which is derived straightforwardly from its Latin precursors status, “standing,” and stare, “to stand,” but it also involves a deliberate pun on “holdings.” That first sense—“condition”—runs through the whole period of this study; for example, a will in 1392 reads “I … in hool estat of my body and in good mynde beynge, make my testament” (Earliest English Wills 4). But dying and wills were not the primary site for the word; “man’s estate,” “the estate of virginity [or widowhood]” (Queen Elizabeth refers to her virgin “kind of life” as “this estate” [in Rice’s edition 115]) and “estate of grace” were more common. The Castle of Perseverance contains the memorable couplet, urged against Man’s salvation by Justicia: “But whanne he was com to man’s a-state / All his behestis he thanne for-gate” (3402-03). Even the departed saints are thought of in status hierarchies; as the Mirror of Salvation says, “Marie superexcellis of all seints, the state / Of patriarkes and Prophetes and Postles Dignitee, / Of Martirs and confessoures and virgines in Degree” (39). A touching fictional example is found in The Pearl.

Time, that rearranger of estates

Anne Sexton, “The Division of Parts”

You would have Mr. Casaubon because he had such a great soul, and was so old and dismal and learned; and now you think of marrying Mr. Ladislaw, who has got no estate or anything.

George Eliot, Middlemarch