Plague literature

Question 1

H.F.’s anecdote on the adolescent virgin

Answer 1

a young Maiden about 19 years old
immediately discovered the fatal Tokens on the Inside of her Thighs

Question 1

the body of ‘a young Woman’ ‘left […] to die by herself’

Answer 1

Upon this, the two Men to satisfy their Curiosity, got a long Ladder, and one of them went up to the Window, and look’d into the Room, where he saw a Woman lying dead upon the Floor, […] having no Cloaths on her but her Shift: But tho’ he call’d aloud, and putting in his long Staff, knock’d hard on the Floor, yet no Body stirr’d or answered;

Question 2

Samuel Pepys’s diary, 30 August 1665

Answer 2

I went forth and walked towards Moorfields to see (God forbid by presumption!) whether I could see any dead corps going to the grave

Question 3

H.F.’s motivation for going to plague pits

Answer 3

I could not resist my curiosity
my Curiosity led, or rather drove me to go and see this Pit again […] and I was not content to see it in the Day-time […] for then there would have been nothing to have been seen but the loose Earth

Question 4

Justifying gazing upon the plague and its parallel in the preface to Moll Flanders

Answer 4

an Instructing Sight, that might not be without its uses
some just and religious Inference is drawn, by which the Reader will have something of Instruction, if he pleases to make use of it

Question 5

Men’s vs women’s nakedness

Answer 5

naked, naked as he was
no Cloaths on her but her shift, wrapt only in a green rug

Question 6

Despite their jobs as searchers in the plague, H.F. has contempt for

Answer 6

old Women
old Wives Tales