The exceptionally low social status of a surviving English author has been remarked upon. According to Naomi Baker, a major scholar of Thurgood's work, Rose Thurgood's narrative is remarkable in giving "a rare and fascinating glimpse into the lives of puritan women in the early decades of the seventeenth century", "particularly significant as an almost unique opportunity to hear the voice of a seventeenth-century woman living in extreme poverty"; "economic desperation was by no means an exceptional experience in England in the first decades of the seventeenth century, yet texts articulating the agony of a woman who 'could not abide this life any longer' because she 'would not live to see [her] children starve' are extremely rare from this period".
