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Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720 (review)

Article  in  Parergon · January 2001

DOI: 10.1353/pgn.2001.0039

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Carole Cusack
The University of Sydney
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198 Reviews

from the writings by John S. Moore (1989), David Pelteret (1995), J. Jesch
(1991), Pauline Stafford (1989) and Christine Fell (1984). In this as in so many
other matters, the writer of the guide would seem to have succeeded admirably
in her chosen task of arousing the reader's avid curiosity. Further the
sectionalising of areas in the various paragraphs should m a k e research projects
open up in the particular area of interest to the beginning reader or researcher.
The bold general areas of religious, political and economic life in the
periods c. 600-1250 and 1250-1530 are followed by similar treatment of matters
such as women's place in the economy, degrees of formal education, religious
experience and autonomy, legal rights, patronage, labour services, punishments
of sexual offences, and, in m u c h detail, the activities and opportunities that befell
and were seized by widows - as attested by various documents.
In short, these guides m a y be held to continue the fine introductory
handbooks in the humanities by the same publisher a century ago, with the very
definite bonus of a most comprehensive bibliography. Mavis E. Mate, the
Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oregon, w h o published in
1998 Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex,
1350-1530, has again shown herself to be an excellent teacher, choosing word,
observation and example with the greatest care and relevance. This is, indeed, a
vade m e c u m for the curious reader as well as the medieval specialist.
J. S. Ryan
School of English, Communication and Theatre
University of New England

Mendelson, Sara and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England 1550-
1720, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998; pp. xviii, 480; 49 b/w illustrations; R R P
£25 (cloth), £14.99 (paper); I S B N 0198201249 (cloth), 019820812X (paper).

The 15 years of collaborative research and writing which went into this su
volume are everywhere apparent. Mendelson and Crawford have assembled a
formidable array of materials which shed light on the hitherto somewhat obscure
subject of Early Modern w o m e n . M a n y of these sources are fragmentary or
difficult to interpret, and the authors stress the importance of 'discovering as much
as possible about the circumstances in which the documents were created and
preserved' (p. 9). The first chapter covers the contexts for understanding women,
Reviews 199

including medical discourses, religious teachings, the law and its operation, the
concept of citizenship, and ideas which were popular a m o n g 'ordinary' people,
including stereotypes. W h a t clearly emerges is the extent to which contradictory
views were in some cases almost equally prominently espoused, and the w a y in
which exceptional cases, such as the four female monarchs of the period, stretched
the boundaries of most definitions of 'women'.
The second and third chapters cover the life-cycle of w o m e n ; childhood,
adolescence and adulthood. Interesting differences emerge across social and
economic boundaries. The least information is available for the earliest years of
girls' lives, and for the lives of the poorest w o m e n . Important subjects include
the incidence of violence and sexual abuse in the lives of female servants and
apprentices by masters, and the distinctly female experience of marriage, which
the authors characterize as probably 'a violent discontinuity' at odds with the
masculine view of the bride's 'smooth transfer from paternal to spousal authority'
(p. 129). Evidence of wifely insubordination came from masculine sources, and
there were two ideal images of a wife; the companion and the subordinate. S o m e
women writers argued that the subordination of wives m a d e their position
identical to that of slaves, and Mendelson and Crawford argue that a husband's
power over his wife was such that he could m a k e her life unendurable. Maternity
and the lives of those w h o chose to remain single are also covered, as are
widowhood, old age, and death. The conclusion reached is that gender, class and
age were interacting at every stage of a woman's life.
Chapter Four, 'Female Culture', is probably the most contentious in the
book. This is because few Early M o d e r n scholars have acknowledged that a
distinctly female culture existed. The authors consider culture to be 'a system
of shared meanings within which people lived their lives' (p. 202). Mendelson
and Crawford analyse the areas of space, speech, material culture, piety, female
friendship, passionatefriendshipsand lesbianism, and female consciousness and
feminism. Under 'space', they discuss women's control of domestic space, the
times when w o m e n could take possession of spaces constructed by religion, and
the ways in which w o m e n negotiated traditionally masculine spaces. Interestingly,
middle and lower class w o m e n were physically freer than m a n y of their
aristocratic sisters, w h o were confined to their o w n apartments and often
prohibited from havingfriendsby possessive or controlling husbands. Friendships
often crossed class boundaries, but little usually remains to preserve the voice
of the lower-class w o m a n (usually a maid). This is the case with Alice Thornton
and her maid Dafeny Lightfoot, where Alice's autobiography and sundry legal
200 Reviews

documents concerning her inheritance from her mother, Lady Wandesford,

provide her side of the story, but nothing remains to convey Dafeny's opinions
(pp. 236-37).
The evidence for lesbian sexuality is slightly less scarce and interesting,
including the literary products of Aphra Behn and Mary Delarivier Manley; and
the subject of passionate friendships is rather better documented. S o m e of these
friendships were political in nature (for example, that of Sarah Churchill and
Queen Anne), an area which receives more attention in chapter seven, 'Polities'.
Chapter Five concerns 'The Makeshift E c o n o m y of Poor W o m e n ' . Here the
realities of making a living for poor w o m e n are exposed: apprenticeships, service,
agricultural labour, selling prepared foodstuffs, and the making of cloth and
clothes. There were also less legal occupations; unlicensed ale brewer, prostitute,
and thief. Rural w o m e n had greater access to scavengable foods, and for both
rural and urban w o m e n being poor meant having few possessions. Work was
hard and only on Sunday was there any rest. M a n y poor w o m e n failed to hold
theirfragileeconomy together and became indigent and destitute.
Poverty was partially alleviated by charity, which was administered by
the church and by wealthier members of society, often w o m e n . There were few
almshouses and even if placed in one it was possible to experience severe
privation. People convicted of vagrancy could be whipped or branded. Chapter
Six, 'Occupational Identities and Social Roles', considers w o m e n of the middling
and upper ranks. Here life was not so desperate, but the fact remained that women
were directed by the economic circumstances of their fathers and husbands.
Housewifery and child-rearing, growing foodstuffs in gardens, and duties towards
dependents and supervision of staff are among the occupations discussed. Wealthy
widows could become religious patrons. There is also the issue of professional
and paid work, such as midwifery and teaching; crafts and trades; and
employment at court. T h e illustrations for the two chapters on work are
particularly interesting and helpful for the reader.
The final chapter on w o m e n and politics focuses attention on the four
female monarchs, Mary I, Elizabeth I, M a r y II, and Anne, w h o reigned during
the period. Next in extent of influence included queens consort and aristocratic
ladies-in-waiting, royal daughters and royal mistresses. The remainder of the
chapter looks at women's participation in mass, popular politics, and in the
English Revolution. That this frequently relied on religious convictions is
acknowledged, and the case of Quaker w o m e n is covered in some detail. The
brief 'Epilogue' notes that avenues for women's political activity had dried up
Reviews 201

by the end of the seventeenth century, as institutions came to be defined in more

masculine terms. This is an excellent book and highly recommended.
Carole M. Cusack
Studies in Religion
University of Sydney

Mooney, Catherine M., ed., Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their
Interpreters (Middle Ages Series), Philadelphia, University of Philadelphia
Press, 1999; pp. xi, 276; R R P US$39.95 (cloth), US$19.95 (paper); I S B N
081223485 (cloth), 0812216873 (paper).

Since the 1987 publication of Caroline Walker Bynum's ground-breaking Holy

Feast and Holy Fast there has been a steady stream of scholarship appearing on
the w o m e n mystics of the twelfth tofifteenthcenturies. This volume centres on
the sources for the lives of mystics and saints, and the essayists attempt to separate
the voices present in these sources, to distinguish the voice of the female saint
from that of her (usually) male hagiographer/biographer/correspondent. Bynum's
'Foreword' comments on the difficulties of the project, from the 'socially
contructed' nature of sainthood (p. ix) to the complex relations of 'gender' and
'voice' (p. ix).
Mooney'sfirstarticle is the only survey piece in the volume, and is
primarily an overview of the other contributions. She retraces s o m e of the
intellectual history behind contemporary scholarship on medieval women's
hagiography, rejecting the view that the texts in question tell virtually nothing
about the experience of w o m e n , and are informative only as to the expectations
and classifications of male ecclesiastics. Sources where the saint herself has written
or 'managed to leave a discernible imprint within other texts' (p. 3) m a y be
carefully mined for useful information. Barbara N e w m a n ' s 'Hildegard and Her
Hagiographers' argues for the importance of the Vita S. Hildegardis as hagiography
as well as biography, and as the 'first and only vita that lets us compare a holy
woman's self-portrait directly with male representations of her' (p. 16). The article
compares Hildegard's o w n modelling of her literary persona and the Biblical heroes
to which she compared herself, along with other aspects of the Vita, with those of
Gottfried and Theodoric, finding interesting discrepancies and divergences.
The next essay, A n n e L. Clark's 'Holy W o m a n or Unworthy Vessel? The
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