gender Flashcards
underdown
crisis in gender relations
esp 1560-1640
anxieties about boundaries and new attempts reassert them
ingram critci
sexuality and reputation
gowing
gender mattered more to women than to men as an organising feature of their lives
legal system and women- hist
- Shepard: defamation cases, most male cases are about their economic and social credibility; women’s cases are usually sexual reputation.
civil war and women
Opportunities for female agency: defending estates, participation in sects, petitioning parliament, crowd politics. Evokes anxiety about inversion of the gender order?
hist civil war and gender
- Ann Hughes: gender central in CW polemic, both sides try to undermine the other’s masculinity. C1 pilloried as an unmanly man, in thrall to his powerful Catholic wife. For the Royalists, the political subversion of the parliamentarians was analogous to a potential gender one.
masculinity
- advice lit for young men how to align themselves w classical ideas and chivalrous codes of masc
- male reputation nd credit
p honour econ - adultery and control of sex
- puritans issue men playing women in theatre
- marriage reciprocal
advice lit masculinity
chivalrous codes of mas- braithwaite- the eng gentlemen- what to wear etc - esp purotans 1630
- gouge domestically duties 1622
- ealrier ones dod and cleaer- godlie forme of householde gov 1598
marital relations masuclinity
dod and cleaver- a godlie form of househode gov
marriage reciprocal in a sense
man has responsibility for outside the home, but the woman does have the responsibility for things within it, and also painting honour fo family
policing sex -
- public magirstrates and ifnormal action of community
- importance of kirk sessions in scot policing morals- shaming of cuckolds, whores, scolds nd shrews
- sucking stool, scolds bridle for ageing women
precept gender= sources
bible
shakespeare
law \authoirty
precept gender- bible- positive gender relations
- Galatians 3:28 ‘in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, man nor woman’ – spiritual equality, temporal hierarchy.
- Homily of the State of Matrimony (1563) ‘It is instituted of God, to ye intent that man and woman should live lawfully in a perpetual friendly fellowship,
- to bring forth fruit, and to avoid fornication.’ - same
precept- shakespear
- Taming of the Shrew: “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper… / Such duty as the subject owes the prince / Even such a woman oweth to her husband…” (husband owes protection, wife obedience).
law precept gender
- English common law particularly restrictive to women. Single woman’s identity as feme sole – same legal identity as a man.
- Married woman feme couvert – husband bears full legal responsibility other than in cases of treason, murder, brothel-keeping. BUT couverture pertains to English common law, not civil/canon.
- Opportunities for women through Chancery
legal precept diff scot- gender
- Couverture less enforced in Scotland. See higher proportion of wills.
inequality in law- gender
different crimes for spousal murder – petty treason for woman. Major anxiety about infanticide; it was considered a solely female crime (See A Pittilesse Mother 1616) Laws against illegitimacy – ‘bastard getters’ – overwhelmingly enforced against mothers.
stats illegit children
Records for Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Somerset and Warwickshire for 203 women punished in the late Elizabethan and early Stuart period for having an illegitimate child: 65 imprisoned, 35% whipped. Of 135 men prosecuted, 4 % imprisoned, and 25 % whipped.
authority precept - gender
Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum (pub. 1583), of the ‘parts and persons of the commonwealth’, ‘we do reject women, as those whom nature hath made to keep home and to nourish their family and children… except it be in such cases as the authority is annexed to the blood and progeny, as the crown.’
practice- gender
marrital customs vary thorughout british isles
household
womens work
sexual freedoms
marital customs vary regionally
highlands- custom trial arriages- see how go for year inc sexual relations tghen decide married properly
thought barbaric in eng
wales often live with kin
the household- gender stats
- Late age of marriage, between 27 and 29 for men, c. 26 for women –
- Many men and women never marry – c. 1/5 population in England.
why late age marriage
reflects the assumption that marry when can form a secure socioeconomic unit. High number of remarriages, especially for men, complicates ideas of virginity and femininity?
why many men and women not marry
Demographic expansion – high numbers of journeymen, wage labourers etc. who don’t achieve economic independence; possibilities for unmarried women to support themselves through paid labour.
womens work pratcially
-can make textiles; married women can trade through specific feme sole customs in London and boroughs.
-As much as 60% of married women in London supported themselves through their own labour to some extent.
-In periods of economic contraction, it was women’s opportunities which declined first.
- Guilds- silk trade for example, men formed and forced women out of the trade which they had previously constituted the majority in c1600.
sexual freedoms
trail marriages in highlands
restoration court
libertinism