Gender Flashcards
Key sources
Knox, Monstrous Regiment (1558); Aylmer (1559 reply)
Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene (1590/6)
Dodd and Cleaver (1598)
William Gouge (1622)
Richard Brathwaite (1631)
John Donne, The Autumnal, The Sun Rising (1630’s)
Pepys Diary (1660)
Lady Margaret Hoby’s dairy; Lady Grace Mildmay’s medicine and recipe books/prayers.
Key ideas: gender
Masculinity as tightly controlled as femininity throughout the period, subject to hierarchy in status terms
Differences in expectations according to status/rural/urban?
Key monarchs:
Mary I (1553-58) Elizabeth I (1558-1603)
Women and reputation/honour
Dabhoiwala: reputation “a compound of social and moral status”; chastity “a prerequisite, rather than a measure, of reputation”
Gowing: “sexual insult belonged to a culture that perceived women’s virtue, honour, and reputation through sexuality”. no equivalent to “whore” for men
Men and reputation/honour
Shepard: patriarchy increasingly dependent on “distinctions of social position”; honour dependent on “virtue/honour/character” (morals) for women but this “of subsidiary importance to men” - instead = worldly values of ‘rank’ and ‘quality’
in 1604-28 1/5 of population never married (positive culture of excess bravado)
Women’s work
Gowing: “women had duties, work, and social lives both outside and inside the house”
Women and power
Gowing: 16% of Southwark households headed by women in 1631.
1570-1640 = 1800 suits of sexual slander/marriage and 85% were by single female litigants.
1570: women suing 1/2 total sex/marriage cases; 80% by 1620.
Capp: 20% women heading households, and “female sociability” “provided ritual practical advice and support”
Female rule - issues
Gender - inner sanctum, question of marriage and control
Elizabeth I and faction
Hanmer - “no dispute that faction did dominate high politics in the later 1590’s”
Neale - “endemic” vs. Adams: “occasional”
Williams: Leicester/burghley: “loosely constructed and volatile groupings”. Eg’s of success: Ralegh 40,000 acres in Ireland, vs. Spenser: £50p.a. Burghley’s son Robert Cecil gaining secretaryship rather than Essex.
Adams: privy chamber: “feminine inner sanctum”. 1590’s “battleground for factional struggle”
Elizabeth I and court management
GUY - 2nd reign after 1585 and Dudley’s death. E didn’t refill positions - 13 LL left open, court vacancies unfilled: privy C = 10 in 1598, half the no. of 1559. Corruption: Shirley accused of embezzling 30,000 from treasury in 1593 and Burghley took £3000+ for wardships within two years.
Adams: court expenditure: 10,000-90,000 p.a. over rule, mainly on food.
Body politic and mixed monarchy:
McLaren: wisdom of many “imparted grace to a female prince, and thereby preserved both protestantism and national autonomy”
Cult of Virgin Queen
Consciously chosen because a virgin = someone who could be worshipped.
Used in 1590’s in opposition to the Anjou match
Sieve portraits from 1597-83. 135 surviving paintings and 25 book images.
Doran - alternative meanings of symbols in portraits - Rose, phoenix and Pelican = Tudor, hereditary rule, and charity, as well as virginity…
KING - bible and sword = similar emblems inherited from HVIII (used to signify his authority coming directly from God) to be a prot. monarch.
“bookends”
START: pre-reformation women as abbesses (positions of unique power) - eg. Syon Abbey, richest one pre-reformation, last leader: Abbess Jordan.
END: Restoration libertinism, eg. Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine
Dodd and Cleaver - Quotes
1598 - “A household is as it were a little commonwealth”, “the duty of the husband is to travell abroad to seeke living: and the wives dutie is to keepe the house”
William Gouge - quotes
“Of Domesticall Duties”, 1622
Ephesians 5:22 “wives submit unto your husbands, as unto the lord”
“a bad husband, wife, parent… is no good christian”
“of all the inferiours in a family, wives are far the most excellent”
Husband - “his place is expressed in the metaphor of an head”
Richard Brathwait - quotes
1631, “The English Gentleman”
“Education is the seasoner or instructor of Youth”
recreation: “refresher of the minde, and an enabler to the bodie”
fishing analogy man = fish “is ever nibbling at the bait of vanitie”
“the comfort of an active life consists in societie”
“these garish fashions agree well with none but prostitutes and shameless women”
MODERATION in all
“he that wants a wife to cherish him, had had of some money to cheere him”
Knox - quotes
“The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women” (1558)
“how abominable before God is the empire or rule of a wicked woman”
“to promote a woman to bear rule, superiority… is repugnant to nature”
God: “thy will shall be subject to thy husband, and he shall bear dominion over thee”
Aylmer - quotes
Reply, 1559.
God: “he sendeth a woman by birth, we may not refuse her by violence”
marriage: “she may be some mans head as in her household”
Subdivisions of gender
class, urban/rural, change over time, masculinity/femininity, sexuality/chastity, religion
Subdivisions of patriarchy
State, town/village (male hierarchy of status), household (conceived in terms of econ. differentiation) - romantic, child/parent, and child/child hierarchies also at play.
Subversion: homosexuality/non-conformist modes of masculinity (eg. libertinism - this could actually enhance male honour in 1660’s)
Barbara Palmer
Long-standing mistress of Charles II.
Countess of Castlemaine (5 children by C1 from 1660 onwards)
- Pepys: “my Lady Castlemaine rules him”.
- Dabhoiwala: “‘honour’ was something she gained rather than lost through her unchastity”
- Obituary: “satisfying the pleasure of a Prince… her birth and quality, was otherwise very noble”
Pepys quotes
1660 - “fit of jealousy for her dancing master”, “upon a small temptation I could be false to her, and therefore ought not to expect more justice from her”
Eg. of vulnerability of young working women
Gowing: Susan More, 25 yr old with an illegitimate child who had worked in 6 houses in 5 years.
Eg. of strength of women
Pollock; Barret-Lennard siblings - Anne gaining posessions within Belhus estate at father’s death in 1690’s and refusing to give them up to Dacre - taking furniture she was entitled to. Tried to dissuade him from a lawsuit but fought it when necessary. - showed siblings “were at one and the same time allies and rivals”, shows fem “willingness of women to stand up for their rights”
