Gender Issues In Early Modern England

In 1610 James I patronized parliament by asserting his authority through his position of Parens Patraie, illustrating the popular contemporary notion of the father as unquestioned ruler, from the macrocosm of the state to the microcosm of the household. Such political rhetoric is exemplary of the popular patriarchy of the early modern period in England. The fusion of the household into the little commonwealth in the post-Reformation period hailed a new era of separate spheres ideology, as to use Dodd and Cleaver's A Godlie Forme of Household Government notions of the godwife tied to the domestic sphere whilst the husband 'travel[ed] abroade.' The feminist historiography of Andrea Dworkin et al view the witch-hunts of the period at the zenith of this sophisticated patriarchy. Yet, the sophistication of Patriarchy in the period is problematic in itself. As asserted in Susan Amussen's studies, if popular culture serves a 'perceived [public] need' may the expanse of treatise, pamphlet or public shaming ritual concerning male domestic authority signify a response to a perceived challenge to it? Recent historiography has certainly bought to light a more complex relationship between patriarchal theory and early modern reality. Thus, a focused analysis of gender relation will bring into question whether the conventional theories of male domestic authority hold true in the face of day-to-day gender relation. It is with ease of argument that one may assert conduct books of the period provided ballast for real patriarchy through a provision of clearly defined gender roles and expectation. To watch over 'the family at home when your husbands are abroad is your proper work' wrote non-conformist preacher Richard Baxter. Whilst Richard Allstree, who's text the Whole Dutie of Man (1659) went through fifty reprints in nearly as many years, believed that a woman's work at home to be so bountiful that ladies '.need not be much at a loss as how to entertain themselves, nor run abroad.' Such delineation of roles ties women through male domestic authority to the home, becoming as Ambroise Barnes of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne advised his daughters in the seventeenth century a veritable tortoise, rarely peeping into the male, public sphere. Yet, within the patriarchal theory may we find limitation through the more prescient early modern reality, economic survival. Financing the household meant for many early modern women a foray into the public sphere, in direct contrast to the conventions of patriarchal theory. In seventeenth century Colton, Devon lace-making provided the female population with a lucrative craft quite separate from their husbands. Within Alexandra Shephard's analysis of Cambridge University court cases one Margaret Swetson pronounced that 'she was worth £10' with no mention of her husband, in complete disregard to the legal convention of coverture. Without falling into the trap of exemplification of an independent early modern woman - as caricatured and generalised as the victim of feminist historiography in light of such economic strictures upon domestic order these cases add foundation to the arguments of Amussen & Capp of the wife as a 'domestic co-manager' or 'subordinate magistrate' as opposed to subservient homebody. The submissive wife of elite literature would certainly be a poor market barterer. Yet, as Alexandra Shephard has asserted maintenance of clear roles became intrinsic in the maintenance of credit and reputation within the Early Modern household. It is through such an assertion that one may argue of a societal need for patriarchal dialogue in all cultures, élite and common, from high-level treatise on marriage to the low level village skimmington as a response to a male concern with a rising challenge to the patriarchal system through the participation of females in the public sphere. It is through the figurative cliché of the shrew & the sheep that one may further read a male preoccupation with female behaviour in the period. Whilst one may use the scold as a case in point for the superiority of male domestic authority, the punitive measures against the lewd and loud female signifies a concern with maintenance of patriarchal order, challenged by female assertiveness. A case seen by the Court of the Star Chamber, 1662 sees the turned out servant Joan Knipe leading a large group of females against Thomas Bulwer and his family denouncing them as being a household of witches, pimps and whores, whilst six Middlesex women took a male neighbour to court for savagely beating a maidservant in the same year. As a plethora of recent studies such evidence allows for an assertion that the liminal space resided in by women in the early modern period in fact provided de facto authority, through the moralistic power of gossip. A power particularly dangerous whence one considers a sixth to a quarter of women between the Armada and the Popish Plot remained unmarried into their forties, further exacerbated by the fact the men of London where in fact outnumbered by women four to one by the time of the Restoration. Such assertions of female authority as previously discussed when correlated with evidence of increase in female agency in the public sphere fits in with the notion of the period being characterised by a moral panic exacerbated by a perceived gender crisis. Such crises provide foundation for David Underdown's argument of the period of 1560 - 1640 as characterised by 'an epidemic of scolding' & the 'punishing' of 'female assertiveness.' The cultural image of the Shrew and gossip from Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor (1592) to Samuel Rowland's Tis Merrie When Gossips Meete (1602) to popular ballad such as The Masterful Wife, may be read as more than reaction but part of Amussen's perceived need. A reaction to a perceived societal threat to patriarchal order from what Bernard Capp has termed a burgeoning 'female public opinion.' Scholars such as Rosalind Miles & Miranda Chaytor yet perceive the scold as a masculine construct maintaining submission, a veritable signifier of male oppression. As Matthew Griffith asserted '.tis the guise of the harlot to be forever babbling.' gossip then had as pejorative connotation in the early modern period as the modern. Furthermore, the linguistic root of the term gossip - 'god-sib' finds its inception in the very heart of the female sphere, the birthing chamber. The vocabulary of the vice then has an unavoidably female context. It is certainly true that when it came to defamation and the utilisation of language men held the upper hand; such male power is exemplified by the linguistic fragility of female reputation. To illuminate, Robert Shoemaker's research finds a London butter vendour branded a 'bitch' and a 'whore', for in-fact cheating people out of the correct weight of butter. Whilst Phoebe Cartwright faces court action for calling Margery Hipwell an 'impudent queane' out of anger not as an accusation of sexual misconduct. It is through the narrow stricture of female honesty as wholly based upon sexual chastity that we see 'the ultimate context of male authority.' Even male sexual slurs such as wittold, cuckold & whoremonger ultimately place the culpability with the female, it after all, being the woman who creates the illegitimate child damaging to early modern society. This 'sexual double standard' is illustrated in contemporary cases, Dorcas Newton with the backing of her servants accused William Garrod of rape, only to be charged with defamation. With notions of sexual misdemeanour as with the notion of gossip, rooted in the female sphere male culpability in any case became 'unenforceable in practice.' Yet further evidence shows women not as victims of a male imposed morality, but as co-operative in maintenance of such patriarchal mores. After all the defamers of the aforementioned court cases were women and there are a plethora more. A court case of 1632 sees adultress Margaret Ellis forced out of her lodgings by the scorned wife Mary Sadd, who had 'rousted her out of one place already.' Whilst away from the scolded wife, female moralistic power asserts itself in a more objective manor through informal female courts such as the 'Jury of Matrons.' One such group in Oxfordshire in 1584 met to examine a female accused of giving the vicar veneral disease. Whilst in Wellow, Somerset a Mrs Mary Lovett was stripped & forcibly washed with soap before casting her from society on account of adultery. As Judith Butler asserts, it is not only the male notion of the good-woman that asserts itself through defamation, but the female - reciprocal consensus therefore adding coherence and consistency to patriarchal mores. In a form of conclusion as such whilst it is as important not to view the female of the period as passive victim, one must not take evidence of female economic agency and independence as expedient to a notion of wholesale sliding male domestic authority. In fact, the survival of many such pieces of evidence of female independence and power, are resultant of court action. A signifier in itself of how such behaviour was outside of societal ideals. Perhaps we can see the basis for Merry E. Wiesner's assessment of a relationship between husband and wife, citizen and patriarchy 'far more complex than any simple patriarchal model would suggest.' Much as the issue of gendering of the witchcraft deposition, the patriarchal system from which it stemmed is a veritable quagmire of complexity - full to the brim with danger of generalisation, as such the nature of the historiography of male domestic authority in the Early Modern period will remain a dynamic subject of debate for many decades to come.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amussen, Susan, 'Gender, family & social order 1560 - 1725' in Fletcher, Anthony & Stevenson, John (eds), Order & Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985) Amussen, Susan, An Ordered Society: Gender & Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988) Davis, Zemon, Natalie, 'Women on top: symbolic sexual inversion & political disorder in early modern Europe' in idem, Society and Culture in Early Modern Europe (Stanford, 1975) Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words & Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 2005) Harris, Tim, Popular Culture in England, 1580 - 1850 (Basingstoke, 1995) Laurence, Anne, Women in England 1500 - 1760: A Social History (London, 1994) Kermode, Jenny & Walker, Garthine, Women, Crime & the Courts in Early Modern England (North Carolina, 1994) Shepard, Alexandra, 'Manhood, Credit & Patriarchy in Early Modern England c.1580-1640', Past & Present, No. 167 (May, 2000) pp. 75 - 106. Shoemaker, Robert, 'Separate Spheres? Ideology & Practice in London Gender Relations 1660 - 1740' in Macdonald, Michael, McClendon, Muriel & Ward, Joseph (eds.) Protestant Identities: Religion, Society & Self-Fashioning in Post-Reformation England (Stanford, 1999) Wrightson, Keith, English Society 1580 - 1680 (London, 2003)