Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-68ccn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-14T10:19:08.115Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Garthine Walker
Garthine Walker
Affiliation:
The University of Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Within the historiography of gender and reputation in early modern Europe, female and male honour are usually presented as being incommensurable; yet they are constantly compared. Female honour has been discussed primarily in the context of sexual reputation. Male honour is commonly imagined as ‘more complex’, involving matters of deference, physical prowess, economic and professional competence and die avoidance of public ridicule. Thus the predominant model of gendered honour has been oppositional—female to male, private to public, passive to active, individual to collective and, by extension, chastity to deeds. Such a model, however, is misconceived. Just as the honour of men could be bound up with sexuality and the body, so these constituted merely one—albeit powerful—concomitant of feminine honour. Sexual probity was indeed central to the dominant discourse of early modern gender ideology, and historians have quite properly noted the significance of a social code of female honour ‘which was overwhelmingly seen in sexual terms’. But the potency of this discourse has itself frequently led to the selection of sources in which sexual conduct and reputation are central issues, and in which sexual constructions of female dishonour are immediately visible Because women's honour has effectively been imagined in terms of dishonour, constructions of shame—especially those associated with sexuality and sexual behaviour—have been privileged over, or compounded with, those of affront. Even when it has been noted that sexual insult could be a mundane response ‘in every sort of local and personal conflict’, conceptualisations of women's honour have been defined overwhelmingly by the nature of such responses rather than the conflicts themselves.

Type
Honour and Reputation in Early-Modern England
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 6 , December 1996 , pp. 235 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 E.g., Ruff, J.R., Crime, Justice and Public Order in Old Regime France. The Senechausees of Libourne and Bazas, 1696–1798 (1984), 73–4, 167–9, at 73Google Scholar; Roper, L., Oedipus and the Devil. Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (1994) [hereafter Roper, Oedipus], 65, 108–9Google Scholar.

2 Roper, , Oedipus, 108Google Scholar; Cohen, T.V. and Cohen, E.S., Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials Before the Papal Magistrates (Toronto, 1995) [hereafter Cohen and Cohen, Words and Deeds], 23–4Google Scholar.

3 Fletcher, A., Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800 (New Haven and London, 1995) [hereafter Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination], 101–5, 124, at 101Google Scholar. See also PittRivers, J., ‘Honour and Social Status’, in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. Peristiany, J.G. (1965) [hereafter Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour and Social Status’], 42–6, 52–3, 62–71Google Scholar.

4 E.g., Cavallo, S. and Cerutti, S., ‘Female Honor and the Social Control of Reproduction in Piedmont between 1600 and 1800’, in Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, ed. Muir, E. and Ruggiero, G. (1990) [hereafter Sex and Gender, ed. Muir and Ruggiero], 73–109Google Scholar; Ferrante, L., ‘Honor Regained: Women in the Casa del Soccorsco di San Paolo in Sixteenth-Century Bologna’ [hereafter Ferrante, ‘Honor Regained’], in Sex and Gender, ed.Muir, and Ruggiero, , 46–72Google Scholar; Roper, , Oedipus, 65, 107, 108, 229Google Scholar; Gowing, L., ‘Gender and the Language of Insult in Early Modern London’, History Workshop Journal XXXV (1993), 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Gowing, L., ‘Language, Power and the Law: Women's Slander Litigation in Early Modern London’, in Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, ed. Kermode, J. and Walker, G. (1994) [hereafter Women, Crime and the Courts, ed. Kermode and Walker], 26–47, at 30Google Scholar.

6 On social and personal codes of honour, see Schneider, P., ‘Honor and Conflict in a Sicilian Town’, Anthropology Quarterly, XLII, 3 (1969) [hereafter Schneider, ‘Honor and Conflict’], 144–5Google Scholar.

7 Cohen, T.V., ‘The Lay Liturgy of Affront in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Journal of Social History, XXV (1991–1992) [hereafter Cohen, ‘Lay Liturgy of Affront’], 857Google Scholar.

8 Cust, R., ‘Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England: The Case of Beaumont v. Hastings’, Past & Present, CXLIX (1995), 91Google Scholar; Rigby, S.R., English Society in the Later Middle Ages: Class, Status, Gender (1995), 280Google Scholar. Cf. Chaytor, M., ‘Husband(ry): Narratives of Rape in the Seventeenth Century’, Gender and History VII, 3 (1995) [hereafter Chaytor, ‘Husband(ry)’], 382–4Google Scholar.

9 Pitt-Rivers, , ‘Honour and Social Status’, 21–2Google Scholar.

10 Schneider, , ‘Honor and Conflict’, 144Google Scholar.

11 Cheshire Record Office, Quarter Sessions Files [hereafter QJF] 95/3, fos. 106, 103, 104.

12 Pitt-Rivers, , ‘Honour and Social Status’, 22Google Scholar.

13 Fletcher, , Gender, Sex and Subordination, 223, 226Google Scholar; Erickson, A.L., Women and Property in Early Modern England (1993), 53–4Google Scholar; Vickery, A., ‘Women and the World of Goods: A Lancashire Consumer and her Possessions, 1751–81’, in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. Brewer, John and Porter, Roy (1993), 283Google Scholar.

14 Cited in Ezell, M.. The Patriarch's Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family (1987), 134, 176–7, 137Google Scholar, and see 36–42, 133–7.

15 Cited in Fletcher, , Gender, Sex and Subordination, 226, 268Google Scholar.

16 Cheshire Diocesan Record Office, Consistory Court Cause Papers [hereafter EDC] 5 (1624)2, William and Anne Blanchard c. John and Margaret Blanchard. My italic.

17 EDC 5(1626)2, John Frances c. Katherine Sponne.

18 EDC 5(1628)7, Sarah Warman c. Ellen Wright.

19 Meldrum, T., ‘A Woman's Court in London: Defamation at the Bishop of London's Consistory Court, 1700–1745’, London Journal, XIX, 1 (1994), 8Google Scholar.

20 E.g., EDC 5(1628)1, Margery Chambers c. Thomas Williams; EDC 5(1669)28, Mary Mainwaring c. Jane Tompson.

21 EDC 5(1661)38, Eleaner Waine c. Richard Tottie. My italic.

22 EDC 5(1667)47, Isabell Anyon c. Robert Moulson. See also EDC 5(1663)41, Ann Taylor c. Frances Eaton.

23 Chaytor, , ‘Husband(ry)’, 398–9Google Scholar.

24 QJF 89/2, fo. 231; QJF 89/3, fo. 36.

25 QJF 49/1, fo. 165; Cheshire Record Office, Quarter Sessions Book, OJB 1/5, fo. 69v.

26 Walker, G., ‘Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern Cheshire’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1994) [hereafter Walker, ‘Crime, Gender and Social Order’], 253–68Google Scholar.

27 EDC 5(1620)26, Anne Lea c. Anne Lewis.

28 QJF 95/2, fos. 49, 85, 87.

29 QJF 95/3, fo. 96. See also QJF 93/1, fos. 92, 93, 94, 95; QJF 95/1, fo. 61.

30 E.g, QJF 51/3, fo. 22; QJF 95/4, fo. 35.

31 Cohen, , ‘Lay Liturgy of Affront’, 862Google Scholar.

32 Cohen, and Cohen, , Words and Deeds, 23Google Scholar.

33 Gowing, ‘Language, Power and the Law’, passim; G. Walker, ‘Women, Theft and the World of Stolen Goods’, in Women, Crime and the Courts, Kermode and Walker, passim.

34 Bohstedt, J., ‘Gender, Household and Community Politics: Women in English Riots 1790–1810’, Past and Present, CXX (1988), 88–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Dekker, R.M., ‘Women in Revolt: Popular Protest and its Social Basis in Holland in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Theory and Society, XVI (1987), 337–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 E.g., QJF 89/2, fo. 56.

36 QJF 51/3, fo. 112.

37 Walker, , ‘Crime, Gender and Social Order’, 243–53Google Scholar.

38 E.g., QJF 49/1, fo. 139; QJF 49/2, fo. 104; QJF 49/2, fos. 106, 107; QJF 51/3, fo. 112; QJF 89/2, fos. 191, 192; QJF 89/3, fo. 76; QJF 89/4, fos. 75, 76; QJF 95/4, fo. 55; QJF 97/1, fos. 57, 93.

39 QJF 49/2, fos. 67, 176; QJF 51/2, fo. 119.

40 QJF 51/3, fo. 112; QJF 51/4, fos. 113, 163.

41 QJF 49.2. fos. 156, 163; QJF 49/3, fo. 58. See also QJF 49/3, fo. 88; QJF 51/1, fo. 117; QJF 51/3, fo. 99.

42 QJF 55/1, fo. 47. See also QJF 55/3, fo. 95; QJF 95/4, fo. 68.

43 QJF 89/2, fo. 213.

44 Gowing, L., ‘Women, Sex and Honour: The London Church Courts, 1572–1640’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1993), 82Google Scholar.

45 Cheshire City Record Office, Quarter Sessions Files, QSF 67, fos. 4, 10, 11.

46 Ferrante, , ‘Honor Regained’, 57Google Scholar.

47 E.g., EDC 5 (1620)23, Jane Leadbetter c. Elizabeth Sutton; EDC 5(1622)36, Elizabeth Billinge alias Billington c. Alice Rogerson; EDC 5(1626)32, Richard Wood and Mary Wood his daughter c. Randle Kirkham; EDC 5(1626)3, Jane Cattarall c. William and Elizabeth Cattarall; EDC 5(1626)81, Alice Ratcliffe c. Alice Collinge.

48 QJF 79/1, fo. 116. My italic.

49 Sharpe, J.A., ‘Witchcraft and Women in Seventeenth-Century England: Some Northern Evidence’, Continuity and Change, VI (1991), 179–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roper, , Oedipus, 199–225Google Scholar.

50 I am grateful to Andy Wood for commenting upon a draft of this essay.