Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-qlrfm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T11:39:16.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Men's Dilemma: The Future of Patriarchy in England 1560–1660

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Anthony Fletcher
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

PATRIARCHY was very old when Queen Elizabeth ascended the English throne. Historians have sought its origins in die Old Testament record of the creation of Jewish monotiieism and in the social conditions of Hebrew society. They have explored die contributions of classical Greece and early Christian thinking to its development and evolution. By the time that the Tudor dynasty ruled in England, the institutionalised male dominance over women and children in die family and die extension of diat subordination to women in society in general, die scriptural patriarchy with which I am concerned, had become so deeply embedded diat it has appeared immutable. Something so permanent, something that was so given, has seemed not to deserve scrutiny by die historians of early modern England. It was socialist and radical feminists who took up die notion of patriarchy in die 1960s because they needed a concept which would help diem to theorise male dominance. From dieir contemporary perspective also, patriarchy appeared immovable and monumental. There was a tendency among them at first to study it as such: feminist historians approached die past wim die premise diat there has always been an undifferentiated and consistent male commitment to domination and control over women in every sphere of life. The conflation of patriarchy with misogyny, I suggest, produced an unhistorical patriarchy as die staple of women's history. It is only fairly recendy diat historical studies of gender have broken free from diese shackles, diat historians have begun to penetrate die discourses and strategies dirough which men have—or have not— coerced, or oppressed or subordinated women through die ages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 4 , December 1994 , pp. 61 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1994

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 Lerner, G., The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar.

2 G.Lloyd, The Man of Reason: Male and Female in Western Philosophy (1984)Google Scholar; D. H. Coole, Women in Political Theory: From Ancient Misogyny to Contemporary Feminism; Ruether, R. Radford, Sexism and God-talk (Boston, Massachusetts, 1983)Google Scholar; Maclean, I., The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800, eds. Roper, M. and Tosh, J., (1991), 1–24Google Scholar; Scott, J., ‘Gender: a useful category of historical analysis’, American Historical Review XCI (1986), 1067Google Scholar; Purkiss, D., ‘Material girls: the seventeenth-century woman debate’, in Women, Texts and Histories 1575–1660, eds. Brant, C. and Purkiss, D., 71–2Google Scholar; Block, G., ‘Women's history and gender history: aspects of an international debate’, Gender and History I (1989), 7–30Google Scholar. See also Thompson's, E. P. comments on the use of patriarchy as a historical concept in his Customs in Common (1991), 499–501Google Scholar.

4 e.g. Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850 (1987)Google Scholar; Mendus, S. and Rendall, J. eds, Sexuality and Subordination, (1989)Google Scholar; Walby, S., Patriarchy at Work (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar.

5 Manful Assertions, 7.

6 D. E. Underdown, ‘The taming of the scold: the enforcement of patriarchal authority in early modern England’, and Amussen, S. D., ‘Gender, family and the social order 1560–1725’, in Order and Disorder in Early Modem England, eds. Fletcher, A. J. and Stevenson, J. (Cambridge, 1985), 116–36Google Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., ‘Witchcraft and women in seventeenth-century England: some northern evidence’, Continuity and Change VI (1991), 182–3Google Scholar.

7 These studies will appear in my forthcoming book Transforming Gender: Men and Women in Early Modem England (Yale University Press).

8 Hattaway, M., ‘Drama and society’; in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaisance Drama, eds. Braunmuller, A. R. and Hattaway, M., 91–6Google Scholar; McLuskie, K., ‘The patriarchal bard: feminist criticism and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure for Measure’, in Political Shakespeare, eds. Dollimore, J. and Sinfield, A. (Manchester, 1985), 88–92Google Scholar.

9 Cited in McLuskie, K., Renaissance Dramatists (1989), 7Google Scholar.

10 Greenblatt, S., Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley, 1988), 88–92Google Scholar.

11 Collinson, P., The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1988), 72–3Google Scholar; Wall, A. D., ed., Two Elizabethan Women: Correspondence of Joan and Maria Thynne 1575–1611 (Wiltshire Record Society, XXXVUI, 1983), 32, 36–7. 48Google Scholar.

12 As You Like It, act 3, scene 2, 95–7; Gouge, W., Domestical Duties (1622), 376Google Scholar.

13 The Taming of the Shrew, act 4, scene 1, 183–4, 188–9; Miller, J., Subsequent Performances (1986), 121–2Google Scholar.

14 Henderson, K.U. and McManus, B. F., eds., Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England 1540–1640 (Urbana, Illinois, 1985), 209Google Scholar.

15 Ingram, M., ‘Ridings, Rough Music and the “Reform of Popular Culture” in Early Modern England’, Past and Present 105 (1984), 79–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, 111–12.

16 Rutter, C., Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today (1988), 12Google Scholar.

17 Rutter, , Clamorous Voices, 13–14Google Scholar.

18 Fletcher, A. J., ‘The Protestant Idea of Marriage’, in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modem Britain, eds. Fletcher, A.J. and Roberts, P. R. (Cambridge, 1994), I75–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 The Taming of the Shrew, act 2, scene 1, 214–20; Rutter, , Clamorous Voices, 11Google Scholar; Jardine, L., Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (1983), 121Google Scholar.

20 The Taming of the Shrew, act 5, scene 2, 136–79.

21 Miller, , Subsequent Performances, 122Google Scholar.

22 Rutter, , Clamorous Voices, 24–5Google Scholar.

23 For feminist and other readings see Woodbridge, L., Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Mature of Womankind 1540–1820 (Urbana, Illinois, 1986), 206–7, 221–2Google Scholar; McLuskie, , Renaissance Dramatists, 6–10Google Scholar.

24 For recent statements of this view see Houlbrooke, R., The English Family, 1450–1700 (1984) 119Google Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., Early Modem England: A Social History 1550–1760 (1987), 62–9Google Scholar; Wrightson, K., English Society, 1580–1680 (1982), 100Google Scholar.

25 Williamms, C., tr. Thomas Plotter's Travels in England 1599 1937), 181–2Google Scholar; Ray, J.A Collection of English Proverbs (1670), 54Google Scholar. For citation of the proverb in social descriptions see Amussen, S. D., An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modem England 1988), 48Google Scholar.

26 Tilley, M.P., A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, 1950), 741–9Google Scholar.

27 Ray, , Collection of English Proverbs, 50Google Scholar.

28 For a short discussion of these and other demonic women in the drama see Belsey, C., The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (1985), 183–8Google Scholar. See also McLuskie, in Political Shakespeare, 98–106Google Scholar; Callaghan, D., Women and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy: A study of King Lear, Othello, The Duchess of Maffie and The White Devil (1989), especially 49–73Google Scholar.

29 Beir, L. M., Sufferers and Healers: The Experience of Illness in Seventeenth-Century England (1987), 213–5Google Scholar; Jardine, , Still Harping on Daughters, 104Google Scholar; Maclean, , Renaissance Notion of Woman, 41Google Scholar. I explore this issue fully in my forthcoming book Transforming Gender.

30 Tilley, Dictionary of Proverbs, nos, W653, W658, W673, W674.

31 Smith, H., ‘Gynaecology and ideology in seventeenth-century England’, in Liberating Women's History, ed. Carroll, B. A. (Urbana, 1976), 97–114Google Scholar; Beier, , Sufferers and Healers, 126Google Scholar.

32 Tilley, Dictionary of Proverbs, nos W638, W649, W659, W710, W713, W720.

33 Roper, L., The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989), 131Google Scholar.

34 The Discontented Married Man: or a merry new song that was pen'd in foul weather, of a scold that could not hep her lips together, in Chappell, W., ed. The Roxburghe Ballads (1871), I, 295–9Google Scholar. The editor dates the printing to the reign of Charles I.

35 Citations from a review by Hampson, Daphne in The Times Higher Education Supplement, 24 05 1991, 18Google Scholar.

36 Laqueur, T., Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Masachussetts, 1990)Google Scholar.

37 As You Like It, act 2, scene 4, 3–7.

38 Woodbridge, , Women and the English Renaissance, 139Google Scholar.

39 Deuteronomy, chapter 22, verse 5: ‘A woman must not wear men's clothes nor a man put on women's dress; anyone who does this is detestable to Yahweh your God’. Stubbes, P., The Anatomy of Abuses (1583)Google Scholar, sig F5.

40 Woodbridge, , Women and the English Renaissance, 141–3Google Scholar; Shapiro, S.C., ‘Feminists in Elizabethan England’, History Today 1977, 704Google Scholar.

41 Frost, D. L., ed. The Selected Plays of Thomas Middleton (Cambridge, 1978), 53–4Google Scholar.

42 Woodbridge, , Women and the English Renaissance, 139Google Scholar.

43 Henderson, and McManus, , eds, Half Humankind, 266–8, 279–80Google Scholar; Woodbridge, , Women and the English Renaissance, 217Google Scholar.

44 Jardine, , Still Harping on Daughters, 154–6Google Scholar.

45 Henderson, and McManus, , eds, Half Humankind, 267, 271Google Scholar.

46 McClure, N. E., ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, (Philadelphia, 1939), II, pp. 286–7, 289Google Scholar; Woodbridge, , Women and the English Renaissance, 143–4Google Scholar. Henderson, and McManus, , eds., Half Humankind, 275Google Scholar.

47 Bowers, F., ed. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker (Cambridge, 1958), III, 11, 39, 43–6Google Scholar; Woodbridge, , Women and the English Renaissance, 254–5Google Scholar.

48 Roper, , Holy Household, 5Google Scholar.

49 Gouge, W., Domestkal Duties (1622)Google Scholar; Dod, J. and Cleaver, R., A Godly Form of Household Government (1614)Google Scholar; Whateley, W., A Bride Bush (1623)Google Scholar; Rogers, D., Matrimonial Honour (1642)Google Scholar.

50 Seaver, P. S., Wallington's World: A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London (London, 1985), 79Google Scholar.

51 Gouge, , Domestkal Duties, xxxGoogle Scholar. For accounts of this episode see Collinson, , The Birthpangs of Protestant England, 71Google Scholar and Amussen, , An Ordered Society, 44–7.Google Scholar

52 Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modem Britain, eds. Fletcher, and Roberts, , 161–81Google Scholar.

53 Woodbridge, , Women and the English Renaissance, 225–35Google Scholar.

54 OED, gossip 3.

55 , S. Rowlands, Well Met Gossip (1619)Google Scholar.

56 Rowlands, S., A Crew of Kind Gossips all met to be Merry (1613)Google Scholar sig D 3 v.

57 Ray, , A Collection of English Proverbs, 52Google Scholar.

58 Tilley, , Dictionary of Proverbs, no W 695Google Scholar.

59 Henderson, and McManus, , eds. Half Humankind, 290Google Scholar.

60 Othello, act 3, scene 3, 23–4.

61 Braithwaite, R., Art Asleep Husband (1640)Google Scholar; Heywood, T., A Curtain Lecture (1637), 183–4Google Scholar.

62 Wurzbach, N., The Rise of the English Street Ballad 1550–1650 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar; Watt, T., Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), 11–130Google Scholar.

63 ‘A Banquet for Sovereign Husbands’, in Rollins, H. E., ed. A Pepysian Garland: Black Letter Broadside Ballads of the Years 1595–1639 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971), 328–31Google Scholar. I am grateful to Elizabedi Foyster for drawing this ballad to my attention.

64 Foyster, E. A., ‘A Laughing Matter? Marital Discord and Gender Control in Seventeenth-Century England’, Rural History IV (1993), 1–17Google Scholar.

65 This paragraph is based on Underdown in Order and Disorder in Early Modem England, 119–28.

66 Thompson, , Customs in Common, 488Google Scholar.

67 Cited in Amussen, , An Ordered Society, 118Google Scholar.

68 Underdown in Order and Disorder in Early Modem England, 127–36; Past and Present 105 (1984) 79–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 For this theme see Underdown, D. E., Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford, (1985), 44–72Google Scholar and Fire Under Heaven (1992), 90–129.

70 P.Crawford, ‘The Construction and experience of maternity in seventeenth-century England’ in Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England, ed. Fildes, V., (1990), 6Google Scholar.

71 18 Elizabeth c.3.

72 Hunt, W., The Puritan Moment (Cambridge, Masachussetts, 1983), 75–6Google Scholar.

73 7 James I c.4; Fletcher, A.J., Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (1986), 252–7Google Scholar.

74 21 James I, c. 27; Kent, J. R., ‘Attitudes of members of the House of Commons to the regulation of personal conduct in late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research XLV (1972), 69Google Scholar.

75 Wrightson, K., ‘Infanticide in earlier seventeenth-century England’, Local Population Studies XV (1975), 10–22Google Scholar.

76 For an interesting parallel in the Victorian period see Nead, L., Myths of Sexuality (Oxford, 1988), 80–118Google Scholar.

77 Ray, , A Collection of English Proverbs, 50Google Scholar.

78 Davies, K. M., ‘Change and continuity in literary advice on marriate’ in Marriage and Society, ed. Outhwaite, R. B., (1981), 68Google Scholar; Gouge, , Domestical Duties, 394–7Google Scholar; Whateley, , Bride Bush, 96–116, 123–5, 210–16Google Scholar; Amussen, , An Ordered Society, 42–3Google Scholar.

79 Heale, W., An Apology for Women (1609), 18–19Google Scholar.

80 Snawsel, R., A Looking Glass for Married Folks (1631), 109–12Google Scholar.

81 Heywood, , A Curtain Lecture, 189–92Google Scholar.

82 Keller, E. F., Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven and London, 1985), 6–8, 33–42Google Scholar.

83 Zohar, D., The Quantum Self (1990), 38, 74–6Google Scholar.

84 Davis, , Society and Culture in Early Modem France, 151Google Scholar.