Continuity and change and gender and family in the early modern period
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 23-05-18 13:01
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- Continuity and change and gender and family in the early modern period (according to Bernard Capp)
- The Protestant Reformation
- According to Roper
- Mixed blessing for women
- Removed (male) priests as indispensable
- Justification by faith alone made men and women spiritual equals
- Elevated status of marriage
- rejected celibacy as a superior state
- Through sermons and domestic conduct-books promoted values of married love, mutual responsibilities and mutual rights
- According to Ozment
- New marriage laws in towns such as Zurich
- Enabled both husbands and wives to sue for divorce and to remarry, if their partners had committed serious faults such as adultery and reconciliation proved impossible
- New marriage laws in towns such as Zurich
- Protestants always stressed father's authority
- Like Catholic reformers, they were anxious to regulate marriage more tightly by:
- discouraging informal weddings based on simple exchange of vows
- demanding parental approval
- prosecuting couples for premarital sex
- Like Catholic reformers, they were anxious to regulate marriage more tightly by:
- Divorce
- Remained everywhere difficult to obtain
- Impossible in Catholic countries and England
- Protestantism removed women's option of religious vocation and possibility of achieving position of authority
- Some women carved new forms of vocation for themselves
- In Germany, France and elsewhere, w can find devout women using their personal interpretation of scripture to challenge authority of Catholic Church or non-believing husband
- Others felt call to spread gospel by preaching or writing, and women played leading role in evangelical missions of early Quakers and early Methodists
- Some women carved new forms of vocation for themselves
- Protestant movements generally became more conservative and restrictive
- According to Roper
- The Catholic Reformation
- Triggered burst of female religious activity
- finding expression in lay orders devoted to working with poor and sick
- e.g. Angela's Merici's Ursilines in C16th Italy and Daughters of Charity in C17th France
- finding expression in lay orders devoted to working with poor and sick
- Triggered burst of female religious activity
- Work
- Guild control gradually weakened over period
- Women played prominent part in proto-industrial cloth and silk industries
- If mainly in ill-paid work at home as spinners and silk weavers
- As mot innovations in textile industry occurred outside guilds
- Opportunities for women opened up there as well as in burgeoning retail sector
- Broader changes in prevailing views of gender
- By C18th humoral understanding of body was losing ground
- Women increasingly seen as frail rather than threatening, needing protection, not control
- Reinforced men's perception of patriarchal authority as natural and essential
- Public debate over relations between sexes continued throughout period
- increasingly aired in print
- Many writers, drawing on scripture and history, pointed to striking examples of pious, brave and intelligent woemn
- According to Davis
- One C16th French poetess daringly argued Christ had been incarnated as a man only because a female saviour would have been unacceptable in Jewish society of his time
- Shakespeare created numerous heroines for stage who were witty, intelligent, witty and forceful
- if combative Katharina was eventually subdued in 'The Taming of the Shrew', tables were turned in John Fletcher's sequel 'The Tamer Tamed'
- Contemporary proverb
- Acknowledged need for women to play active role in family and community
- Advised that in choosing a wife 'better a shrew than a sheep'
- Proto-feminists
- Argued women were by nature equals of men and held back only by lack of educational opportunity
- In practice, intrinsic 'worth' of women posed little real threat to male control
- Even Mary Astell, who published brilliant critique of society's gender bias, could not suggest any means to bring about change
- A woman who had mastered enough legal expertise to practise as a solicitor in London was arrested in 1654 and dispatched to Bridewell among vagrants, pickpockets and prostitutes
- In 1793, French actress Olympe de Gouges was guillotined by Jacobins, after daring to demand political rights for men as well as women
- Even by French Revolution, gender equality remained shocking idea
- The Protestant Reformation
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