From culture to childbirth, money to marriage and wooing to widowhood, Rosemary O'Day introduces us to the lives of women in early modern Britain and the North American colonies. Dispelling the myth that women during this period were weak characters dominated by husbands and fathers, O'Day reveals these women to be important agents in the social, economic, religious and cultural lives of their societies who exercised considerable influence on the world around them. Strong women, she argues, were not the exception but the norm at this time and in many, even most, cases their menfolk valued and colluded in their strength. These women did not exist in a vacuum. In examining the differing lives of married women in the old and new worlds O'Day challenges the assumption that women of the North American colonies had more agency than those in Britain. She demonstrates that gender is indeed a social construct and that different societies will construct it differently. However, far from leading us into the realms of abstract speculation, O'Day focuses on the real lives of real women, exploring how far their experience was determined by their family roles and to what extent they existed as individuals, expanding their own horizonsand those of future women.

The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450-1800 looks at the growth of a professional working class from the Tudor period to the early nineteenth century, a working class vital in the development of a recognizably modern world. Examines the differences between the 'lettered' and the leisured classes and explores the lives of lawyers, politicians, physicians, teachers and clerics. Those interested in British or social history. Hardcover - 0-582-29265-4 $ 84.95 y

Women in early modern Britain and colonial America were not the weak husband- and father-dominated characters of popular myth. Quite the reverse, strong women were the norm. They exercised considerable influence as important agents in the social, economic, religious and cultural life of their societies. This book shows how women on both sides of the Atlantic, while accepting a patriarchal system with all its advantages and disadvantages, contrived to carve out for themselves meaningful lives. Unusually it concentrates not only on the making and meaning of marriage, but also upon the partnership between men and women. It also looks at the varied roles – cultural, religious and educational – that women played both inside and outside marriage during the key period 1500-1760. Women emerge as partners, patrons, matchmakers, investors and network builders.

Explaining the curious legal doctrine of "coverture," William Blackstone famously declared that "by marriage, husband and wife are one person at law." This "covering" of a wife's legal identity by her husband meant that the greatest subordination of women to men developed within marriage. In England and its colonies, generations of judges, legislators, and husbands invoked coverture to limit married women's rights and property, but there was no monolithic concept of coverture and their justifications shifted to fit changing times: Were husband and wife lord and subject? Master and servant? Guardian and ward? Or one person at law? The essays in Married Women and the Law offer new insights into the legal effects of marriage for women from medieval to modern times. Focusing on the years prior to the passage of the Divorce Acts and Married Women's Property Acts in the late nineteenth century, contributors examine a variety of jurisdictions in the common law world, from civil courts to ecclesiastical and criminal courts. By bringing together studies of several common law jurisdictions over a span of centuries, they show how similar legal rules persisted and developed in different environments. This volume reveals not only legal changes and the women who creatively used or subverted coverture, but also astonishing continuities. Accessibly written and coherently presented, Married Women and the Law is an important look at the persistence of one of the longest lived ideas in British legal history. Contributors include Sara M. Butler (Loyola), Marisha Caswell (Queen’s), Mary Beth Combs (Fordham), Angela Fernandez (Toronto), Margaret Hunt (Amherst), Kim Kippen (Toronto), Natasha Korda (Wesleyan), Lindsay Moore (Boston), Barbara J. Todd (Toronto), and Danaya C. Wright (Florida).

"Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750 brings together research on women and gender across the Low Countries, a culturally contiguous region that was split by the Eighty Years War into the Protestant Dutch Republic in the north and the Spanish-controlled, Catholic Hapsburg Netherlands in the south. The authors of this interdisciplinary volume highlight women's experiences of social class, as family members, before the law, and as authors, artists, and patrons, as well as the workings of gender in art and literature. In studies ranging from microhistories to surveys, the book reveals the Low Countries as a remarkable historical laboratory for its topic and points to the opportunities the region holds for future scholarly investigations"--

Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750 brings together research on women and gender across the Low Countries, a culturally contiguous region that was split by the Eighty Years' War into the Protestant Dutch Republic in the North and the Spanish-controlled, Catholic Hapsburg Netherlands in the South. The authors of this interdisciplinary volume highlight women’s experiences of social class, as family members, before the law, and as authors, artists, and patrons, as well as the workings of gender in art and literature. In studies ranging from microhistories to surveys, the book reveals the Low Countries as a remarkable historical laboratory for its topic and points to the opportunities the region holds for future scholarly investigations. Contributors: Martine van Elk, Martha Howell, Martha Moffitt Peacock, Sarah Joan Moran, Amanda Pipkin, Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Margit Thøfner, and Diane Wolfthal.

This volume considers women's roles in the conflicts and negotiations of the early modern world. Essays explore the ways that gender shapes women's agency in times of war, religious strife, and economic change. How were conflict and concord gendered in histories, literature, music, and political, legal, didactic, and religious treatises? Four interdisciplinary plenary topics ground this exploration: Negotiations, Economies, Faiths & Spiritualities, and Pedagogies. Scholars focus upon many regions of the early modern world--the Atlantic world, the Mediterranean world, Granada, Indonesia, the Low Countries, England, and Italy--inflected by such religions as Islam, Catholicism, and Reformed Protestantism, as they came into contact with indigenous spiritualities and with one another. Essays and workshop summaries analyze how gender and class are implicated in economic change and assess the ways gender and religion map onto voyages of trade, exploration, or imperialism. They investigate how women, as individuals and as members of political or family networks, were instrumental in transmitting, promoting, supporting, or thwarting different religions during times of religious crises. This volume also offers methods for teaching and researching these topics. It will be invaluable to scholars of medieval and early modern women's studies, especially those working in history, literature, languages, musicology, and religious studies.