Changing Conceptions Of Women In Sixteenth And Seventeenth Century England. (volumes I - Ii).

Abstract

This work is concerned with the change in ideas about women and their place in society and its relationship to changes in the social and production relations in English society as a whole which were occurring in sixteenth and seventeenth century. The central questions considered are whether change(s) occurred, what the nature of the change(s) was(were), what caused the change(s) and what effects the change(s) engendered. These questions are examined through the study of contemporary written literature, both lay and clerical, contemporary drama and the diaries, journals and autobiographies left by the members of literate strata. The ideological changes which are shown to have occurred are such as demonstrate a devaluation of women as rational and productive members of society. Abilities which women had once been assumed to possess naturally were considered in 1650 to be beyond their acquisition. The traditional tasks performed by women were either removed from their sphere or devalued. The role of women within their homes was redefined from producer to reproducer. The place of women within society itself was denied as the ideological devaluation of women was accompanied by the physical circumscription of space and the juridical restriction of opportunities to rise above their limited abilities. Women were conceived of in 1650 as private indoor creatures best neither seen nor heard, present in English society only through their relationship to a man. It is suggested that these changes were both caused by and reinforced the changing social and economic relations within the public nation. As market relations became more prevalent, the effects of the social division of labour contributed to making the traditional tasks of women redundant, irrational or impossible, depending on the social stratum of the woman involved. It is further suggested that the traditional patriachal ideology provided a means by which the redundant women could be subject to the control of a master without competing with what the propertied class saw as a threatening horde of masterless men, in need of employment as much as a means of social control as of subsistence.