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A Woman's Place in Society
by Heather Thomas
This can be a difficult subject to study objectively, as women had few rights in the early modern period. There is the danger of supposing that because women were very much confined to the domestic sphere that they were unhappy, oppressed, and abused by tyrannical husbands. While tyrannical husbands certainly existed, there is no evidence to suggest that they were the norm and that women were generally mistreated and unhappy. There is, quite the contrary, an abundance of evidence of happy marriages and happy families.
The roles of women were limited, but this had a lot to do with the the lack of effective birth control that made it impractical and virtually impossible for married women to work full time outside the home. A woman had, on average, a baby every two years. Childbearing was considered a great honor to women and they very much took pride in it. To the Elizabethans, the roles of men and women were simply different. The woman stayed at home and looked after the family, while the man went out to work to earn a living, or worked his own land. Both husband and wife worked extremely hard, and both roles were as important as the other.
There is no doubt, however, that women occupied a lesser status to men in society, and there were many limitations on what a woman could do.
- Girls could be educated by a tutor, but schools were reserved for boys. Girls were not allowed to go to university.
- Women, regardless of social position, were not allowed to vote. (However, only men of a certain social position were allowed to vote.)
- Women could not enter the professions i.e law, medicine, politics. Neither could women enter the navy or the army. Women could, however, and often did, work in domestic service as cooks, maids etc. Women were also allowed to write works of literature, although few works by women were actually published. A female painter, Levina Teerlinc, was also employed by Henry VIII, Mary and Elizabeth respectively. Neither could a woman act on the stage. Acting was not considered reputable for women. Women did not appear on the stage in England until the seventeenth century. The roles of women in Shakespeare's plays were often played by young boys.
- Women could not be heirs to their father's titles. All titles would pass from father to son or brother to brother, depending on the circumstances. The only exception was, of course, the crown. The crown could pass to a daughter, and that daughter would be invested with all the power and Majesty of any king. This allowed Mary, and then Elizabeth, to reign. In some cases women could not inherit estates, but women could be heiresses to property, if not to titles, and some women, especially if the only child of a great noble man, could be very affluent heiresses indeed. Robert Dudley's first wife, Amy Robsart, was Sir John Robsart's only child, and inherited both his estates in Norfolk. It was not always clear what happened to these estates when the woman married, whether they became the property of their husband, but this was not automatically the case and, if the wife died, he could lose the properties.
Marriages of the nobility were very complicated affairs indeed. Marriage treaties usually had to be drawn up so that each party knew exactly where they stood in such matters. The laws of inheritance meant that fathers were anxious to have a son, but that does not mean that daughters were unloved and unwanted. The attitude of Henry VIII to his daughters was unusual, and was probably the result of his obsession with providing the country with a male heir and subsequent ruler. Parents did love their daughters and saw them as precious gifts from God. Of all the children Thomas More had, his daughter Margaret was his favorite, and William Cecil was a devoted father to all his children, male and female. Queen Elizabeth would write letters of condolence on the death of daughters as well as on the deaths of sons.
- A man had the legal right to chastise his wife as he was seen as the head of the marriage. However, it is important to understand what this "headship" meant. It did not mean, as if often supposed, that the husband was able to command his wife to do anything he pleased, in other words, be a petty tyrant. The headship principal was quite the opposite. It derived essentially from the biblical teachings of Paul in the New Testament, and the headship was a loose concept that gave the husband more responsibility in the marriage than the wife. The man was given responsibilities towards his wife, perhaps an essential responsibility in an age where the woman spent many years pregnant, and was commanded to love and honor his wife.
The idea of a tyrannical husband was completely against the Christian ethos from which the principal derived, but was of course abused by some husbands. While Puritans may have publicly advocated the submission of women, there is no evidence that their views were the views of the nation. Quite the contrary, the Puritan pamphleteers bewailed the relationships between husbands and wives because they were too informal and affectionate. One early Stuart writer, William Gouge, found himself publicly called "a hater of women" because he had published a tract on the need for female submission. While a man did have the right to chastise his wife, he did not have the right to be cruel or inflict bodily harm. A man could be punished in law or by the community for being cruel to his wife, and in some cases, could be legally prevented from living with his wife. While marital rape may not have been a public issue, rape outside of wedlock was certainly regarded as an abominable crime, and if found guilty of it, a man was sentenced to death by hanging.
The rights of women in divorce cases cannot be fairly assessed as divorce, as it occurs today, was unknown in Tudor times. My essay on early modern divorce gives further information on this subject.
It is probably fair to say that women had more freedom in the Elizabethan period than they did in subsequent centuries. The Renaissance brought with it a new way of thinking. It was thought men and women could do anything and be anything they wanted to be, that their capacity for knowledge was limitless. Noble women, as well as men, were given a good education in the classics, mathematics, and all other academic subjects of the day. Women were not allowed to enter universities, but it was thought essential that noble women were educated to a high standard. With Elizabeth being on the throne, this was encouraged, as men did not want their daughters to look like dim in the presence of their very intelligent and highly educated queen.
Women who perhaps suffered the most in this period were, ironically, those like the Queen who did not wish to marry. Tudor society did not have many avenues open to single women and, following the Reformation, those avenues were even less. Before, women were able to become nuns and look forward to a rewarding life in Abbeys, perhaps be a Mother Superior one day. But with the Reformation, the convents were closed. Wealthy women, heiresses of property, could look forward to being mistress of their estates and wield the power in the community this would bring, but for poor women, the only "career" really open to them was domestic service. It was not surprising, therefore, that most women married. Marriage was seen as the desirable state for both men and women, and single women were sometimes looked upon with suspicion. It was often single women who were thought to be witches by their neighbors.
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©2005 Heather Thomas - Visit her Website
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