Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World)

Addressing a key challenge facing feminist scholars today, this volume explores the tensions between shared gender identity and the myriad social differences structuring women's lives. By examining historical experiences of early modern women, the authors of these essays consider the possibilities for commonalities and the forces dividing women. They analyse individual and collective identities of early modern women, tracing the web of power relations emerging from women's social interactions and contemporary understandings of femininity. Essays range from the late medieval period to the eighteenth century, study women in England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden, and locate women in a variety of social environments, from household, neighbourhood and parish, to city, court and nation. Despite differing local contexts, the volume highlights continuities in women's experiences and the gendering of power relations across the early modern world. Recognizing the critical power of gender to structure identities and experiences, this collection responds to the challenge of the complexity of early modern women's lives. In paying attention to the contexts in which women identified with other women, or were seen by others to identify, contributors add new depth to our understanding of early modern women's senses of exclusion and belonging. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Notes on Contributors 12 Preface 16 Acknowledgements 18 Introduction 20 Part 1 Reading Communities in History 30 1 Real and Imagined Communities in the Lives of Women in Seventeenth-Century Ireland: Identity and Gender 32 2 The Abuse of History? Identity Politics, Disordered Identity and the 'Really Real' in French Cases of Demonic Possession 48 Part 2 Domestic Polities 62 3 'In myn own house': The Troubled Connections between Servant Marriages, Late-Medieval English Household Communities and Early Modern Historiography 64 4 Recusants, Daughters and Sisters in Christ: English Nuns and their Communities in the Seventeenth Century 80 Part 3 Social Networks 96 5 'Charity is worth it when it looks that good': Rural Women and Bequests of Clothing in Early Modern England 98 6 Female Magic and Women's Social Relations in Eighteenth-Century Sweden 114 Part 4 Negotiating the City 130 7 The Gorgon of Augsburg 132 8 Giving Birth at the Magistrate's Gate: Single Mothers in the Early Modern City 156 Part 5 Gentry Communities 170 9 Neighbourhood as Female Community in the Life of Anne Dormer 172 10 A Revolution Correspondence: Elizabeth Packer Geddes and Elizabeth Burnet 184 Part 6 Queens and Court 198 11 Gendering the Culture of Honour at the Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Court 200 12 Public Identity and Public Memory: Case Studies of Two Tudor Women 214 13 In Praise of Queens: The Public Presentation of the Virtuous Consort in Seventeenth-Century Britain 230 Select Bibliography 244 Index 252 Exploring the contradictory forces shaping women's identities and experiences, this collection examines the possibilities for commonalities and the forces of division between women in early modern Europe. The contributors analyse the critical power of gender to structure identities and experiences, adding new depth to our understanding of early modern women's senses of exclusion and belonging.