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Women In England, 1500-1760: A Social History
Women in England 1500-1760 charts the expectations and experiences from birth to death of women in England in the period between the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, using the most recent statistical studies as well as the evidence of individual biographies and other writings.
Bringing together the astonishing range of research over the last twenty years, this book looks at areas such as life-expectancy, likelihood and duration of marriage, choice of partners, numbers of children and experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, work inside and outside the household, education, religion, and participation in the community and the wider world. These are all subjects on which people make broad generalizations which often bear little resemblance to the most recent research.
Early modern England was not a golden age for women, and women's opportunities for an independent existence outside the family probably diminished between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. But nevertheless there were many areas of life in which women, despite official prohibition, were able to exercise power and individual choice in matters both material and spiritual. As members of nuclear families, marrying usually in their mid-twenties, women lived in a recognisably modern society rather than a traditional society of extended families and child brides.
Anne Laurence examines the material world of women - their possessions and what they created and commissioned - as well as their mental their beliefs, their writing and the popular culture in which they participated.
Bringing together the astonishing range of research over the last twenty years, this book looks at areas such as life-expectancy, likelihood and duration of marriage, choice of partners, numbers of children and experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, work inside and outside the household, education, religion, and participation in the community and the wider world. These are all subjects on which people make broad generalizations which often bear little resemblance to the most recent research.
Early modern England was not a golden age for women, and women's opportunities for an independent existence outside the family probably diminished between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. But nevertheless there were many areas of life in which women, despite official prohibition, were able to exercise power and individual choice in matters both material and spiritual. As members of nuclear families, marrying usually in their mid-twenties, women lived in a recognisably modern society rather than a traditional society of extended families and child brides.
Anne Laurence examines the material world of women - their possessions and what they created and commissioned - as well as their mental their beliefs, their writing and the popular culture in which they participated.
301 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1994
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February 16, 2025"a number of women in early modern England have been considered the mother's of feminism Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1624? -74), Bathsua Makin (fl. 1673), Mary Astell (1666-1731) & Margaret Fell Fox (1614-1702) have been seen as the intellectual forebears of Hannah More (1745-1833) & Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97). But these earlier women did not address the condition of women in general terms. They did not challenge the nature of marriage or the conduct of gender relations; nor did they contest class divisions or call for political rights for women. They tackled individual issues, such as the need for better education for women or the trials of marriage. Their perspective on the world was different from the women who...adopted a fundamentally new approach to women's position in society, one which took them outside the household & into the world as autonomous beings. The earlier women took the place of women to be in the family & household. The later women conceived of extending individualism to women 100 years after men had started to think of themselves in this way."
(p.253)
I found this book in one of those community book swap boxes, sadly at that moment I didn't have any books of my own with me to swap, so now I owe this box a book, or possibly two if I allow for interest. I had best not think about inflation I suppose or I will need a trolley or a wheelbarrow to pay back the book that I borrowed.
Anne Laurence taught for most of her career at the Open University, which specialises in distance learning, and has particularly targeted those who missed out on going on to higher education at the age of eighteen, as such it was a forerunner in terms of accessibility, I feel that some a certain egalitarian ethos rubbed off on to its long term staff, or perhaps indidviduals more committed to opening up learning to as broad an audience as possible were attracted to work there, I feel this shows in thectect of this book. If you are familiar with the style and tone of their teaching materials you will recognise it here too. A clear literary style, tendency to explicitly credit the authors who shape a particular academic debate, and a commitment to balance conflicting ideas or interpretations. Here off set by Laurence generally making it quite clear where she stands.
My first and very general point is that this book can only be distinguished from a social history of England between circa 1500 and 1760 because almost all the examples given are of women. There is very little in the book that is specifically and only about women. Laurence has an interesting reluctance to concentrate on the literate minority, perhaps this is a reflection of the demotic spirit of the Open University.
Secondly I appreciated the honesty of the title, I have read book that proport to be about Britain, and which turn out to be about England with Scotland maybe mentioned twice. Laurence tells us there is not the data to write an equivalent book about British women, indeed even within England there are significant varations in the amount of research carried out. For instance Essex has been extensively studied in regard to witchcraft trials, but in so far as historians have looked at other counties it turns out that Essex does not appear to be typical (Laurence does not specific how).
Some big issues handing over the book, the impact of the Reformation at the beginning and that if the Industrial revolution at the end, with the question of how these impacted women's lives - did they make them better or worse? Inbetween are other changes that has profound impacts, one was the introduction of the scythe. When the sickle was used exclusively to bring in the harvest, man and woman worked equally to bring in the harvest, equally maybe is not the right word, but in Laurence's account you might be cutting the wheat or the barley, or binding sheafs. Whether you were a man or a woman didn't matter, you did what needed to be done. However the scythe was gendered, it was a man's tool and once it was introduced, men mowed , while women bound the sheets - guess what impact this had financially.
A similar shift occurred with the change from drinking ale, to drinking beer. Women brewed ale at home and sold it from home (legally or illegally). Beer was brewed commercially - meaning at scale, often at sites associated with former monasteries (Burton- on- Trent for instance) , and it was a trade dominated by man as commercial enterprises not as an activity that was part of one's housekeeping.
England was already a very commercial society, in southern England even in small villages people got their bread from bakeries. In northern England oat cakes were more popular and people cooked those at home on a skillet or a gridle. Generally women made the underwear for their household, but even at the Yeoman level ( ie people earning their living by farming their own land ) households were ordering their clothes from tailors, poorer people than yeomen relied on a busy market in second hand clothes, while already in the seventeenth century in areas around Manchester ready made off the peg gowns were manufactured and sold.
A feature of reading history is to see that the past is different from the present, which means there is no reason to believe that things will stay as they are. They will change. It might be too harsh to say that it's wrong and stupid to believe in progress and continual improvement, though I would say historically, or possibly poetically that there are tides in human affairs, there are waves that benefit some and at the same time harm others, freedoms and privileges can be lost as well as gained.
Over all Laurence shows a society in change. And important changes can also be obscure. For example for most of the period marriage patterns were rather similar to those in contemporary Europe. Couples married in their late twenties, they both worked before marriage (presumably to save enough money to set up a household), and they didn't have many children - & not all survived to adulthood, population growth was slow. The situation in Ireland was different - people married younger, they had more children, the population was growing rapidly. However by the mid eighteenth century the situation had changed, couples married at a younger age and so starting their families younger, the population grew more rapidly. Why this change occurred is unclear, but it was hugely significant, . Judging by the date of the both of the first child relative to the date of marriage, pre-marital sex was a widespread part of courtship practices.
During this period there was a reduction in the number of women running businesses and taking on apprentices - and not because any laws changed. Spending time as an apprentice was normal for both girls and boys, even in agriculture. At the slowest there seems to have been a 100% turnover of apprentices within two years on farms, and in some areas it was faster than that, it seems that young people might as apprentices work on one farm for a season, and then move to another to learn a different skill, this is a dynamic society with people at least for part of their lives moving around, as a result households generally consisted of a nuclear family plus servants and apprentices, collectively their were refered to as a family.
There were no legal restrictions on women holding office say as a sheriff of a churchwarden, but if they did hold such offices they tended to appoint a man to carry out the work. Laurence has a few examples of women who served, pretending that they were men, in the army, fighting in Europe and the colonies , a couple of whom even received government pensions, which suggests a tendency for the authorities to judge cases on their merits.
On the big visible changes that frame this book, Laurence wonders at the support of women for the Reformation, she feels that the old practices had more to offer women though actual women don't seem to have agreed with Laurence.; church courts enforced social discipline and that system went into decline after the Reformation. Some scholars have seen in the Industrial revolution a period of liberation for women from work in the household (domestic, agricultural or artisanal) to paid employment, others see industrial work as externally disciplined and controlled, with industrual work disrupting community and support networks. Laurence inclines more to the latter view.
Well i fear this is less a review and more a ragbag of facts or interpretations that caught my attention, one that I found particularly interesting is that Jews were living in England before they were legally permitted to do so in the years of the Republic, the really striking fact though is that they worshipped at the Spanish embassy with the Catholics, plainly they didn't bear a grudge for their ancestors having been expelled from Spain generations earlier.
Lesbian relationships were not criminalised in England - unlike in France and Spain, this means that they are less visible - court records are an important source of social information. Also a large proportion of women sentenced to death were effectively pardoned because there was no prison system while transportation of prisoners to the colonies only began in the eighteenth century. Again from court records there seems to have been plenty of rape and domestic abuse, while obtaining justice in the courts was no easier than it is today.
To my suprise the period of he English civil war did not see an explosion in the numbers of children born out of wedlock - possibly the soldiers were too busy going to prayer meetings? In Laurence's account there does not seem to have been any social signs around illegitimacy, the concern at parish level was purely financial - would the well to do have to pay for the child's upkeep. This was a issue because bigamy was fairly common. As you can imagine, if your spouse has to work in the next county snd you receive word that somebody looking like them has died, naturally you get married again - then when they turn up alive, suddenly you are a bigamist and all your new children bastards ; from ehich we learn that Thomas Hardy was curiously in touch with the rural way of life of a much earlier era.
(p.253)
I found this book in one of those community book swap boxes, sadly at that moment I didn't have any books of my own with me to swap, so now I owe this box a book, or possibly two if I allow for interest. I had best not think about inflation I suppose or I will need a trolley or a wheelbarrow to pay back the book that I borrowed.
Anne Laurence taught for most of her career at the Open University, which specialises in distance learning, and has particularly targeted those who missed out on going on to higher education at the age of eighteen, as such it was a forerunner in terms of accessibility, I feel that some a certain egalitarian ethos rubbed off on to its long term staff, or perhaps indidviduals more committed to opening up learning to as broad an audience as possible were attracted to work there, I feel this shows in thectect of this book. If you are familiar with the style and tone of their teaching materials you will recognise it here too. A clear literary style, tendency to explicitly credit the authors who shape a particular academic debate, and a commitment to balance conflicting ideas or interpretations. Here off set by Laurence generally making it quite clear where she stands.
My first and very general point is that this book can only be distinguished from a social history of England between circa 1500 and 1760 because almost all the examples given are of women. There is very little in the book that is specifically and only about women. Laurence has an interesting reluctance to concentrate on the literate minority, perhaps this is a reflection of the demotic spirit of the Open University.
Secondly I appreciated the honesty of the title, I have read book that proport to be about Britain, and which turn out to be about England with Scotland maybe mentioned twice. Laurence tells us there is not the data to write an equivalent book about British women, indeed even within England there are significant varations in the amount of research carried out. For instance Essex has been extensively studied in regard to witchcraft trials, but in so far as historians have looked at other counties it turns out that Essex does not appear to be typical (Laurence does not specific how).
Some big issues handing over the book, the impact of the Reformation at the beginning and that if the Industrial revolution at the end, with the question of how these impacted women's lives - did they make them better or worse? Inbetween are other changes that has profound impacts, one was the introduction of the scythe. When the sickle was used exclusively to bring in the harvest, man and woman worked equally to bring in the harvest, equally maybe is not the right word, but in Laurence's account you might be cutting the wheat or the barley, or binding sheafs. Whether you were a man or a woman didn't matter, you did what needed to be done. However the scythe was gendered, it was a man's tool and once it was introduced, men mowed , while women bound the sheets - guess what impact this had financially.
A similar shift occurred with the change from drinking ale, to drinking beer. Women brewed ale at home and sold it from home (legally or illegally). Beer was brewed commercially - meaning at scale, often at sites associated with former monasteries (Burton- on- Trent for instance) , and it was a trade dominated by man as commercial enterprises not as an activity that was part of one's housekeeping.
England was already a very commercial society, in southern England even in small villages people got their bread from bakeries. In northern England oat cakes were more popular and people cooked those at home on a skillet or a gridle. Generally women made the underwear for their household, but even at the Yeoman level ( ie people earning their living by farming their own land ) households were ordering their clothes from tailors, poorer people than yeomen relied on a busy market in second hand clothes, while already in the seventeenth century in areas around Manchester ready made off the peg gowns were manufactured and sold.
A feature of reading history is to see that the past is different from the present, which means there is no reason to believe that things will stay as they are. They will change. It might be too harsh to say that it's wrong and stupid to believe in progress and continual improvement, though I would say historically, or possibly poetically that there are tides in human affairs, there are waves that benefit some and at the same time harm others, freedoms and privileges can be lost as well as gained.
Over all Laurence shows a society in change. And important changes can also be obscure. For example for most of the period marriage patterns were rather similar to those in contemporary Europe. Couples married in their late twenties, they both worked before marriage (presumably to save enough money to set up a household), and they didn't have many children - & not all survived to adulthood, population growth was slow. The situation in Ireland was different - people married younger, they had more children, the population was growing rapidly. However by the mid eighteenth century the situation had changed, couples married at a younger age and so starting their families younger, the population grew more rapidly. Why this change occurred is unclear, but it was hugely significant, . Judging by the date of the both of the first child relative to the date of marriage, pre-marital sex was a widespread part of courtship practices.
During this period there was a reduction in the number of women running businesses and taking on apprentices - and not because any laws changed. Spending time as an apprentice was normal for both girls and boys, even in agriculture. At the slowest there seems to have been a 100% turnover of apprentices within two years on farms, and in some areas it was faster than that, it seems that young people might as apprentices work on one farm for a season, and then move to another to learn a different skill, this is a dynamic society with people at least for part of their lives moving around, as a result households generally consisted of a nuclear family plus servants and apprentices, collectively their were refered to as a family.
There were no legal restrictions on women holding office say as a sheriff of a churchwarden, but if they did hold such offices they tended to appoint a man to carry out the work. Laurence has a few examples of women who served, pretending that they were men, in the army, fighting in Europe and the colonies , a couple of whom even received government pensions, which suggests a tendency for the authorities to judge cases on their merits.
On the big visible changes that frame this book, Laurence wonders at the support of women for the Reformation, she feels that the old practices had more to offer women though actual women don't seem to have agreed with Laurence.; church courts enforced social discipline and that system went into decline after the Reformation. Some scholars have seen in the Industrial revolution a period of liberation for women from work in the household (domestic, agricultural or artisanal) to paid employment, others see industrial work as externally disciplined and controlled, with industrual work disrupting community and support networks. Laurence inclines more to the latter view.
Well i fear this is less a review and more a ragbag of facts or interpretations that caught my attention, one that I found particularly interesting is that Jews were living in England before they were legally permitted to do so in the years of the Republic, the really striking fact though is that they worshipped at the Spanish embassy with the Catholics, plainly they didn't bear a grudge for their ancestors having been expelled from Spain generations earlier.
Lesbian relationships were not criminalised in England - unlike in France and Spain, this means that they are less visible - court records are an important source of social information. Also a large proportion of women sentenced to death were effectively pardoned because there was no prison system while transportation of prisoners to the colonies only began in the eighteenth century. Again from court records there seems to have been plenty of rape and domestic abuse, while obtaining justice in the courts was no easier than it is today.
To my suprise the period of he English civil war did not see an explosion in the numbers of children born out of wedlock - possibly the soldiers were too busy going to prayer meetings? In Laurence's account there does not seem to have been any social signs around illegitimacy, the concern at parish level was purely financial - would the well to do have to pay for the child's upkeep. This was a issue because bigamy was fairly common. As you can imagine, if your spouse has to work in the next county snd you receive word that somebody looking like them has died, naturally you get married again - then when they turn up alive, suddenly you are a bigamist and all your new children bastards ; from ehich we learn that Thomas Hardy was curiously in touch with the rural way of life of a much earlier era.
August 8, 2023
Really well written with lots of interesting people whose stories were told. I learned about the Roaring girl. I learned so much.
I was interested by the ideas of suicide at the start of the book and what it meant for women.
I felt I need to learn more about the restoration, this section was a bit confusing for me.
I felt this book was tasteful as it didn't go on about prostitution in the crime section but about adultery.
I enjoyed every section of this book. Also Laurence said suffrage was thought of, there was a preoccupation with a need for social change in lower class men. However, Laurence only stated this, not going off topic out of respect.
I'm sure I'll reread this book.
I was interested by the ideas of suicide at the start of the book and what it meant for women.
I felt I need to learn more about the restoration, this section was a bit confusing for me.
I felt this book was tasteful as it didn't go on about prostitution in the crime section but about adultery.
I enjoyed every section of this book. Also Laurence said suffrage was thought of, there was a preoccupation with a need for social change in lower class men. However, Laurence only stated this, not going off topic out of respect.
I'm sure I'll reread this book.
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September 21, 2022I'm enjoying this title. The author included such a broad scope that some of the topics get a treatment on the shorter side, but in some ways that works to the books advantage.
I'm also enjoying Laurence's writing style which is a nice change of pace from some of the drier non-fiction I read. Her writing is readable, colourful, but not ostentatious.
I'm also enjoying Laurence's writing style which is a nice change of pace from some of the drier non-fiction I read. Her writing is readable, colourful, but not ostentatious.
July 11, 2017
Good interesting read. A spring board for further delving into those areas that really interest you; this really provides an overview of women's generally horrendous lives
January 16, 2019
An excellent, fascinating read
October 2, 2020
A very interesting and informative read. I really enjoyed it.
August 22, 2008
Contains a lot of facts, but felt a bit bland if not boring to me.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews