Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Marianna Muravyeva, Raisa Maria Toivo, Marianna Muravyeva, Raisa Maria Toivo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136275388
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia europea medieval

This project is an attempt to challenge the canonical gender concept while trying to specify what gender was in the medieval and early modern world. Despite the emphasis on individual, identity and difference that past research claims, much of this history still focuses on hierarchical or dichotomous paring of masculinity and femininity (or male and female). The emphasis on differences has been largely based on the research of such topics as premarital sex, religious deviance, rape and violence; these are topics that were, in the early modern society, criminal or at least easily marginalizing. The central focus of the book is to test, verify and challenge the methodology and use the concept(s) of gender specifically applicable to the period of great change and transition.

The volume contains two theoretical sections supplemented by case-studies of gender through specific practices such as mysticism, witchcraft, crime, and legal behaviour. The first section, "Concepts", analyzes certain useful notions, such as patriarchy and morality. The second section, "Identities", seeks to deepen this analysis into the studies of female identities in various situations, cultures and dimensions and to show the fluidity and flexibility of what is called femininity nowadays. The third part, "Practises", seeks to rethink the bigger narratives through the case-studies coming from Northern Europe to see how conventional ideas of gender did not work in this particular region. The case studies also challenge the established narratives in such well-research historiographies as witchcraft and sexual offences and at the same time suggest new insights for the developing fields of study, such as history of homicide.

Part I

Historiography and the Politics of Gender

1 From Women's Oppression to Male Anxiety

The Concept of ‘Patriarchy’ in the Historiography of Early Modern Europe

Androniki Dialeti

In her recent work History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, Judith Bennett notices that, although gender scholarship has burgeoned in recent years, its connection with feminism is fading, especially in the United States.¹ Bennett argues that the gradual depoliticization of women's history with its detachment from feminist activism was the high price to be paid for the institutionalization of gender studies in academia, especially since the 1980s.² Bennett cynically states:

As women's history has gained institutional sanction in the United States, some of us have succumbed to pressures to produce studies that are palatable to our nonfeminist colleagues—studies that avoid hard feminist questions and that appear more mainstream. And as feminism itself has matured, changed, and survived media assault, some of us have turned away from explicit feminism.³

Writing from a radical feminist standpoint, Bennett holds that history's detachment from feminist politics is significantly attested by the gradual abandonment of the concept of ‘patriarchy’ in gender analysis. According to Bennett, the ongoing rejection of terms such as ‘women's oppression’ or ‘women's subordination’ for terms such as ‘gender order’ or ‘gender hierarchy,’ or even for notions that emphasize difference instead of inequality (e.g., ‘gender differences’ or ‘fault lines of gender’), skillfully eclipses male domination over women and gives a cloudy image of power relations.

Taking as a starting point Judith Bennett's call for the writing of a femİnist history, this chapter seeks to examine the various ways in which the concept of patriarchy has been employed, or rejected, in the historiography of early modern Europe from the late 1960s to the present, and it discusses the implications of the term ‘patriarchy’ in different historiographical traditions. The chapter makes some suggestions regarding the links between feminism and history, and discusses whether and how fundamental feminist concepts of the past, which have come to the fore from new perspectives in the last few years, can offer more sophisticated views on early modern history. Owing to the complexity of the subject and the increasing literature, this chapter selectively focuses on several bibliographical examples and discusses some aspects of the issue rather than aspiring to offer a more comprehensive analysis.

FEMINIST ARTICULATIONS OF PATRIARCHY

The term ‘patriarchy’ had been used in social and political theory long before becoming a fundamental analytical tool in radical feminist theory. In 17th-century England, the term was used by political theorists, such as Robert Filmer, John Locke, and James Tyrrell, to discuss absolute monarchy and its analogies to the patriarchal family;⁴ in modern times, Max Weber employed the term to describe a system in which political power derives from men's dominant position in the household.⁵ Thus, the term ‘patriarchy’ has traditionally been used to denote the absolute authority of the male head of the household ( pater familias ) over his wife, children, servants, and other male and female dependants, and, at the same time, its political implİcations. This usage of the term has focused on hierarchical relations among men in legal, political, and economic terms, whereas male authority over women holds a secondary place.

However, in the 1970s, the term ‘patriarchy’ was reconceptualized in radical feminist theory and became the fundamental concept to demonstrate men's systematic domination over women. Kate Millett's Sexual Polİtics is often referred to as the landmark work in the feminist usage of the term.⁶ Millett invested the term ‘patriarchy’ with a new meaning, not only to describe the authority of the male as father, husband, and master in the household, but to define a whole system of male dominance and female subordination, which is manifested in every social site (family, work, polİtics, ideology, religion, culture, sexuality, etc.). It is worth noting that, in anticipation of subsequent criticisms about essentialism, ahistoricism, and reductionism, Millett stressed that patriarchy is often characterized by a hiatus between the real and the ideal whereas contradictions and exceptions do exist within it and suggested that despite its diachronic perspective, patriarchy should always be historicized. In the same vein, the well-known radical feminist Adrienne Rich described patriarchy as a ‘familial-social, ideologİcal, political system in which men—by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labor, determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male.’⁷ More recently, Sylvia Walby has defined patriarchy as ‘a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women.’⁸

Thus, in the 1970s and 1980s, within radical feminist thought, the notion of patriarchy as an entire system of male power and female oppression became a fundamental category of analysis. A variety of studies explored the dominant structures, mechanisms, and institutions of patriarchal power with reference to the family, work, culture, sexuality, reproduction, language, violence, and the state.⁹ Furthermore, several studies attempted to map the interweaving between patriarchy and capitalism, offering theories that sought to ‘marry’ Marxism and radical feminist theory into a new theoretical perspective.¹⁰

Patriarchy, as articulated in radical feminist theory, became a controversial term, which often attracted criticism from feminists. It has often been argued that the theory of patriarchy implies a universal, ahistorical, static, and fixed system of male domination and female subordination that does not allow the potential of women's agency, rendering women passive and docile. Besides, the notion of patriarchy, by highlighting the repressive side of male power, cannot interpret aspects of male-female relationships that include feelings of love, friendship, and mutual support. As critics have noted, the concept of patriarchy denotes a single determining cause of women's subordination by exalting biological differences between men and women or by ignoring other categories of social differentiation, such as class or race. By focusing on the dialectics of male domination, theorists of patriarchy have also ignored power relations among women or femİnine forms of power.¹¹ Other critics have argued that patriarchy is a useful analytical category to refer to past societies, but it has no application in the modern capitalistic world.¹² The notion of patriarchy was further questioned by Black and Third-World feminist theory, which challenged fundamental theoretical assumptions of the second-wave feminism, such as universal solidarity through sisterhood or common experience and identity among all women. Criticism of the hegemony of white experience led to new forms of feminist thought and activism that underlined the intersection between sexism and racism whereas the universal category ‘woman’ gradually begun to fracture to give its place to multiplicity, fluidity, and interdeterminancy.¹³

Thus, since the late 1980s, the use of the term ‘patriarchy’ has gradually begun to wane, as universal meanings and master narratives have been questioned, and a new interest in representation, identity construction, individual experience, and multiple subjectivities has emerged. The domination of gender as a fundamental analytical category in feminist post-structuralist theory in the 1990s and the parallel focus on the cultural construction of femininity and masculinity also challenged the idea of a common identity, experience, conscience, and action among women (and among men) and transformed the terms of the debate.¹⁴ Most recently, women's common subjugated experience and the imaginary notion of a universal patriarchy has been further criticized from the perspective of gender performativity.¹⁵ Some apologetic studies that circulated in the 1990s, such as the sociologist Sylvia Walby's Theorizing Patriarchy, the journalist Susan Faludi's Backlash, and a volume of essays by well-known radical feminist theoreticians who wanted to rebut ‘the postmodernist assault on feminism,’ were rather the swan song of the radical notion of patriarchy.¹⁶

THE CONCEPT OF PATRIARCHY IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF EARLY MODERN EUROPE

Detecting the impact that the growing feminist theory on patriarchy had on the historiography of early modern Europe, we could outline some major historiographical currents. The first historiographical current concerns ‘descriptive’ studies, or overviews, often intended for students or the general reader. These studies have become more common since the 1990s as women's and gender history has been institutionalized, university courses have increased, and publishers’ catalogues have come to include specialized series on gender. This descriptive approach goes back to the basic tasks of the first wave of feminism, that is, to write a history of women, illuminate previously neglected aspects of their lives, and restore them as historical subjects. However, any reference to analytical concepts such as patriarchy is usually absent from such studies, which remain in a narrative framework.

Another historiographical approach intends to make women visible in history by focusing on female agency. Emphasis on female agency has dominated the historiography over the last two decades. In these studies, patriarchal structures are often implied as the background against which women's action took place, either as a dynamic resistance or most often in a negotiation process. Here, the interest shifts from structures and mechanisms of power to individual experience, strategies, and practices, whereas it is often suggested that in the patriarchal system women were not always passive and helpless victims.¹⁷ Thus, in these studies, female agency is prİmarily underlined so that the discrepancy between patriarchy theory and practice can be demonstrated. Stanley Chojnacki, for example, has argued for early modern Venice that ‘although institutionally subordinate to men, women of the propertied classes nevertheless possessed the resources and determination to act on their own, often with the support of men.’¹⁸ In the same vein, Julie Hardwick has suggested that social and kinship bonds and specific strategies employed by women in early modern France permitted them to soften patriarchal authority in everyday life significantly.¹⁹ A simİlar reevaluation of the patriarchal model can be found in Joanne Ferraro's study on marital litigation in early modern Venice. According to Ferraro, women who faced marital problems could ‘receive hope, direction, protection, and support’ from institutions of public life, such as the Church, the state, the community, and the family.²⁰ Arguing that these institutions could correctively intervene to constrain male authority over women, Ferraro explicitly diverges from the radical feminist interpretation, according to which institutions are essentially male centered and dominated, the nucl...