Women's Worlds in Seventeenth Century England

A Sourcebook

Patricia Crawford, Laura Gowing, Patricia Crawford, Laura Gowing

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138131439
• eBook ISBN: 9781000158861
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities

Women's Worlds in England presents a unique collection of source materials on women's lives in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. The book introduces a wonderfully diverse group of women and a series of voices that have rarely been heard in history, from Deborah Brackley, a poor Devon servant, to Katharine Whitstone, Oliver Cromwell's sister, and Queen Anne. Drawing on unpublished, archival materials, Women's Worlds explores the everyday lives of ordinary early modern women, including their:
* experiences of work, sex, marriage and motherhood
* beliefs and spirituality
* political activities
* relationships
* mental worlds
In a time when few women could write, this book reveals the multitude of ways in which their voices and experiences leave traces in the written record, and deepens and challenges our understanding of womens lives in the past.

1

BODIES

We begin with the body, a subject neglected by historians until comparatively recently. On the whole, historians have found the body of less interest than the mind, and have concentrated on the public sphere of human activity, relegating the body to the ‘private’ sphere. The history of women’s bodies has seemed fundamentally ahistorical, an account of childbearing and rearing. Reproduction, what women ‘naturally’ do, lacked historical interest. Furthermore, a postmodern focus on the discursive construction of experience has moved attention further away from women’s bodies. Yet being a woman was a biological as well as a cultural experience, as this section demonstrates.¹

The relationship between discursive constructions of the female body and women’s lives is problematic. Two discourses were significant, one religious, the other medical. Protestant ministers and biblical scholars explained that as woman was created second, her body was inferior. Medical theorists were largely influenced by ancient texts, especially those of Hippocrates (born c. 460 BCE) and Galen (c. CE 129-199) but sought to reconcile traditional wisdom with a growing body of knowledge based on observation. Hence many medical theories about woman were confused and contradictory. Even so, most medical writers explained the human female as a deviation from the male norm. Since nature sought to make all creation male, a female body was deemed the product of nature’s failure.² Physiological changes in her body because of her reproductive cycles made her unstable and potentially dangerous to man. Furthermore, the distinctive female functions of menstruation, parturition, and lactation were constructed as potentially damaging to her own health. Popular understandings of the female body likewise reflected negative views of women. While many historians have discussed these theories and beliefs about women’s bodies, they have paid less attention to the body as lived experience and to the evidence about how individuals understood their bodies.³ Although ‘experience’ is as we know a problematic category, nevertheless it is worth asking questions about how women experienced physiological changes associated with their reproductive functions.

Parturition, lactation, and menstruation are three distinctive female functions, although individual women had different bodily experiences and different remedies for disorders. There are hints in the sources that women’s common biology transcended class differences; a wealthier woman might find assistance from a poorer woman, and the midwife who attended a queen perforce had her practice among women of lower social status. Source material, as always, is biased towards the wealthier. While we have diaries, autobiographies, and letters from elite women about their health and bodily experiences, evidence about ordinary women is more difficult to find. Sometimes we can extrapolate from literate women’s accounts; their commonplace books reflect their own individual interests, but most included medical remedies for various female health problems. Not all of that material was based on their own direct knowledge; literate women recorded cures offered by others, or copied from a printed book. Yet even here the compilers sometimes added their own annotations, which suggests that women consulted a wide range of people about their health, from the university-trained doctors to the almswoman at the door. Women’s commonplace books and letters indicate that they suffered from some of the ‘disorders’ which were a corollary of the medical theories, such as greensickness, suffocation of the womb, and mother-fits.

For many of the experiences of ordinary women, we depend upon accounts of women in male sources. Yet while the records of courts which prosecuted women for ‘bastardy’ and infanticide reveal details about conception, pregnancy, and parturition, we must remember that these records were created in extreme situations; the penalty for concealing the birth of a bastard child which was stillborn or died at birth was death. Thus the words of the women themselves before the courts require careful interpretation.⁴

Physicians and medical practitioners offered assistance for women’s bodily health and disorders, but their case notes too must be viewed with caution. Female modesty seems on many occasions to have made women unwilling to discuss their bodily ills with men. Ann Barton, testifying in a 1624 defamation case at the London consistory court, reveals two ways in which women’s knowledge of the body was asserted – and safeguarded – against young men. When Nathan Webb, an apprentice, asked the widow ‘why maids were let blood in the foot’, she reproved him ‘and told him it was not fitting for boys to know it’.⁵ Unlicensed female medical practitioners who advertised their services promised discretion which would not endanger women’s concepts of modesty.

We begin with pregnancy, and a woman’s puzzlement about whether conception had occurred. Reliable indications were few; the main sign for medical practitioners as well as women themselves was the cessation of menstruation after sexual intercourse.⁶ One of the main contemporary theories about conception was that simultaneous orgasm was necessary for conception. Although there were female doubting voices, in general people thought that sexual pleasure could lead to conception at any stage during her menstrual cycle. The link between ovulation and menstruation was not understood until the 1920s, so it is not surprising that women were uncertain about pregnancy.⁷

Women generally viewed childbirth with fear, although Schofield has calculated that the danger of death in childbirth was statistically low, only 10 per 1,000.⁸ Nevertheless, evidence from women themselves indicates that they were fearful, and stories were spread of the dangers.⁹ From the humblest to the highest woman in the land, ideas and practices about childbirth were similar, until the late seventeenth century, when aristocratic and wealthy women began using the services of the physicians. Likewise, there was a common store of female experience about breast-feeding. Mothers of middling status may have been the experts, since it was they who both fed their babies and were likely to be employed to wet-nurse the babies of others.

Menstruation was referred to variously as ‘the flowers’ – referring to the flowering or fermenting of beer, when a scum formed on the surface – and ‘the courses’ or ‘the terms’, referring to the periodicity of the bleeding. Women linked regular menstruation with general health. Since the absence of menstruation could precipitate a disorder known as greensickness, if women did not menstruate according to their own understandings of their bodily patterns they sought assistance. Menstrual blood was usually thought of as providing foetal nourishment,¹⁰ hence women were anxious about blood-letting in pregnancy. Those who feared that they might be pregnant when they did not menstruate may have sought a blood-letting as a means of abortion. Excessive menstrual bleeding, however, was thought detrimental to health, and women used various remedies to stop the flow.

Women’s general health was affected by their reproductive capacities. In addition, they were subject to many illnesses similar to those of men, and to accidents, such as burns and scalds. Daily health care was largely in female hands; women both nursed the sick and prepared many of the herbal remedies.¹¹

Bodily appearance and the care of clothing also occupied a proportion of women’s time: the higher the social level, the more effort was expended. More rapid changes in fashion later in the seventeenth century meant that wealthier women updated their wardrobes more frequently and passed their clothes to others, including their female servants. However, the bulk of the female population probably spent most of their time in one or two outfits, one for summer and one for winter. The silks and laces of wealthy women were carefully looked after. Some items have survived and can also be seen in the portraiture of the time. Nevertheless, most clothing was passed on until it was worn out.

CONCEPTION AND PREGNANCY

1.1 Pregnancy and primogeniture: Anne, Princess of Denmark, 1692

For a few women, the birth of a child, preferably a son and heir, was of political as well as personal significance. The menstruation of such women was of interest to a range of people, as well as to the women themselves, for its presence or absence was related to their ability to bear children. Ambassadors to Queen Elizabeth’s court, for example, enquired of her chamber women whether she menstruated.

From the letters of Anne, Princess of Denmark, to her intimate friend Sarah Churchill, later Duchess of Marlborough, we can gain some information about how Anne herself reacted to the absence of menstruation in 1692 and 1693. At that date, Anne’s sister Queen Mary had borne no children, so Anne herself and her children were the next in line for the throne, since in 1688 both Mary and Anne had displaced their step-brother, James, born to their step-mother, another Mary (see 1.5 below). Most people believed that the security of the Protestant succession rested on Anne’s fecundity. In 1692 Anne had already three children. Ultimately, she bore eighteen children, and experienced even more pregnancies, but at her death in 1714 she had not one living child.

Only Anne’s side of the famous correspondence between her and Sarah, under their chosen names of Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman, survives. (Sarah wanted all her own letters destroyed.) On occasions, Anne wrote almost daily to her friend. Her letters lack any address or signature, and sometimes can be dated only on internal evidence. Anne adopted certain disguises, such as using a numerical cipher to refer to a person, in case the correspondence should be intercepted. Menstruation was termed ‘Lady Charlotte’, which was possibly a joke between the two women, as the name belonged to a courtier whom neither Anne nor Sarah liked. Sarah at this stage was Groom of the Stole, an appointment which involved certain duties of attending at Anne’s court.

Here, one of Anne’s letters is given in full, to indicate the range of concerns which the two women shared and the flavour of the correspondence. Brief extracts from subsequent letters continue the story of Anne’s absence of menstruation.

Anne, Princess of Denmark, to Sarah, née Jenyns, wife of John Churchill, BL, Add. MS 61415, Blenheim papers, fos 7, 10, 11v, 29, 34.

[25 July 1692?] I have had the satisfaction this morning of receiving a very kind letter from dear Mrs Freeman which I can never thank you enough for, but must assure you as I have often done that one kind word from you is more welcome than anything you can say besides; if you hold your resolution of coming hither next week I hope Thursday will be the latest because I would willingly spend as much of the two days my dear Mrs Freeman is here with her as tis possible, and Saturday being a busy day with me, if she should not come till Friday I should be able to enjoy very little more of her company than I did at St Albans; I have not yet seen Lady Charlotte which I wonder very much at for I used to be very regular and I cannot fancy she has taken her leave for nine months, because since my three first children I have never bred so soon; having writ to my dear, dear Mrs Freeman yesterday and knowing no manner of news I hope she will excuse me for saying no more but that I am more hers than I can ever express.

[ps] Mr Morley sends Mr Freeman these Gazettes believing he may not have heard any thing that is come by the last post, the letters being come but yesterday, and if he cares for them, he will not fail letting him have them every post.

Figure 1 Anne of Denmark
By permission of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Pregnancy was always significant, but especially so when a woman was the heir presumptive to the throne, as Anne, Princess of Denmark, was when she failed to menstruate in mid-1692. Anne bore eighteen children, but had not one living child when she died in 1714.

[?1 August 1692] I am at this time in very splenetic way for lady Charlotte is not yet come to me and I doubt if I should prove with child, tis too soon after my illness to hope to go on with it, and if I am not, tis a very ugly thing to be so irregular, but these and all melancholy thoughts will vanish at the sight of dear Mrs Freeman which I hope she will bless me with some time this week …

[?2 August 1692] I have sent to day to the doctors to ask their advice what they would have me to do in case Lady Charlotte should not come to me before the sixteenth of this month, I am mightily inclined to the spa waters myself and I hope they will not disapprove of them …

[?1692] [PS] I have taken physic today and Lady Charlotte is come to me just at the time I expecte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of documents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Permissions
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Bodies
• 2 Religion, Beliefs, Spirituality
• 3 Work
• 4 Poverty and Property
• 5 Sexual Experiences
• 6 Marriage
• 7 Maternity
• 8 Relationships
• 9 Politics and Protests
• 10 Mental Worlds
• Notes
• Further reading
• Glossary
• Index