Medieval Single Women
The Politics of Social Classification in Late Medieval England
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 13 September 2007
- ISBN 9780199283415
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages195 pages
- Size 223x144x18 mm
- Weight 380 g
- Language English 0
Categories
Short description:
In a culture in which marriage was the desirable norm, and virginity was particularly prized in females, the categories 'virgin' and 'widow' held particular significance. This book investigates the uses of the category 'single woman'. The law gave unmarried women legal rights and responsibilities that were generally withheld from married women. The pervasiveness of religion and the law in people's day-to-day lives led to a complex interplay between moral and economic concerns in how medieval women were seen. As a result they were marked out as 'single women' in very different contexts, and his study reveals the multiplicity of ways in which dominant cultural ideas impacted on them.
MoreLong description:
The single woman is a troubling and disruptive category. Does it denote all unmarried women, therefore creating a group which every female was part of at some stage in her life? Or, were the categories 'maiden' and 'widow' so culturally significant in late medieval England that 'single woman' was a residual category for women seen as anomalous? Was the category 'single man' used in an equivalent way and, if not, why? This study offers a way into the complex process of social classification in late medieval England.
All societies use classifications in order to understand and impose order. In this book, Cordelia Beattie views classification as a political act, an act of power: those classifying must make choices about which divisions are most important or about who falls into which category, and such choices have repercussions. Defining how a group or an individual should be labelled, means variables such as social status, gender, or age, are prioritized. Rather than isolate gender as a variable, this book examines how it relates to other social cleavages. Using a variety of approaches, from social and cultural history, to gender history, and medieval studies, its original methodology offers an innovative approach to a range of historical texts, from pastoral manuals to tax returns, and guild registers.
...interesting and persuasive...an example of how to do careful social and cultural history that never strays from the sources but that also offers a fruitful analysis of those same documents.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Medieval classification schemes
Single woman as a category of difference
Classification in Cultural Context
Clean maids, true wives, and steadfast widows
Femmes soles
Marriage, social change, and the politics of classification
The Single Woman in a Penitential Discourse
Penitential discourse, women, and sexual sin
Fourteen degrees of active lechery
Seven states of chastity
The Single Woman in a Fiscal Discourse
The schedule for the 1379 tax and the classification process
The Bishop's Lynn poll tax return of 1379
Widows, daughters, and work
Thinking with single women
The Single Woman in Guild Texts
Single sisters and the guild returns of 1388-9
Maidens and single men: the register of the guild of the Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon (1406-1535)
'Singlewoman' as a Personal Designation
Early examples of 'singlewoman'
York's civic records c.1475-c.1540
From the medieval to the early modern
Conclusion: Cultural Intersections
