An analytical review on how idealised gender roles impacted the lives of women in the early modern period?
Introduction
Gender roles were very defined and static during the early modern period, men were expected to act and dress masculine and women were expected to dress and act feminine. People who acted outside the social norms of what was expected in early modern society were ostracised and treated with contempt. This discussion creates an analytical review of the literature that existed in the period that presented the expectations of these gender roles and representations.
Tyndale’s Definition of Women
In 1534 William Tyndale translated the New Testament and within his writings defined women as ‘the weaker vessel’. Tyndale’s definition and the characterisation of women being the weaker sex in the view of the Early Modern World remained relatively similar way into the 1600s. In Tyndale’s The Obedience of a Christian Man he wrote:
“God, which created woman, knoweth what is in that weak vessel and hath therefore put her under the obedience of her husband to rule her…”[1]
Tyndale’s text therefore defines women as the subordinate sex and asserts that the gender roles of the early modern period were organised into a patriarchy and men were in control. Tyndale’s early writings did not exist in isolation. Two decades later Thomas Becon and John Knox would write texts that provoked controversy and reasserted the dominant role of the male and the obedience of the woman as idealised gender roles for the period. Whilst, Tyndale’s text and later texts related to all women affected their lives and expectations. Becon and Knox during the period focused on attacks of the female kind that they believed were transgressing the social order and corrupting the gender roles: Queens and women in the political sphere. Nevertheless, throughout all these primary texts comes one overarching ideology – men were superior to women, and women should be subordinate to men. Anthony Fletcher also alludes to this ideology within the Early Modern period as defining idealised gender roles he argues:
“An individual’s sexual temperament, in effect gender, was a question of the balance in the body of the hot and cold, dry and moist qualities…”[2]
The mid 1500s saw many criticisms of the female kind. Tyndale wrote that women were the ‘weaker vessel’ and that they were inferior to men. Tyndale’s writings provoked the opinions of other men who were concerned about the place of women in society and the fears they had if this social order was disrupted. In particular, Wythorne argued that women were manipulative and deceitful and that although they were the ‘weaker vessel’ they would:
“overcome two, three or four men in the satisfying of their carnal appetites”.[3]
Anthony Fletcher’s argument on Female inferiority
Men during the early modern period, argued that women used love, lust and manipulation to overcome their inferior nature to men and to gain what they required through marriage and falsification of feelings to manipulate the system. Fletcher also relates to this ideology that women were ‘vessels’ of less worth as he argues:
“The Male is hotter that the female because… the male hath larger vessels and members, stronger limbs… and more courageous mind…”[4]
Fletcher’s argument therefore is that women were inferior and not as able to use their minds to their advantage in the social realm. However, Wythorne’s fear demonstrates that women didn’t need the mind of the man, and that they would use their bodies and ideals around sexuality to manipulate the minds and hearts of these ‘courageous’ men that Fletcher speaks of. This view can be validated by an extract from Robert Burton[5] he argues that:
“Cruel Love, to what dost thou not force the hearts of men? How it tickles the hearts of mortal men, I am almost afraid to relate, amazed and ashamed, it hath wrought such stipend and prodigious effects…”[6]
From this extract, Tyndale’s ‘weaker vessel’ claim and Wythorne’s ideology, historians can deduct that women weren’t highly thought of in the early modern society, and that even their actions surrounding love and affection were criticised by men who feared their actions had bad consequences due to the circulating idealised gender roles and the information that detailed the dangers of transgressing these gender roles. This extract from Burton also provokes another thought process amongst the men. He uses words such as ‘cruel’ and ‘afraid’ to suggest that the women’s actions are corrupt and perhaps his words can be seen to have superstitious connotations.[7] Depicting women as cruel for loving effected not only the men’s ability to recognise when a woman was truly devoted, but also damaged the reputation of women who dared to show any affection in love.
Schneider’s collection of letters on gender expectations
A later letter in Schneider’s collection also provides evidence of a stronger fear to demonstrate love, later in the Early Modern period. The letter reads:
“but if you can give faith to an honest heart, then be assured that my life only depends on that love which I hope for from you.”[8]
This letter was written from husband to wife and yet compared with other letters in the collection appears to be expressing love much less and in a more subtle manner than the other texts which are written from brother to sister, friends and patron and client relations. The late 1500s and early 1600s saw the rise of Protestantism and Puritans. Puritan ideology demonstrates a lack of open affection and feeling as it diminished their religious dedication duties. Puritans remained hostile to social pleasure and indulgences and therefore were careful to not write anything with too much meaning or pleasure to be associated with it. This demonstrates that men during the period were more concerned with their own social standing, than demonstrating affection to their wives presenting them as inferior to men and not as important as men’s relations with other men in an academic and social sense.
Hic Mulier, Haec-Vir and the Culture of Criticising Women outside the social norm
Burton’s extract that depicts love as ‘cruel’ and something to be feared also relates directly to later primary evidence of the period on how women in particular were perceived by society. The significance of gender in the Early Modern period was of paramount importance to everyday life. Idealised gender roles for both men and women, characterised their everyday behaviour and the expectations they had to withhold. However, these idealised roles weren’t always fulfilled by the people and those that didn’t conform faced persecution, criticism and disregard from society. Two of the period’s polemic texts that display these idealised gender roles are Hic Mulier and Haec-Vir. Not only do these texts provide historians with a basis to define these gender roles, but they also allude to the consequences to non-conformity and provide the period’s explanations as to why such transgressions of the social norm existed. The polemic texts of Haec-Vir and Hic Mulier were published in the 1620s and were used to define gender roles in the Early Modern period. The next simultaneously criticise men who are not masculine enough and females who are too masculine. In particular Hic Mulier argues that women who have adopted a masculine lifestyle:
“they were, are, and will be still most masculine, most mankinde, and most monstrous.”[9]
The importance of the word “monstrous” to describe the transgressive role of women, however, was not a new concept and a detached view of the 1620s when Hic Mulier was published. Around sixty years before this publication were two publications from English and Scottish authors who were outraged about the role of women and their character being contradictory of the social requirements. The first of these texts being Thomas Becon’s An Humble Suplicacioun unto God for the restoring of his holye woorde unto the church of England (1554). In this text Becon professes his particular discomfort at women who bare positions of authority and particularly those who are able to be Queen, or not able in his belief. Becon writes that these women are:
“for the moste part wicked, ungodly, superstitious and geven to idolatory and to all filthy abominacion as we may see the histories of queen Jesobel…”[10]
For Becon, he was in particular aiming his hatred at the accession of Mary Tudor following the death of Edward VI. Whilst it is important to recognise that Becon’s words were fuelled by religious discontent and moral conviction. His ideas within this text also profess that he saw the rule and authority of women as an “abominacion” and something that was a pure transgression of the social order of patriarchy. To Becon women were not meant to speak in public and that to have a woman on the throne of England was purely a punishment from God. In his Supplicacioun he uses Bible references such as Genesis III to support his point that females should not be granted such a luxury and important role due to their inferiority to men. He concludes this point by expressing his distress over replacing a great Protestant King arguing this deception to be of God’s will to punish:
“Ah Lord to take away the empire from a man and gyve it unto a woman semeth to be an evident token of thyne anger toward us Englishmen.”[11]
Therefore, by God anointing Mary I as England’s Queen, according to Becon God is making England’s authority and leadership inadequate. To Becon the importance of male authority is paramount to the success of the realm and its people, women were inadequate to rule.
John Knox and the Monstrous Regiment of Women
In the 1550s, Becon was not alone in his idealistic perception of the male and female roles, especially when it came to the political sphere. In 1558, one of the most controversial texts on the role of women was published. It related itself to four Queens of Europe (although the author only intended to aim it at three), and to today’s perception Britain and used both faith and ability of women to criticise their right to rule and their personal character: the famous The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.[12] Knox’s publication despite the historical dispute over it, was overly critical of the role of women in the political domain. Although, Knox’s hatred stems from his distrust of the Catholic faith and its monarchs of the period – Marie de Guise, Mary Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots, he goes further to argue that not only are they idolatrous and corrupt due to their religious convictions but that they are also incapable of ruling effectively due to their sex. This is where the fourth Queen is attacked unintentionally by Knox – Elizabeth I with her accession in the same year the publication is released. Knox argued:
“We se our countrie… and the monstruous empire of a cruell women (the secrete counsel of God excepted) we knowe to be the onlie occasion of all miseries: and yet with silence we passe the time as thogh the mater did nothinge appertain to vs.” p.3[13]
Knox’s main issue in The First Blast, may have been his issue with Catholicism and although the text has been manipulated by historians trying to portray Knox as a misogynist his words here emanate the popular view of women in positions of political importance at the time. Knox was not a “woman hater” as some historians argue but didn’t believe they had the ability to rule. Historiography has argued that Knox’s ideology stems from a hatred of monarchy and women. However, direct primary evidence specifies differently and therefore, Knox’s writings can be viewed not as misogynistic but as a common perception and belief of the early modern period. Knox’s own work in The First Blast stemmed from his annoyance at the Catholic Church for its corruption and treatment of the poo. Knox himself was a victim in his early life of poverty and through his education and social influences came to blame the institution of Catholicism for these problems, but he did not despise the idea of monarchy. Knox was taught by John Mair who wrote in 1509/10 that:
“It is better to have one supreme monarch in the realm, at whose pleasure everything is governed, provided that he takes the counsel of wise men…”[14]
Mair’s influence became fundamental to Knox’s own writings and beliefs and therefore, Knox’s arguments that women were unfit to rule were not a criticism of the institution of monarchy or a woman hater’s rants but of genuine belief influenced by religion. The First Blast was primarily concerned with the ineffectiveness of the Catholic rulers in Europe, to which they were predominately women. His issue was that their corruption, superstitious and idolatrous ideals would prevent them from ruling the people correctly. Knox’s claim that these female rulers were not equipped to rule stemmed from what he had read and adapted himself in the bible. Knox himself wrote:
“Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man, not to rule and command him.”[15]
Knox’s perception of the female rule is more complex than how his views appear to a twenty-first century mind. Historian Healey argues that Knox’s ideas were almost mainstream perceptions of how women were seen in the period.[16] To Healey, Knox’s writings were reflective of the era’s diminishment of women’s capabilities and that Knox and Becon’s depictions relating to the female rule and women in the political sphere, related to a wider criticism of all women who transgressed the social expectations of the period in terms of idealised gender roles; women were supposed to be submissive and below men in a patriarchal system. Knox’s perception of women also related closely with the scripture to which he encountered and was used as justification to his ideas on women’s places in society. Knox argued
“rule by women opposed God’s will: no natural or historical circumstances justified a woman’s exercising civil authority…”[17]
Knox’s perception however was contradicted by biblical examples of female rulers such as Deborah. However, Knox argued these biblical women to have divine commandment to rile and that Queens such as Mary Queen of Scots and Mary Tudor in the period could never live up to the idealistic regime of Deborah in Knox’s mind.[18] Both Knox and Becon’s texts verbally attacking the ruling Queens of the 1500s caused disruption and self-consciousness about their social position. Elizabeth I began her reign in the midst of Knox’s The First Blast and meant that as well as issues with asserting her position due to claims of illegitimacy and inferiority, she also had Knox’s degrading words surrounding women’s ability to also contend with. Mary Queen of Scots also arranged a private meeting with Knox as discussed by Roderick Graham in his An Accidental Tragedy.[19] Graham depicts that the Earl of Moray had to act as an ‘umpire’ for Mary’s angered criticisms of Knox’s texts whilst Knox replied and justified his work with phrases such as:
“If to teach people to follow the truth of God was to preach sedition then he pled guilty, and as to the book which ‘seemeth so highly to offend your Majesty”[20]
Knox’s argument therefore being that his words are just and support the word of God, ignoring all offenses he had caused in undermining the Queen due to her sex and religious conviction, as he believed that he was doing God’s will.
Conclusion
From Tyndale’s early 1500s criticism of women being ‘weaker vessels’ to Knox’s publication of The First Blast historians can demonstrate that the everyday lives of women were criticised and diminished by men who feared women’s transgressions of the social norms. Women who appeared too masculine and were seen to take an active role in the political sphere were verbally attacked by individuals such as Knox and Becon. Whilst ordinary women were feared and seen as corrupt as they could manipulate the mind and hearts of men as stated by Burton. Words used by these men to present women of the period such as ‘cruel’, ‘monstrous’ and ‘wicked’ had a profound impact on the image and reputation of these women and therefore, undermined women as the ‘weaker vessel’ and presents them maybe even as victims of the patriarchal system to which they attempted to transgress and improve their status. Overall, idealised gender roles corrupted the minds of men as it made them suspicious of women even when genuine connection occurred and demoralised the strengths and positions of women trying to improve their standing in Early Modern Society.
References
- Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800, (Yale University Press, 1999), p.17
- Becon, Thomas, An Humble Suplicacioun unto God for the restoring of his holye woorde unto the church of England (1554)
- Gary Schneider, Epistolary: Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern England 1500-1700, (University of Delaware Press, 2005), p.129
- Hic Mulier. 1620. London: John Trundle.
- John Mair cited in James Henderson Burns, The True Law of Kinghship, (1996), p.54
- Knox, John and Healey, R.M., Waiting for Deborah: John Knox and Four Ruling Queens, The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol 25, no.2, 1994, p.371-378
- Knox, John, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, (1558)
- Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, (Tudor Publishing Company, 1955) p.49
- Roderick Graham, An Accidental Tragedy: The Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, (Birlinn, 2012), Chapter 7
- Thomas Becon, An Suplicacioun unto God, (1554)
- Thomas Wythorne cited in L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1700, (London, 1977) p.495
- William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, 1528, (London, 1868 edn) p.171
[1] William Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, 1528, (London, 1868 edn) p.171
[2] Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800, (Yale University Press, 1999), p.17
[3] Thomas Wythorne cited in L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1700, (London, 1977) p.495
[4] Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination, (1999), p.61
[5] Gary Schneider, Epistolary: Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern England 1500-1700, (University of Delaware Press, 2005), p.129
[6] Gary Schneider, Epistolary, (2005), p.49
[7] Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, (Tudor Publishing Company, 1955) p.49
[8] Gary Schneider, Epistolary, (2005), p129
[9] Hic Mulier. 1620. London: John Trundle.
[10] Becon, Thomas, An Humble Suplicacioun unto God for the restoring of his holye woorde unto the church of England (1554)
[11] Thomas Becon, An Suplicacioun unto God, (1554)
[12] Knox, John, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, (1558)
[13] Ibid p.3
[14] John Mair cited in James Henderson Burns, The True Law of Kinghship, (1996), p.54
[15] John Knox, The First Blast, (1558)
[16] Knox, John and Healey, R.M., Waiting for Deborah: John Knox and Four Ruling Queens, The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol 25, no.2, 1994, p.371-378
[17] Knox, John and Healey, R.M., Waiting for Deborah: John Knox and Four Ruling Queens, The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol 25, no.2, 1994, p.371-378
[18] Knox, John and Healey, R.M., Waiting for Deborah: John Knox and Four Ruling Queens, The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol 25, no.2, 1994, p.371-378
[19] Roderick Graham, An Accidental Tragedy: The Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, (Birlinn, 2012), Chapter 7
[20] Roderick Graham, An Accidental Tragedy, (2012)