This course examines how women were supposed to look and behave in Tudor and Stuart England. While religious and social commentators modelled women as paragons of virtue in early modern society, in reality their behaviour was often far from ideal. We will consider a wide range of evidence about women behaving badly, including gossip and slander, dressing inappropriately, fighting in the street and church, fornication and adultery, even murder, to understand how gendered roles were constructed and contested by people in their daily lives. We will engage with sources such as conduct literature, court records, pamphlets, ballads and drama alongside visual and material evidence (portraits, monuments, woodcuts) to understand how women were supposed to behave and what prompted women to transgress social norms. We will also examine the gendered nature of punishment, including shaming rituals such as being forced to wear the 'scold's bridle'.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
analyse and critically appraise key events and historical processes relevant to the subject under scrutiny
analyse and critically evaluate a wide range of relevant primary source material
critically evaluate the historiographical context and trends of the subject under exploration
summarise, synthesise and evaluate the subject material in a sophisticated written form
