Women in early modern Scotland
Women in
Women had limited access to formal education and girls benefited less than boys from the expansion of the parish school system. Some women were taught reading, domestic tasks, but often not writing. In noble households some received a private education and some female literary figures emerged from the seventeenth century. Religion may have been particularly important as a means of expression for women and from the seventeenth century women may have had greater opportunities for religious participation in movements outside of the established kirk. Women had very little legal status at the beginning of the period, unable to act as witnesses or legally responsible for their own actions. From the mid-sixteenth century they were increasingly criminalised, with statutes allowing them to be prosecuted for infanticide and as witches. Seventy-five per cent of an estimated 6,000 individuals prosecuted for witchcraft between 1563 and 1736 were women and perhaps 1,500 were executed. As a result, some historians have seen this period as characterised by increasing concern with women and attempts to control and constrain them.
Status
Early modern Scotland was a
In politics the theory of patriarchy was complicated by regencies led by Margaret Tudor and Mary of Guise and by the advent of a regnant queen in Mary, Queen of Scots from 1561. Concerns over this threat to male authority were exemplified by John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women (1558), which advocated the deposition of all reigning queens. Most of the political nation took a pragmatic view of the situation, accepting Mary as queen, but the strains that this paradox created may have played a part in the later difficulties of the reign.[7] How exactly patriarchy worked in practice is difficult to discern. Scottish women in this period had something of a reputation among foreign observers for being forthright individuals, with the Spanish ambassador to the court of James IV noting that they were "absolute mistresses of their houses and even their husbands".[3]
Family and marriage
Unlike in England, where kinship was predominately
Marriages, particularly higher in society, were often political in nature and the subject of complex negotiations over the tocher (
Work
Women acted as an important part of the workforce. In addition to the domestic tasks carried out by wives and female servants, many unmarried women worked away from their families as farm servants and married women worked with their husbands around the farm, taking part in all the major agricultural tasks. They had a particular role as shearers in the harvest, forming most of the reaping team of the
Education and writing
By the end of the fifteenth century, Edinburgh had schools for girls, sometimes described as "sewing schools", and probably taught by lay women or nuns.
The widespread belief in the limited intellectual and moral capacity of women, vied with a desire, intensified after the Reformation, for women to take personal moral responsibility, particularly as wives and mothers. In Protestantism this necessitated an ability to learn and understand the catechism and even to be able to independently read the Bible, but most commentators, even those that tended to encourage the education of girls, thought they should not receive the same academic education as boys. In the lower ranks of society, they benefited from the expansion of the parish schools system that took place after the Reformation, but were usually outnumbered by boys, often taught separately, for a shorter time and to a lower level. They were frequently taught reading, sewing and knitting, but not writing. Female illiteracy rates based on signatures among female servants were around 90 per cent, from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth centuries and perhaps 85 per cent for women of all ranks by 1750, compared with 35 per cent for men.[22]
Among the nobility there were many educated and cultured women, of which Queen Mary is the most obvious example.
Religion
Historian Katharine Glover argues that women had less means of public participation than men and that as a result piety and an active religious life may have been more important for women from the social elite. Church going played an important part in the lives of many women. Women were largely excluded from the administration of the kirk, but when heads of households voted on the appointment of a new minister some parishes allowed women in that position to participate.[29]
The upheavals of the seventeenth century saw women autonomously participating in radical religion.
Crime and the law
At the beginning of the period, women had a very limited legal status. A married woman had few property rights and could not make a will without her husband's permission, although jurists expected this to be given.[13] Men had considerable latitude in disciplining the women under their authority and although a handful of cases turn up in higher courts, and the kirk session did intervene to protect women from domestic abuse, it was usually only when the abuse began to disturb public order.[3] The criminal courts refused to recognise women as witnesses, or as independent criminals, and responsibly for their actions was assumed to lie with their husbands, fathers and kin.[14] As a result, a married woman could not sell property, sue in court or make contracts without her husband's permission.[33]
In the post-Reformation period there was a criminalisation of women.
See also
References
Notes
- ^ ISBN 0-7486-1455-9, pp. 62–3.
- ISBN 0-19-211696-7, pp. 645–6.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-956369-1, p. 274.
- ISBN 0-7099-1677-9, p. 208.
- ^ Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, p. 22.
- ISBN 0-7486-1299-8, p. 73.
- ^ Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, p. 243.
- ISBN 0-7486-0276-3, pp. 29–35.
- ^ History Workshop, What's in a Surname? Rebecca Mason
- ^ Ewen, "The early modern family", p. 271.
- ^ Ewen, "The early modern family", p. 272.
- ISBN 1405137401, p. 384.
- ^ a b Ewen, "The early modern family", p. 273.
- ^ ISBN 0-7486-0233-X, pp. 86–8.
- ^ Ewen, "The early modern family", p. 277.
- ^ Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, p. 322.
- ISBN 90-04-10097-0, p. 340.
- ^ ISBN 1-84384-096-0, pp. 29–30.
- ISBN 1-4464-7563-8, pp. 104–7.
- ISBN 1-84383-681-5, p. 36.
- ISBN 0-7486-1625-X, p. 1022.
- ISBN 0-521-89088-8, pp. 63–8.
- ^ Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, p. 187.
- ^ ISBN 1-84383-681-5, p. 26.
- ISBN 0-7546-6049-4, p. 45.
- ISBN 1-84792-114-0, p. 70.
- ISBN 0-19-538623-X, pp. 224, 248 and 257.
- ^ D. G. Mullan, Women's Life Writing in Early Modern Scotland: Writing the Evangelical Self, C. 1670-c. 1730 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003),
ISBN 0-7546-0764-X, p. 1.
- ^ ISBN 1-84383-681-5, p. 135.
- ISBN 1-134-72454-3, p. 2.
- ISBN 0-521-89167-1, p. 137.
- ISBN 0-8047-2052-5, p. 75.
- ^ Ewen, "The early modern family", p. 275.
- ISBN 0-86193-287-0, p. 19.
- ^ ISBN 1-4051-5477-2, p. 32.
- ISBN 0-19-956369-1, p. 81.
- ^ J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community, pp. 168–9.
- ISBN 0-7190-6024-9, p. 75.
- ^ ISBN 0-7486-0233-X, pp. 88–9.
Bibliography
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- Bennett, M., The Civil Wars Experienced: Britain and Ireland, 1638–1661 (London: Routledge, 2005), ISBN 1-134-72454-3.
- Brown, K., Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), ISBN 0-7486-1299-8.
- Brown, S. J., "Religion and society to c. 1900", in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 0-19-956369-1.
- Crawford, R., Scotland's Books: a History of Scottish Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), ISBN 0-19-538623-X.
- Dawson, J. E. A., Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN 0-7486-1455-9.
- Dennison, E. P., "Women: 1 to 1700", in M. Lynch, ed., The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ISBN 0-19-211696-7.
- Edwards, K. A., "Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart Scotland", in K. Cartwright, A Companion to Tudor Literature Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), ISBN 1-4051-5477-2.
- Ewen, E., "The early modern family" in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 0-19-956369-1.
- Gatherer, B., "Scottish teachers", in T. G. K. Bryce and W. M. Humes, eds, Scottish Education: Post-Devolution (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2nd edn., 2003), ISBN 0-7486-1625-X.
- Glover, K., Elite Women and Polite Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Boydell Press, 2011), ISBN 1-84383-681-5.
- Greaves, R. L., Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–1689 (Stanford University Press, 1992), ISBN 0-8047-2052-5, p. 75.
- Houston, R. A., "Women in the economy and society in Scotland" in R. A. Houston and I. D. Whyte, ed., Scottish Society, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-521-89167-1.
- Houston, R. A., Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), ISBN 0-521-89088-8.
- Kilday, A.-M., Women and Violent Crime in Enlightenment Scotland (London: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), ISBN 0-86193-287-0.
- Lynch, M., "Preaching to the converted?: perspectives on the Scottish Reformation", in A. Alasdair A. MacDonald, M. Lynch and I. B. Cowan, The Renaissance in Scotland: Studies in Literature, Religion, History, and Culture Offered to John Durkhan (BRILL, 1994), ISBN 90-04-10097-0.
- Lynch, M., Scotland: A New History (Random House, 2011), ISBN 1-4464-7563-8.
- Lynch, M., The Early Modern Town in Scotland (London: Taylor & Francis, 1987), ISBN 0-7099-1677-9.
- Mackinnon, D., "'I now have a book of songs of her writing': Scottish families, orality, literacy and the transmission of musical culture c. 1500-c. 1800", in E. Ewan and J. Nugent, Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008), ISBN 0-7546-6049-4.
- Martin, L., "The Devil and the domestic: witchcraft, quarrels and women's work in Scotland", in J. Goodare, ed., The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), ISBN 0-7190-6024-9..
- Mitchison, R., Lordship to Patronage, Scotland 1603–1745 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), ISBN 0-7486-0233-X.
- Mortimer, I., The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (Random House, 2012), ISBN 1-84792-114-0, p. 70.
- Mullan, D. G., Women's Life Writing in Early Modern Scotland: Writing the Evangelical Self, C. 1670-c. 1730 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), ISBN 0-7546-0764-X.
- Wormald, J., Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN 0-7486-0276-3.