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Seventeenth-Century English Women Engraved in Stone?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Lois G. Schwoerer
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The question this article poses is: Are the assumptions about women in Lawrence Stone's The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 sound and should his conclusions form the point of departure for the work of the growing number of scholars in both history and literature interested in early modern English women? The question really needs to be asked because of the commanding reputation of the author, his pioneering attempt at constructing an overarching conceptual framework for the evolution of family modes—an effort that has contributed to bringing into focus the work of other scholars in the fields of family and women's history—and the remarkable popularity of the book. By 1979, two years after its first publication the demand for this big, 800 page volume was lively enough to warrant an abridged paperback edition, and today the book is used in “hundreds” of courses and seminars in history, literature, sociology, and women's studies in universities and colleges in the United States and the United Kingdom. Personal conversations with scholars and students, especially those who do not work directly in women's history, indicate that Stone's assumptions about women have won uncritical acceptance. This is surely accountable to the fact that no scholar has published a close examination of Stone's treatment of women and only a few reviewers have suggested the need for caution in following his views about the condition of women.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , Winter 1984 , pp. 389 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1984

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Footnotes

*

A version of this paper was presented at a meeting of the Mid-Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in October 1981. I am grateful to Barbara J. Harris and Hilda Smith for commenting on an early draft. I wish to thank Mrs. Marie P.G. Draper, Archivist, Bedford Office, London, and Mr. Peter Day and Mr. Michael Pearman, Librarians and Archivists at Chatsworth for their expert assistance when I worked through the seventeenth-century Russell papers. Page numbers in the text refer to Stone's book.

References

1 Prior to the advent of women's history as a special field, historians studied seventeenth-century women. Among early works are: Clark, Alice, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1919; reprinted 1982)Google Scholar; McArthur, Ellen, “Women Petitioners and the Long Parliament,” English Historical Review 24 (1909): 698–709CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reynolds, Myra, The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1750 (Boston, 1920)Google Scholar; Thomas, Keith, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” Past and Present 13 (1958): 42–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, E.M., “Women Preachers in the Civil War,” Journal of Modern History 1 (1929): 561–569CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interest has grown in the last twenty years or so. Recent studies include: Brink, J.R., “Bathsua Makin: Educator and Linguist (English, 1608?-1675?),” in Female Scholars: A Tradition of Learned Women before 1800, ed. Brink, J.R. (Montreal, 1980)Google Scholar; Mary Elizabeth Green, “Elizabeth Elstob: The Saxon Nymph (English, 1683-1765),” in Ibid.; Kinnaird, Joan K., “Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism,” Journal of British Studies 19 (1979): 53–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mahl, Mary, Female Spectator: English Women Writers before 1800 (London, 1977)Google Scholar; and Smith, Hilda, Reason's Disciples: Seventeenth Century English Feminists (Urbana, 1982).Google Scholar

2 A spokeswoman at Harper and Row gave the figure. Among examples of work in English family history are: Laslett, Peter, ed. Household and Family in Past Time (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., The World We Have Lost (London, 1970); MacFarlane, Alan, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin; a Seventeenth Century Clergyman: An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar; Slater, Miriam, “The Weightest Business: Marriage in an Upper-Gentry Family in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 72 (1976): 25–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Trumbach, Randolph, The Rise of the Equalitarian Family (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

3 E. William Monter remarked that Stone has a “tendency to underplay the role of women when generalizing about the Western family” (Journal of Modern History [Spring 1978]: 505Google ScholarPubMed). Mary F. Shanley complained that there was insufficient detail about women (Signs [Summer, 1979]: 745, 746Google ScholarPubMed). Trumbach, Randolph, “Europe and its Families: A Review Essay of Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800,“ Journal of Social History 13 (Fall 1979): 136–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar noted Stone's disinclination to study the early feminist movements (p. 140).

4 There are at least twenty-five reviews. Among them are: Ariès, Philippe, American Historical Review 83 (1978): 1221–1224CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berkowitz, David, Renaissance Quarterly 32 (1979): 396–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Demos, John, New York Times Book Review (Dec. 25, 1977)Google Scholar; Lasch, Christopher, New Republic (July 8-15, 1978)Google Scholar; MacFarlane, Alan, History and Theory 28 (1979): 103–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plumb, J.H., New York Review of Books (November 24, 1977)Google Scholar; Slack, Paul, English Historical Review 94 (1979): 124–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, Keith, Times Literary Supplement (October 21, 1977)Google Scholar; and Thompson, E.P., New Society (8 September 1977).Google Scholar

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8 Family Formation in Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1977), chs. 2, 5, and 9.Google Scholar

9 The early study by Clark, Working Life of Women, now dated, but still useful, stressed that early capitalism resulted in a decline in women's positions in agriculture and skilled trades. A modern economic history of women is needed.

10 Sharp, Jane, Complete Midwife's Companion: or, The Art of Midwifery Improved (1671)Google Scholar. Cellier, Elizabeth, To Dr…An Answer to his Queries, concerning the Colledg of Midwives (London, January 16, 1687/1688)Google Scholar. See Smith, Hilda, “Ideology and Gynecology in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Liberating Women's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, ed. Carroll, Berenice A. (Urbana, Illinois, 1976), pp. 97–115.Google Scholar

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12 Horwitz, Henry, Parliament, Policy, and Politics in the Reign of King William III (Manchester, 1977), p. 35.Google Scholar

13 See forthcoming article by Rosemary Begeman.

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15 See Bedford Record Office, London, Russell Papers: 19 leases from 1671 to 1679 in which Lady Russell appears alone as leasor. (Hereafter cited as B.O.L.).

16 “Women in English Revolutionary Politics, 1680-1690,” Presented at the Sixth Berkshire Conference on Women's History, Smith College, June 1984.

17 For Astell, see Kinnaird, “Mary Astell and the Conservative Contribution to English Feminism,” and Smith, Reasons' Disciples, passim. A biography by Ruth Perry is in press.

18 Trumbach, , “Europe and its Families,” p. 140.Google Scholar

19 Stone mentions Max Weber and Joseph [sic] Burckhardt. His terminology and chronology and his attitude towards the lower classes are similar to those of Shorter, Edward, The Making of the Modern Family (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

20 Stone, Lawrence, The Past & The Present (London, 1981), pp. 88, 229.Google ScholarPubMed

21 See the pioneering essay by Hajnal, J., “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective: The Uniqueness of the European Pattern,” Population in History, ed. Glass, D.V. and Eversley, D.E.C. (Chicago, 1965), pp. 101–46Google Scholar. Laslett, Peter, “Mean Household Size in England Since the Sixteenth Century,” in Household and Family Size in Past Time, eds. Laslett, Peter and Wall, Richard (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 126, 137, 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar presents data from 100 communities showing that mean household size was “fairly constant” throughout the period, but was lower than average between c. 1650-1749. Gaskin, Katherine, “Age at First Marriage in Europe before 1850: A Summary of Family Reconstitution Data,” Journal of Family History 2 (1978): 26, 31Google Scholar, argues that the age at first marriage for women was “clearly in an upward direction” by about a year, a point developed by Levine, David, Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1977), p. 104Google Scholar. In The World We Have Lost (London, 1965)Google ScholarPubMed, Peter Laslett maintained that there was “nothing in the documents” to suggest sexual license during the Restoration (pp. 130, 131, 132, 133, 140). In his recent book, Bastardy and Its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Nonconformism (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), edited with Oosterveen, Karla and Smith, R.M.Google Scholar, Laslett presents data that confirm these early conclusions and show that the ratio between legitimate and illegitimate births reached a nadir in 1655-9 and increased only moderately during the second half of the seventeenth century (p. 11).

22 Stone, , The Past & The Present, pp. 80, 222, 229, 230.Google ScholarPubMed

23 One edition is The Letters of Rachel Lady Russell, 2 vols. (London, 1853)Google Scholar. Many of these letters were first published in 1773. See also [Berry, Mary], Some Account of the Life of Rachel Wriothesley Lady Russell. Followed by A Series of Letters From Lady Russell to Her Husband William Lord Russell (London, 1819)Google Scholar. (Hereafter cited as Some Account.)

24 Newcastle, Lady Margaret, Poems and Fancies, Written by the Right Honorable the Lady Newcastle (London, 1653)Google Scholar. Facsimile reproduction: Yorkshire, The Scolar Press, 1972. See Grant, Douglas, Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623-1673 (London, 1957).Google Scholar

25 Grant, Douglas, ed., The Phanseys of William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, addressed to Margaret Lucas and her Letters in reply (London, 1956).Google Scholar

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27 Multiple entries of Boswell's works are not included in the total number. Twenty-six items are from the 19th century.

28 MacDonald, , Mystical Bedlam, pp. 88–92.Google Scholar

29 MacFarlane, Alan, The Family Life of Ralph Josselin. A Seventeenth-Century Clergyman. An Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 1970), p. 92 and note 2Google Scholar. Wrightson, Keith, English Society, 1580-1680 (London, 1982), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar

30 Blakiston, Georgiana, Woburn and the Russells (London, 1980), pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

31 Grant, ed., The Phanseys of William Cravendish, passim.

32 B.O.L., Russell Papers, #39, pp. 34-35.

33 The Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, through England, During the Reign of King Charles the Second, 1669. (London, 1821), p. 400.Google Scholar

34 Wrightson, , English Society, pp. 102–103.Google Scholar

35 Smith, , Reason's Disciples, pp. 89, 91, 93.Google Scholar

36 Quoted in Ibid., pp. 158-159.

37 Some Account, pp. 48, 55, 57, 62, 63. The notes are in the Bedford papers at Chatsworth.

38 Ibid., p. 56.

39 Wrightson, , English Society, pp. 107–118.Google Scholar

40 See Chambers, J.D., “The Course of Population Change: From the Vale of Trent 1670-1800: A Regional Study of Economic Change,” in Population in History, ed. Glass, and Eversley, , p. 328Google ScholarPubMed; and Sigismund Peller, “Births and Deaths among Europe's Ruling Families since 1500,” in ibid., pp. 91, 94.

41 Quoted in Wrightson, , English Society, pp. 101–102.Google Scholar

42 Sorbière, Samuel, A Journey to England. With Some Account of the Manners and Customs of that Nation. Written at the Command of a Nobleman in France. Made English (London, 1700), p. 23Google Scholar. At least five editions of this tract, two in French and with variants in the title, appeared between 1666 and 1709.

43 Some Account, p. 24, 36, 52, 53, 60.

44 In the index childbirth has one reference, midwives four, abortion eight, and pregnancy twenty-one, seventeen of which deal with prenuptial pregnancy, which is not the point I am making.

45 Quoted in Smith, , Reason's Disciples, p. 84.Google Scholar

46 Letters of Lady Rachel Russell (1773 ed.), pp. 3, 4.Google Scholar

47 Illick, Joseph, “Child-Rearing in Seventeenth-Century England and America,” in The History of Childhood, ed. deMause, Lloyd (New York, 1974), pp. 303–350Google Scholar; and Hilda Smith, “Gynecology and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England.”

48 Love Letters by Mrs.Behn, A. in The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn (London, 1696), pp. 403–404.Google Scholar

49 Summers, Montague, ed., The Works of Aphra Behn (London, 1915), 6: 141–144.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., pp. 179-180.

51 Quoted in Smith, , Reason's Disciples, p. 88.Google Scholar

52 Grant, , ed., The Phanseys of William Cavendish, pp. 106, 109, 110.Google Scholar

53 Some Account, p. 58; Also pp. 3, 6, 9, 14, 43, and espec. 65.

54 Kuhn, T.S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed.; Chicago, 1970).Google Scholar