Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe [Hardcover]

Addressing a key challenge facing feminist scholars today, this volume explores the tensions between shared gender identity and the myriad social differences structuring women's lives. By examining historical experiences of early modern women, the authors of these essays consider the possibilities for commonalities and the forces dividing women. They analyse individual and collective identities of early modern women, tracing the web of power relations emerging from women's social interactions and contemporary understandings of femininity. Essays range from the late medieval period to the eighteenth century, study women in England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden, and locate women in a variety of social environments, from household, neighbourhood and parish, to city, court and nation. Despite differing local contexts, the volume highlights continuities in women's experiences and the gendering of power relations across the early modern world. Recognizing the critical power of gender to structure identities and experiences, this collection responds to the challenge of the complexity of early modern women's lives. In paying attention to the contexts in which women identified with other women, or were seen by others to identify, contributors add new depth to our understanding of early modern women's senses of exclusion and belonging.Contents: Preface; Introduction, Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall; Part 1 Reading Communities in History: Real and imagined communities in the lives of women in 17th-century Ireland: identity and gender, Anne Laurence; The abuse of history? Identity politics, disordered identity and the 'really real' in French cases of demonic possession, Sarah Ferber. Part 2 Domestic Polities: 'In myn own house': the troubled connections between servant marriages, late-medieval English household communities, and early modern historiography, Philippa Maddern; Recusants, daughters, and sisters in Christ: English nuns and their communities in lx