This article looks at the difficulties of viewing Queen Elizabeth as an example of female lives, and the ways in which she was treated as both an anomaly and as the epitome of female accomplishment by her contemporaries and near contemporaries. The article looks at two 17th century texts written by women that used Elizabeth as the focus of arguments in favor of women’s education. The author points out that women, more often than men, held up Elizabeth as a model for other women, as opposed to viewing her as an isolated exception, or as being essentially masculine in her accomplishments.
17th c
LHMP entry
In the 16th and 17th centuries, needlework was a strongly associated with the category of “woman” as well as being a significant marker of class in how it was created, used, and imitated. The motifs – both on large and small scale – provided a symbolic vocabulary to express multiple layers of meaning and offered a means of expressing identity, community, and subversion, as well as the more obvious symbolism of the designs. Elite embroiderers might have access to professional designers, but printed design books were becoming more general and patterns were shared within communities.
This paper considers the difficulty of tracing female alliances, due to gender differences in the types of records created and preserved. Women’s bonds are less commonly traceable in formal documents than men’s. Women’s letters provide one source for connections, even though many are written to men. The letter under consideration was written by lady Ralegh after her husband’s conviction for treason.
So, Ben Johnson is a massive misogynist, we know that, right? This analysis of gendered roles and alliances in his play The Magnetic Lady, reveals a complex feminine world, despite the hatred and disgust shown for any female character who is not a well-born, passive, virtuous cypher. Women acting together, in a variety of strongly female-coded roles such as midwife, nurse, and widowed householder, try to subvert the patriarchal establishment by taking ownership of their own sexuality and acting to further female goals in marriage.
The topic of this article involves the reputation that the town of Brentford had as a place of adulterous assignation for residents of London, and how the sexual sheanigans of a group of men in the early 17th c play “Westward Ho” were subverted by the women who were the target of their desire via a femal alliance to keep the upper hand. I just barely skimmed this, as it doesn’t have any identifiable relevance to the Project. Included only for completness’ sake.
Mikalachki’s introduction to this article focuses on the difficulty of the topic: inter-personal alliances among female vagrants in the early 17th century.
The importance of relations (of all types) between women to society and to women’s lives has tended to be overlooked in favor of the more visible relations between men or between women and men. Due to the nature of society, men could assume that their relationships were stable and long-lasting, but women’s relationships could easily be disrupted by the lesser control women had over their own lives. Or women’s relationships might be temporary alliances across social barriers, established for a specific purpose.
Most of the articles on burial monuments commemorating same-sex pairs reference this article, so I had high hopes that it might include further leads and details. Alas, not so, at least with respect to women’s memorials. The article focuses primarily on the symbolism of structural and artistic details of a couple of major monuments commemorating pairs of men. (This focus is not entirely surprising given that the article appears in a journal about English church monuments.)
Ballaster uses the lens of Delarivier Manley’s The New Atalantis, and especially its “New Cabal” as a lens for exploring knowledge of, and attitudes toward, female same-sex eroticism in 17th and 18th century England. (Manley’s book was published in 1709 and so speaks to both centuries.)
Fisher examines the social and erotic context of the gesture-group known as “chin-chucking”, which is loosely defined as “reaching for, touching, fingering, pinching, caressing, cupping, or clasping of the cheek or chin.” The central version of the gesture involves one person holding the chin of the other person with the fingers of one hand. [Note: although Fisher considers this topic specifically within the context of 17th century England, there is a much wider context involved. See my commentary for further consideration.]
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