The thirteen essays in this collection explore questions of identity and community in early modern Europe. This collection was inspired by Patricia Crawford's scholarship on gender identity and the role gender played in structuring women's conditions of existence. The authors of these essays carefully explore the historical experiences of women as a means of analyzing individual and collective identities as well as experiences and responses structuring women's lives in the early modern world. These essays provide a wide range of fascinating explorations of the place of gender in identity and community.
Anne Laurence uses Crawford's method of integrating gender into the wider study of English history in her parallel study of Ireland. She takes gender into account in terms of collective identities in religious and political communities. Sarah Ferber uses cases of witchcraft and demonic possession in early seventeenth-century France as a framework for studying cases of demonic possession as possible instances of child abuse. She questions whether these possession cases can be read as early modern examples of dissociative identity disorder.
The next two essays focus on domestic politics within secular and religious communities and reveal that not only did female agency exist in both of these communities but this agency disrupted the unity of them. Philippa Maddern's essay studies servant marriages in late medieval English households. She suggests these marriages had the sway to destabilize medieval household and marital order as well as challenge the power of gender relations and authority structures. Claire Walker's essay switches focus from the secular household and turns to the religious convents of English Catholic women during the seventeenth century. Through her analysis of these women's letters and chronicles, Walker offers insight into how early modern English nuns perceived themselves individually within their community and how they organized themselves collectively, revealing that, although these communities focused on commonality and unity, the reality also shows a community of social hierarchies, inequities of status and work, and spiritual rivalries. All of these aided in fractured unity and communal conflict.
Essays by Dolly MacKinnon and Jacqueline Van Gent study the social networking of women through material culture and magical rituals. MacKinnon examines how rural parish women in early modern England created female spiritual and economic community networks by using clothing as charity for the deserving poor. MacKinnon suggests that these women constructed a pious identity for themselves while simultaneously ensuring they remained in the memory of the parish community since their good deeds were exhibited by the godly poor who wore their benefactors’ donations. In her essay, Van Gent explores the female social network by examining the role of magic in the lives of women in eighteenth-century Sweden. She suggests that female magic influenced social interaction between women and afforded them varying levels of power and agency within their community. She particularly focuses on the use of magic as described in witchcraft trials as a means of including or excluding women from social power within the community.
The next two essays move away from rural parish and village life and address women in urban communities. Lyndal Roper's essay examines the symbolic significance of the witch as a figurehead of communal identity for the city of Augsburg. Roper's study focuses on several instances throughout Augsburg's history in which the heroine of the city was also perceived as witchlike. Roper points out, however, that although figures of actual women were used to represent political entities, real women remained excluded from the actual political community. Laura Gowing's essay examines poor single mothers in early modern London and their collective attempts to construct an urban identity. Gowing discusses the difficulties faced by these women to overcome the vagrant identities thrust upon them by the civic community that saw these women as threatening the city's order.
The final group of essays examines women higher up the social scale. Essays by Sara Mendelson and Frances Harris focus on women from gentry communities and the female identities and friendships these women formed. Sara Mendelson analyzes the correspondence of the seventeenth-century English gentry woman Anne Dormer to describe her abusive husband's effort to isolate her from her female community of friends and neighbors. But this community served as an essential support to her as she eted female identities for themselves at court. Susan Broomhall's essay explores women's participation in courtly honor culture at the Burgundian court during the fifteenth century. Broomhall uses Eleanor de Poitiers's 1484 text about Burgundian court life to demonstrate that gender played an important role in determining women's and men's respective roles in the application of court rules and ceremony. Judith M. Richards's essay is a case study of two women from the early Tudor court—Margaret Beaufort and Katherine of Aragon. She examines their efforts to shape their reputation and public identities. Sybil Jack's essay also deals with queens (seventeenth-century English queens) and pubic reputations. Jack argues that the queen consort was the peak of the social pyramid, so her image could be used to embody ideals of virtuous womanhood. While these images could be manipulated by the powerful at court, clever queens could do some manipulations of their own.
All of the essays in this volume offer fresh insight into the many variables affecting female identities and experiences. It is an exceptional and thought-provoking collection that covers a broad spectrum of factors affecting women, identity, and community in early modern Europe and is a fitting tribute to the extraordinary scholarship of Patricia Crawford.
