English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers

By Barbara J. Harris

Book Overview

Portraits of aristocratic women from the Yorkist and Tudor periods reveal elaborately clothed and bejeweled nobility, exemplars of their families' wealth. Unlike their male counterparts, their sitters have not been judged for their professional accomplishments. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara J. Harris argues that the roles of aristocratic wives, mothers, and widows constituted careers for women that had as much public and political significance and were as crucial for the survival and prosperity of their families and class as their husband's careers. Women, Harris demonstrates, were trained from an early age to manage their families' property and households; arrange the marriages and careers of their children; create, sustain, and exploit the client-patron relationships that were an essential element in politics at the regional and national levels; and, finally, manage the transmission and distribution of property from one generation to another, since most wives outlived their husbands.

English Aristocratic Women unveils the lives of noblewomen whose historical influence has previously been dismissed, as well as those who became favorites at the court of Henry VIII. Through extensive archival research of documents belonging to more than twelve hundred families, Harris paints a collective portrait of upper-class women of this period. By recognizing the full significance of the aristocratic women's careers, this book reinterprets the politics and gender relations of early modern England. Barbara J. Harris is Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her previous works include Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478-1521.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195151283
• ISBN13: 9780195151282
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

English Aristocratic Women, their Careers, and Patriarchy: An Investigation of a Modern Female Persp

Dr. Barbara J. Harris' text, English Aristocratic Women 1450-1550, is an important contribution to the historical analysis of women's history and brings an innovative perspective to the debate of continuity and change within the history of women's studies. Dr. Harris redefines aristocratic women's familial, conjugal, social, and political activities in Yorkist and early Tudor England. Her primary investigation focuses on the utility of the female gentry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and argues that the various roles of wives, mothers, and widows established careers for women that had as much of a political, social and familial impact on their social existence as did their husbands' careers. Despite this modern and original perspective on the aristocratic roles of the English women in early modern society, Dr. Harris is careful to discuss the dichotomous and incongruous nature of the lives led by these women. She argues that while these women constructed empowering careers for themselves, they were still subjected to the patriarchal society in which they lived and were ultimately subordinated by the well established patriarchal institutions that defined both their "legal and material situation" (6). In order to support her thesis Dr. Harris examines the function of these women and their activities within the family and society in general by studying family archives of estate documents, personal letters, wills, and chancery cases. Dr. Harris emphasizes this significant contradiction between female empowerment and subordination by analyzing sources not only written by women, but also by analyzing the male perspective of women. With the comparison of these contrasting view points, Dr. Harris ultimately creates a valid historical analysis on the status of aristocratic women and their overall lives. In her text, Dr. Harris provides this balanced perception of aristocratic women's history by juxtaposing personal data found in the accounts of noble women and their husbands with publicly available political data. She incorporated 763 male wills and 266 female wills into her analysis and compared her results with data acquired from chancery cases, state papers, and the Cotton and Harleian Collections at the British Library (15). In all, Dr. Harris studied approximately 1,200 aristocratic couples and their children through these various documents, ultimately compiling a very rich source of information for her study. By using these extensive and well-balanced set of primary sources, Dr. Harris is able to establish the contradictions found within the familial, conjugal and social relations of aristocratic women with respect to their male counterparts. While Dr. Harris is able to draw conclusions about certain types of female autonomy and the power given and maintained by these women during this period, she is also careful to note the sources of an undeniable struggle inflicted upon aristocratic women due to t

A Truly Revealing and Enlightening Study

Barbara Harris', English Aristocratic Women from 1450-1550, sheds much needed light on the position of women in the rigid patriarchal society of Tudor England. Her primary thesis is that "aristocratic women gained wealth, authority, and power as they managed their husbands' property and households, arranged marriages and careers of their children, maintained and exploited kin and client networks essential to their families' political power, and supervised the transmission and distribution of property to the next generation," (pg 6). This and secondary conclusions are supported with a vast array of data from wills and other documents meticulously presented to the reader in a highly readable fashion. She describes and explains the structures of patriarchy: primogenital inheritance enforced by male entail, arranged marriages, dowries, and jointures. She then follows women through all stages of their lives from childhood to death. Widows gain special attention in this text since a massive percentage (around 60) remarried, many multiple times, and used their newfound independence, since they were no longer covert femme who had no legal power, to arrange for themselves advantages marriages. Harris examines in detail the conflicts that arose between remarried women and their multiple stepsons from different marriages in an effort to gain control of willed estates etc. What is most interesting to me was her inclusion of the husbands perspective of the purpose of his wife, womens' perspective on the purpose of childbirth, women at court, and Harris' examination of the reason that the patriarchal system did not change even with so many women (an men) who continued to defy it. This is an extraordinary text about which there is so much to praise. However, be warned, this is only for the historian/or casual history lover who is used to reading a serious scholarly and meticulously argued (with tons of examples and figures) text. This is simply a must buy for anyone who is truly interested in Tudor England.