Gender and the English Revolution

Description

In this fascinating and unique study, Ann Hughes examines how the experience of civil war in seventeenth-century England affected the roles of women and men in politics and society; and how conventional concepts of masculinity and femininity were called into question by the war and the trial and execution of an anointed King. Ann Hughes combines discussion of the activities of women in the religious and political upheavals of the revolution, with a pioneering analysis of how male political identities were fractured by civil war. Traditional parallels and analogies between marriage, the family and the state were shaken, and rival understandings of sexuality, manliness, effeminacy and womanliness were deployed in political debate. In a historiography dominated by military or political approaches, Gender and the English Revolution reveals the importance of gender in understanding the events in England during the 1640s and 1650s. It will be an essential resource for anyone interested in women’s history, feminism, gender or British History. Gender and the English Revolution......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Acknowledgements......Page 8 1 Introduction......Page 10 Gender, power and politics in early modern England......Page 19 Some contexts......Page 39 Women at war......Page 44 A ‘soliciting temper’: women and survival strategies......Page 51 ‘Brave feminine spirits’: women and politics......Page 58 ‘Christ hath purchased us at as dear a rate as he hath done men’: parliamentarian petitioners......Page 63 Royalist women......Page 70 Religion......Page 80 3 Manhood and civil war......Page 99 Roundheads and Cavaliers......Page 102 Thinking with women......Page 105 Inadequate men......Page 111 Radical masculinities......Page 115 An uxorious king......Page 127 England without a king......Page 131 4 Bodies, families, sex: using gender, imagining politics......Page 134 Women, politics, sex......Page 135 Bodies and the body politic......Page 139 Women, family and political change......Page 143 The state and the household: the public and private......Page 147 5 Conclusion......Page 153 Notes......Page 159 Index......Page 184