Religion, Household-State Authority, and the Defense of "Collapsed Ladies" in Early Jacobean England

This article argues that specific features among the early Jacobean Catholic community enabled a reevaluation of the obedience owed by wives to their husbands and of the household-state analogy. At the forefront of this development was a new category of Catholic "collapsed ladies" who acti...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Peters, Christine (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc. 2014
In: The sixteenth century journal
Year: 2014, Volume: 45, Issue: 3, Pages: 631-657
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:This article argues that specific features among the early Jacobean Catholic community enabled a reevaluation of the obedience owed by wives to their husbands and of the household-state analogy. At the forefront of this development was a new category of Catholic "collapsed ladies" who actively rejected state Protestantism. Such women were potentially disruptive in a period in which the stability of the household-state analogy was being tested by recusancy and by scrupulous interpretations of the Oath of Allegiance. From a loyalist perspective, and building on Catholic understandings of reason, conscience, and humanist education, it was possible in 1609 for a female-voiced manuscript to corrode the idea that a man's status in the state depended on how he governed his wife, and that a wife was subject to her husband in matters of conscience. The manuscript writer's assumed location in St.-Omer suggests a possible connection with Mary Ward and her circle.
ISSN:2326-0726
Contains:Enthalten in: The sixteenth century journal