Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485?1603 : Authority, Influence and Material Culture - Susan E. James

Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485?1603

Authority, Influence and Material Culture

By: Susan E. James

Paperback | 14 October 2024

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $83.00

$66.25

20%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $16.56 with

 or 

Available for Backorder. We will order this from our supplier however there isn't a current ETA.

Contributing an original dimension to the significant body of published scholarship on women in 16th-century England, this study examines the largest corpus of women's private writings available to historians: their wills. In these, female voices speak out, commenting on their daily lives, on identity, gender, status, familial relationships and social engagement. Wills show women to have been active participants in a civil society, well aware of their personal authority and potential influence, whose committed actions during life and charitable strategies after death could and did impact the health of that society. From an intensive analysis of more than 1200 wills, this pioneering work focuses on women from all parts of the country and all strata of society, revealing an entire population of articulate, opportunistic, and capable individuals who found the spaces between the lines of the law and used those spaces to achieve personal goals. Author Susan James demonstrates how wills describe strategies for end-of-life care, create platforms of remembrance, and offer insights into the myriad occupational endeavors in which women were engaged. James illuminates how these documents were not simply instruments of bequest and inheritance, but were statements of power and control, catalogues of material culture from which we are able to gauge a woman's understanding of her own reality and the context that formed her environment. Wills were tools and the way in which women wielded these tools offers new ways to look at England in the 16th century and reveals the seminal role women played in its development.
Industry Reviews

"This book is highly recommended for its topic, approach, and new perspectives on women's wills in the Tudor epoch. James presents her views with clarity and at a welcome pace." - George Lazaroiu, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, NY, and Spiru Haret University, Bucharest, Romania

"Does James succeed in allowing us access to the voices of ordinary women? The answer is yes, and with an extraordinary level of detail. Her desire to focus on women's common experience, however, introduces the idea of a more "universal" Tudor woman than some historians would be willing to accept. But the book should be read by everyone interested in women's voices, especially in this period. The great strength of James's book is the amount of knowledge she has so admirably extracted from her sources. Wills really are so much more than mere transfers of property." - Judith Spicksley, University of York, UK

"This is an important contribution that analyses an impressive body of data. James's investigation of women's wills sheds light on the concerns, preoccupations and activities of women in Tudor England and raises important new questions about gender and inheritance." - CHARMIAN MANSELL, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER, UK

More in General & World History

Emperor of the Seas : Kublai Khan and the Making of China - Jack Weatherford
The Golden Road : How Ancient India Transformed the World - William Dalrymple
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - Bettany Hughes

RRP $34.99

$26.95

23%
OFF
Normal Women : 900 Years Of Making History - Philippa Gregory
The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy : Leather-bound Classics - Confucius
Humankind : A Hopeful History - Rutger Bregman

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Homo Deus : A Brief History of Tomorrow - Yuval Noah Harari

RRP $24.99

$23.75

The Journals of Captain Cook : Penguin Classics - James Cook
Band of Brothers - Stephen E. Ambrose

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Kokoda : Updated Edition - Peter FitzSimons

RRP $39.99

$32.75

18%
OFF
The End of Everything : How Wars Descend into Annihilation - Victor D Hanson
The Voynich Manuscript - Raymond Clemens

RRP $82.95

$55.00

34%
OFF