Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England

by Shepard, Alexandra

• ISBN13: 9780199299348
• ISBN10: 019929934X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-28
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

This path-breaking study explores the diverse and varied meanings ofmanhood in early modern England and their complex, and often contested,relationship with patriarchal principles. Using social, political and medicalcommentary, alongside evidence of social practice derived from court records, DrShepard argues that patriarchal ideology contained numerous contradictions, andthat, while males were its primary beneficiaries, it was undermined and opposedby men as well as women. Patriarchal concepts of manhood existed in tension bothwith anti-patriarchal forms of resistance and with alternative codes of manhoodwhich were sometimes primarily defined independently of patriarchal imperatives.As a result the differences within each sex, as well as between them, wereintrinsic to the practice of patriarchy and the social distribution of itsdividends in early modern England.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	xi
List of Tables	xi
Conventions and Abbreviations	xii
Introduction	1	(20)
Part I: Modelling Manhood
The Constant Age	21	(26)
Youth and manhood	23	(15)
One foot in the grave	38	(9)
The Imagined Body of `Man's Estate'	47	(23)
The ages of man	54	(4)
A hierarchy of complexions	58	(6)
`Things not natural': manhood and the environment	64	(6)
Models of Manhood	70	(23)
Manhood, marriage, and domestic conduct	73	(14)
Manhood and the social order	87	(6)
Part II: The Social Practice of Manhood
Youthful Excess and Fraternal Bonding	93	(34)
The camaraderie of misrule	96	(17)
Male intimacy, friendship, and illicit sex	113	(14)
The Violence of Manhood	127	(25)
Judicial punishment and disciplinary violence	132	(8)
The gestures of disputed status and the rules of fair play	140	(12)
Respectability, Sex, and Status	152	(34)
The gendered components of honesty and reputation	157	(16)
Slanderous debasement	173	(13)
Credit, Provision, and Worth	186	(28)
Credit, worth, and the language of social description	188	(7)
Women's provision and alternative household strategies	195	(10)
Lone men	205	(9)
The `Ancienter Sort'	214	(32)
The report of ancient men	221	(10)
Ageing, work, and impotence	231	(15)
Conclusion: Manhood, Patriarchy, and Gender in Early Modern England	246	(8)
Bibliography	254	(23)
Index	277