Witchcraft Week 6 Overview

Velazquez’s “Venus at her Mirror” (c. 1649-1661)

modern style but Cupid → not modern woman

looking at the viewer

blurry face → focus on the nude

connection to royalty, mythological → accepted

erotic figure for male viewership

gender flexibility with class (especially for men)

Breughel and Ruben’s “The Garden of Eden” 1615

the Fall, original sin

duality—women inferior, but powerful

Eve sexualised, Adam covered

Jan Steen’s “Celebrating the Birth” 1664

cuckold symbol—legitimacy of child

power of women in household ← scrutinised

focus on men even in female space

Natalie Davis

importance of the history of both men and women

understand the significance of gender groups in the past

Joan Kelly Gadol: did women have a renaissance?

wealthy women as the patrons of troubadours and ballads

Bernard Capp (2003) When Gossips Meet

conduct-book writers (elite and middling readers)

often at odds with common social lives: women leading household, good neighbours vs gadding, familes relied on household income

wife’s money: legal control versus responsibility to manage household budget

wife still has authority over other members of the householf

religious duty vs authority of the husband

young women without husbands at risk (prostitution and crime)

young widows more threat than old

women with absent husbands

abandoned wives → female householders

women with husbands as self-supporting

women out of male supervision, gossiping

birth: female social space

monotonous work → company for tedium

neighbourly ties in times of crisis

solidarity with gossip networks, aggressive towards outsiders

• police boundaries of acceptable behaviour

  • defamation cases: sexual allegations

Mary Risebrook

young widow in London, several employments for good pay

Catherine des Roches

poem about a spindle: “Domestic honor”

Eve

the fall

Martin Luther

women created to serve men, let them bear children to death

Thomas Fuller

witches often women

natural philosophy

women < men (humours)

sperm 1670s, eggs 1827

Blessed Virgin Mary as the perfect woman

free from original sin, virginity

classical goddesses

female protagonists but not good Christian role models

courtly love

idealised

women as an object?

unconsummated

Irish recusants

take advantage of no separate status for wives

Erasmus

spiritual equality

education to make women “fit companions”

topsy turvy

women ruling men