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The honourable estate : marital advice in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this paper is to analyze advice about marriage written in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first chapter focuses on marital counsel contained in letters, the second on advice offered by Protestant clergymen, and the third on various kinds of popular literature which discussed marriage and women. The contents of the works are described, as is the historical and literary context in which they were written. Although the form, purpose, and significance of the marital counsel varies, the advice itself is remarkably consistent. The central concern of the authors is how a man can select a good wife and how the woman should comport herself after marriage; only the works written by clerics describe the husband's marital responsibilities to any significant extent. The implication is that a successful marriage would result if the man chose his wife wisely and if, once chosen, the woman conformed to his and society's expectations. However, advice tells us only what people were saying, not what they were doing; it is prescriptive, not descriptive. Moreover, when examining works which dealt with wedlock, one becomes aware of the essentially literary nature of much of the counsel—many authors simply repeated or expanded on clichés. Their words do not provide us with insight into their own thoughts or matrimonial relations, but inform us as to the accepted, conventional mode of discussing marriage during this period.

Text

2010-07-26

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/26895

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