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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
The Emancipation of Women
Carl Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen: 1590-1642 (1968; Oxford University Press, New York), pp. 27, 28.
‘The
subordination of women under feudalism and the Christian Church throughout the
Middle Ages proved to be so complete and so effective that few challenges to
this immutable order occurred much before the accession of Elizabeth. The first
treatise explaining the complicated and restrictive status of the fair sex,
assembled in Tudor days though not published until 1632, was
The
Lawes Resolution of Women’s Rights [also known as The Women’s Lawyer
– Ed.]. Because of Adam’s sin, the compiler held,
half apologetically,
Women have no voyse in Parliament, They make no Lawes, they
consent to none, they abrogate none. All of them are understood either married
or to bee married and their desires ar subject to their husband, I know no
remedy though some women can shift it well enough. The Common Law here shaketh
hand with Divinitie. . . .
‛Thus, in most instances,
did man-made society deny to woman any part in public life or control of her
property. Years later, 1642, Thomas Fuller could still insist that “the house
is the woman’s centre,” as he elucidated the attitude of his countrymen, for in
Jacobean and Caroline times, men in general deeply resented the intrusion of
women into the hitherto forbidden spheres of trade and the intellect.
‛It was the growth and
change in the economy that opened more places for women in business life, and
education raised many of them socially and culturally as their worldly wealth
accrued. Puritanism proved a tangible aid in their gradual emancipation. As in
former years, the women helped to educate England’s children and managed
households; they aided their spouses in agriculture or trade, and they nursed
them through their illnesses. Soon they would embark with them, however
reluctantly, in the great English adventure of colonization. The women gave the
coup de grâce to the Middle Ages; they were the makers of a modern
England.’
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