Women's Wealth and Women's Writing in Early Modern England: 'Little Legacies' and the Materials of Motherhood

by Elizabeth Mazzola

Overview

Focusing on both literary and material networks in early modern England, this book examines the nature of women's wealth, its peculiar laws of transmission and accumulation, and how a world of goods and favors, mothers and daughters was transformed by market culture. Drawing on the long and troubled relationship between Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, Bess of Hardwick, and Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Mazzola more broadly explores what early modern women might exchange with or leave to each other, including jewels and cloth, needlework, combs, and candlesticks. Women's writings take their place in this circulation of material things, and Mazzola argues that their poems and prayers, letters and wills are particularly designed with the aim of substantiating female ties. This book is an interdisciplinary one, making use of archival research, literary criticism, social history, feminist theory, and anthropological studies of gift exchange to propose that early modern women - whatever their class, educational background or marital status - were key economic players, actively pursuing favors, trading services, and exchanging goods.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351871150
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/05/2016
Series:	Women and Gender in the Early Modern World
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	138
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Elizabeth Mazzola is Professor of English, City College of the City University of New York, USA

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction; Miroir or glasse; Borrowed robes; 'Manifest housekeepers'; Strange bedfellows; 'Girles aflote'; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'In this eloquent, evocative, and valuable book, Elizabeth Mazzola thoroughly ties women's writing into material culture in a specific and detailed manner, providing a needed focus on the material (needlework, writing, cloth, poetry, and letters) produced by four related women: Queen Elizabeth, Bess Hardwick, Mary Stuart, and Arbella Stuart. She shows that their relationships are intricate and complex, and traces the General evolution of the relationship of women and goods/writings from rich networks of affiliation to empty commercial connections as England moves towards a consumer economy.' Mary Ellen Lamb, Southern Illinois University, USA 'By approaching women's literary history not through the context of male literary history but through social history, the book highlights the connections between literary writing and the artistic productions of women's daily lives.' Renaissance Quarterly '... a brief, insightful, interesting study of the material conditions in the 'ways women's writings in the early modern period concern their wealth'... As an interdisciplinary study, this is [a] valuable resource... Highly recommended.' Choice '... a vitally important, excellent study. Women's Wealth and Women's Writing in Early Modern England represents the very best of literary historical scholarship: it expands productively upon previous research, develops innovative interpretive concepts that might be applied fruitfully in other contexts, and reveals significant, previously overlooked connections among events, texts, people, and things. Mazzola's book makes crucial contributions to our understanding of early modern women's cultural production, the social and material history of the elite family and household, and the gendered dynamics of court life.' Clio '[Mazzola's book] is a model of the use of interdisciplinary archival resources to interpret women's texts and the place of those texts in early modern English culture.' Journal of British Studie

From the Publisher