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When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and
Neighbourhood in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University
Bernard
Capp.
Press, 2003. vi + 398pp. ISBN 0199255989
In this lively and meticulously researched monograph, Bernard Capp explores
how, and with what success, women negotiated the patriarchal restrictions of
early modern England. His conclusion is an optimistic one: despite social,
cultural, and material constraints, the realities of many women’s lives failed in
numerous ways to conform to dominant patriarchal codes. The eponymous
meetings of gossips refers to the female networks from which so many
women drew support in a range of contexts. But while the book’s title
foregrounds the meeting of ‘gossips’ or female friends, Capp offers us far
more: he explores manifold aspects of women’s lives and relationships,
including, but not exclusively, those between women.
While women’s speech was a matter for ridicule and anxiety on the part
of many male commentators, in practice the social order itself depended on
women’s networking and friendships. Households headed by women – not
only widows and spinsters but also married women whose husbands were
absent – necessarily found themselves participating in a predominantly female
‘economy of mutual favours’. But such networks extended support to women
trapped in unhappy or violent marriages, too. Such women, having failed to
resolve marital problems privately, frequently turned to other women for
assistance. Female friendships also helped maidservants to bear with lives of
drudgery and dependence, and, if they were unlucky, the cruelty of their
master or mistress. Of course, women’s experiences with other women were
not always positive, but even this could take the form of a resource. Verbal
insults, uttered publicly, and even physical assaults, which Capp argues
convincingly were minor rather than rare, were used to undermine or confer
credit on the parties involved. Matters were somewhat different when women
quarrelled with men. Although the issues were similar to those of all-female
altercations, the patriarchal capital accorded to men placed female adversaries
at a serious disadvantage. Women tried to counter this in various ways. For
instance, the insults that women flung at men, such as ‘rogue’, ‘knave’, and
‘jack’, were not actionable in the ecclesiastical courts and were discouraged in
the civil courts. Women therefore used such insults against male opponents
with impunity, but if a man responded with an equivalent insult, especially the
typical retort ‘whore’, his adversary might sue him for defamation.
Women were theoretically excluded from most aspects of public life.
Capp demonstrates, however, that many women played a larger role than
many historians have acknowledged. This was not confined to acting as juries
of matrons or medical experts as midwives in legal cases such as rape,
infanticide, and fornication, where evidence was imprinted on the female
body. They also exerted collective pressure on parish officers through
informal networks and gossip. Moreover, women collectively petitioned the
authorities with demands about a number of issues, not only during the civil
wars but both before and after, and rioted together in protest over a number
of issues that affected their lives. Women’s traditional concern for the welfare
of their families led many to act overtly to protect collectively the social and
material interests of their households and neighbourhoods. The very concerns
that patriarchal ideology dictated were connected to women’s household
duties were thus the very same that provoked women to become involved in
politicised actions. Capp does not stop there with women’s activities outside
the home: he discusses women’s recreational activities, too, in the context of
both religion and secular female culture. While some female recreational
activities took place in the context of marital, household, and neighbourhood
alliances in which women and men participated together, Capp shows that
women did enjoy a great deal of same-sex company. Importantly, he warns
against sentimentalising or idealising a female ‘sub-culture’; we must
acknowledge that women’s relationships could be characterised by
competition and conflict as well as by cooperation and support.
Capp has mined primary manuscript and printed sources to produce a
book packed to the brim with rich detail. He expertly reads his numerous
sources ‘against the grain’ to discover the diversity of female experience. The
overall impression one gains is that for every passive and docile woman, many
more were feisty and assertive, usually within the boundaries set by dominant
gender codes but sometimes transgressing them. This is both the book’s
strength and its weakness. For such emphasis on female agency allows the
reader to celebrate early modern women and perhaps forget the extent to
which they were undoubtedly oppressed by patriarchal structures. That
quibble notwithstanding, Bernard Capp’s When Gossips Meet is essential reading
for all students and scholars of early modern women.
Dr Garthine Walker, Cardiff University