The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women
A Social History
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The turbulent Tudor Age never fails to capture the imagination. But what was it truly like to be a woman during this era?
The Tudor period conjures up images of queens and noblewomen in elaborate court dress; of palace intrigue and dramatic politics. But if you were a woman, it was also a time when death during childbirth was rife; when marriage was usually a legal contract, not a matter for love, and the education you could hope to receive was minimal at best.
Yet the Tudor century was also dominated by powerful and dynamic women in a way that no era had been before. Historian Elizabeth Norton explores the life cycle of the Tudor woman, from childhood to old age, through the diverging examples of women such as Elizabeth Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister; Cecily Burbage, Elizabeth's wet nurse; Mary Howard, widowed but influential at court; Elizabeth Boleyn, mother of a controversial queen; and Elizabeth Barton, a peasant girl who would be lauded as a prophetess. Their stories are interwoven with studies of topics ranging from Tudor toys to contraception to witchcraft, painting a portrait of the lives of queens and serving maids, nuns and harlots, widows and chaperones. Norton brings this vibrant period to colorful life in an evocative and insightful social history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In these absorbing and well-researched portraits, Norton (The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor), an authority on the queens of England, juxtaposes the experiences of prominent and ordinary women across the social, economic, and religious spectra during the Tudor period (1485 1603). Norton frames her work with the lives of Henry VIII's younger sister Elizabeth (1492 1495) and his younger daughter, Queen Elizabeth I (1533 1603). She posits that women passed through Shakespeare's "seven ages of man" in parallel fashion. This construct proves awkward, as for women there was no fourth or fifth age comparable to those of a soldier or man at the peak of his professional success. Thus, two of the book's middle sections devolve into narratives about well-known, exceptional women caught up in the religious turmoil of the 1530s 1550s. The earlier and later ages more successfully encompass a broad range of experiences, including those of wet nurses, witches, the poor, servants, and widows. Readers will learn about cooking and medicine, church pews and contraception, ladies in waiting, rape and prostitution, ecclesiastical courts, Lady Jane Grey, cosmetics, and more. Despite occasionally stretching the material to suit her thesis, Norton weaves her stories with an expert hand and illuminates many rarely discussed aspects of daily life for Tudor women. Illus.
