Women in Early Modern England, 1550-1720

How did women see themselves as having attained adult status? Women conceptualized female maturity mainly in terms of being married, with a household to run, and possibly with children to rear and servants to oversee. 'As I am a woman, so I am also mistress of a large family', wrote Susanna Wesley to her husband in 1712, identifying her responsibilities as 'a trust by the great Lord of all the families both of heaven and earth'.¹ Marriage marked a break with the dependence of childhood and the semi-dependence of adolescence and service. It was a life-stage, 'the hon[ou]rable estate of marriage' as Alice Thornton termed it.²

Early modern society recognized adult status in several different ways. In legal terms, men and women became adult at various ages; in practice, participation in the adult world was delayed for both sexes.³ Since the age at marriage was generally late, most historians have concluded that 'the transition from semi-dependency to full adult status' and 'equal participation' in the adult world was deferred until well beyond the age of 20.⁴ Yet, for a woman, 'equal participation' was actually denied if she married, since she lost her status as a legal individual through the doctrine of coverture.⁵ No adult woman, whether married or single, participated as a citizen in the same way as a man did, with the exception of the queen regnant. Nevertheless, a woman who was married enjoyed greater social status than a single one; as adults, women were accorded different degrees of independence and responsibility.

Women's ideas about adulthood ran directly counter to legal discourse, which insisted that marriage turned a woman into a non-person, her husband's dependant with no real will of her own. Ideally, a woman was to her husband what she had been to her father or master, except that she

-124-