Gender and Space in Early Modern England (review)

The previously ubiquitous notion of separate spheres in early modern social history comes under attack in Amanda Flather's text as she emphasizes the complexities and contradictions inherent in seventeenth-century English social and familial spatial relations. The use of physical space is key to her understanding of male-female relations. Her main thesis is that previously-held beliefs concerning domestic and public spheres in early modern England do not take into account the realities of life that necessitated the blurring of such boundaries, blurring that was so frequent as to render the separate-spheres doctrine untenable for the modern scholar. Flather sees the social guidelines of the period as far less prescriptive than earlier imagined. Despite rule books that outlined proper spaces for men and women, exceptions were more often than not the rule, as women were forced outside the home for economic reasons and younger, poorer men were sometimes forced into a domestic sphere to be overseen by older, wealthier women. The author contends that "spaces should be understood and read as social fields in which individual actors are placed in differential power relations" (15).

Flather, a lecturer in history at the University of Essex, focuses her research on the county of Essex. The rich archival record and relative lack of research on the church court depositions provide the ample personal examples upon which she builds her argument of the intricate nature of spatial gender relations. Flather divides the text into five chapters: an explanation of the separate spheres doctrine, domestic space, spatial division of labor, social space, and sacred space. Each chapter provides a steady stream of accounts that illustrate life for the middling sort. The research is thorough, and Flather clearly makes her point for a revision of the traditional view of gendered early modern society. In fact, this thesis seems overdue. The author's presentation, however, is repetitive, as she makes her case again and again. The first chapter outlining the separate spheres model is not necessary for any reader interested in this field, and the thesis and evidence could easily be condensed. Although her examples are very informative, they are also similar.

The somewhat repetitive nature of the text does not take away from the fact that this is necessary revisionism. It has been temptingly easy for far too long to take prescriptive literature and rule books for women as gospel —to create neat roles for men and women within assigned spatial arrangements. Flather rightly points out that life often disrupted what we believed the norm to be in early modern England. All space was gendered, but not necessarily how we assume it to be. Particularly in the chapters regarding domestic space and sacred space, the author describes a society where social control (sometimes dictated by gender, sometimes not) was the most important element. Eating and sleeping spaces, for example, were arranged by power relations. The wealthy and older men and women exercised control over the poor and young, leading to conflict and strife. One of the most entertaining sections of the text outlines the development of the politics of place within the parish church. Upon the advent of the Reformation, when households began to sit together (men and women), the jockeying for position within the pews of the church became the ultimate gauge of hierarchy and power. The construction of elaborate pews provided physical representation of the competition between families for most favored position.

Gender and Space in Early Modern England above all seeks to dismantle a binary model of male/female and public/private to complicate the discussion of gender in the period. Flather contends that the social system was "highly complex, dynamic, and varied according to context" (174). This text would be appropriate for readers interested in early modern gender relations, women's history, and social history. Although important reading for established scholars of the period, upper-level undergraduate...