The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England (review)

Keith Thomas's new book, based on his Ford Lectures delivered at Oxford in 2000, is a wonderfully rich survey of the cultural landscape of early modern England. Written with humanity and insight, it is a delight to read and an ideal introduction. With over ninety pages of endnotes, it also provides scholars with a happy hunting-ground. Six wide-ranging chapters explore a number of 'ends'-military prowess, work and vocation, wealth and possessions, honour and reputation, friendship and sociability, and fame and the afterlife. Tracing shifts over the period, they chart the transformation of 'friendship' from vertical to primarily horizontal ties, and its gradual separation from family and kin, changes in the nature and expectations of marriage, the emergence of new forms of sociability (coffee-house, club, tea-party), and the development of 'taste' in the acquisition of material goods and furnishings, along with much else. Thomas is fully aware of the conceptual and evidential problems inherent in his project. How far can we speak of individuality in the early modern period? How far were people conscious of the possibility, let alone propriety, of seeking a personal fulfilment? Elite families generally subordinated individual wishes to the interest of the family as a whole, and its lineage. Jacobean satirists and dramatists such as Ben Jonson thought primarily in terms of 'character' types. Even spiritual autobiography quickly assumed a generic form, with writers tracing broadly similar paths from sinfulness through conversion to grace. But if individuality still had far to go, Thomas stresses how far it had already come. The conventional discourse urging acceptance of one's given station in life has to be set against "widespread evidence of active agency, mobility, self-help, and independence of spirit" (p.41). To the evidence he adduces we might add the idiosyncratic autobiography of the Tudor musician Thomas Whythorne, and the deeply personal travails of the Stuart nonconformist Agnes Beaumont. Finding clues to an individual's inner drives poses a different kind of problem, especially for the poor and less literate. While we can trace misbehaviour through court records, there is little direct evidence on the inner thoughts of the silent and outwardly respectable majority; Quaker and similar writings, however rich, are highly unrepresentative. The surviving evidence is weighted heavily towards the social and intellectual elites, and the book inevitably reflects this, though Thomas does all he can to probe attitudes lower down the social scale. He acknowledges too the fact that for the poor, life was bound by constraints that generally left little room to pursue personal ends. For most, life was about survival and providing for their families. And for women, especially, it was widely regarded as inappropriate to pursue any personal goal other than to be a good wife, mother, and neighbour.

Thomas marshals here a vast body of material. He also sets out, very fairly, evidence of widely different, even opposing attitudes. Early modern English culture was far from homogeneous, and characterised in all these fields by remarkable diversity both within and among different social strata, and over time. This was an age in which asceticism and rampant materialism both found many champions and devotees, though consumerism clearly emerged victorious. The book's title, however, is slightly misleading. Agreement over a particular cultural attribute might range from those who regarded it as generally appropriate to those for whom it was the driving force in their lives. While the title suggests a focus on the latter, Thomas in fact ranges across the entire spectrum. This is most evident in the chapter on military prowess, which (perhaps surprisingly) comes first. For much of the period, England was at peace, and only a very small proportion of the elites chose to pursue a military career overseas, fighting as volunteers. Most aristocrats and gentlemen were proud of their skill in fencing and horsemanship, and no doubt hoped to perform with courage and honour should the need arise. But these were hardly...