"With Her Own Hands" : household instructional texts and the medieval and renaissance woman /
Since the advent of printing in the fifteenth century, practical household books have been marketed to women, the primary consumers of these texts. This dissertation specifically examines women's roles in the late-medieval and early modern household as wives, mothers, and household managers, t...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
2000.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=728323041&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | Since the advent of printing in the fifteenth century, practical household books have been marketed to women, the primary consumers of these texts. This dissertation specifically examines women's roles in the late-medieval and early modern household as wives, mothers, and household managers, to gain an understanding of their use of instructional texts that helped them perform the household duties that were expected of them. Following Chapter I's introduction, Chapter II provides an overview of the educational opportunities that were available to women between 1300 and 1600. Middle and upper-class women were commonly taught reading skills as girls in order to prepare them for marriage and the household. These skills were then applied to the reading of instructional, as well as biblical texts. Chapter III demonstrates that women's activities within the household were extensive, and important to the household's economy. In spite of the messages sent by writers of tracts discussing women's behavior, wives were required to be more than simply modest, chaste, and silent. Chapter IV focuses on early cookery texts, court chefs and other hired cooks in the early periods, and emphasizes the importance of women's participation in the culinary genre as readers and users of instructional text to their authorship of those texts in the seventeenth-century. Chapter V discusses women healers in the medieval and early modern periods and shows that although the health care profession mostly limited women's participation to the field of midwifery, the practice of folk healing and lay medicine by women in the household was accepted by society and encouraged by the authors and publishers of medical "receipt" books. The instructional texts that were directed toward women readers between 1450 and 1650 are a more reliable source of information about women's household activities and responsibilities than behavior manuals and marriage sermons, which promoted an unrealistic ideal for women's conduct in the household. Women read, utilized and, more and more frequently after 1600, wrote household guides for women. As consumers of popular practical texts, women influenced writers and publishers to produce household guides and market them to married women. |
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| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: English". |
| Physical Description: | viii, 255 leaves ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilm Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 232-254). |