Gender and the English Revolution

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 19; p. 133
• Main Author: Carlin, Norah
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2015
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Christianity; Civil war; English language; English literature; Gender; Masculinity; Patriarchy; Religion; Spirituality; War; Williams, Roger; Women; United Kingdom > UK; England
• ISSN: 0954-0970

More than thirty years have passed since a facetious gentleman asked the historian Antonia Fraser, ? Were there any women in the seventeenth century?' Since then many volumes, including Fraser's own, have combined to make the women of this period indelibly visible: their domestic and economic roles, their experience of marriage, childbirth, and widowhood, their access to property, their published and unpublished writings, and many other aspects of women's experience in this period have been the subjects of research, analysis and debate. About a third of the book deals with women's experience of civil war, drawing on the author's own research and that of many other historians, using local and regional sources as well as those originating at the centre in London. Many women took charge of family property and businesses in the absence of their menfolk, and made specific contributions to the war effort of each side by fundraising, taking oaths of loyalty, even in some cases carrying messages and gathering intelligence through enemy lines; while elite women on both sides could find themselves defending their homes from siege or armed attack.