Male Honour, Social Control and Wife Beating in Late Stuart England

Abstract

In seventeenth-century England honour was a concept which had meaning for men in the private or domestic spheres as well as in the public spheres of their lives. Indeed, failure to prove an honourable man at home could exclude men from entering any honour community outside it. Above all else, men from whatever social status were only held worthy of honour if they could demonstrate control over their wives, children and servants. Hence honour was a concept which was vital to the upholding of male power. To achieve that power or control men were encouraged to adopt behaviour which laid emphasis on two key gender characteristics which were thought to distinguish them from women: physical strength and reason. As Sir Thomas Smith explained in 1583, God had intended to give the male ‘great wit, bigger strength, and more courage to compel the woman to obey by reason or force’. Men used their claim to reason to legitimise their authority over women; the first Marquis of Halifax explained to his daughter in a letter of 1688: That there is Inequality in the Sexes, and that for the better Economy of the World, the Men, who were to be the Law-givers, had the larger share of Reason bestow'd upon them…Your Sex wanteth our Reason for your Conduct, and our Strength for your Protection.

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