Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville Mary Elizabeth Perry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Perry, Mary Elizabeth.

Contributor:

Princeton University.

Series:

Women's studies. History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Spain--Seville--Social condicions--16th century.

Women.

Women--Spain--Seville--Social condicions--17th century.

Seville (Spain)--Social condicions--16th century.

Seville (Spain).

Seville (Spain)--Social condicions--17th century.

Marginality, Social--Spain--Seville--History--16th century.

Marginality, Social.

Marginality, Social--Spain--Seville--History--17th century.

Genre:

Historia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (206 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Princenton : University Press, 1990.

Summary:

In this exploration of crisis in Counter-Reformation Spain, Mary Elizabeth Perry reveals the significance of gender for social order by portraying the lives of women who lived on the margins of respectability--prostitutes, healers, visionaries, and other deviants who provoked the concern of a growing central government linked closely to the church. Focusing on Seville, the commercial capital of Habsburg Spain, Perry uses rich archival sources to document the economic and spiritual activity of women, and efforts made by civil and church authorities to control this activity, during a period of local economic change and religious turmoil. In analyzing such sources as art and literature from the period, women's writings, Inquisition records, and laws and regulations, Perry finds that social definitions of what it meant to be a woman or a man persisted due to their sanctification by religious ideas and their adaptation into political order. She describes the tension between gender ideals and actual conditions in women's lives, and shows how some women subverted the gender order by using a surprisingly wide variety of intellectual and physical strategies.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION Neither Broken Sword nor Wandering Woman

CHAPTER 1 In the Hands of Women

CHAPTER 2 Virgins, Martyrs, and the Necessary Evil

CHAPTER 3 Perfect Wives and Profane Lovers

CHAPTER 4 Walls without Windows

CHAPTER 5 Chastity and Danger

CHAPTER 6 Sexual Rebels

CHAPTER 7 Prostitutes, Penitents, and Brothel Padres

CHAPTER 8 Mothers of the Poor

CONCLUSION Survivors and Subversives

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [185]-202) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691008547

069100854X

OCLC:

1273305900