GENDERING THE LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN WORLD Cohen and Reeves (eds) Cohen The Youth of Early Modern Women Modern Early of Youth The Edited by Elizabeth S. Cohen and Margaret Reeves The Youth of Early Modern Women The Youth of Early Modern Women Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World Series editors: James Daybell (Chair), Victoria E. Burke, Svante Norrhem, and Merry Wiesner-Hanks This series provides a forum for studies that investigate women, gender, and/ or sexuality in the late medieval and early modern world. The editors invite proposals for book-length studies of an interdisciplinary nature, including, but not exclusively, from the fields of history, literature, art and architectural history, and visual and material culture. Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays. Chronologically, we welcome studies that look at the period between 1400 and 1700, with a focus on any part of the world, as well as comparative and global works. We invite proposals including, but not limited to, the following broad themes: methodologies, theories and meanings of gender; gender, power and political culture; monarchs, courts and power; constructions of femininity and masculinity; gift-giving, diplomacy and the politics of exchange; gender and the politics of early modern archives; gender and architectural spaces (courts, salons, household); consumption and material culture; objects and gendered power; women’s writing; gendered patronage and power; gendered activities, behaviours, rituals and fashions. The Youth of Early Modern Women Edited by Elizabeth S. Cohen and Margaret Reeves Amsterdam University Press Cover image: Hans Baldung Grien, The Seven Ages of Woman (1544-1545). Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany. Photo Credit: Art Resource, New York. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6298 432 5 e-isbn 978 90 4853 498 2 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789462984325 nur 685 © E.S. Cohen and M. Reeves / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2018 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. Table of Contents Introduction 11 Elizabeth S. Cohen and Margaret Reeves Part 1 Concepts and Representations 1. ‘A Prospect of Flowers’ 35 Concepts of Childhood and Female Youth in Seventeenth-Century British Culture Margaret Reeves 2. A Roving Woman 59 The Rover, Part I and Hellena’s Self-Creation of Youth Sarah Morris 3. ‘She is but a girl’ 77 Talk of Young Women as Daughters, Wives, and Mothers in the Records of the English Consistory Courts, 1550–1650 Jennifer McNabb 4. Flight and Confinement 97 Female Youth, Agency, and Emotions in Sixteenth-Century New Spain Jacqueline Holler 5. Harlots and Camp Followers 117 Swiss Renaissance Drawings of Young Women circa 1520 Christiane Andersson Part 2 Self-Representations: Life-Writing and Letters 6. Three Sisters of Carmen 137 The Youths of Teresa de Jesús, María de San José, and Ana de San Bartolomé Barbara Mujica 7. Elite English Girlhood in Early Modern Ireland 159 The Examples of Mary Boyle and Alice Wandesford Julie A. Eckerle 8. Young Women Negotiating Fashion in Early Modern Florence 179 Megan Moran 9. ‘Is it possible that my sister […] has had a baby?’ 195 The Early Years of Marriage as a Transition from Girlhood to Womanhood in the Letters of Three Generations of Orange-Nassau Women Jane Couchman Part 3 Training for Adulthood 10. Malleable Youth 217 Forging Female Education in Early Modern Rome Alessandra Franco 11. The Material Culture of Female Youth in Bologna, 1550–1600 235 Michele Nicole Robinson 12. Becoming a Woman in the Dutch Republic 255 Advice Literature for Young Adult Women of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Marja van Tilburg Part 4 Courtship and Becoming Sexual 13. Straying and Led Astray 277 Roman Maids Become Young Women circa 1600 Elizabeth S. Cohen 14. A Room of Their Own 297 Young Women, Courtship, and the Night in Early Modern England Eleanor Hubbard 15. In Search of a ‘Remedy’ 315 Young Women, their Intimate Partners, and the Challenge of Fertility in Early Modern France Julie Hardwick Supplementary Bibliography of Secondary Works 333 Index 339 List of Illustrations Figure I.1 Hans Baldung Grien, The Seven Ages of Woman, 1544–1545. Oil on wood, 97 × 74 cm. Inv. G 1364. Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany. Photograph by Bertram Kober (Punctum Leipzig). Art Resource, New York. 10 Figure 5.1 Niklaus Manuel, Scenes from Camp Life (detail), c. 1517. Silverpoint on white-grounded wood panel, 12 × 8.5 cm. Inv. 1662.73.6, Basel Kunstmuseum. 118 Figure 5.2 Urs Graf, Young Woman Making a Gesture of Greeting, c. 1514. Pen with black ink, 14.2 × 9.6 cm. Inv. U.X.115, Basel Kunstmuseum. 120 Figure 5.3 Urs Graf, Simpering Harlot, 1525. Pen with black ink, 27.8 × 20.4 cm. Inv. B.IV.19, Dessau Anhaltsche Gemäldegalerie. 122 Figure 5.4 Urs Graf, Young Woman in Profile, 1517. Pen with black ink and brush with grey ink, white body colour, red chalk, 21.3 × 14.9 cm. Inv.U.X.79, Basel Kunstmuseum. 124 Figure 5.5 Urs Graf, Old Fool Observing a Nude Young Woman, c. 1515. Pen with black ink, Inv. U.X.105, Basel Kunstmu- seum. 126 Figure 5.6 Urs Graf, Young Woman Stepping into a Brook, c. 1521. Pen with black ink, 19.9 × 14.5 cm. Inv. 3051, Vienna Albertina. 129 Figure 5.7 Urs Graf, Victim of War Standing before a Landscape, 1514. Pen with black ink, 21 × 15.9 cm. Inv. U.I.58, Basel Kunstmuseum. 130 Figure 5.8 Urs Graf, Camp Follower Passing a Hanged Mercenary Soldier, 1525. Pen with greyish-black ink, 32 × 21.5 cm. U.I.57, Basel Kunstmuseum. 131 Figure 11.1 Toy Jug made in Pesaro, Italy, c. 1520–1540. Tin-glazed earthenware, 4 cm tall. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 245 Figure 11.2 Saint Nicholas Dowering a Maiden (detail), from Nicolò Zoppino, Esemplario di lavori, 1529, 18r. Woodcut, 23.7 × 18.4 × 2.4 cm. Acc. No. 21.98 (35), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1921. Public Domain, CCO. 249 Figure 12.1 The Virgin’s Arms (Maeghde-wapen) from Jacob Cats, Houwelick, 1625, f. I (***) iij r. University of Groningen Library. Photograph by Dirk Fennema, Haren, Groningen. 261 Figure 12.2 The Spinster’s Arms (Vrijster-wapen) from Jacob Cats, Houwelick, 1625, f. Fij r. University of Groningen Library. Photograph by Dirk Fennema, Haren, Groningen. 263 Figure I.1 Hans Baldung Grien, The Seven Ages of Woman, 1544–1545 Introduction Elizabeth S. Cohen and Margaret Reeves1 Abstract This collection of essays demonstrates that early modern women experi- enced a shaping time of life between childhood and adulthood. Drawing on diverse sources from across Europe as well as Spanish America – including literary and visual representations, material cultures, letters, and judicial records – these studies together explore three central themes: how female youth was culturally constructed; how young women underwent distinc- tive physiological, social, and psychological transformations; and how differences of social rank inflected these changes. Scholarly investiga- tions of European youth have generally focused on the more visible and institutionalized male presence. These essays show that women, too, had a youth that allowed them to reach full adulthood, to exercise agency, and to express themselves. Keywords: female youth; girlhood; adolescence; young women; ages of woman; agency Did early modern women have a youth? Yes. Although the scholarship has not only ignored but also, in some contexts, rejected a category for female youth, European women in fact underwent a distinctive shaping time between childhood and full adult status. This interdisciplinary collection explores the many ways that, between 1500 and 1800, young women took steps toward grown-up roles in several domains. The essays draw on a diverse mix of sources from across Europe and even Spanish America, including literary and visual representations, material culture, letters, and judicial 1 We are grateful to the many colleagues who have enthusiastically supported this project from its conception. We warmly thank our editors at Amsterdam University Press and its readers for helpful suggestions. For a publication grant in support of the cover, we also thank the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Cohen, E.S. and M. Reeves (eds.), The Youth of Early Modern Women, Amsterdam University Press, 2018. doi: 10.5117/9789462984325/intro 12 ELIZABETH S. COHEN AND MARGARET ReeVES records. This variety permits us collectively to address two mutually shaped frames of inquiry: first, early modern cultural constructions of youth, and second, particular lived experiences, including young women’s exercise of personal and expressive agency in several forms. A third principal axis of investigation highlights the differences among young women of elite and more modest social ranks. Early modern language designating female youth often lacked precision, but European culture did recognize and represent important transitions. Personal development took place within culturally mediated conventions and the constraints of moral and social norms. Unlike male youth, for some of whom an institutional or corporate dimension made their adolescence more visible to scholarship, girls’ experience was largely domestic, if not necessarily private. Although females generally lived under male authority, in practice the rules applied differently to girl children, to grown women, and, we would suggest, to the young women in-between.