Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in 17th-Century England

by Laura Gowing

This pioneering book explores for the first time how ordinary women of the early modern period in England understood and experienced their bodies. Using letters, popular literature, and detailed legal records from courts that were obsessively concerned with regulating morals, the book recaptures seventeenth-century popular understandings of sex and reproduction. This history of the female body is at once intimate and wide-ranging, with sometimes startling insights about the extent to which early modern women maintained, or forfeited, control over their own bodies. Laura Gowing explores the ways social and economic pressures of daily life shaped the lived experiences of bodies: the cost of having a child, the vulnerability of being a servant, the difficulty of prosecuting rape, the social ambiguities of widowhood. She explains how the female body was governed most of all by other women-wives and midwives. Gowing casts new light on beliefs and practices of the time concerning women's bodies and provides an original perspective on the history of women and gender."This is a wonderful book . . . offering a new perspective on why men needed women to regulate each other and on why women were willing to do so. A provocative and persuasive piece of history."-Cynthia Herrup, Duke University

Author Biography: Laura Gowing is lecturer in history at King's College, London.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Academic

272 pages, Hardcover

First published September 2, 2003

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had watched an excellent talk by Laura Gowing and tried to get several of her books at the BL. This was the only one that wasn't already being used by another reader. Alas it wasn't quite what I needed for research for the exhibition. It was a great history of the body in 17th century England and looked at how gender was created in that period, it gave some good background for me but was too specific for what I was looking for. However, if you are wanting a history of the body this is highly recommended.

[Renske Smekens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eén van de beste historische werken die ik in tijden heb gelezen!! Aanvankelijk had ik maar een paar bladzijdes nodig voor mijn thesis maar jeetje ik bleef erin lezen. Gowing krijgt sowieso een plekje in m'n scrips :)

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great social history of women in 17th century England. The author writes in a way where it is fairly easy to understand the conclusions she has arrived at. It is a decently quick read and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The main focus of Laura Gowing's book is how power relationships between working women, and sometimes men, worked. The author uses these relationships to explain the various meanings of touch, the touch of other women and men. She also uses these relationships to explain how patriarchal structures were enforced on women, and surprisingly enough, policed by fellow women. This is a great book because it discusses a topic not many people know and understand. The author's research is mainly court documents, which can be a good and bad thing because there was only a certain segment of society that was able to go to court and bring lawsuit. Gowing usese these court documents expertly and weaves them into the book. It's a great and intriguing read from beginning to end. I highly recommend it!

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gowing has tried to make some sweeping statements, both in terms of women's bodies in the seventeenth century, and more generally about culture and even politics. On the former, she fails because she is constrained by her sources: she wants to look at ordinary women's lives, but is therefore forced to rely on court records which, in the main, are anything but ordinary. Reading this book, you'd be entitled to believe that every servant was raped several times, all women killed their children, and that most gave birth to bastards. Hidden within the text, she actually admits that the rate of stillbirths was about 2% and the percentage of births to unmarried mothers rested around 5%. This, therefore, means that her book is not about ordinary women. On the latter point, as a political historian I find it deeply concerning when the two rebellions in the seventeenth century are attributed to a failure to establish stable families.

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely informative with lots of interesting stories; stories about the sexuality and sex lives of women in the seventeenth century. I was using it just as research for a project but ended up reading all of it.