The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe by Christopher Fletcher Sean Brady Rachel E. Moss & Lucy Riall

Author:Christopher Fletcher, Sean Brady, Rachel E. Moss & Lucy Riall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Gender, Civil War and Early Modern Political Culture

The right, indeed the duty to hold formal public office, and the right to bear arms, were key markers of elite masculinity in early modern England. The identification of political agency with manhood was justified in early modern England within two broad frameworks, both founded on the inferiority of women, that were not entirely compatible in abstract logic, but were in practice nonetheless often held together. The first was based on a distinction between public and private life; the second on a parallel and often causal connection between authority, particularly fatherly authority in the family, and political, especially monarchical power. The Elizabethan humanist Thomas Smith outlined the fundamental assumption, derived ultimately from Aristotle, of a division between the domestic and the political, that he justified through the natural distinctions between men and women:We do reject women, as those whom nature hath made to keep house and to nourish their family and children, and not to meddle with matters abroad, nor to bear office in a city or commonwealth, no more than children and infants. 9

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