TENDENCIES OF FEMALE EMANCIPATION IN ENGLAND DURING THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD. WOMEN PREACHERS AND PROPHETESSES
TENDENCIES OF FEMALE EMANCIPATION IN ENGLAND DURING THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD. WOMEN PREACHERS AND PROPHETESSES

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the trends of female emancipation in England during the Civil War and Commonwealth period (c. 1640-1660), with particular attention to women preachers and prophetesses. It argues that the social and political upheaval of these decades temporarily loosened the structures that confined women to domestic life, allowing them to defend estates, manage property, petition Parliament, and – most strikingly – to preach, prophesy, and publish religious writings. Drawing on the analytical framework of Joan W. Scott, the article treats gender as a constitutive element of social relationships and a primary way of signifying power, showing how women such as Katherine Chidley, Eleanor Davies, Elizabeth Poole, Anna Trapnell, and Margaret Fell contested the prevailing gendered order by claiming the right to interpret Scripture and to speak in public. Methodologically, the research rests on the analysis of primary sources – including contemporary pamphlets, petitions, and theological writings – alongside a critical reading of the relevant secondary scholarship. It concludes that, although these openings were largely closed after the Restoration, the women involved were agents rather than victims, exposing the gendered boundaries of their society as human constructions and laying an early foundation for the later transformation of women’s position.

• Details
• Contents