The Status of Wives

Religious Grounds for Women’s Subordination

Para1In early modern England, women’s subordinate status was based on religious concepts of gender hierarchy. God’s punishment of Eve in Genesis 3:16 is stated as
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly increase thy sorrows and thy conception; in sorrow shalt though bring forth children; and thy desire shall be subject to thine husband and he shall rule over thee.
Para2To reinforce this hierarchy, Anglican priests read The Homily on the State of Matrimony from The Book of Common Prayer regularly in church. During the marriage ceremony, Biblical quotations from St. Paul (Ephesians, 5: 22–5) were often read to the bride and bridegroom:
Ye women, submit your selves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the wife's head, even as Christ is the head of the Church, and he is the saviour of the whole body. Therefore as the Church in congregation is subject unto Christ: so likewise let the wives be in subjection unto their own husbands in all things.

Women’s Legal Status

Para3In English common law, married women were considered feme couvert, a phrase from medieval Norman French that is usually translated as “a married woman”. Husband and wife were considered one person in legal terms, so the woman’s identity is subsumed under the husband’s since the marriage ceremony says man and wife are one flesh. A wife could not usually own property in her own name or make legal contracts of any kind without her husband’s permission. Occasional cases exist that indicate women sometimes inherited property, brought court cases, and controlled business interests separately from their spouse.
Para4Unmarried women, including widows, were considered femme sole (“a single woman”) and thus technically allowed to purchase property, make contracts, operate business, and interact with the court system. Typically, only widows exercised any of these legal powers.

Financial Matters

Para5Young, unmarried women would not have had financial freedom, as their father, brother, uncle or other guardian would have controlled any property or funds on their behalf, as well as selected a suitable husband and negotiated a marriage contract. Heiresses who had inherited substantial money or estates were highly sought-after as marriage partners—but their property likely passed to the husband once married.
Para6A marriage contract, particularly for anyone with property, would have included stipulations for a dowry, an amount of property, money, or goods provided to the intended husband by the bride’s family. In return, the husband would provide a jointure: a sum of money or property guaranteed to his widow. A widow would not automatically inherit her husband’s estate (houses or land were likely entailed to eligible male heirs) or necessarily expect to be named as guardian to their children.
Para7As Tranio says regarding his eligibility as a husband in The Taming of the Shrew,
I am my father’s heir and only son;
If I may have your daughter to my wife,
I’ll leave her houses three or four as good
Within rich Pisa’s walls as any one
Old Signior Gremio has in Padua;
Besides two thousand ducats by the year
Of fruitful land, all which shall be her jointure.
(2.1.373–379)

Governing Women

Para8A husband was expected to regulate his wife’s behavior and spending. Social and religious conventions dictated that women needed someone to look after them and curb their unruly tendencies through appropriate chastisement. However, this expectation of household government did not mean that the husband was allowed to be a tyrant or to abuse his wife (although abuse certainly did occur, then as now). Husbands were expected to provide and care for their wives, love her according to Christian principles, and support their children. Abusive men could be prosecuted or separated from their wives. Although English law did not sanction divorce, couples could live separately or have the marriage annulled, a difficult process that erased the marriage’s legal and ecclesiastical status.

A Wife’s Authority

Para9A wife did have some authority within her home. She was expected to manage the household, supervise any children’s basic education and spiritual welfare, and to train and regulate any servants. She was expected to be an helpmeet (Genesis 2:18) to her husband, meaning a fitting supporter of the household’s endeavors. If the number of sermons and pamphlets about keeping women quiet or subordinate is any indication, English women of the period were vocal partners in their marriages, despite the many pressures of female subordination in the period.

Key Print Sources

Aughterson, Kate. Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook, Constructions of Femininity in England. Routledge, 1995.
Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford University Press, 1999.
McDonald, Russ. Men and Women: Gender, Family and Society in The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents. Bedford/St. Martins, 2001.

Key Online Sources

5 Facts About Love, Marriage, and Sex in Shakespeare’s England. OUPBlog. Oxford University Press, 30 Jan. 2016. https://blog.oup.com/2016/01/marriage-love-sex-shakespeares-england/. Accessed 10 May 2018.
Best, Michael. The Wife’s Status. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/status.html. Accessed 10 May 2018.
Layson, Hana, and Susan Philips. Marriage and Family in Shakespeare’s England. The Newberry Library: Digital Collections for the Classroom. https://dcc.newberry.org/?p=14411. Accessed 10 May 2018.
Rasmussen, Eric. Marriage and Courtship. Discovering Literature: Shakespeare and Renaissance Writers. The British Library. 15 Mar. 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20230515144520/https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/marriage-and-courtship. Archived 15 May 2023.

Image Sources

The Amorous Gallant. c. 1663. MS. Houghton Lib. English Broadside Ballad Archive. https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/35252/transcription.
Gouge, William. Of Domesticall Duties. 1622. MS. Newberry Lib., Chicago.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title The Status of Wives
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
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