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'Witty offending great ones'? Elite female householders in an early Stuart Westminster parish

2007; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1179/174963207x227541

1749-6322

Ian Warren,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

Hostile representations of female members of the landed elite resident in London form a recurring feature of early Stuart literary culture. These emphasised elite women's rapacious addiction to fashionable vices, fuelling concerns which were particularly evident in vociferous criticisms of female dress circulating in the early months of 1620. While acknowledging that such anxieties derived in part from longstanding cultural tropes and from contemporary ideological preoccupations, this paper sets out to consider their relation to the behaviour and circumstances of noble and gentle women resident in the capital. The theme is explored through a focus on women of noble or knightly status who were rated as householders in the fashionable parish of St Martin in the Fields between 1603 and 1642. The experiences of these women suggest that while satirical archetypes did bear some relation to day-to-day social experience, they tended to privilege certain characteristics of London's elite female population over others. The familiar figure of the Lady of fashion thus overlooks the continuing importance to the householders of St Martins of identities and loyalties distinct from the fashionable world of the town, and the varying degrees of participation in metropolitan forms of consumption suggested by their widely differing financial circumstances.