Theme summary: Home

Susanna lived in a time of great debate and fear around gender roles. The expectation of women to be chaste, silent and obedient, and for the home to be a reflection of the social and godly patriarchies presented everywhere from household manuals to sermons, was dominant, though that is not to say there was no resistance. The domestic space, however, is often where we must remember to look for some trace of the hidden stories of early modern women. Follow this theme to explore some elements of everyday life for a woman of Susanna’s time and social place, and follow links to get started in the archive pushing further at the idea of the woman’s place in the home.

Return to the digital spatial archive.

In the Collection

A curated search on medicine-related items in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Archive and Collections can be viewed on the online catalogue.

Further Research

Follow the links below to a selection of other resources relating to early modern women and the home:

1. The Museum of the Home (formerly The Geffrye Museum) provides research access to its collections via its Collections Library.
2. Women’s Histories in the National Archive https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/womens-histories/ contains several pre-curated finding aids and searches on early modern women
3. County Records Offices hold various types of archive material relating to the history of the home and household management.[RS1]
   1. The examination of inventories of possessions and assets, often created as part of the process of probate, is one way to approach research into individuals or groups of individuals for whom not a lot of other evidence is extant. This guide, created by Gloucestershire County Council, provides useful information on inventories and how to access them (Gloucestershire area).
   2. The National Trust cares for estate papers relating to some of the historic properties in its care, for example, The papers of the Hussey family of Scotney Castle, Lamberhurst. Estate papers are included in the National Trust’s online catalogue.

Free online resources

1. ‘Shakespeare’s Lost Interiors’ - This online exhibition by Dr Alex Hewitt draws on items from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s museum collection to explore what William Shakespeare’s New Place (the home he purchased in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1597) might have contained. When William Shakespeare died in 1616, New Place passed to Susanna Hall and her husband, John.
2. Dr Alex Hewitt’s blog ‘Shakespeare’s Lost Interiors: Inventories’ discusses the benefits and potential pitfalls of using inventories in historical research. Alex Hewitt also discussed Shakespeare’s Lost Interiors at one of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Research Conversations.
3. Dr Tara Hamling (University of Birmingham) and Professor Catherine Richardson (University of Kent) discuss ‘The Middling Sort’ of the early modern period (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Research Conversation)
4. Professor Katherine Schiel (University of Minnesota) and Dr Anders Ingram (University of Oxford) discuss ‘Giving the Shakespeare Women a History’ (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Research Conversation).
5. Alice Thornton’s Books: this AHRC funded research project, in partnership with Durham Cathedral, is creating an online digital edition of all four of Alice Thornton’s autobiographical manuscripts. Thornton (1626-1707) wrote four different versions of her autobiograpphy which ‘offer a rich insight into gentry life in seventeenth-century Yorkshire, at a time of civil war and plague.’ (https://thornton.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/#who) (Twitter: @thornton_books)
6. The Middling Culture project funded by AHRC examines the cultural lives of the literate, urban ‘middling sort’ in early modern England, analysing the broad range of written and material forms they both produced and consumed’ (https://middlingculture.com/about/)
7. Lady Anne Clifford (1589-1676) is a remarkable example of an early modern woman challenging patriarchal structures of inheritance and property. For more information on her life see, for example, (https://www.visitchurches.org.uk/what-we-do/blog/every-wise-woman-buildeth-her-house.html?fbclid=IwAR3v8pl-nCuZrUoQpTgxbj1rBUrdhXEoOsOzHBKKK9fWbeVObp3VArYv7BI)
8. The Centre for Early Modern Studies at the Australian National University project ‘Marginalia and the Early Modern Woman Writer, 1530-1660' ‘provides an ambitious new literary history of how early modern women read and wrote in the margins of their books, uncovering new texts, practices, writers, and readers across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ (https://cems.anu.edu.au/marginalia-and-the-early-modern-woman-writer-1530-1660/)
9. The Blog ‘Early Modern Female Book Ownership ‘features blog posts on books owned by women between 1500 and 1750. These books are important as they give us information on what books women owned and read, on women’s handwriting and signatures, and on how women presented themselves textually.’ (https://earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/)
10. The National Trust’s ‘visit places with Tudor connections’ highlights its properties in the England and Wales with connections to the Tudor period (1485-1603).