tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post3757717737694938672..comments2023-03-25T21:50:50.891+13:00Comments on Bavardess: Bridling the scold, or women’s speech silencedBavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-62014665514420164102012-08-03T17:40:43.690+12:002012-08-03T17:40:43.690+12:00While I know it seems rather churlish (and kind of...While I know it seems rather churlish (and kind of a cheap shot - last word and all that), I had to return to this post and respond to the last comment, because for some reason, this post is still generating a lot of hits on this blog and I wouldn't want to leave its criticisms unaddressed. <br /><br />Anyway, the Earl makes some valid comments about the need to return to the primary evidence, but I find the argument about the legal abolition of torture completely unconvincing. Technically, torture wasn't legal in medieval England, either, but it certainly didn't stop the authorities imposing punishments from clipped ears through to hanging, drawing, disemboweling and quartering. Torture as it was perfected by the good old Inquisition had a very specific purpose, which was to extract truth. However, bodily punishments that look to us like torture could still be considered *not* torture by medieval English judicial authorities, because they were imposed with the purpose of teaching others a lesson and/or imposing a kind of retributive justice on the offender, *not* for the purposes of extracting truth.<br /><br />I may pick up this conversation in a new post (in which case I will link it here), because it really does touch on some complex ideas about the relationship between torture and truth. For now, though, I think we are all familiar enough with the dynamics of domestic violence to know that just because a form of bodily violence or shaming wasn't statutorily recorded, it didn't happen. (Also, I think the commenter somewhat misrepresents Boose's argument.)Bavardesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-2727969976830187572010-03-16T16:01:22.618+13:002010-03-16T16:01:22.618+13:00Analysis of Lynda Boose, "Scolding Brides and...Analysis of Lynda Boose, "Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds"<br /><br />"...that history has paid for the right to speak itself, whatever the resultant incongruities."<br /><br />Oh, how courageous of Ms. Boose to boldly stretch for the low hanging English fruit! Does Ms. Boose's really claim that English women were cruelly tamed en masse sometime around 1640?<br /><br />Ms. Boose declares;<br /><br />Around 1640 the proverbial scold seems virtually to disappear from court documents. ...formal mechanisms of control were rarely used after the Restoration. The prosecution of scolds was most common before 1640; while accusations of scolding, abusing neighbours, brawling in church and other forms of quarrel-ling usually make up between a tenth and a quarter of the offences in sample Act Books of the Archdeacons of Norwich and Norfolk before 1640, they do not appear in the samplebooks after 1660. Why did "scolds" apparently disappear? Were they always just the projections of an order-obsessed culture, who disappeared when life became more orderly? Or is the difference real and the behavior of women in the early modern era indeed different from the norms of a later one? ...Perhaps the gentle and pleasing Stepford Wives of mid-nineteenth-century Chester are precisely the products that such a searing socialization...<br /><br />Ms. Boose leaves out one very important, one very accessible fact: Torture was abolished in England sometime after 1640! Around the time of the English Civil War, the English Parliament banned all torture except a few methods of capital punishment. Now, of course it would be a while before the law took hold, and many forms of punishment endured, but any recording of municipalities administering punishment via torture would have instantly come off the books! Why have the town clerk record it if it's illegal? Does Ms. Boose deduce that all the drunk Englishmen in stocks have all disappeared because of a miraculous sobering up of the entire British Isles at exactly the same instant? Ms. Boose's assessment of the timing is suspect also. According to William Andrews in Old Time Punishments (Hull, 1890) "[The bridling scold] was used at Edinburgh in 1567, at Glasgow in 1574, but not before the 17th century in any English town." This leaves only a little more than one generation for the entire female population of England, over three million women, to be "tamed" sufficiently that they and all their female progeny have their "behavior" permanently changed into Stepford Wives (did she really say Stepford Wives? Post-restoration English sexual robots?). Boose is not saying society as a whole in England (like everywhere else in the world) gradually changed over three centuries and gender roles and traditions adjusted as well - Boose is bluntly accusing a single generation of English men of violently and cruelly employing a device of torture to permanently psychologically damage enough of the three million strong population of women into changing for three hundred years the entire social moiré and consciously breeding nine million lobotomized "sexual robots" by the mid-ninteenth century.<br /><br />That is just fucking preposterous (IMHO).Earl of Cornwallnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-80114553277990586722009-10-19T09:44:14.187+13:002009-10-19T09:44:14.187+13:00I can imagine John Knox being a great fan of these...I can imagine John Knox being a great fan of these devices.Bavardesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-88695856588393876302009-10-18T21:57:24.071+13:002009-10-18T21:57:24.071+13:00I saw one of these ghastly things in a museum in S...I saw one of these ghastly things in a museum in Scotland - I think it was Edinburgh, and may have been in a display related to John Knox. I had a very similar experience to yours when you read about them - it just brought so forcibly home to me the realities of what has been done to women who refused to behave properly. The Witches' Bridge in Lubeck had a simlar effect. Thank you for your brilliant posts.AnneEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-56692481493293054952009-10-05T08:55:09.550+13:002009-10-05T08:55:09.550+13:00You're right, the adjective of interest certai...You're right, the adjective of interest certainly does needs some thought!ZACLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07289333819869440699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-82025241615338876022009-10-04T11:03:12.624+13:002009-10-04T11:03:12.624+13:00Thanks for stopping by, ZACL. I was going to say I...Thanks for stopping by, ZACL. I was going to say I'm glad you enjoyed it, but 'enjoy' isn't really the right word!Bavardesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-89860778370297071952009-10-03T03:14:04.827+13:002009-10-03T03:14:04.827+13:00I was horribly magnetised to your account of the b...I was horribly magnetised to your account of the bridle to silence women. As I read, I had fleeting thoughts about the old asylums. Then to my further horror, though not disbelief,(sad to say) you confirmed the diabolical seed that was forming in my thoughts about the state sanctioned use of such devices of torture against the helpless and the vulnerable.<br /><br />My heaven! What patriarchal societies were allowed to do to their human counterparts was dreadful. <br /><br />There is much we suspect but have no proof of, some we have heard of, and have protested against in present day social orders.<br /><br />I am a random writer about this that and the other,which means I am interested in a wide range of subjects and thoughts, I have therefore, placed your blog on my blog list and I look forward to your next post.ZACLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07289333819869440699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-89723192388955584182009-10-02T09:11:10.803+13:002009-10-02T09:11:10.803+13:00Hi Painsthee, glad you found this useful. I don’t ...Hi Painsthee, glad you found this useful. I don’t know what period/area you’re looking at, but if you’re interested in 16-17c England, you may also find the following refs useful (if you haven’t come across them already) –<br /><br />Anthony Fletcher & John Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England – especially the chapter by David Underdown called ‘The Taming of the Scold’<br />and <br />Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (which includes a huge number of refs to original sources – court records etc.)<br /><br />Both of those books put the significantly increased (and more brutal) persecution of scolds during this period into its wider context, including rapid social, religious and economic changes. There was quite a disconnect between the patriarchal ideal of the meek, submissive, dependent woman and the practical reality (especially for families of the middling/lower orders) of needing wives to be assertive and reasonably independent in order to succeed in the marketplace and bring in the bucks for the household economy. There was also a lot of tension created by some of the newer religious sects, which challenged the traditional religious and social hierarchies by putting more emphasis on equality before God between all believers.<br /><br />If you don’t mind sharing, I’d be interested to know more about your research. I'm quite interested in how class and gender intersect in the persecution of scolds and in similar kinds of public shaming punishments (like the Skimmington).Bavardesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-43153741041878158412009-10-02T08:44:40.847+13:002009-10-02T08:44:40.847+13:00Wow. This information is both deeply disturbing an...Wow. This information is both deeply disturbing and highly serendipitous, because I am researching female outspokenness related to class, and I wonder how I haven't come across something like this yet. So while I may now have nightmares, I thank you nonetheless.painstheehttp://painsthee.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-16361964882634462592009-09-30T19:43:16.077+13:002009-09-30T19:43:16.077+13:00Sadly, not a product of lurid antiquarian imaginat...Sadly, not a product of lurid antiquarian imagination. They show up in Glasgow court records in the 1570s and there also seem to be quite a few oblique or direct references in literature, sermons etc. from the period, but I don't know how much systematic research has been done on their use by authorities in England. There is an interesting juxtaposition between this historic silencing of women, and silence about that process in later historical accounts.Bavardesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-29340287509140206352009-09-29T05:05:10.952+13:002009-09-29T05:05:10.952+13:00Fascinating. I've long been aware of these tor...Fascinating. I've long been aware of these torture instruments, but had assumed that the more severe ones were quite likely products of the same nedievalist fanfic as the "chastity belt" - that is, real historical objects, but fraudulently fabricated long after their supposed period of use.<br /><br />You're quoting genuine accounts from period, AFAICanTell, and that's pretty chilling.<br /><br />I've always wondered what kind of a husband it would take to turn his wife (or any close family member, for that matter) in to the authorities for such punishment. Not worse than beating, but colder, more distant - less a "crime of passion" and more of a premeditated horror.<br /><br />What a species we are.Emrys Eustace, hygt Broomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01242091309304183692noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-67788676478029322762009-09-27T03:24:07.096+13:002009-09-27T03:24:07.096+13:00They are chilling instruments, those bridles. As a...They are chilling instruments, those bridles. As a youngster, I saw one in a New England historical exhibit and remember feeling absolute horror and outrage at the sight.Janicehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14093558563358431804noreply@blogger.com