HIS33120

This module will examine the various roles and experiences of women in early modern Ireland (1541-1800). This was a period characterised by significant religious and political upheaval, and great economic, social and cultural change. Utilising a broad base of primary source material (e.g. correspondence, diaries, marriage settlements, wills) and printed primary sources (e.g. pamphlets, domestic manuals), students will consider the legal realities, social and cultural expressions and individual experiences of womanhood in early modern Ireland. Looking at marriage and the family, students will explore the impact of the English Common Law system on women's position and on the making and breaking of unions, comparing and contrasting law with practice by examining accounts of everyday lives and relationships. Students will also examine the role of women in conflict and the shared and divergent experiences on each side of the religious divide. The position of women in the declining Catholic elite and in the Protestant ascendancy in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century will be examined, with particular attention given to social and cultural expressions of status, political engagement and economic activity. The module will look at the practices and experiences of the aristocracy, the gentry, the emergent middle class and the ‘lower orders’. Engaging with the extant historiography, students will be encouraged to contextualise primary source material within wider historical debates to consider the issues that attend the study of women, with a particular focus on the methodologies used in women's and gender history in Ireland, Britain and Europe.