Product Description

Just how weak were the women of the Civil War era? What could they expect beyond marriage and childbirth in an age where infant and maternal mortality was frequent and contraception unknown? Did anyone marry for love? Could a woman divorce? What rights had the unmarried? What expectations the widowed? An expert on the period, Antonia Fraser aims to bring to life the many and various women she has encountered in her considerable research, such as governesses, milkmaids, fishwives, nuns, defenders of castles and equally courageous courtesans, countesses, witches and widows. Antonia Fraser is the author of three historical biographies: "Mary Queen of Scots", "Cromwell: Our Chief of Men" and "King Charles II". She also wrote "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and "The Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #755147 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

Review
Entertaining and revealing account of the lot of women in England from the death of one Queen Regent (Elizabeth I) to the accession of another (Queen Anne). A mass of deftly handled material and winner of the 1984 Wolfson Award for History. (Kirkus UK)

A panorama of 17th-century English womanhood, presented with Fraser's usual taste for passion and pageantry, and a degree of balance between the higher and lower orders. Centrally, she succeeds in showing how the ideology of woman as the weaker vessel was belied by women rising to the personal challenges created by the English Civil War, the Great Plague, and the fire of London, quite apart from the risks of repeated pregnancies, then believed to be women's normal state. While Elizabeth I reigned, it was not good form to emphasize woman's weakness; but once she was dead (1603), women were valued chiefly for the wealth they could bring to a marriage. "In an age before the English had properly discovered the rumbustious sport of fox-hunting, heiresses were hunted as though they were animals of prey." Affection was suspect, though even the well-born sometimes succumbed. The lower classes may have been freer to choose, Fraser suggests, if simply because less was at stake. During the Civil War, however, women became defenders of castles, disguised comrades-in-arms ("she-soldiers"), and solicitors on behalf of husband and family. They made demands, subsequently, on Cromwell's Commonwealth; but only the small sect of Diggers proposed such radical changes as giving women equal right to choose whom to marry ("for we are all of one blood, mankind, and for portion, the Common Storehouses are every man and maid portion, as free to one as to another"). With the Restoration, many of women's opportunities for independent action vanished; life became "a continual labor"; and it was harder to find a husband. From displays of bravery, women were reduced to displays of accomplishment. "So the girls tripped in dainty slippers down the ornamental paths of their education; so very different from the demanding courses of classics and grammar set for their brothers." Some became gentlewomen, some "petticoat authors," and some courtesans - "wanton and free." In sum, Fraser believes that women's status rose during the middle decades of upheaval, only to fall as the Restoration took hold. "Women in the seventeenth century were as they had always been, strong vessels where they had the opportunity. . . where a particular combination of character and circumstance enabled them to be so." Vivid personalities, powerful circumstances, told with drama and bite. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Antonia Fraser has written many acclaimed historical works which have been international bestsellers, including MARIE ANTOINETTE, MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS (JAMES TAIT Prize), CROMWELL and THE GUNPOWDER PLOT (St Louis Literary Award; CWA NON-FICTION GOLD DAGGER). She was made CBE in 1999, and awarded the NORTON MEDLICOTT Medal by the Historical Association in 2000. She lives in London and is currently working on a biography of Queen Elizabeth I. She was married to Harold Pinter who died on Christmas Eve 2008 and has eighteen grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

An excellent insight into 17th Century life
This is one of the most readable and enlightening books that I have read about life in 17th Century England. Although this is a very comprehensive work it is very readable and, once begun, very difficult to put down. Although it primarily deals with the role of women in the 17th century, it balances this by putting that role in context with events taking place at the time. What I found particularly facinating is that the book managed to give an in-depth look at life at all levels of society. This is a book that, having read it from start to finish, I still dip into from time to time because it is just so interesting.

Very readable
I started reading Antonia Fraser's books after having read Gunpowder Plot. The Weaker Vessel is just as readble, and portrays the lives and characters of women from all walks of life, before, during and after the civil war. I think Ms Fraser is an amazing researcher, her books contain the most interesting facts all put together in pleasant prose which flows beautifully - so really it is like reading a novel rather than a work of pure fact (even though so many historical facts actually are included). Ms Fraser makes the female heroines of this novel come to life, for each lady discussed you feel genuine compassion, admiration, and sometimes disbelief at their feats of courage in the face of civil war. Included are excerpts from letters, diaries , etc which makes the account even more enjoyable. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in 17th century history or the history of women. One star less because I feel that the reader is not given an overall view of women in the 17th century - Antonia Fraser focuses on a handful of women, most of them extraordinarily courageous, but I do not think that the women in question were representative of the majority of women in Britain at the time.

A fascinating read.
You don't have to be a keen historian or a reader of "dry" books. This book is extremely well written and kept me really interested right to the end. It covers all aspects of women's role in society in the 17th century, from midwives, mistresses, whores, witches, middle-class wives and poor fishwives and deals with each backing up points of view with short written quotations. In fact it encouraged me to buy Samuel Pepys diary (you have to read it to believe it)!