Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England

This path-breaking study explores the diverse and varied meanings ofmanhood in early modern England and their complex, and often contested,relationship with patriarchal principles. Using social, political and medicalcommentary, alongside evidence of social practice derived from court records, DrShepard argues that patriarchal ideology contained numerous contradictions, andthat, while males were its primary beneficiaries, it was undermined and opposedby men as well as women. Patriarchal concepts of manhood existed in tension bothwith anti-patriarchal forms of resistance and with alternative codes of manhoodwhich were sometimes primarily defined independently of patriarchal imperatives.As a result the differences within each sex, as well as between them, wereintrinsic to the practice of patriarchy and the social distribution of itsdividends in early modern England.