Domestic Dangers

by Laura Gowing

'What else is woman but a foe to friendship ... a domestic danger.' Sexual morality was central to the patriarchal society of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century England, as demonstrated by this popular quotation, taken from a biblical commentary by St John Chrysostom. In this fascinating and original book, Laura Gowing considers what gender difference meant in the practice of daily life, examining the working of gender relations in sex, courtship, marriage conflict, and verbal disputes. Her focus is the richly detailed and hitherto unused records of litigation over sexual insult, contracts of marriage, and marital separation in London, c.1560-1640. Dr. Gowing takes a new approach to these legal testimonies. She reads them as texts with complicated layers of meanings in order to reveal precisely how culture, language, stories, and experience connected. Arguing that women's and men's sexual honour had such different meanings as to make them incommensurable, she reveals how, in every are