Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English Comedy

Abstract

The courtship and remarriage of a rich widow was a popular motif in early modern comic theatre. Jennifer Panek brings together a wide variety of texts, from ballads and jest-books to sermons and court records, to examine the staple widow of comedy in her cultural context and to examine early modern attitudes to remarriage. She persuasively challenges the critical tendency to see the stereotype of the lusty widow as a tactic to dissuade women from second marriages, arguing instead that it was deployed to enable her suitors to regain their masculinity, under threat from the dominant, wealthier widow. The theatre, as demonstrated by Middleton, Dekker, Beaumont and Fletcher and others, was the prime purveyor of a fantasy in which a young man's sexual mastery of a widow allowed him to seize the economic opportunity she offered.

Frozen in Time: Gender, Fan Culture, and a Young Widow’s Icy Terrain

“…Although the female black widow spider only rarely devours the male after mating, she nevertheless provides the foundational metaphor for texts and discourses involving femmes fatales who murder their rich husbands, as in the 1987 film aptly named Black Widow (Mark & Rafelson, 1987). On the other hand, scholarly treatments of widows and widowhood range from historical accounts of war widows, to analyses of textual representations, to studies in sociology or social work of economic and other prospects for widows, to anthropological investigations of relevant cultural practices, such as the Hindu ritual of widow burning (see, e.g., Lee, 2006; Panek, 2007; Weinberger‐Thomas, Mehlman, & White, 2000).…”

‘[M]istris Drewry,/ You do not well’: The Gossip as an Ill-Doer in A Warning for Fair Women (1599)

“…Chief among these was her alleged lustfulness and the threat she was thought to pose to social order given her 'lack of a male head'. 46 That Mistress Drury is mobile in contrast to the home-tied Mistress Saunders, who only leaves her house to go to her prison cell in the lead-up to her sentencing and execution, should not come as a surprise. This alleged mobility was one of the stereotypical attributes of widows that, according to Panek, contributed to early modern descriptions of them as 'willful and ungovernable'.…”

Women, Marriage, Property and Law: Contextualizing <i>The Witch of Edmonton</i>

“…Shamelessly reaping the dividends of coverture, he took possession of as much of her fortune as he could (before his eventual arrest and imprisonment). 14 Anne Elsdon's example also demonstrates the extent to which the kinds of assets individuals might bring to marriage in the 1620s varied from those of a few decades before. Her personal fortune amounted to £6000, two thirds of which was in written and sealed instruments and in 'money, plate, jewells and chattels'.…”

“…Her personal fortune amounted to £6000, two thirds of which was in written and sealed instruments and in 'money, plate, jewells and chattels'. 15 This kind of liquid wealth was of more use to the Thorneys than estates in lands, and their motives for wooing Susan Carter appear almost as covetous and self-interested as Tobias Audley's in his later pursuit of Elsdon. Frank is obviously duplicitous, shamelessly committing bigamy and lying to his father out of his lust for Winifred and desire for the wealth that marriage to Susan can secure him.…”