A Tudor Woman's Home

There's this abiding belief (which btw this BL post does not in any respect share) that women were chattels themselves and had no property rights in law in history. To the best of my (not very informed) knowledge it's mostly rubbish: Women held real property, kept control of their finances, were not completely alienated from signing contracts or owning companies, joined guilds, they "did things" as much as anyone did. I've always felt its a strawman. I think 18th century and victorian novels did a lot to propagate it because the myth worked to promote heroines in Austen fiction (for example)

I doubt it was fully equal, but the idea they embodied "handmaid's tale" forms of existence from the middle ages until emancipation is a bit bogus. Certainly there were pretty stupid legalisms, by Victorian times there was a bit of a problem in capture of the finances by the male partner in marriage, its the basis of many book plots but the fictionalisation of a real problem doesn't automatically translate to the existence of the real problem at scale: Financially literate women owned their own fate, even without the vote.

Dorothy Dunnett wrote about early renaissance trade from a woman's perspective (albeit with mostly male protagonists) and was a historian by training. She used masses of source documents which very clearly show women running significant enterprises across Europe, in control.

Tudor homes were wood lined, massive furniture, a lot of the stuff got cleared out by subsequent generations who wanted lighter more modern things in the home. Osbert Lancaster's "piller to post" (1938) is an amusing cartoon take on the history of architecture and interiors. You could put Alice Smythe right into his illustrations. The Victoria and Albert museum has a lot of home articles from that time in their galleries.

Really worth not glossing over: Alice left £438 in funeral expenses. Going by the inflation calculation earlier in the article, that's over £130,000 in today's money.

Obviously by today's standards, that's outrageous. But this period of time is known for ornate mausoleums and whatnot. I think I'd appreciate a similar write-up, but specifically for the funeral arrangements of the wealthy.

The British Library has digitized two manuscripts from the Medieval and Renaissance Women project that reveal the contents of the home of Alice Smythe, an important merchant who lived in 16th century England. Alice's house in Fenchurch Street, London was appraised two years after her death by a team of appraisers who noted her possessions in each room. The house contained two parlours, many well-decorated bedrooms, a gallery filled with paintings and stained glass, a tennis court, a stable, and other outbuildings. Her possessions were worth over £1,000, which equates to almost £700,000 today. Alice's collection of paintings depicted classical myths, Tudor monarchs, and biblical figures. Alice was also literate, owning several books, including one written by and for women, The Monument of Matrones.