Jana Jackson

Graduation Semester and Year

2017

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English

Department

English

First Advisor

Amy L Tigner

Abstract

The establishment of the Church of England in the sixteenth century instigated a period of turbulence as religious practices transitioned from medieval Catholicism to post-Reformation Protestantism. Protestant theology idealized proficient domesticity as an essential signifier of piety for women. In practice, daily spiritual examination, moral purity, competence in managing a household, and the efficacious administration of domestic medicine largely defined a pious Protestant woman. Consequently, women validated their piety by leaving evidence of these practices in diaries, autobiographical writing, and receipt books. Religious meditative writing and recipes occur side by side in early modern pious women's manuscripts intentionally because each of these elements are purposeful demonstrations of Christian female virtue. This thesis argues that the development of domestic medicine in the early modern period, as revealed in women's self-writing, can only be fully understood when interpreted through the lens of religiosity. The first chapter examines the cultural transitions in education and religion that enabled women to not only read their Bibles for themselves, but also to move recipe collection from an oral to written tradition. Chapter two compares the rhetoric of domestic medicine to women's religious self-writing, emphasizing the importance of a Christian theology of the body to achieve both spiritual purity and physical healing. Chapter three examines the material enclosure of women's closets in early modern homes. Closets provided private spaces for women to develop identities broader than prescriptive religious paradigms, thus contributing to the advancement of medical practices in the period. Finally, chapter four focuses on medical recipes, demonstrating how physic, codified in receipt books, heightened the permeability of domestic and professional medical practices. Professionally trained physicians frequently borrowed from women's receipt books, and conversely those receipt books commonly included the recipes of professionally trained physicians. Early modern women's physic, motivated by piety, gained authority within the patriarchal culture, if in sometimes covert ways, as recipes were shared across social, generational, and professional boundaries. In this way, women's physic provided an essential foundation for the progress of medical literacy and practice in the early modern period.

Keywords

Domestic medicine, Early modern, Women, Recipes, Receipt books, Religion, Protestants, Reformation, Physic

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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