As social gender dynamics require all sexes to define, critique, and police the boundaries of masculinity and femininity, the definition of “man” in early modern England remains incomplete if only men’s writing is consulted; women’s writing, therefore, is essential to our understanding of early modern definitions of manliness and manhood. To isolate men as a subject, a survey of writing by nine English women—Margaret Roper, Anne Clifford, Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Cary, Elizabeth Grymeston, Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Jocelin, Rachel Speght, and Aemilia Lanyer—spanning from 1557 to 1676 was conducted across multiple genres such as letters, autobiographical writings, closet dramas, mothers’ advice manuals, poetry, and polemical tracts. By organizing the subject of men and masculinity through the lens of a woman’s experiences of patriarchy throughout her life, male experience was thus decentralized, ultimately placing an emphasis on women’s relationship with men throughout her life-cycle: daughters and fathers, wives and husbands, mothers and sons, and female citizens and larger patriarchal structures within the community. The results of the study indicate that women were both validating some manly characteristics defined by the dominant male-authored discourses, such as men being patriarchal heads of households in companionate and affectionate relationships toward their wives, as well as rejecting some dominant tropes as markers of manliness, such as martial bravery generally, and specific practices such dueling. Thus women were active participants—rather than passive recipients—in the discursive and cultural constructions of masculinity, critiquing, and policing of early modern definitions of men and manliness, as men were navigating their own struggle between masculine codes of moderation and dominance, evident in male writings.
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