I'm designing this D&D campaign for my friends which is going to be set in real world 16th century Europe (only magic is real, the fae truly exists, there are other planes et cetera). To do some research, I bought the book "
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England" by Ian Mortimer. I just started reading, but so far it was very much worth it. A few highlighters from the chapter about the status of women.
Despite the fact that women were barred from voting and from most prestigious professions, could hold almost no public office, were usually legally subservient to males for most of their lives, and, when married, owned no property separately from their husbands and were allowed to be beaten by their husbands, women in England enjoyed more freedom than in other parts of Europe. In 1599, the Swiss Thomas Platter writes:
"Now the women-folk of England, who have mostly blue-gray eyes and are fair and pretty, have far more liberty than in other lands, and know just how to make good use of it for they often stroll out or drive by coach in very gorgeous clothes, and the men must put up with such ways, and may not punish them for it..."
Alessandro Magno from Venice writes:
"Englishwomen have great freedom to go out of the home without menfolk. . . . Many of the young women gather outside Moorgate and play with young lads, even though they do not know them. Often during these games the women are thrown to the ground by the young men who only allow them to get up after they have kissed them. They kiss each other a lot."
Somehow I haven't expected to find the phrase "they kiss each other a lot" in a 16th century text and it is very amusing.
The Flemish Emanuel van Meteren writes in 1575:
"Although the women there are entirely in the power of their husbands, except for their lives, yet they are not kept as strictly as they are in Spain or elsewhere. Nor are they shut up but have the free management of the house or housekeeping, after the fashion of those of the Netherlands and other neighboring countries. They go to market to buy what they like best to eat. They are well-dressed, fond of taking it easy, and commonly leave the care of household matters and drudgery to their servants. They sit before their doors decked out in fine clothes in order to see and be seen by the passers-by. In all banquets and feasts they are shown the greatest honor; they are placed at the upper end of the table where they are served first; at the lower end they help the men. All the rest of their time they employ in walking and riding, in playing at cards or otherwise, in visiting their friends and keeping company, conversing with their equals (whom they term “gossips”) and their neighbors, and making merry with them at childbirths, christenings, churchings and funerals; and all this with the permission and knowledge of their husbands, as such is the custom. Although the husbands often recommend to them the pains, industry and care of the German or Dutch women, who do what men ought to do both in the house and in the shops, for which services in England men are employed, nevertheless the women usually persist in retaining their customs. This is why England is called “The Paradise of Married Women.” The girls who are not yet married are kept much more rigorously and strictly than in the Low Countries."
Obviously all this stuff about "gorgeous clothes", "well-dressed" , "servants" etc. only talks about women of the upper classes. Lower class women are sometimes abandoned by their husbands and left to starve.
Also, there is a considerable number of female writers and poets in Elizabethan England, something which is a novelty compared to earlier times. The Calvinist poet Anne Locke writes, rather humbly:
“Everie one in his calling is bound to doo somewhat to the furtherance of the holie building, but because great things by reason of my sex I may not doo, and that which I may I ought to doo, I have according to my duetie brought my poore basket of stones to the strengthning of the walles of that Jerusalem whereof (by grace) wee are all both citizens and members.”
Some voices are a little less placid concerning the position of women in society. Isabella Whitney writes, in 1573:
"The lover’s tears will soon appease
His lady’s angry mood
But men will not be pacified
If women weep a flood."
Emilia Lanier writes in 1611:
"It pleased our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, without the assistance of man, being free from original and all other sins, from the time of his conception till the hour of his death, to be begotten of a woman, born of a woman, nourished of a woman, obedient to a woman; and that he healed women, pardoned women, comforted women . . . after his resurrection appeared first to a woman, and sent a woman to declare his most glorious resurrection to the rest of his Disciples."
And also from Lanier:
"But surely Adam cannot be excused;
Her fault, though great: yet he was most to blame;
What weakness offered, strength might have refused,
Being lord of all, the greater was his shame:
Although the serpent’s craft had her abused
God’s holy word ought all his actions frame,
For he was lord and King of all the Earth
Before poor Eve had either life or breath."
Mortimer concludes that: "Even though Elizabeth herself does nothing directly to advance the cause of women, she clearly inspires her female contemporaries. In legal terms, nothing changes; but under her rule, women begin to enjoy social freedoms that they have never enjoyed in the past, and a few brave souls gain public respect— not as the wives of great men, but on account of their own intellectual and creative brilliance."
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