Day 3- Reading Response

The focus of today’s reading was women who lived as men and about social exclusion. I found all of the articles to be very interesting and informative. The one that I found the most interesting was the last one, Women and gender in early modern Europe. The article itself is not just about women posing as men but it takes a deeper look into all aspects of a woman’s life during that time period.

The article makes a good point about how there were many different steps in a mans life but how there were just here for a woman. The three stages were virgin, wife, and widow or daughter, wife, mother. I found it interesting that the three stages of a woman’s life were still centered and dependent around and upon a man however. When a woman is a daughter and a wife she is dependent upon the male in her life for clothes and food and all of the basic necessities. When she is a widow she is dependent upon a man still because she takes over his estate and goes about doing the things that the man should. In early modern Europe a woman that had been widowed often looked for another husband as well because it was considered necessary to rely on a man.

This article, as well as the one on Catalina de Erauso, talked about women dressing as transvestites. During that time period if a woman were able to successfully dress as a man then she was able to have a more free and enjoyable life. In the case of Catalina de Erauso she was able to help defend her country and her church, something that she never would have been allowed to do if she was a woman. Catalina was able to fool the men into believing that she was a man and I think that that is amazing. In the last article that we read there was a reference to Anna Bonny, she two chose to dress in men’s clothing and thus enjoyed a more feel life as a free willed pirate. It seems that if a woman were able to pull of living as a man and get away with it then it wouldn’t be all that bad. They would be able to live the life that they wanted and not be questioned all the time as to whether or not their actions were correct. However, if they were caught it seems like there was a no tolerance policy towards this type of behavior. In the reading it talks about how women who were found guilty of living as a man were sometimes sentenced to death. Back in that time it was considered to be overstepping your boundaries of womanhood, a line that would not have needed crossing if woman had been afforded the basic rights that men were.