From Bedroom to Courtroom
Home and the Memory of Childbirth in a Fourteenth-Century Marriage Dispute
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12877783 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sue Niebrzydowski (Bangor University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 123-134 |
| Publication date | 2009-04-09 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Home Cultures (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1740-6315 • E-ISSN: 1751-7427 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2752/175174209x416553 |
| OpenAlex | W2052877308 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Between November 1365 and February 1366, the family of Alice de Rouclif, then around twelve and a half years old, sought the annulment of her marriage to John Marrays on the grounds that she was under age when they married. Many women, including her mother, aunt, wet nurse, and godmother, gave depositions before the church court at York. The case of Alice de Rouclif demonstrates how the memory of childbirth, in which the private bedroom became, temporarily, a specifically female locus bound by its own rituals, impacted on the public sphere of the Church and the operation of its court. The female depositions in relation to Alice's case suggest that women, in particular, measured time in relation to the life-changing event that took place at home: by the recollection of their own and others' parturition, successful or otherwise, and that this domestic perception of time ran alongside those temporal markers used traditionally in the patriarchal world: the calendar, the seasons, and the Church year
Archaeology · Aunt · Bedroom · Childbirth · Political science · Politics · Salon · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law
| Highly cited | No |
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