Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths. Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-Century Household

This interesting and important book is based on a continuous series of household accounts kept by Lady Alice Le Strange of Hunstanton in Norfolk between 1610 and 1654. It includes a wealth of fascinating details about early modern daily life but the book is far from an antiquarian curiosity. Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths have adopted a micro-historical approach and set their study of the material aspects of the Le Strange household within a broader context in order to thicken, deepen, and question some existing understandings of the gentry and of gender and consumption in the early modern period. The analysis is organized thematically and looks at seven main areas: household management, the acquisition of goods, everyday consumables, material culture, family life cycle and consumption, elite consumption, and the employment of labor. The writing is a model of clarity. Each chapter begins with an overview of relevant themes and debates and the analysis that follows is enriched by comparative evidence from other Norfolk gentry families and enlivened by excerpts from the jest book of Nicholas Le Strange, Alice's eldest son.

Archaeology · Calvinism · Consumption (sociology) · Context (archaeology) · Economics · Elite · Gentry · Order (exchange) · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law