Women in early modern courtrooms: 'A cross-section of society'
In early modern England, courts of law were working overtime. University lecturer Lotte Fikkers delved into the records of centuries-old court cases involving women. In Early Modern Women's Life-Writing and English Law, she reconstructs how the story they told in court differs from the one they wrote down in their diaries.
'In early modern England, people found themselves in court far more often than we can imagine today,' Fikkers says. 'In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they went to court for all sorts of minor matters. Reputation tarnished? Take them to court!'
For scholars, this litigiousness provides a wealth of material, in which women are well represented. Fikkers: 'We have very few autobiographical texts by women from that era, but we have millions of legal sources in which a lawyer wrote down their stories. Young, old, rich and poor, higher social status, no social status: it's a cross-section of society.'
'Played the game'
Fikkers juxtaposed court records with women's diary excerpts. By comparing the two genres, she was able to reconstruct what narrative and rhetorical strategies women employed to make the best possible impression on a judge. 'Women were very aware of the options available in court,' she says. 'Courts at the time all had their own specialist area: one was known as the poverty court, another only handled cases involving violence. We see that women very consciously chose which court to go to. If they were brought before a court they did not like, they often started their own counter case in another. So they knew the rules and they played the game.'
Exactly how they played that game differed by stage of life, Fikkers discovered. 'In general, young girls were reserved, especially when it came to affairs of the heart. They still had to find a husband later on, so they couldn’t be too bold. Wives, on the other hand, would often launch a personal attack. Whether their legal opponent was their husband or a business partner, they could often be almost aggressive. Widows portrayed themselves as the quintessential biblical widow: poor and with life experience. They had done a lot for their husband and children and therefore deserved respect, and of course a favourable court ruling.'
Role of the lawyer
An important role in determining their strategy was played by the women's lawyers. 'In the next phase of my research, I’m going to see exactly what that relationship looked like,' Fikkers says. 'We already know that women's texts varied widely even within a single lawyer's practice, so at the very least we know that the women themselves were able to exert a lot of influence on these texts.