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　　　　　　　Women's Positions in the 17th Century　　　　　　　　

Social circumstances in Early Modern England mostly served to repress women's voices. Patriarchal culture and institutions constructed them as chaste, silent, obedient, and subordinate. At the beginning of the 17th century, the ideology of patriarchy, political absolutism, and gender hierarchy were reaffirmed powerfully by King James in The Trew Law of Free Monarchie and the Basilikon Doron; by that ideology the absolute power of God the supreme patriarch was seen to be imaged in the absolute monarch of the state and in the husband and father of a family. Accordingly, a woman's subjection, first to her father and then to her husband, imaged the subjection of English people to their monarch, and of all Christians to God. Also, the period saw an outpouring of repressive or overtly misogynist sermons, tracts, and plays, detailing women's physical and mental defects, spiritual evils, rebelliousness, shrewish ness, and natural inferiority to men.

Yet some social and cultural conditions served to empower women. During the Elizabethan era (1558—1603) the culture was dominated by a powerful Queen, who provided an impressive female example though she left scant cultural space for other women. Elizabethan women writers began to produce original texts but were occupied chiefly with translation. In the 17th century, however, various circumstances enabled women to write original texts in some numbers. For one thing, some counterweight to patriarchy was provided by female communities—mothers and daughters, extended kinship networks, close female friends, the separate court of Queen Anne (King James' consort) and her often oppositional masques and political activities. For another, most of these women had a reasonably good education (modern languages, history, literature, religion, music, occasionally Latin) and some apparently found in romances and histories more expansive terms for imagining women's lives. Also, representation of vigorous and rebellious female characters in literature and especially on the stage no doubt helped to undermine any monolithic social construct of women's mature and role.

Most important, perhaps, was the radical potential inherent in the Protestant insistence on every Christian's immediate relationship with God and primary responsibility to follow his or her individual conscience. There is plenty of support in St Paul's epistles and elsewhere in the Bible for patriarchy and a wife's subjection to her husband, but some texts (notably Galatians 3:28) inscribe a very different politics, promoting women's spiritual equality: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Jesus Christ." Such texts encouraged some women to claim the support of God the supreme patriarch against the various earthly patriarchs who claimed to stand toward them in his stead.

There is also the gap or slippage between ideology and common experience. English women throughout the 17th century exercised a good deal of accrual power: as managers of estates in their husbands' absences at court or on military and diplomatic missions; as members of guilds; as wives and mothers who apex during the English Civil War and Interregnum (1640-60) as the execution of the King and the attendant disruption of social hierarchies led many women to seize new roles—as preachers, as prophetesses, as deputies for exiled royalist husbands, as writers of religious and political tracts.


Vocabulary

1. repress 压制，镇压，约束

2. patriarchy 族长制，家长制

3. chaste 贞洁的，高雅的

4. hierarchy 等级制

5. monarch 君主，最高统治

6. image 象征，反映

7. overtly 公开的，明显的

8. outpour 倾泻

9. sermon 布道，说教

10. tract 政治宗教，小册子传单

11. misogynist 反对妇女

12. shrewish 泼妇似的，爱骂街的

13. counterweight 抗衡

14. consort 配偶

15. masque 化装舞会

16. monolithic 铁板一样的，磐石般的

17. epistle 圣经·新约中的使徒书

18. Galatians 新约圣经中加拉太书

19. inscribe 写，题写，铭记



难句译注

1. Also, the period saw an outpouring of repressive or overtly misogynist sermons, tracts, and plays, detailing women's physical and mental defects, spiritual evils, rebelliousness, shrewish ness, and natural inferiority to men.

[结构简析] 这是一种句型，年代，时间+see, find 等动词+宾语。

[参考译文] 这一时期出来许多约束或明显反对妇女的布道（教义），小册子和戏剧，详细地描述了妇女精神上和肉体上的缺陷，精神罪恶，叛逆，凶狠，天生低于男人的品性。

2. Such texts encouraged some women to claim the support of God the supreme patriarch against the various earthly patriarchs who claimed to stand toward them in his stead.

[结构简析] in one's stead 代替某人。

[参考译文] 这样的版本鼓励有些妇女去寻求最高家长，上帝的支持，以对抗各种各样凡间家长，他们声称替代上帝对付她们。



写作方法与文章大意

文章论述了17世纪英国妇女的地位，采用对比写作手法。一方面（第一段）英皇詹姆士重新以法律形式确定：家长制的思想体系，政治上集权主义，性别等级制。而思想意识是上帝的绝对权威；最高等级制体现在绝对君主政权上，体现在家庭的父亲和丈夫身上。所以妇女先对父亲，后对丈夫的服从体现了英国臣民对君权，全体基督徒对上帝的服从。那时代造就的妇女都是贞洁，沉默，服从，低下。

另方面，某些社会和文化因素赋予妇女以力量，首先是女皇伊丽莎白统治的时期，她本身就是一个强有力的榜样。其次一些妇女亲情关系，以及安娜女皇的分庭抗礼统治活动和舞会。再则是大多数活动妇女都受过良好教育。最重要的是有些圣经文本鼓吹妇女精神平等。

最后一段论述了英国妇女实际上有的已经掌握实权，如丈夫公务，他们管理庄园田产。