Date of Award
8-2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
Committee Member
Dr. Caroline Dunn, Committee Chair
Committee Member
Dr. Stephanie Barczewski
Committee Member
Dr. Thomas Kuehn
Abstract
Widows who lived in fifteenth-century England present an interesting case study for their exercises of agency through personal piety because they are underrepresented in the historiographical discussion on this topic. This thesis focuses largely on widowed laywomen and the different ways in which they could access agency through personal piety and the legal system. The examination of their choices in donations, bequests, and other pious actions reveals widows’ ability to express themselves. The chief focus of this thesis are the ways in which widows’ actions of personal piety provided them with access points to agency, authority, and power. While there has been much study on women’s piety and women’s agency, this study seeks to fill historiographical gaps by combining these aspects of medieval Englishwomen’s lives as they experienced them in the fifteenth century.
Recommended Citation
Bailey, Mikkaela Beth, "Relict: Widows and their Expressions of Agency through Personal Piety and Religious Devotion in Fifteenth-Century England" (2019). All Theses. 3236.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/3236