¹ Rowbotham, S., Hidden from History: Three Hundred Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight against it (1973, 3, 4Google Scholar.

² Oakley, A., Housewife (1974), 21Google Scholar.

³ Agonito, R., History of Ideas on Women: a Source Book (New York, 1977), 91Google Scholar.

⁴ Shorter, E., The Making of the Modem Family (1976), 3Google Scholar.

⁵ Ibid., 55.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid., 56. It is worth noting that a more recent work on the French peasant family, albeit with a slightly later chronological focus than Snorter's, provides a very different impression: Segalen, M., Love and Power in the Peasant Family: Rural France in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar.

⁸ Stone, L., The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (1977), 5Google Scholar.

⁸ Ibid., 54.

¹⁰ Ibid., 658. Rowbotham similarly argues that more humane ideas on sexual relations were an invention of the enlightened middle classes of the eighteenth century: Hidden from History, 15.

¹¹ Stone, , Family, Sex and Marriage, 684Google Scholar.

¹² Stone, L., ‘Interpersonal violence in English society 1300–1980’, Past & Present, ci (1983), 27 n. 12Google Scholar.

¹³ Thompson, E., ‘Happy Families’, New Society, 8 09 1977, 499Google Scholar. Thompson's strictures remind us that, despite the favourable reviews it received when it first appeared, Stone's Family, Sex and Marriage has attracted considerable adverse com-from subsequent writers, many of them specialists in the field of family history. See: Macfarlane's, A. review article in History and Theory, xviii (1979), 103–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, M., Approaches to the History of the Western Family 1500–1914 (Studies in Economic and Social History, 1980), 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., ‘Domestic homicide in early modern England’, Historical Journal, xxiv (1981), 29–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wrightson, K., English Society 1580–1680 (1982), 71ffGoogle Scholar; Pollock, L., Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge, 1983), 58–9Google Scholar; Houlbrooke, R. A., The English Family 1450–1700 (1984), 14–15Google Scholar; Spring, E., ‘Law and the theory of the affective family’, Albion, xvi (1984), 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; L. G. Schwoerer, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Women Engraved in Stone?’, ibid., 389–403.

¹⁴ Stone, , Family, Sex and Marriage, 603Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Spufford, M., Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (1981)Google Scholar. For a more recent and more general discussion of the relevant source material see Capp, B., ‘Popular literature’, in Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Reay, B. (1985)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ My argument is based on two large edited collections of these ballads: The Roxburghe Ballads, ed. Chappell, W. and Ebsworth, J.W. (9 vols., 1871–1897)Google Scholar; and The Pepys Ballads, ed. Rollins, H. E. (7 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1929–1931)Google Scholar. Other collections include: The Bagford Ballads, ed. Ebsworth, J. W. (2 vols., 1876–1877)Google Scholar; The Shirburn Ballads 1585–1616, ed. Clark, Andrew (Oxford, 1907Google Scholar); Old English Ballads 1553–1625, Chiefly from Manuscripts, ed. Rollins, H. E. (Cambridge, 1920Google Scholar); Naval Ballads and Songs, ed. Firth, C. H. (Navy Records Soc, xxxiii, 1908Google Scholar). A useful introduction to this type of Literature is Shepard, L., The Broadside Ballad: a Study in Origins and Meaning (1962)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ A number of early modern joke books are listed in Wardroper, J., Jest upon Jest: a Selection from the Jestbooks and Collections of Merry Tales Published from the Reign of Richard III to George III (1970), 200–5Google Scholar.

¹⁸ For a comprehensive listing of books of proverbs and others relevant sources see The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (3rd edn., Oxford, 1970), xi–xvGoogle Scholar. Another excellent introduction to the proverbs of the early modern period is provided by Tilley, M. P., A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: a Collection of the Proverbs found in English Literature and the Dictionaries of the Period (Ann Arbor, 1950)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ The general outline to these problems has, however, been established by Spuf-ford, ch. 3, ‘Direct and Indirect Evidence for the Readership of the Chapbooks’, and ch. 4, ‘The Fortunes and the Volume of Stock of the Chapbook Publishers’. Her evidence suggests that there was little clear division between the readers and publishers of chapbooks and those of ballads.

²⁰ For an example which, although drawn from a later period, illustrates this point vividly, Spufford, 3. For discussions of the general relationship between the oral culture and the printed word in this period see: Burke, P., Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978), 250–9Google Scholar; Cressy, D., Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writingin Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), 13–14, 189CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Quoted in Pepys Ballads, iii. p. v. It is also worth noting in this context that one of the reviewers of Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, noted Elizabethan ballads might have provided some evidence about the attitudes of the lower orders: Hill, C., ‘Sex, marriage and the family in England’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xxxi (1978), 462Google Scholar.

²² Roxburghe Ballads, i. 558.

²³ Pepys Ballads, ii. 141, 228.

²⁴ , N.R., Proverbs English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish, All Englished and Alphabetically Digested (1659), 17, 40Google Scholar.

²⁵ Roxburghe Ballads, vii. 97–124.

²⁶ Much the same conclusion is reached by Spufford, 157; ‘the concept of romantic love as a basis for marriage was very much present in seventeenth-century humble society. This, reflected in its twopenny literature, was not a world in which people married for economic interest rather than inclination.’ Two recent discussions of courtship suggest that the actual behaviour of the period corresponded with the popular literature: Wrightson, , English Society, 70–88Google Scholar; Ingram, M., ‘The reform of popular culture? Sex and marriage in early modern England’, in Popular Culture, ed. Reay, , 134–7Google Scholar.

²⁷ Pepys Ballads, i. 243–6; Roxburghe Ballads, vii. 171–2, respectively.

²⁸ Roxburghe Ballads, ii. 165.

²⁹ Ray, John, A Collection of English Proverbs: Digested into a Convenient Method for the Speedy Finding upon Occasion (1670), 49Google Scholar.

³⁰ Pepys Ballads, ii. 7; Roxburghe Ballads, vii. 205, respectively.

³¹ Roxburghe Ballads, ii. 179.

³² Ibid., vii. 205.

³³ Ibid., i. 124.

³⁴ Pepys Ballads, vii. 169.

³⁵ Roxburghe Ballads, i. 48.

³⁶ Pepys Ballads, vi. 102.

³⁷ The Universal Jester: Or, a Compleat Book of Jests, Containing a Pleasant Variety of English Jests, Irish Jests, Oxford Jests, Cambridge Jests, Coffee-House Jests, Novels, Bulls, Stories Jokes and Puns &c. (1668), 148.

³⁸ Roxburghe Ballads, ii. 160.

³⁹ Ibid., i. 123.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 48.

⁴¹ Ibid., vii. 185.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Ibid., 187.

⁴⁴ Ibid., i. 439.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 508.

⁴⁶ Ibid., ii. 163.

⁴⁷ Ibid., i 122–8.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 122.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 126.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 249–53.

⁵¹ Ibid., iii. 478–80.

⁵² It should be remembered, however, that there is no reason why patriarchal values and affection within marriage should not co-exist. As one recent writer has commented, ‘love is not inconsistent with patriarchy. For eons the two things have gone hand in hand’: Spring, 20.

⁵³ Roxburghe Ballads, i. 436. The image of the world turned upside down was, of course, a very potent one in the early modern period. For a discussion of popular visual art dealing with this theme, for example, see Kunzle, D., ‘World Upside Down: the iconography of a European broadsheet type’, in The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society, ed. Babcock, B. (Ithaca-London, 1978)Google Scholar. It is interesting to note Kunzle's comment, ibid., 42, that ‘In the first place (often literally so in the print) stands the most ubiquitous motif of all: the inversion of the male-female roles’.

⁵⁴ It is noteworthy that works dealing with popular culture have had little to say about areas in which women were actively involved. Thus one writer, dealing with participation in popular recreations, comments that ‘Sex, in fact, was probably a social determinant of greater weight than age…most of the sporting events assumed that women would attend only as spectators, or not at all’, but does not purse the point further, or examine the possibility of separate female recreations: Malcolmson, R. W., Popular Recreations in English Society 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1973), 56Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Roxburghe Ballads, i. 205, 95, respectively.

⁵⁶ The First and Best Part of Scroggins lests: Full of Witty Mirth and Pleasant Shifts, done by Him in France and Other Places: being a Preservative against Melancholy. Gathered by Andrew Boord, Dr. of Physicke (1626), 33.

⁵⁷ Clark, Peter, The English Alehouse: a Social History 1200–1830 (1983), 131–2Google Scholar, where it is suggested that women would rarely be found among customers in the alehouse.

⁵⁸ Pepys Ballads, ii. 175–9.

⁵⁹ Roxburghe Ballads, i. 50, 95; ii. 188, respectively.

⁶⁰ Ibid., i. 149; ii. 168, respectively.

⁶¹ Wits, Fits and Fancies: or, a Generall and Serious Collection, of the Sententious Speeches, Answers, Jests and Behaviours, of all Sortes and Estates, from the Throane to the Cottage (1614).95.

⁶² Roxburghe Ballads, vii. 197; ii. 298, respectively.

⁶³ Ibid., vii. 236–7.

⁶⁴ Ibid., i. 94–8; vii. 182–4, 188 9, 192–3, 198 9, respectively. The last example tells the story of a doctor who arrived in England from the continent and ‘cured’ 700 scolds in seven weeks.

⁶⁵ Roxburghe Ballads, vii. 189.

⁶⁶ Ibid., i. 438.

⁶⁷ It is worth noting that popular reaction at the practice of wives beating their husbands was a common cause of English versions of the charivari in the 17th century. For a general discussion of this phenomenon, see Ingram, M., ‘Ridings, rough music, and the “Reform of Popular Culture” in early modern England’, Past & Present, cv (1984), 79–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁸ Roxburghe Ballads, i. 436, 95; vii. 184, respectively.

⁶⁹ Ibid., ii. 160.

⁷⁰ E.g., ibid., i. 331–6; ii. 367–71.

⁷¹ Pepys Ballads, i. 206; Roxburghe Ballads, iii. 377, respectively.

⁷² Pepys Ballads, ii. 170–3; Roxburghe Ballads, iii. 98–103, respectively.

⁷³ Roxburghe Ballads, vii. 145.

⁷⁴ Ibid., iii. 521.

⁷⁵ Ibid., ii. 38.

⁷⁶ The best recent discussion of the genre is Davies, K. M., ‘Continuity and change in literary advice on marriage’, in Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage, ed. Outhwaite, R.B. (1981)Google Scholar. For two representative examples see: Dod, John and Cleaver, Robert, A Godly Form of Household Government: for the Ordering of Private Families according to the Direction of God's Word (1614)Google Scholar; Gouge, William, Of Domesticall Duties (1622)Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Hence Davies, concludes that the family conduct books were ‘descriptive, rather than prescriptive texts’: Davies, , 76Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Rogers, K. M., The Troublesome Helpmate: a History of Misogyny in Literature (Seattle-London, 1966)Google Scholar, constitutes an excellent introduction to this subject. Two other works dealing with the presentation of women in early modern elite literature, and which have much to suggest about misogynistic attitudes are: Gagen, J. E., The New Woman: her Emergence in English Drama 1600–1730 (New York, 1954)Google Scholar; Shepherd, S., Amazons and Warrior Women: Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth-Century Drama (Hassocks, Sussex, 1981)Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Rogers, , Troublesome Helpmate, 11–46Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Sharpe, J. A., Crime in Early Modern England, 1550–1750 (1984), 84Google Scholar, 88–9. For a useful initial discussion of the wider problems involved in interpreting scolding, seeUnderdown, D., ‘The taming of the scold: the enforcement of patriarchal authority in early modern England’, in Order and Disorder in Early Modem England, ed. Fletcher, A. and Stevenson, J. (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Thomas, K., ‘The place of laughter in Tudor and Stuart England’, Times Literary Supplement, 21 01 1977, 77–81Google Scholar.

⁸² Ibid., 77.

⁸³ Ibid. Cf. S. M. Tave, The Aimiable Humorist: a Study in the Comic Theory and Criticism of the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries (Chicago-London, 1960), ix, where, after a discussion similar to Thomas's, the author remarks that ‘humor in this sense was a historical event with a beginning and an end’.

⁸⁴ The classic introduction to the anthropology of humour is Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., ‘On joking relationships’, in Structure and Function in Primitive Societies: Essays and Addresses (1952)Google Scholar. Anthropological and other social scientific works dealing with humour are listed in Zijderveld, A. C., ‘The sociology of humour and laughter’, Current Sociology, xxi, no. 3 (1983)Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ See Tave, Aimiable Humorist; Wardroper, Jest upon Jest; Barker, C. L., Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: a Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton, 1959)Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ A standard introduction is Wilson, C. P., Jokes: Form, Content Use and Function (European Monographs in Social Psychology, xvi, 1979)Google Scholar. Some idea of the variety of approaches to the subject can be gained from studying two collections of essays: The Psychology of Humour: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, ed. Goldstein, J. H. and McGhee, P. E. (New York-London, 1972)Google Scholar; Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications, ed. Chapman, A.J. and Foot, H. C. (1976)Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, ed. Strachey, J. (The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, viii, 1960)Google Scholar\.

⁸⁸ Wilson, , Jokes, 2Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Quoted ibid., 189.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 9.

⁹¹ Hazlitt, W., Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819), 1Google Scholar.

⁹² For a variety of different approaches to the theme of inversion, see: Barker, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy; The Reversible World, ed. Babcock; Clark, S., ‘Inversion, misrule, and the meaning of witchcraft’, Past & Present, lxxxvii (1980), 98–127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁹⁴ Freud, , Jokes, 110–11Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Thomas, 77. But the scolding wife could be potent enough in real life. Oliver Heywood recorded a man who, in 1681, was driven to suicide by his ‘shrewish untoward wife’: The Rev. Oliver Heywood, B.A., 1630–1702: His Autobiography, Diaries, Anecdote and Event Books, ed. Turner, J. Horsfall (4 vols., Brighouse, 1882–1885), ii. 300Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ A point discussed by Wilson, , Jokes, 220–5Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Ray, , Collection of English Proverbs, 48Google Scholar, gives this version of an extremely common saying. Cf. Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 513–14.