The 16th and 17th centuries were a time when a person's concept of what it was to love or be in love was determined by their place in society. Marriage was also something that unfortunately favored men over women who were declared inferior to their counterparts by law. The union of marriage and its relationship to one's sexual morals were very pressured topics in society and one's infidelity could see them shunned from society and many opportunities. The ‘normal’ vision of the family was one where the husband ruled over his wife, their children and servants in the same way a king would rule over his people. There was very little access to an outlet for the complaints of women in unhappy marriages, and while marriage did give women some respectability there were limited options for women in terms of making an independent living.
The concept of love was also explained differently by women than by men in writing. While women wrote of their standards for men in terms of fidelity, men such as Sir Thomas Overbury were consistently reminding women that they were less than in terms of religious doctrine. Sir Thoms’s poem “A Wife” states that “From woman take; her being she from man; And therefore Eve created was a wife, And at the end of all her sex, began: Mariage their object is; their being then, And now perfection, they receive from men.” or in other words women were made to be wives and should think of the union of marriage as their way to perfection. He also makes references to the role that religion played in the subjugation of women by saying “God to each man a private woman gave, That in that center his desires might stint...” By describing women as more of an object to be given to men than a person to cherish or respect, Sir Thomas Overbury’s dialogue further dehumanized women.
Love in the 16th and 17th centuries was also governed by the rules of the court. Andreas Capellanus’ “De Amore” was a dialogue-based guide for people of different social backgrounds regarding the concept of courtly love. There are descriptions of things like love at first sight and Capellanus insists that “this inborn suffering [love] comes, therefore, from seeing and meditating.” He also mentions love at first sight in rule sixteen where he states “When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.” Men were able to conceptualize love as an option in terms of marriage whereas women were more likely to describe marriage as a way to hand them over from father to son-in-law similar to the concept of selling property or goods.
Love as a concept for women was characterized by writings on things such as unhappy marriages and forbidden loves. Writers such as Lady Mary Wroth and Margaret Cavendish wrote about the nuances of marriage in terms of the treatment of women by their partners and society in relation to their male counterparts. Margaret Cavendish described marriage as “ a curse we find, especially to womankind” and “the grave or tomb of wit.” Women in the 16th and 17th centuries were usually expected to throw themselves into a life of servitude to their husbands regardless of how they were treated and shunned for many of the same actions that men took with no judgment. Infidelity in women was seen as a terrible sin, but the infidelity of a husband would be blamed on his ‘inattentive wife.’ Women such as Margaret Cavendish were shunned by society for their infidelity and isolated from former friends, while the information on their huss and their ‘inattentiveness’ is lacking if at all present in the commentary of members of courtly society. Marriage was built up as a union that was heavily connected to the love between two people but for women, it was seen as more of a prison sentence even in the best circumstances.
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