How were woman treated in the Elizabethan era?
It varied. Parents had absolute rights over their children until they grew up, and were expected to treat their parents with deference even then. Wives were expected to defer to their husbands in all things, a man had the right to beat his wife with a stick provided the stick was no thicker than his thumb (hence “rule of thumb”) and provided he did not actually beat her so badly that she died. A wife who ran away from her husband could be brought before the church courts and although she might plead that she had run away from him because he used her cruelly, the husband might tell the court that he beat her only “to make her mend her ways”. The court might well then order her to resume living with her husband, and you can imagine what revenge the husband might exact if she was dragged back to his home. If a woman was very lucky she might find herself married to a good, kind, gentle man, but romantic love was not considered necessary or even desirable in a marriage and any woman of soci
