Barbara J. Harris – författare

English Aristocratic Women combines a collective portrait of aristocratic women with an analysis of the particular, class-specific form of patriarchy and gender relations that flourished among the upper classes in Yorkist and early Tudor England. The first book on the subject based on extensive archival research, it examines the apparent contradiction between the patriarchal institutions that shaped women's lives and the wide range of their activities, control of resources, and power over themselves and members of their families. It demonstrates that the roles of aristocratic wives, mothers, and wideows constituted careers for women that had as much public and political significance and were as crucial for the survival and prosperity of their families and class as the careers of their husbands. They managed their families' property and households; arranged the marriages and careers of their children; created, sustained, and exploited the client-patron relationships that were an essential element in politics at the regional and national levels and in the power of individual families; and, finally, managed the transmission and distribution of property from one generation to another, since most wives outlive their husbands. For women from the inner circle of court families, careers at court expanded and supported these roles. As in all careers, aristocratic women gained prestige, authority, power, and financial rewards for their activities. Recognising the full significance of aristocratic women's careers revises our understanding of Yorkist and early Tudor politics. In addition, the centrality of their roles means that reconstructing their activities creates a vivid picture of every aspect of aristocratic domestic, familial, economic, and political life.

Portraits of aristocratic women from the Yorkist and Tudor periods reveal elaborately clothed and bejeweled nobility, exemplars of their families' wealth. Unlike their male counterparts, their sitters have not been judged for their professional accomplishments. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara J. Harris argues that the roles of aristocratic wives, mothers, and widows constituted careers for women that had as much public and political significance and were as crucial for the survival and prosperity of their families and class as their husband's careers. Women, Harris demonstrates, were trained from an early age to manage their families' property and households; arrange the marriages and careers of their children; create, sustain, and exploit the client-patron relationships that were an essential element in politics at the regional and national levels; and, finally, manage the transmission and distribution of property from one generation to another, since most wives outlived their husbands. English Aristocratic Women unveils the lives of noblewomen whose historical influence has previously been dismissed, as well as those who became favourites at the court of Henry VIII. Through extensive archival research of documents belonging to more than twelve hundred families, Harris paints a collective portrait of upper-class women of this period. By recognising the full significance of the aristocratic women's careers, this book reinterprets the politics and gender relations of early modern England. Barbara J. Harris is Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her previous works include Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478-1521.

The role played by women in the evolution of religious art and architecture has been largely neglected. This study of upper-class women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries corrects that oversight, uncovering the active role they undertook in choosing designs, materials, and locations for monuments, commissioning repairs and additions to many parish churches, chantry chapels, and almshouses characteristic of the English countryside. Their preferred art, Barbara J. Harris shows, reveals their responses to the religious revolution and signifies their preferred identities.