Marriage\Divorce\Role+of+Women

Tayliyah Dixon Marriage/Divorce/Role of Women

In //Elizabethan Times// women were considered property and not treated as human beings...

In 1604, it was an felony to run out on your family if you were unhappy in your marriage. Most likely divorce was not an option and it was almost impossible to remarry.When an Elizabethan annulled a marriage they just pretended that marriage never happened and the only way to do this was to get a legal seperation.There were other ways out of a marriage or to get a divorce.One way is male impotence not having intercourse takes away the official reason for a marriage because one of the main reason was to have children.You can also file for a divorce when someone in the marriage was physotic or if someone was abducted or was at least gone for seven years or was presumed dead while in a marriage or committed infidelity while married.(Kathy Lynn Emerson said this in her book everyday life in Renaissance England 66).
 * //__Divorce__//**


 * //__Marriage__//**

The main objective of most Elizabethans was to marry and to have children.When an arranged marriage was successful, it was sometimes expected that the Elizabethan bride would provide property (material) to the marriage. Successful arranged marriages can also provide comfort, love, companionship and also physical attraction, but that wasn't important in a marriage that was based more on wealth, money and material.( Andrews 87) You could marry at the age of seven, but it couldn't be legalized until the age of twelve for girls and fourteen for boys. The common marriage ages were twenty seven for boys and twenty five for girls.When married everything that the women owned now belonged to their husband even the women was now property the women were entirely under their husbands control (Pritchard 27-28).

Women from wealthy familes were sometimes allowed to get an education, lower class women **commoners** weren't able to attend school or get any type of education. Elizabethan women had to teach themselves and also had to be highly skilled in household chores.Elizabethan women had to be very dependent on their significant others and all women were expected to marry.Unmarried women or women that couldn't get married were expected to go to a nunnery or be a household servant.Women with parental rights were able to get married at twleve years of age. The bride's father often had to give a **dowry** the amount of money offered to marry his daughter or bargain with the perspective groom a price to marry his daughter if the man accepted, he took the money and married the daughter.
 * //__Role of Women__//**



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Works Cited Andrews, John F, ed. //Shakespear’s World and Work//. Vol. 2. New York: Karen Day, 2001. Print. “Elizabethan Era Role of Women.” //Elizabethan Era//. N.p., 2010. Web. 8 Apr. 2010. Emerson, Kathy Lynn. //Everyday Life in Renaissance England//. Cincinnati: Writiers Digest, 1996. Print. Hatzigeorgiou, Karen J. //Renaissance Press image 5//. 2009. //Karen Whimsey.com//. Web. 12 Apr. 2010. Pritchard, R.E. //LIfe in Elizbethan//. N.p.: n.p., 1999. Print.