2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

We typically understand early modern women’s heterosexuality in reference to repressive patriarchal norms. This panel explodes that historical interpretation in a variety of early modern settings, from Korea to France, and from elites to artisans. We reveal that early modern married women often had adultery as one of the options open to them, although for varying reasons and to different extents, depending on various social and cultural contexts. (Most women, of course, had no interest in getting involved with yet another man, but a minority could and did choose to have both a lover and husband.) The work of all the panelists is based on legal archives. Although such documents have their own literary qualities, we are ultimately talking about actual people, not representations per se. Jacob Melish (University of Northern Colorado) uncovers the various factors that enabled workingwomen in early modern Paris to have both a lover and a husband. Jungwon Kim (Columbia University) examines how adulterous women who were brought to trial manipulated Korean jurisprudence to be found not guilty; she looks particularly at chogan laws. Nina Kushner, through a rich corpus of court cases, returns us to early modern France to examine the rules and sexual cultures that governed women’s adultery broadly, and particularly among the elite strata. Our chair, Professor Marie Seong-Hak Kim is a specialist of early modern France and Korea. Our commentator, Merry Wiesner-Hanks, is a specialist of early modern European culture and gender who has fully engaged global history.