“Women weare the breeches”: gender disputes in english street literature (17th century)

Abstract

With the spread of the press, during the early modern, access to printed materials in England was facilitated, and among countless topics, they addressed the disputes surrounding gender. Thus, this article focuses on this documental body (printed materials of the time), and from scientific research, it sought to catalogue the literary representations of “disorderly” women. It is noticed that these printed materials were important symbolic elements in the attribution of female and male roles. As a result, it is possible to observe that such texts attributed female representations as conducive to performing sins of carnal and sexual nature, such as adultery, prostitution, and seduction. Furthermore, in addressing sinful women such prints also created faulty male representations, which failed to establish control over these women.