Researching Elizabethan England

1.The role of women in Elizabethan England
The roles of women in society were very limited. Women were expected to be housewives and mothers. On average, a woman gave birth to a child every two years. Childbearing was considered a great honor to women.
Women were regarded as "the weaker sex", not just in terms of physical strength, but emotionally too. It was believed that women always needed someone to look after them. If they were married, their husband was expected to look after them. If they were single, then their father, brother or another male relative was expected to take care of them.
Many women in this period were highly educated. Women were not allowed to go to school or to university, but they could be educated at home by private tutors.
Women were not allowed to enter the professions i.e law, medicine, politics, but they could work in domestic service as cooks, maids etc. Women were also allowed to write works of literature, providing the subject was suitable for women: mainly translations or religious works. Women were not allowed to act on the public stage or write for the public stage. Acting was considered dishonorable for women and women did not appear on the stage in England until the seventeenth century. In Shakespeare's plays, the roles of women were often played by young boys.
Women, regardless of social position, were not allowed to vote. Neither could women inherit their father's titles. The only exception was, of course, the crown. The crown could pass to a daughter, and that daughter would be invested with all the power and Majesty of any king. In some cases women could not inherit estates, but women could be heiresses to property, and some women, especially if they were the only child of a great noble man, could be very affluent heiresses indeed.
Women had more freedom in the Elizabethan period than they had had previously and would have again for some time. Thus, noble women, as well as men, were given an impressive education in the classics, mathematics, and all other academic subjects of the day.
Sources from: www.elizabethi.org/us/women

2.Class distinctions in Elizabethan England
There were four groups of classes in Elizabethan England:
·The nobility
In Shakespeare's time there are only about 55 noble families in England. At the head of each noble family is a duke, a baron, or an earl. These are the lords and ladies of the land.
These men are rich and powerful, and they have large households. For example, in 1521 the earl of Northumberland supports 166 people – family, servants and guests.
A person became a member of the nobility in one of two ways: by birth, or by a grant from the queen or king. Noble titles were hereditary, passing from father to oldest son.
People in other classes might lose status by wasting their fortunes and becoming poorer. It took a crime such as treason for a nobleman to lose his title.

·The Gentry
When Elizabeth I was young, only about 5% of the population would have been classed as gentry: knights, squires, gentlemen, and gentlewomen "who did not work with their hands for a living." (Time Traveller's Guide) Their numbers, though, were growing. They were the most important social class in Shakespeare's England.
"Wealth was the key to becoming part of the gentry. These were people not of noble birth who, by acquiring large amounts of property, became wealthy landowners. Some families bought property bit by bit over generations.
"The upper gentry lived like nobles, building huge houses, and employing hundreds of servants. They could not buy their way into the nobility, but their sons or grandsons often became peers (nobles).
"The gentry were the solid citizens of Elizabethan England. They went to Parliament and served as justices of the Peace."

·The Yeomanry
"Between the two extremes of rich and poor are the so-called 'middling sort', who have saved enough to be comfortable but who could at any moment, through illness or bad luck, be plunged into poverty. They are yeomen farmers, tradesmen and craft workers. They have apprentices and take religion very seriously; usually, they are literate." (Time Traveler’s Guide)
"They had existed for centuries and were, like the gentry, peculiar to England. They had no counterparts in Europe, which had great nobles, poor peasants, and little in between.
"The yeomen were prosperous, and their wealth could exceed that of some of the gentry. The difference was how they spent their wealth. The gentry lived like lords, building great houses. The yeoman was content to live more simply, using his wealth to improve his land and to expand it.
"Below the free holding yeoman on the social scale were the small leaseholders or "copyholders". Their lands might occasionally compare in size and wealth with those of the wealthier yeomen, but they were much less secure. A lease might be for life, in which case a copyholder could not be sure his son would inherit the land. His lease might be hereditary, but the amount due to the landowner might change. Copyholders were often forced off their land to make way for the larger operations.
"Beneath the copyholders were the hired laborers. Some of these lived in one place, working for wages on the lord's land and farming the four acres that, by law, went with their cottages. Other laborers went from county to county as migrant workers, wherever there might be sheep to shear or crops to harvest."

·The Poor
At the bottom were the poor. There was far more poverty under Elizabeth than in previous reigns, mostly because of enclosure, but there were also the sick, the disabled, the old and feeble, and soldiers unable to work because of wounds.
The result was the famous Elizabethan Poor Laws, one of the world's first government- sponsored welfare programs. The program was financed, at first, by contributions from the wealthy. When this proved inadequate, a poor tax was levied on everyone. The Poor Laws had three goals: first, those unable to care for themselves were placed in hospitals or orphanages. Children, when they were old enough, were put out as apprentices to craftsmen. Second, the able-bodied who could not find jobs on their own were put to work, usually in workhouses established in the towns. These were places where the unemployed were put to work making goods for sale -- such small items as candles, soap, or rope -- in exchange for a place to sleep and enough food to keep alive.
The third goal was to discourage the permanently unemployed, "rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars" responsible for "horrible murders, thefts, and other great outrages." The Elizabethans made a clear distinction between those who, for one reason or another, were unable to work and those able-bodied people who refused employment, whether in a regular job or in a workhouse. The Elizabethan sense of order revolted at the thought of people wandering about with no respectable occupation. To refuse to work for wages was an offense punishable by law.
If the vagrant refused work or escaped from a workhouse and was caught, he was "burned through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about."50 If, for a third time, a vagrant was found to be unemployed, the punishment was death.
Sources from: http://www.brandonsd.mb.ca/crocus/library/social_classes_in_shakespeare.htm

3.Fashion in Elizabethan England
Women:
The Elizabethan age brought about a great development of culture in sixteenth century England. One way this great development of culture came about is through fashion and costume. Fashion in the Elizabethan age was a way of expressing one's self: the fashion truly helped to reveal the general culture of the period.
In the early stages of the Elizabethan era women generally wore clothes that covered them completely. The bodice or the top part of the gown was generally tight fitting with square shoulders. The yoke was usually of a dark color, and there was often some type of high collar. The collar would extend all the way to the chin and usually would ruffle at the top.
The sleeves were usually full from the shoulder to the elbow and then more tight and form-fitting from the elbow to the wrist. At the wrist the sleeves would open wide into a large ruffle.
The gown usually contained a v-shaped point at the waistline and then expanded into a sort of funnel shape reaching the ground. The shoes the women wore in this beginning period were not important because the gown reached to the floor; the shoes most often were not seen. As for jewelry, many woman in this period wore large pendants of gold around their necks. Earrings were not very common except among the very sophisticated, who could wear pearls.
The headgear of the beginning of the Elizabethan period was an English version of the French hood. This "hood" was placed near the back of the head and was worn with a stiff base that was very close-fitting. Many women in this period also opted for small jeweled caps decorated with jewels, pearls, or lace.
As the period went on, the women's style of dress saw a few changes. The bodice of a dress was still tight-fitting, but instead of a v-shaped waistline, the bodice was cut in a straight line around the hips. The sleeves also changed. Instead of ruffling between the shoulder and the elbow, they were tight-fitting all the way down to the wrist. The skirt became heavily embroidered, yet still remained long enough to drag the ground.
Men:
The men's style of clothing was also very distinct during the beginning of this great period. The men wore embroidered vest-like shirts called jerkins, which had square shoulders and buttons down the front. The sleeves were often decorated and loose- fitting all the way to the wrists. The pants were loose-fitting and extended to about three to four inches above the knee. They were padded with horse-hair and slashed in order to show the knitted silk stockings underneath.
The shoes of the men were generally made with the finest of leather. They contained a small leather heel and were often decorated with slashes. The headgear was either a small flat hat made of velvet or silk or a tall crown hat that was covered by fine fabric or feathers. Some of the more distinguished men wore small capes with big-edged collars.
As the period continued, so did the development of men's fashion in this culture. Stockings began to be replaced by garters, and silk stockings were replace by horse hair trunk hose. The most distinguished men began to wear crowned beaver hats and wide cloaks held by a chain and a crucifix. The tailored stockings were plain. The pumps had rounded toes and closed at the ankles. The bonnet was trimmed around the edged and decorated with a plume on one side.The men also began to carry short perfumed gloves.
There really isn't much to be said about the fashion of children in this age. They usually wore smaller versions of the adult fashions, and even the infant girls were required to wear long gowns. The boys generally wore miniature versions of clothing worn by the men. Their doublets and shirts had slashes in them, and they wore silk stockings of color underneath. The girls generally wore long braids in their hair; the braids would either be tied with ribbon or made into a crown.
Throughout the Elizabethan period there was a great development of culture in England. The influences of this culture can be seen through the fashion and costume of the sixteenth century English people.
sources from: http://www.springfield.k12.il.us/schools/springfield/eliz/fashionwm.html