|
Studies treating the Huguenot-Catholic conflicts in during the period of the
Wars of Religion have frequently overlooked gender and gender relations as
categories of analysis. And perhaps the most significant aspect of gender
relations during this period involves questions of sexual relations and
marriage. My paper explores two approaches to these questions: literary and
historical. Drawing from examples the popular genre of the nouvelle, I
demonstrates how the specter of "mixed marriages" produces anxiety among
Catholic writers, anxiety that becomes a thematic device for anti-Protestant
propaganda.
I suggest that the forces of religious strife and civil war create a climate
far more pernicious to the preserving of social structures than the literary
data might indicate. Archival evidence reveals a marked destabilization of
both
class and gender boundaries among Protestant women. However, the
normalization
of Calvinism in the Edict of Nantes erases the potential threat to gender and
class structures. Through its validation of the strict Huguenot moral code,
the Edict ultimately serves to circumscribe a restructuring of the gender and
class hierarchies in early modern France.
Homepage
|