A Tribe of Roaring Girls: Crime and Gender in Early Modern England

Abstract

Scholars who write about early modern women and crime have focused primarily on prostitution and witchcraft which they deem “feminine” crimes. Removing this gender bias by employing a non-essentialist perspective, reveals a more nuanced picture of women’s participation in crime. Women who were unwilling—or perhaps not feminine enough—to use their sexual attributes to make money existed and are reported in crime statistics and literature. Using both hard evidence from crime studies and soft evidence from literary sources, and considering a wide historical range (from 1600–1800), reveals a steady stream of references to masculine-female criminals on the margins of early modern culture. I argue that future crime studies of early modern periods should allow for the consideration of women who did not conform to their culture’s gender ideals. Making a space for the “masculine-female criminal” contributes to a more nuanced view of gender and early modern culture.