The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany

Abstract

This book studies ‘deviant’ women. It presents an account of how women were prosecuted for theft, infanticide, and sexual crimes in early modern Germany, and challenges the assumption that women were treated more leniently than men. The book uses criminal trials to illuminate the social status and conflicts of women living through the Reformation and Thirty Years War, telling, for the first time, the stories of cutpurses, maidservants' dangerous liaisons, and artisans' troubled marriages. It provides a thought-provoking analysis of labeling and sentencing processes, and of the punishments inflicted on those found guilty. Above all, the author engages with the way ‘ordinary’ women experienced authority and sexuality, household and community.