Absent Husbands Research Articles

Governadoras: Women Administrators, Gender, and Colonization in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese America

In sixteenth-century Brazil, several European women governed the captaincies of their late or absent husbands during the first century of Portuguese colonization. A contextual and lexical analysis of the male-authored sources reveals that these women acted decisively to protect and expand familial patrimonies and, in doing so, were part of the colonizing movement. Although extensive written evidence survives that attests to their authority and agency over colonial affairs, their importance has been overlooked in the scholarship. Therefore, this essay argues that a small group of elite European women became imperial agents who wielded power against colonial subjects in select circumstances.

Environmental rehabilitation and the vulnerability of the poor: The case of the Great Green Wall

Poor people in rural areas depend directly on functioning agroecosystems. Environmental rehabilitation, culminating in the reestablishment of tree cover, is seen as improving ecological functioning and in so doing, reducing the vulnerability of the poor who rely on these agroecosystems. This is what we refer to as the win-win vision for afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation (ARR) programs – increases in ecological resiliency will lead to increases in social resiliency. This highly appealing vision cannot be realized unless one takes seriously the two basic premises. First, to reduce the vulnerability of a rural population, even in rural areas of the Sahel, one must develop strategies to improve the conditions of the most vulnerable. Second, technical success in terms of ecological rehabilitation will not automatically reduce the vulnerability of the most vulnerable and may in fact directly or indirectly exacerbate their vulnerability. Thus, for ARR programs to approach their win-win goals, one must be attentive not only to their technical success, but also to their social consequences for the rural poor. The Great Green Wall program is the most ambitious ARR program in sub-Saharan Africa. It seeks to rehabilitate degraded lands and reduce the vulnerability of the rural poor in dryland West Africa. We reviewed project documents from twelve country programs of the World Bank’s Sahel and West Africa Program (SAWAP) initiative that falls under the visionary umbrella of the Great Green Wall. Our approach was to treat these project documents as “research sites,” allowing us to not only consider how these projects conceptualize the relationships between vulnerability environmental rehabilitation but also to identify the activities and outcomes that projects attend to and measure their success by. In general, attention was narrowly focused on achieving the technical goals of ARR with outcomes primarily measured by numbers of trees planted, hectares restored, and people trained. We looked for evidence in these documents of efforts and strategies used to identify and target benefits to the most vulnerable. We found little evidence in project design and evaluation of attention to the differential vulnerabilities of particular livelihood and demographic groups nor to the potential for these projects to serve as mechanisms of enclosure to benefit powerful local interests. Rapid rural appraisal at nine ARR sites in Niger revealed little attention to the needs of the most vulnerable with some of the most vulnerable either excluded (women with absent husbands) or ignored (pastoralists). Moreover, ARR activities often led to the direct and indirect enclosure of reclaimed sites benefiting powerful individuals. Options to improve these programs are discussed.

Separation Scenes: Domestic Drama in Early Modern England by Ann C. Christensen

Reviewed by: Separation Scenes: Domestic Drama in Early Modern England by Ann C. Christensen Aoise Stratford Separation Scenes: Domestic Drama in Early Modern England. By Ann C. Christensen. University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Cloth $60.00. 318 pages. Commercial expansion in Early Modern England resulted in a significant increase in the number of husbands who traveled for work and the number of wives who were left behind to manage domestic obligations and keep their homes (and themselves) secure. Ann C. Christensen’s thorough and compelling book, Separation Scenes: Domestic Drama in Early Modern England, argues convincingly that the impact of business travel on the wives and households husbands left behind is a unifying concern of domestic dramas popular during this period. Individual chapters focus on five emblematic plays of the domestic drama genre in which “the departure of men and their households’ accommodation of their absence constitute the main plots” (3). Those plays are the anonymously/ambiguously authored Arden of Faversham (c. 1592) and A Warning For Fair Women (1599), Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed With Kindness (1607), Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women (c. 1613-21), and the rarely addressed The Launching of The Mary, or The Seaman’s Honest Wife written by Walter Mountfort, a clerk in the East India Company. A brief epilogue expands the discussion to the life and poetry of John Donne. Christensen’s introduction provides a brief and broad, but helpful, overview of period documents and key approaches to domestic tragedy in existing scholarship by Frances Dolan, Catherine Richardson, Lena Cowen Orlin, and others. Christensen thus situates her own analysis in the context of feminist historicist approaches to marriage, sexuality, labor, space, and domestic violence in the Early Modern period. The introduction defines key foci and terms, such as separation scene and “unpartnered wife” (11), and proposes a number of cultural questions that these plays explore by using “absent husbands and domestic settings . . . to articulate the broader cultural concerns brought home (literally) from an expanding commercial world” (3). The chapters that follow are self-contained and well-ordered to build a comparative framework for these plays that is cumulative and nuanced, showing how business travel and its often violent impact on the domestic vary in articulation, detail, and “in degree but not in kind,” across this genre (3). [End Page 145] Chapter 1 explores how the titular Arden’s travel between home and away structures Arden of Faversham. The central analysis of Alice’s performance of housewifery shows how the fraught deputation of authority to the unpartnered wife in this play drives the plot and critiques sixteenth-century ideals about the division of domestic authority. The second chapter illuminates how A Warning For Fair Women’s use of liminal spaces (such as doorways and shorelines) reveals the heroine’s vulnerability in a domestic sphere in which her labor and authority are devalued and denied. The third chapter addresses Heywood’s A Woman Killed With Kindness. Christensen insightfully demonstrates how this play stages consumption (of meals, fashion, and novelties) to “critique a domestic ideology that falsely imagines women as consumers and men . . . as providers of ‘kindness’”—a job men supposedly sustain by travel away from home (108). In the fourth chapter, on Women Beware Women, the author focuses on class and economic disparity as complicating and violence-inducing factors in household models where husbands travel to support domesticity (and fail to do so) at home. A nuanced reading of the trope of “the ruin” shows how it functions in the play to stage the collapse of structures (homes, marriages), while also trading on period associations of the ruin with the sexual dishonor of women. The final chapter seeks in part to lift The Launching of The Mary from critical obscurity, and so provides a much more thorough overview for this understudied play. Much of the chapter is concerned with explaining the play’s treatment of the effect of global commercial travel on seamen’s wives. It does so by cleanly contrasting the play’s treatment of the East India Company, seamen, and their wives, with treatments offered by Thomas Mun’s A Discourse of Trade (1621). This comparison is especially effective for articulating the...

The Predicament of Women in a Postmodern World

Feminism has no unanimous acceptance in Africa, so women who are associated with it are regarded as deviants or radicals who have chosen to kick against the norms and traditions of traditional Africa. This study explores the plight of suppression and exploitation experienced by women and also revealed the dangerous and difficult situations that often reduce women to mental wrecks. Njabulo Ndebele’s The Cry of Winnie Mandela is the focus of this essay, as the novel accounts for the entrapment and subjugation of women caused by traditional laws and customs, as well as their determined effort to survive in a patriarchal culture. Njabulo examined the lives of five South African women in post-apartheid South Africa, who had to wait indefinitely for their absent husbands. This essay attempts to create awareness of the need for societal reforms in order to improve the lot of women in patriarchal societies and encourage cooperation between women in order to stand up to the challenges of life and assert their individual worth and value, as espoused in the novel. This study concludes that the subjugation of women by patriarchal societies is to the detriment of the family and society at large. Thus, there is a need to re-evaluate and redefine gender roles in African societies in order to establish mutual understanding and relationships between the genders.

Towards an MIT-Conscious Biblical Studies in South Africa? Glimpsing the Stories of Absent Husbands and Waiting Wives

Professor I.J.J. Spangenberg has invested much of his teaching time at universities in the subject of Biblical Studies among others. He is thus aware of the “glorious” days of the subject as well as of the events which led to its downfall. It is thus fitting that in an article that seeks to honour his scholarship, also aware of his commitment to offerings that would impact on the daily lives of the people, an article that examines a possible new way of offering Biblical Studies in our African contexts, be dedicated to him. When considering the place of Biblical Studies as a school subject in South African history, one cannot but be reminded of the (predictable) fate of the proverbial eagle. Says one African proverb: o se bone go akalala ga bonong, go wa fase ke ga yona: do not puzzled by the (pride) of an eagle which soars so high, its fall is certain. Considering the present (slippery) place of (traditional) Biblical Studies as offered in South African institutions of higher learning, the subject’s future appears to be gloomy. In the era of the MIT’s (Multi, Inter, Transdisciplinarities), (biblical) scholars should be persuaded to move away from their discipline-specific silos to engage with other disciplines in order for the subject to enrich other disciplines and vice versa. If disciplines such (African) History and Folklore Studies are made to interact with the subject of Biblical Studies, which contribution may such a “merger” bring to the study of African Biblical Hermeneutics in (South) Africa today?

«A la sombra» de hombres ausentes: mujeres malcasadas en el mundo hispánico del setecientos

The households with feminine heads have been revealed in recent research as an important social reality in Early Modern Europe. These households, often under direction of a widow, and to a lesser extent, of a spinster or an unhappily married woman, are providing historians with the possibility to observe women’s lives from the margins of structures of patriarchal power. The economic, social and affective reality of unhappily married women needs a profound analysis, that goes beyond a quantitative magnitude, facing the challenge of imagining these women in conditions that, at first glance, didn’t go beyond exceptional and accidental, but in reality they could have formed an environment of autonomy and power for themselves. In this study, judicial records and testaments which come from Cadiz in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries are utilised to show the different paths of the lifes of women with absent husbands. These testimonials confirm that the experiences of women and their own perception of themselves differ not only as a function of their own circumstances but also according to the sources that we could choose. If from the allegations of abandonment from the «Warrants to Indies» it can be deduced that for this collective, overall they experienced poverty and difficult conditions, their wills offer a vision of full lives where work and affection are basic structures.

Agents at Home: Wives, Lawyers, and Financial Competence in Eighteenth-Century New England Port Cities

This article analyzes wives who acted on behalf of their absent husbands in eighteenth-century New England port cities, situating them within the broader matrix of agents who acted for absent men. Wives’ management of their households enabled their husbands to pursue distant commercial opportunities, yet historians tend to overlook that wives acted within mixed-sex networks of designees and agents. Analyzing divisions of responsibility between wives and male agents reveals the extent and the limits of men’s legal and economic activities in practice. Using the case study of a merchant who absconded from Boston in 1755 and other contemporaneous examples, I argue that, while husbands placed significant trust in their wives, they saw certain matters as the domains of male professionals and used gendered language to downplay their wives’ competence. The malleability of these divisions of responsibility sparked disputes, but it also allowed wives to co-opt alliances for their own benefit.

Male migration and decision making: are women finally being included?

In a mixed methods interdisciplinary case study approach, this paper explores the role of decision making for women who remain in their rural communities when male migration is considered and, on occasion, acted upon. In a unique approach in the field of migration studies, this paper considers not only women whose husbands have migrated – absent husbands – but also the impact of male migration on women whose husbands have returned – most often from the United States – as well as women whose husbands have never left – anchored husbands. The findings from this study of women in San Juan Guelavía, Oaxaca, Mexico, suggest that women’s involvement in migration decision making pertaining to imminent or potential emigration of husbands remains, in large part, the domain of husbands, but generational differences are shown that may begin to erode men’s traditional patriarchal role. Women with anchored husbands often implement strategies – consciously or subconsciously – to retain husbands in the home and with the family, especially if decision making power is weak on the part of wives.

The Construction of Epistolary Identity in a Gentry’s Communication Network of the Seventeenth Century: The Case of Jane Lady Cornwallis Bacon

There has recently been increasing scholarly interest in early modern correspondence and specifically also in women’s letter writing and reading. Starting from the late Middle Ages familiar responsibilities and domestic obligations led many women to write to their absent husbands or other relatives to exchange health news and inform them about family affairs. It is however in the early modern period that corresponding with relatives and friends became a widespread social practice ranging from official to familiar and personal correspondence; in this period female literacy increased thus allowing growing numbers of women to write and read their own letters. A growing number of female voices can thus be heard depicting early modern social life. The article focuses on a neglected aspect of women’s correspondence: it investigates not the sender’s epistolary identity, but that of the recipient through the analysis of the personal correspondence of Lady Cornwallis Bacon. The main theme of the article is to show how the epistolary identity of an early modern gentlewoman was constructed by her correspondents. It is assumed that modes of communicating information and achieving a specific goal through letters varied not only according to the relationship connecting the correspondents but also the purpose and content of letters.

Technologies of the spouse: intimate surveillance in Senegalese transnational marriages

AbstractRapid advances in communication technology in the last 20 years have enabled migrants to sustain social and economic investment in multiple geographic locations, or, to be transnational. In this article, by analysing non‐migrant Senegalese women's experiences in marriages with migrant Senegalese men, I critically engage in discussions about the role of technology in transnational family dynamics. In the intimate negotiations of transnational married life, these women feel profoundly ambivalent about the role of communication technologies in their lives. Instead of enabling ‘emotional closeness’, the virtual presence of their absent husbands frequently represents a spectre of suspicion, control and surveillance.

Cooking from Life: The Real Recipe for Street Food in Ha Noi

Cooking from Life: The Real Recipe for Street Food in Ha Noi

Absent husbands and whispering voices: a critical analysis of the representation of men in two popular Flemish women's magazines

This study examines the textual representation of men in two popular Flemish women's magazines, Het Rijk der Vrouw and Libelle. We compare Het Rijk der Vrouw of 1958 with its successor Libelle of 2008 through building on the tradition of critical discourse analysis. Our analysis of the names used to refer to men in the two magazines illustrates how the representation of men has changed during this period. In 2008, men were found in different roles than they were in 1958. This analysis is supplemented by an analysis of the processes through which men are represented in relation to women (readers). The key findings suggest that women's relationships with men, although different, are still integral to the ethos of these magazines. Although the importance of marriage has declined, the number of roles that men take on in women's lives has increased, and, most notably, the presence of a loving man in women's lives is still a central theme.

What’s in a Name: Orsilochus, or the Perfect Adulterer

The adultery of wives is a commonplace in Greek comedy. The sex strike in Aristophanes' Lysistrata is inspired as much by the absence of the wives' husbands as by the unavailability of their lovers. In reply to Lysistrata's rather rhetorical question as to whether they are pining for their absent husbands (ajto0r|jx<Sv dvrip, Lys. 101), the women all answer in the affirmative, but Calonice1 adds that even lovers have vanished without a trace (dXX' ouoe iioiftoO KaxaXiteurxai (pe'|/aA,vC, Lys. 107). When the conspirators take the oath administered by Lysistrata, lovers are even mentioned before the husbands (ovk scttiv ouoeic ouxe (xoixoc out' <xvr|p ocmc rcpoc e|j.e rcpoceiciv ?gtukcuc;, Lys. 2124). According to the magistrate (rcpoPouXoc, a member of the committee of Ten), the men themselves have driven their wives to adultery by sending well-endowed craftsmen to their homes in their absence (Lys. 407-19). The Greek word for 'lover' used in these quotations is (J-oi/oc 'adulterer' or, to be more precise, 'man who seduces married women' (Chantraine 1968-80: 708).2 One of the best known, and arguably one of the most notorious, adulterers in late fifthcentury Athens was Eratosthenes of Oe, of whom Lysias says

Dinah Mulock Craik and Benjamin Mulock

Stories of nineteenth-century women writer's entrance into the profession of authorship have long emphasized the failings of their male relations. Alcoholic fathers and absent husbands are seen as the catalyst that spurs women into earning a living through authorship. This paper takes Dinah Mulock Craik's relationship with her younger brother Ben Mulock as a challenge to the critical paradigm. Mulock has been dismissed by critics from Margaret Oliphant onwards as an itinerant young man who funded his dissipations through his famous sister. New archival evidence, in the form of over 250 unpublished letters exchanged between brother and sister, suggests that their relationship was mainly collaborative and productive, and that Mulock was as earnest and hard-working as his sister. These letters suggest a more positive role for the woman writer's male relation, offering an example of shared economic and emotional structures that could support siblings throughout their careers.

The Impact of Japanese Corporate Transnationalism on Men’s Involvement in Family Life and Relationships

This study examines the ways in which Japanese corporate transnationalism affects husbands’ involvement in family life and marital relationships primarily from a perspective of wives. It is based on interviews with 22 Japanese wives and 4 husbands. Studies of Japanese corporate transnationalism treat men as mere supervisors to local workers or representatives of corporations and pay little attention to their family relations. The study found that corporate transnationalism weakens the Japanese masculine corporate culture (which creates absent husbands and fathers) and consequently provides Japanese men an opportunity to consolidate family bonds and integrate themselves into family life, though not all men take advantage of this opportunity. Inasmuch as transnational corporate families are isolated from their friends and relatives in Japan, the degree and willingness of husbands’ involvement in family life has a substantial effect on the quality of marital relationships.

Absent Husbands, Single Wives: Success, Domesticity, and Seminuclear Families in the Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes World

The industrial and transportation revolutions of nineteenth-century America separated work from home (at least for the growing middle class) and intensified the development of masculine and feminine spheres devoted to success and domesticity, respectively. This development tended to reduce the husband's traditional patriarchal roles to that of provider only, while leaving the wife and mother with enhanced authority over household management and child rearing, a development with consequences for feminism. This article examines two extreme cases of separation of work from home: absent husbands, respected professional men, who left their wives alone for months or years and, while they provided financial support, surrendered all household authority to "single" wives.

Indigenous Labor as Family Labor: Tributes, Migration, and Hispanicization in Colonial Guatemala

It is well known in the history of Spanish America that early colonial-era tributes in labor and commodities were gradually converted to tributes in cash, and tribute labor was gradually replaced by privately contracted labor. For Mexico and Central America, scholarship on these processes has remained largely separate from new, gendered histories. This article revisits tribute and native labor procurement, placing gender and family structure at the center of analysis. Focusing on Guatemala, the article argues that the transition from draft tribute labor to privately contracted labor increasingly drew entire families into migratory labor at Spanish agricultural enterprises. As out-migration from native communities lengthened from eight-day draft turns to longer “voluntary” stints, women and children began accompanying their men to colonial estates. Some women stayed behind, typically with small children, while their men left to earn wages. These women could face dire straits if their husbands died or did not return from abroad. Native women with absent husbands were likely to seek wages by migrating to the Spanish city. Further, the restructuring of labor within the cash economy may have encouraged parents to put their children out to work. Wages earned by native children sent to the city were usually remitted to the parents in the sending community, where tributes were collected. Contrary to popular stereotypes, the article concludes, women and children were at the vanguard of urbanization and hispanicization.

Life in the ‘Hood: Postwar Suburban Literature and Films

This article examines the postwar suburb and its representation in literature and films, which shares responsibility with the housing boom for propagating the suburban myth, as Herbert Gans coined the term in his seminal sociological study, The Levittowners (1963), whereby ‘the suburbs were breeding a new set of Americans, as mass produced as the houses, driven into a never ending round of group activity ruled by the strictest conformity’ yet which also revolved around ‘a matriarchal family of domineering wives, absent husbands, and spoiled children, and with it, rising marital friction, adultery, divorce, drunkenness, and mental illness’ (xxviii). This myth, contradictory but enduring, was propagated by the competing sensibilities of business interests intent on selling the ‘suburbs-as-lifestyle’ and by urban intellectuals who located there all that they disdained about middlebrow culture. This suburban aesthetic has remained largely unaltered despite the radical changes that the suburbs themselves are now undergoing: the majority of all Americans, including immigrants and people in poverty, now live in the suburbs, rendering obsolete the notion of the suburbs as the exclusive playground of the white middle class. Recent suburban literature and films work within the suburban literary tradition yet point toward a new suburban aesthetic that reflects and renegotiates this changing, fraught landscape.

Panegyris Channels Penelope: Mêtis and Pietas in Plautus’s Stichus

Panegyris Channels Penelope: Mêtis and Pietas in Plautus’s Stichus Amanda N. Krauss (bio) Plautus’s Stichus is an odd play. Instead of a traditional New Comic plot, we find a tripartite structure that highlights different groups of characters at the beginning, middle, and end. Furthermore, there is a marked change in the tone, which descends from a highly moral beginning to what scholars have called an “antimoral” ending.1 In the initial scenes,2 the plot focuses on two sisters, Pamphila and Panegyris,3 as they wait for their long-lost husbands to return from a journey abroad. The sisters wish to remain married to their absent husbands, but their father Antipho wishes them to remarry. A conflict between father and daughters ensues. This type of father-daughter interaction is unusual in New Comedy,4 and thus offers a unique opportunity for a study in family dynamics. Past scholars have focused mainly on the sisters’ roles as ideal wives and/or daughters.5 Although they have been correct to identify the overt moral themes of the play and the sisters as impressively virtuous characters, a close study of the sisters’ characterization complicates the definition of “moral.” In this article, I reexamine the sisters’ characterization and its implications. First, I revisit the two scenes in which the sisters appear6 and consider textual evidence for their agency and cleverness, characteristics that have only recently begun to be recognized.7 Next, I consider the sisters’ mention of Penelope and its significance for the literary and social setting of the play. As I shall argue, both the text and the reference to Penelope highlight the sisters’ clever manipulation of their social situation. This play is especially important because it demonstrates the presence of female agency and opposition in a father-daughter relationship, and thus provides a new understanding of daughterly pietas.8 Revisiting the Text In the play’s opening, we find the two sisters alone onstage, waiting for their husbands to return from a two-year-long voyage. Panegyris, the [End Page 29] elder sister, compares their situation to that of Penelope, whose state of mind is recognizable from their own situation (nam nos eius animum / de nostris factis noscimus, 3–4).9 It is just, she claims, to be worried about their husbands (ita ut aequom est / sollicitae, 5–6). Her younger sister Pamphila responds that what is just is doing their duty, and that they need not do anything more than piety advises (nostrum officium nos facere aequomst, neque id magis facimus / quam nos monet pietas, 7–8). It is Pamphila who first brings up the ensuing conflict: she worries that their father will act unjustly (improbi viri officio uti, 14) by trying to remove them from their homes. Panegyris advises her not to worry, because he would never do such a thing, but she concedes that their father has a point: they have no idea where their husbands are, what they are doing, or if they are alive (31–3). Pamphila asks whether Panegyris is unhappy because their husbands “do not cherish their duty, when you carry out yours” (an id doles, soror, quia illi suom officium / non colunt, quom tu tuom facis? 34–5).10 In response to Panegyris’s affirmative answer (ita pol), Pamphila becomes imperious. She tells her elder sister to be quiet (tace) and admonishes her to recognize and practice officium (34–6) even if their husbands do not (40). The scene ends when Panegyris agrees to keep quiet, and Pamphila orders her one last time to remember her duty (47). While there is doubtless an argument of sorts between the sisters, we should not overemphasize the conflict at this point. We may reasonably assume that Pamphila’s underlying concern is what Panegyris will do when and if their father presses the point of remarriage. However, no particular course of action is brought up, and Pamphila’s initial question reveals a concern with attitude, not strategy. Moreover, the moral terms of this debate11 do not prevent a comic scenario. When the younger sister corrects her older sister’s definition of aequom or becomes imperious, we should think in terms of a short...

L’assedio di Genova degli anni 1317-1331: «maligna et durans discordia inter gibellinos et guelfos de Ianua»

The critical stage that Genoa had to face in the years of 1317-1331, gave rise to a traumatic time in the evolution of institutional and social politics of the city. The provoking cause was an inner war between the two factions of nobility, notwithstanding the strong support of a wide public following. The declaration of the pars Ghibelline dictated the beginning of a real and concrete siege, in which both contending parties found important external economic and military support (Viscontis for the Ghibellines, Angio for the Guelphs), at first in the vicinity of the city and then on the coastlines, in the colonies and up to the Black Sea. In the end, the deterioration of the contending parties on one hand and the threat of a Catalan supremacy on the Mediterranean on the other hand, helped the people of Genoa rediscover unity against a common enemy. The scope of the present essay is to verify, through private and fiscal documentation, how the people lived and operated in the city during those years. In fact, the economic relapse is noteworthy to mention: formation of a burdensome public debt (the share coupons which quickly lost their value), high prices following the difficulty of supplying provisions due to the maritime and land block and the rarefaction of merchant activities. The crisis was also heavily felt in the “private” sector and the family economies, as various findings indicate (the increase of the number of women that operated, in the merchant practices, in name of absent husbands, the scarce occurrence of weddings for the difficulty to pay the dowries).