ABSTRACT
In investigating the subject of women and death, one discovers words and images occurring along a broad spectrum from submersion to extinction. The restrictions placed upon will-making for married women necessarily limit the amount of material available for examination. The breadth of female wills, the inclusion of even the most peripheral of material goods, allowed women access to a greater opportunity for self-representation within a circle of family and close friends through will-making than was necessarily the case for men. One aspect of the creation of female identity that arises naturally from a consideration of women's wills, and upon which there is interesting if not conclusive evidence, is the question of female marital status after death. However much Early Modern society might have endeavoured to confine women within a heavenly patriarchy in death, one is still left with a plethora of possible marital destinations for Early Modern women in heaven.
