ABSTRACT
In many kinship systems widows were passed from their dead husbands to the control of a son, father or new husband. But in England, because of the cultural preference for elementary conjugal households, widows could not easily be put under control of another male. One response to the resulting patriarchal dilemma was the common negative image of the widow in pre-modern England. The first half of Page’s work is devoted to describing the acts by which a widow acquires the inward virtues, essentially an intensified version of the duties required of any Christian, shadowed here by the bereavement and material hardships of living as a widow. Since affliction is Page’s central theme, not surprisingly the widow’s first duty is ‘Desolation’ and it is the ‘foundation of all the rest’. The paradox of Page’s simultaneous desolation and pre-eminence created a model of virtuous widowhood in which English widows found consolation and courage in the greatest crisis of independent lives.
