ABSTRACT
Christian assumptions about gender, including a pronounced hostility to homosexuality, set the basis for developments in Western Europe in the early modern and 19th-century periods. But economic and cultural change, ultimately including early industrialization, introduced a number of new elements. Patriarchal assumptions were challenged by new ideas about women’s education and moral stature, but the economic roles of women were diminished. The result, by the 19th century, was an important set of redefinitions, including new ideas about gender characteristics that have a lingering impact even today.
