Abstract
As a group, for the British nobility much of the self- understanding of their identity came from their inclusion in the titular nobility. This identity was foundational to the existence of the women of this rank for most of the period under consideration here. Because of that, a great deal of effort went into preserving that position and for women that meant that appropriate marriages were extraordinarily important.
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Notes
See Peter Burke, “The Language of Orders in Early Modern Europe,” in Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe Since 1500: Studies in Social Stratification, M.L. Bush, ed. (London: Longman, 1991).
Barbara Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 11.
Margaret P. Hannay “‘O Daughter Heare,’ Reconstructing the Lives of Aristocratic Englishwomen,” in Attending to Women in Early Modern England, ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Adele F. Seef (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994), 38.
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Ingrid H. Tague, Women of Quality: Accepting and Contesting Ideas of Femininity in England, 1690–1760 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), 11–12.
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Dorothy Nevill, Life and Letters of Lady Dorothy Nevill (London: Methuen, 1919), 184.
Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 5.
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© 2014 Kimberly Schutte
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Schutte, K. (2014). Prologue: Identity and Rank. In: Women, Rank, and Marriage in the British Aristocracy, 1485–2000. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137327802_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137327802_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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