Guest post by Jennifer Lodine-Chaffey, 9 August 2022.
Critical attention to early modern execution narratives has focused primarily on men’s gallows speeches and their behavior on the scaffold, tending to overlook the unique experiences of women executed in Tudor and Stuart England.[1] A man’s execution performance was often viewed as a test of his manhood. According to historian Anthony Fletcher, men were expected to learn and perform “a social role, founded upon self-mastery and rational behaviour.”[2] Thus, when providing their final speeches and facing public execution, men endeavored to display manly courage. Witnesses judged men’s execution behavior not only on their displays of contrition and godliness but also on their show of manliness, which included a lack of fear, an upright carriage, a loud voice, and masculine eloquence. But what of women?
Like their male counterparts, the women who suffered public execution during this era were not all…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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