Guardianship, Gender, and the Nobility in Early Modern Spain

Grace E. Coolidge is an Associate Professor of History at Grand Valley State University, USA.

• Contents: Introduction; Inheritance law, guardianship, and women; 'The great love and affection I have for her'; appointing female guardians; 'Giving security to the youthful years': raising wards and managing noble property; 'With license and authority'; arranging marriages for noble wards; 'A guardian should bring suit': female guardians in court; 'I have been diligent': life after guardianship; Conclusion; Works cited; Index.

'Coolidge's book is a significant addition to the scholarship on women and gender in the early modern world. Her thorough archival research and astute analysis add greatly to our understanding of the power and agency of Spanish noblewomen.' Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Cleveland State University, USA, and author of Religious Women in Golden Age Spain. 'In addition to extremely informative annotations, there is a well-selected and complete bibliography that closes the book. Coolidge excels at compiling excellent documentation to demonstrate in a well-organized study that maintaining a very flexible patriarchal system was, in fact, in the best interest of a nobility that depended on its women for success. By analyzing female guardianship in some of the most important families of early modern Spanish society, the author presents us with a very solidly documented work that contributes to the recent revision of the importance of women in the historical narrative of early modern Europe. This book is a recommended reading for anyone who wants to increase his or her knowledge of the importance of female guardianship and the intersection of gender and power in early modern times.' Renaissance Quarterly 'This valuable book is a painstakingly elaborated treasure trove of detail and of glimpses into the particulars of noblewomen's lives, from the late Middle Ages until the mid-eighteenth century,' Sixteenth Century Journal 'Coolidge's book is a work of solid scholarship based on a rich range of primary sources with which the author is clearly deeply familiar. Running through this volume... is a thematic thread that binds various people, regions and circumstances together: the idea that the relationship between noblemen and noblewomen was one of mutuality, where women played an essential and active role in the wider 'strategies' of a lineage. Legal and theological texts may have drawn a picture of the ideal woman as passive and secluded, but the reality was far more dynamic.' Engli