| This dissertation addresses community belonging, community building, and community identity of women in the city of Granada during the early modern period, showing how women made use of their Granadan social context. It situates the women of Granada in the context of the economic and social turmoil throughout the early modern period, and in particular of the seventeenth century. Non-elite urban women in early modern Granada actively shaped the civic economy, culture, and religious life of the city and, in turn, their lives were shaped by the interplay of these elements. Women played indispensable commercial roles in the market economy, as well as providing the backbone of many of Granada's most important industries. Further, their participation in the economy undergirded the creation and consumption of Granada's civic culture, in particular the city's annual Corpus Christi celebration. Official municipal and religious attitudes as reflected in city council records and moralist treatises not only reflect an anxious ambivalence about but also a grudging acceptance of women's often assertive presence in civic activities. Although overt challenges to the social structure were rare, urban women aggressively protected, and even expanded, their access to natural, cultural and economic resources in their community. Urban women bridged the foundational social structure of the home to the larger civic body. In this role, Granadan women served as an axis point amidst the struggle between custom and the economic and social changes that characterize the early modern period. |
