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The Family And Women In The Fifteenth Century: A Case Study Of The Pastons, Diana Thurman

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis questions the prevailing historical models of the medieval family, using the Paston family as a test case. It reviews the theories of three prominent historians of the medieval family: Lawrence Stone, Ralph Houlbrooke and Joel Rosenthal. Whether the Paston family and particularly the women fit the models of families as defined by the above mentioned historians is the underlying question. If the Paston family does not fit these models, what does that tell us about the current assumptions made concerning the fifteenth century family?

The thesis illustrates that the family models of Stone do not always apply to …