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Title

On the Meaning of Gossip

Author(s)

Published

2018

Publisher

PM Press

Volume

Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women

Publication types

Languages

English

Pages

35 – 43
Collections and Annotations that reference this Citation
Glossary definitions referencing On the Meaning of Gossip

Friendship

In early modern England the word ‘gossip’ referred to companions in childbirth not limited to the midwife. It also became a term for women friends [Mystery plays] were critical of strong, independent women, and especially of their relations to their husbands, to whom—the accusation went—they preferred their friends. As Thomas Wright reports in A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages (1862), they frequently depicted them as conducting a separate life, often “assembling with their ‘gossips’ in public taverns to drink and amuse themselves.”

From: Silvia Federici, ‘On the Meaning of Gossip‘,Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women, 2018