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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
Pages
35 – 43
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Annotation
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