{"id":3873,"date":"2026-03-26T14:16:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T14:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3873"},"modified":"2026-03-26T14:16:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T14:16:33","slug":"do-not-seek-pleasure-guidelines-for-17th-century-widows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3873","title":{"rendered":"Do not seek pleasure – guidelines for 17th-century widows"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"he<\/a>

The Mourning Virgin, after Dieric Bouts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MET, 71.156\u201357<\/p><\/div>\n

Last year our own Dr Maria Cannon won a fellowship to study at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.\u00a0 While there she came across a manuscript book, Of the Commendable Estate of Widowehoode, <\/em>a translation of a 16th century Italian work which advises widows on suitable behaviour, and afterwards wrote this blog piece for the Folger Library blog.\u00a0 Let’s just say that having any kind of fun is out.\u00a0 While its lessons can appear restrictive and depressing to modern tastes, this lengthy guide reveals that women were responsible for negotiating their own behaviour, spirituality and relationship to God.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/blogs\/collation\/how-to-be-a-true-widow\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year our own Dr Maria Cannon won a fellowship to study at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.\u00a0 While there she came across a manuscript book, Of the Commendable Estate of Widowehoode, a translation of a 16th century Italian work which advises widows on suitable behaviour, and afterwards wrote this blog piece for the Folger Library blog.\u00a0 Let’s just say that having any kind of fun is out.\u00a0 While its lessons can appear restrictive and depressing to modern tastes, this lengthy guide reveals that women were responsible for negotiating their own behaviour, spirituality and relationship to God. https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/blogs\/collation\/how-to-be-a-true-widow\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,920,580,112,922,921,91,329,923,632],"class_list":["post-3873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-in-focus","tag-archives","tag-conduct-books","tag-death-and-mourning","tag-early-modern-history","tag-fellowships","tag-folger-shakespeare-library","tag-seventeenth-century","tag-sixteenth-century","tag-widows","tag-womens-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91PlX-10t","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3873"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3879,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions\/3879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}