Why Moll Wouldn’t Marry?

We seem to have a pretty clear picture of the lives of women three or four hundred years ago. They were under the charge of their fathers until their parents chose a husband for them, and then they had to get married. They had very little freedom and very little choice about it.

But… Who decided when and to whom women in early-modern England should marry? Why would a woman decide to refuse all her suitors and never marry? And what were the consequences of such choices?

Let’s turn to Dr. Yonatan Moss, who is interviewing Dr. Daphna Oren-Magidor, a historian of the family in seventeenth-century England. Daphna will be telling us about one woman whose story sheds a different light on this topic.