Download or read book Patriarchy and Families of Privilege in Fifteenth-Century England written by Joel T. Rosenthal and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1991-09-29 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are, contends Joel Rosenthal, two suppositions that have achieved almost full and unquestionable acceptance in contemporary social history and family studies. The first is that at any given time in any given culture one particular form or model of the family dominates; the second is that historical changes in the family operate in a single and compelling direction. In Patriarchy and Families of Privilege in Fifteenth-Century England, the author joins quantitative and legal evidence with case studies to yield a depiction of the family as something at once corporeal, fictive, and symbolic.