Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England [Hardcover]

Dr. Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 1994

This book is an investigation of youth and adolescence in pre-industrial England. It concentrates on young people from the middle or lower groups of society, who, between 1500 and 1800, left home to work as apprentices, agricultural labourers or in domestic service. Drawing on municipal, ecclesiastical and parish records, and over 70 autobiographies, Ben-Amos focusses on aspects of youth as they related to maturation: the separation of adolescents from their parents; their working lives and relationships with their employers or masters and mistresses; the relative independence and autonomy exercised by younger women; the role of the young in religious affairs; and the question of whether there was such as thing as a "youth subculture".

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (May 25, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300055978
• ISBN-13: 978-0300055979
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,905,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars The placement of Ben-Amos in the larger context of historiography concerning the Early Modern period (Renaissance), October 10, 2010

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This review is from: Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England (Hardcover)

Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, in Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England, contributes to a growing and dynamic field of the study of adolescence, youth, and the resulting maturation culminating in adulthood. A study of this nature, though somewhat limited in its scope, is important towards a more comprehensive understanding of early modern social dynamics, in this case specifically focusing on England, because the majority of society was comprised of people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four.# Margaret L. King, in an extensive article outlining the various contributions to the study of childhood, adolescence, and youth within various cultures and throughout different time periods, points towards Phillipe Aries's "imaginative essay," Centuries of Childhood, as being the catalyst for this flood of child-centric research, which she further explains by claiming that "Aries's greatest contribution, however, is his insistence on the historicity of childhood."# Ben-Amos's study of the particulars of adolescent and youth life in early modern England follows, and adds its own contribution, in the wake of Aries's seminal work by concentrating on "the experiences of growing up"# in early modern England, providing historiographical insights concerning the lives of adolescents and youth, in addition to an extensive array of first-hand accounts of life during this time period drawn from a long list of autobiographies and diaries. Instead of separating the summary of Ben-Amos's work from the corresponding comparison to similar studies and analysis in terms of course concepts, each section of the book being discussed will be placed side by side with the applicable critical analysis and placement in contextually relevant ideas and research concerning adolescence and youth, and more specifically, apprenticeships in general.

Before delving into the specifics of Ben-Amos's work, it is important to briefly examine her use of `early modern' as an appellation, as opposed to the more broad term the Renaissance, to define the particular time period covered. This could be attributed to the fact that the term Renaissance "has always been a shifty chronological marker,"# Although Ben-Amos does not directly address the reasons for not using the general term `Renaissance,' it can be assumed that she opted for the more time-specific label of `early modern' because, even though she is discussing the aspects of the lives of adolescents and youth in the 16th and early 17th centuries, she is not focusing on the growth, transmission, or occurrences of particular cultural, artistic, and philosophical movements usually associated with northern Europe during the period denoted as the Renaissance, but rather the events and influences on a particular section of society, in a specific place and during a specific time. In avoiding the abovementioned `shiftiness,' and thereby bypassing the "entangling commitments" associated with the "idea of the Renaissance,"# Ben-Amos is able to devote the entirety of her work on the subject of adolescence and youth in England during the 1500s and beginning of the 1600s, instead of having to clearly define and interpret what the term Renaissance means in relation to her work and as a movement in general.

Similar to the questioned differences between the labels of Renaissance and early modern are the contrasting ideas about the length of adolescence and youth in "the pre-industrial and early modern past," those emphasizing either a short or prolonged duration.# Ben-Amos takes issue with this rift in historical conceptions of the length of time associated with adolescence and youth because each alienates the other in focusing on a single model of the period of adolescence.# Ben-Amos goes on to make the distinction between the sociologists who favor the idea of a short duration and the historians who have embraced the notion of a prolonged one. To further illustrate the single-mindedness of both approaches, Ben-Amos goes on to introduce in detail the sociological ideas of "adolescence [appearing as] a relatively simple process if only because it was short," while historians "stress that...full participation in adult life was retarded, and legal, social and economic rights and obligations were accorded to the young only many years after they had reached puberty."# Concluding her introduction, Ben-Amos brings these different ideas of adolescence together, claiming that the recognized maturity of adolescents did not take place in a specific place in time, neither was it a consistent "set of gradual stages," but rather a series of "various transformations" which differed based on the contributing factors of the lives of the adolescents themselves.# It is expressly stated that this book is not a "comprehensive account," but rather an examination of the "major features [of adolescence and youth] as a transitional stage in the life cycle."#

The bulk of the book is centered around the experiences of apprenticeship and how they impact and influence the lives and societal standing of adolescence and youth. This focus includes the effects of early separation from family, the relationship between apprentices and masters, the acquisition of friends, a high level of mobility, both away from home and between different apprenticeships, the resultant disparities between genders, and the eventual move from youthful apprenticeship to the herald of adulthood in the form of marriage. However, before diving into the specifics of her extensive focus on apprenticeships, Ben-Amos first begins with the prevailing, and often contradictory, images of youth and adolescence held by society during the early modern period. Creating a backdrop to the larger discussion of adolescents and youth in the course of their lives, Ben-Amos first describes the commonly believed concepts of youth/childhood which helped to color the attitudes and treatment on the part of adults towards youth, which include ideas of inherent sin/piety, youth as symbols of hope, and ideas regarding youthful insubordination and inexperience. It is interesting to note that even the ideas about the different stages of man in the early modern period, partially based on the thoughts of antiquity, such as those revolving around, but not restricted to, Ptolemaic astrology, while according youth and adolescence "a special place," failed to clearly define the boundaries of said place.# Youth were seen as being inherently sinful, originally innocent, or as the "the antidote to old age...and a hope...for a long and healthy life."# Her treatment of these variations in the public image of youth, as Linda Pollock claims, actually do not reflect the reality present within the life of young people during this period. Pollock goes on to say that Ben-Amos neglects to further expound on the "mismatch between portrayal and reality," and that she neglects to answer questions like "Why was there such a discrepancy and did it matter?"# In fact, with the exception of the discussion on relations between boys and girls, or young men and women, the discussion of how adolescence and youth are viewed is one of the shortest in the book, which begs the question of why Ben-Amos does not further expand on why this discrepancy is important and how it fits into the main focus of the book.

Turning then to the major focus of Ben-Amos's work, that of apprenticeship and all the subsequent facets, such as "childhood tasks, death of parents, long separations and mobility, aid from kinfolk, adjustment to apprenticeship, continued parental backing, and graduation to accepting apprentices of one's own,"# in addition to acquiring the mark of adulthood, marriage. The discussion of how adolescents adjusted and reacted to the beginning of their apprenticeships begins with a description of how older children, shortly before or on the verge of adolescence, were initiated to work within the sphere of their family, often choosing to find apprenticeships in the same, or similar, fields of work. Ben-Amos makes the argument that the separation experienced by adolescents when embarking on their apprenticeships was neither a first traumatic shock of leaving the safety of the family, nor did it signal the beginning of the transition to adulthood.# Following the aforementioned synthesis of the theories concerning the duration and process of adolescence and youth,# Ben-Amos continues the presentation of adolescence and youth by portraying their lives as being comprised of a series of life-altering events, the separation from parents and home, and the continuity of childhood leading into adolescence, in the fact that these separations were neither unexpected or new, presenting a pattern which allowed for a sudden shift and gradual change simultaneously. Patrick Wallis agrees that the years spent in an apprenticeship "[were] a period of socialization, of transition from youth to adulthood,"# which helps to offset the fact that Ben-Amos neglects most other aspects of typical study of adolescence in favor of connecting what she does discuss back to the act of being an apprentice. However, it should be noted that Wallis is seeking to explain and illustrate the dynamics of the master-apprentice relationship from an economic standpoint, not the resulting impact on the adolescents and youths involved with said apprenticeships. This difference is in keeping with Ben-Amos's introductory statement that she is presenting formative events occurring within the period of adolescence and youth, as relating specifically to apprenticeship, and not a general overview of adolescence and youth as a whole.#

The high level of mobility, adjustment to urban areas, living with a complete stranger, and the skills acquired in the course of an apprenticeship are all areas of adolescence Ben-Amos emphasizes as examples of significant formative events during the course of adolescence and... Read more ›