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IN A WHITECHAPEL NEIGHBORHOOD in London in 1610, at least seven women stood in the doorways of their seven houses, all "at work." One of the neighbors, Alice Rochester, called out to another, Jane Lilham: "Thou art a whore and an arrant whore and a common carted whore and thou art my husband's whore"-this last not an unusual accusation in the repertory of insults that early modern women deployed in reference to other women, if the defamation suits of the period are to be believed. Alice Rochester's words survive in the report of Jane Lilham, who subsequently sued Alice for slander at the church court. Jane's testimony was validated by the five neighbors who were working on their doorsteps when Alice called Jane a whore.
Laura Gowing opens her recent study of church court depositions with the suit of Jane Lilham contra Alice Rochester, perhaps because, as she, Loreen Giese, Martin Ingram, and Sara Mendelson would confirm, the suit contains elements characteristic of so many such depositions. As Gowing puts it, Alice Rochester's charges "tapped into a familiar and potent idiom" (p. 1). Gowing, Giese, Ingram, and Mendelson have worked extensively with the records of the church courts, as I, I hasten to say, have not. For the purposes of this forum, however, I am less interested in the language of sexual insult in Jane Lilham's deposition than in its spatial locution. What does it mean for the world of early modern women that as many as seven from this one neighborhood could be found on their doorsteps at the very moment that Alice Rochester chose to call Jane Lilham a whore?
After all, we know from an extensive body of hortatory literature that early modern women belonged at home, and specifically in their home. As Henry Smith states in perhaps the most frequently repeated commonplace of domestic sermons and conduct books, "we call the Wife Huswife, that is, house wife, not a street wife like Thamar, nor a field wife like Dinah, but a house wife, to show that a good wife keeps her house" (1591; sig. F6r). Edmund Tilney cites approvingly a Numidian tradition reported by Plutarch: "their husbands being abroad, the wives kept always their doors shut" (1573; sig. E3v). And, although...