WOMEN IN THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY MODERN TIME – OUTSTANDING PERSONALITIES OF THE DRUGETH FAMILY (II)

Due to the development of the science of history and the research on the „female theme”, the way of looking at the past and the future is also undergoing a significant change. In our study, through the study of general and specific examples, we would like to present the social conditions in which aristocratic women lived, worked, gave birth, raised children, and managed estates in the second half of the 17th century. Many of them can be said to have withstood the difficult conditions of those times in an exemplary manner. In the society of those times, all people had their own duties and responsibilities with regard to their gender and age. In this study, we examine what opportunities were available to early modern aristocratic women in terms of social and community relations, family life and building a marriage inserted into the historical events of those times. We complete it by examining the life paths and career models of the women who entered the Homonnai Drugeth family through marriage, highlighting various aspects of their lives. From the reader’s point of view, it may seem excessive to outline the social conditions of those times, however, without knowledge of them, the formulation of women’s roles of those times may be incomplete. In the second half of the 17th century, the religious structure of the region also changed significantly, so the aristocratic women of those times (unlike their predecessors) already supported the spread of re-Catholicization. What roles did the aristocratic women of that period play in contemporary Hungarian society and in their narrower environment? The framework for this was mainly set by her family and the inherited relationship system into which she was born. In accordance with social expectations, the aristocratic woman of those times increased the prestige of her family through marriage as well as ensured financial security of her future descendants with a prosperous marriage. Since women did not (could not) participate widely and officially in the formation of politics and everyday public life, there are much fewer and more diverse sources about them than about men. In these, we can find references to them mainly as wives, daughters, brides and mothers. Despite this (precisely due to their social status), women also had a significant informal influence on political life. That is why it is important to study the life path of women of those times, because without this knowledge our image of the society of those times would be incomplete. The present study may become one of the important building blocks, which, in addition to supplementing incomplete biographical data, will try to present the social roles played by these women. The article is a continuation of a scientific study devoted to the current problem - the analysis of the role of women of noble origin in the early modern period in the socio-political and socio-economic relations of the northeastern part of the Hungarian Kingdom. The article summarizes the study new aspects of the family history through the unknown moments of the life path of the Drugeth women (Katalin Nádasdy, Anna Jakusich, Mária Esterházi Mária, Terézia Keglevich) and new give aspects of the family's history.