Gráinne Henry - Early Modern Women
(b) Women and Work
Looking at some evidence
Funeral Monument to Marie Dudley in St. Margaret's, Westminster.
(If possible will find Irish equivalent.)
"Here lyeth entombed Marie Dudley, daughter of William Howard of Effingham, in his time Lord High Admiral of England, Lord Chamberlain and Lord Privy Deal. She was grandchild to Thomas Duke of Norfolk... and Sister to Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, High Admiral of England by whose prosperous direction through the goodness of God in defending his lady Queen Elisabeth, the whole fleet of Spain was defeated and discomforted. She was first married to Edward Sutton, Lord Dudley and after to Richard Monpesson Esquire who in memory of his lice erected this monument to her.
1. What would you like to see written on your gravestone?
2. Marie Dudley was an Elizabethan noblewoman. what do we learn from this about
her life? How is she judged?
The internet can provide many useful visual sources on women and work. Shepherd's Calendar of Medieval Women, mentioned elsewhere, can be found by typing in same on etc. The engravings of Hogarth can also be particularly useful. I found over a hundred, each of which could be enlarged and printed off, just by typing in 'Hogarth' to a search engine. The particular site address, if you prefer to find it that way, was . The paintings of peasant life by the likes of Millet and Corot can be found through most decent search engines by typing in the artists' names.
* Having gathered a few of such sources together, get students to make a list of the types of occupations women had at this time.
Putting things in context
Women from whatever class in Europe were seen as dependents of men. They were the legal and economic responsibility of men. The duty of a father was to provide for his daughter until her marriage after that her husband took on the responsibility for her well being. Every girl was expected to marry.
This was the model. The reality in Early Modern Europe was very different. Childbearing as well as the care and nurturing of all family members was a very important contribution that women make to an economy. Also women were really expected to work to support themselves both when single and married. Only a fool at this time would take a wife who could not contribute to the household income.
This was particularly true for lower class women who made up the bulk of the population. The target of the single woman’s working life was very clear- to make enough money to get together a dowry and to gather enough work skills to attract a husband. Every girl was taught that she needed a husband to survive. Therefor about 80 percent of country girls had left home by the age of twelve to begin work. Some left home as young as seven or eight. The average European girl then had a working life of 10-12 years before she got married. This section aims to look at the type of work women did in the countryside and the cities and what their conditions were like or changes that took place in their working conditions.
The vast majority of people in Europe at this time lived on farms producing for their families and for their landlords. For most ordinary villagers it was often just a struggle to keep their families fed. On a farm a husband and wife worked together as a team. Women carried out the jobs nearer the house so they could nurse and mind the children.
Something to try
Here is a table of the male and female tasks on a farm. Obviously what a woman did depended on what the farm could produce.
Women Men
*Took care of poultry and small animals*Bought and sold the bigger farm
like calves. animals.
*Prepared butter, cheese and other dairy *Was mostly in charge of buying
products. and planting the seed.
*Milked the cows.*Cut the harvest with a sickle or a
*Made beer. scythe.
*Made bread*Usually worked for the landlord or
*Grew flax another farmer.
*Made linen and wool cloth* Often had another job such as
*Did all the household cooking fishing or building.
*Worked in the fields during harvest time.
In harvesting the women gathered and bound
the grain, gleaning or clearing up the field
afterwards.
*Was totally responsible for the farm if the men
worked away
*Often sold products such as soap, manure,
small animals and fruit in market towns.
*Collected nuts or herbs to sell.
*Peddled pins, needles ribbons or other small items.
1. Why was the work divided out in this way?
2. Whose work was the most varied?
3. Whose work demanded the most travel/
4. Was women's work physically demanding?
5. Could the man have survived without the woman?
6. List all the woman's activities that actually brought income into the household.
Women also hired out their labour on farms and at this time demand for women farm labourers far outstripped the supply. Most of the positions on farms were got through family contacts and friends but the hiring fair was an important place for women to offer themselves for work. They wore distinctive clothes depending on what they did and they carried the tools of their trade. For example an experienced cook carried a spoon, the dairymaid a stool. However, this demand for women did not mean that they were well paid. Female farm labourers were paid about half the men's wage. If payment was in bed and board they were given poorer quality food.
Here is a decree from the South of Germany in 1550 on what farm labourers should be fed.
Male LabourersFemale Labourers
Breakfast: soup and wine soup and vegetables
Midday: beer, vegetables and meat milk and bread
Evening: vegetables and wine nothing
1. Who got the most protein in their diet?
2. What differences do you notice in what the males and females got?
3. Why do you think women got less food and drink?
Domestic-service in context
In both the rural and city areas by far the biggest employer of women was domestic service. One historian, Cissie Fourchilds, estimates that one out of every twelve people in France at this time was a servant. Two thirds of these were female.
What you did as a servant depended on who your employer was. Servants, particularly female servants, were in plentiful supply so wages were very low. Even a family with a very modest income could afford a servant, The number of servants in a household could vary from one up to a few hundred in the households of the very rich noblemen. However, the majority of homes at this time in cities had one or two servants. The fewer servants there were the more varied the work was. It was not only households who employed servants. Tradesmen often employed a girl to work in the shop and run errands, tavern keepers employed girls as barmaids, waitresses and washers up.
Occupation of male and female servants
Females Males
housemaidgeneral man
parlour maid butler
chambermaid under-butler
housekeeper footman
cookhouse steward
scullery maid valet
laundry maid chef
nursecoachman
children's maidcoachman/chauffeur
lady's maidgroom
general servantvalet
dairy maid* gardener
*on farms only
Some more evidence
"The girl who entered a multiple - servant household at the bottom could expect to come by a variety of skills in kitchen service and in laundry work, lending and repairing linen. After a few years of washing dishes and scrubbing floors, lighting fires and fetching and carrying coal, water and slops, if she maintained a neat air and had a degree of hood looks and a trim figure, she might advance to parlour maid. With a measure of good luck, which might include resisting the advances of an employer, or, more probably fellow servant, she might find her way upstairs to chambermaid or lady's maid." (Written by historian Oliver Jufton).
1. In the list of occupations, can you figure out what each of these people did?
2. Which were the better-paid jobs?
3. According to Jufton, what qualities did a girl need to get on in service?
4. What do the terms 'carrying the slops' and 'resisting the advances of employer'
mean?
Putting things in context
The work as a domestic servant was very hard. Servants were usually on duty from 6.30am until they went to bed at 10 or 11pm. They might have a half day off a week. Wages were so poor that unless you were an upper servant you could not hope to be able to save enough money to keep you when you left. Also most servants had to cope with periods of unemployment and help support their families. Servants did get their bed and board and unlike the nineteenth century they usually ate and slept with the family. However, no matter what their ate servants were legally the dependents of their employers and they could be dismissed and punished by them at will. Women were not allowed to stay in service once married. They ere often only taken on for a few weeks when their services were needed. Servants were often open to the sexual advances of their Masters. If a woman became pregnant she was simply dismissed.
Many women therefore only saw domestic service as a temporary job. They left in their twenties returning home with their savings to marry. If a woman stayed on in service it was a hard struggle to get promotion. Competition at the upper end of the scale was fierce. One advertisement for a lady's maid would bring in dozens of applicants. Many girls lacked the hygiene and training for any servant job. Girls coming from Ireland to British cities at this rime were so poor, undernourished, dirty and lice redden, that they were automatically excluded from becoming a respectable servant.
Jobs in cities : industry and retail
Women dominated the whole textile industry in Europe up to 1800. In the silk industry every workshop had at least three to four girls, a male apprentice, the master and his wife. The girls always lived in the workshop. They slept in cupboards and under looms and their wages were saved by their employers. Girls of twelve and thirteen started work as a cocoon unwinder. They sat over basins of scalding water into which they plunged the cocoons to melt the sticky substance binding the cocoon together. They often did this tedious work in bad light and many of these girls later suffered damage to their eyes. Their clothes were continually damp and T.B. was rampant. If a girl could survive this, the long periods of unemployment and slumps she advanced to draw girl and finally became a silk worker. After about 14 years she had a sum of money and a range of industrial skills. She was the ideal wife for an apprentice as her lump sum on leaving might pay for his mastership and her skills would contribute to the running of a new workshop.
The lace industry was entirely in the hands of women. Tens of thousands of women were involved on its production. Lace was much more expensive than silk to buy. It was a very skilled hand craft which took years to learn properly. Yet the wages were low even by the standards of female wages in general. In France a day's labour might provide a couple of pounds of bread. When these women married they often became outworkers to convents or other lace making institutions. Once married they could work from their homes.
The spinning of wool or linen was probably the most common industry that women carried out from their homes. Most governments were anxious at this rime to produce cloth so they encouraged spinning. They attached spinning rooms to orphanages, awarded prizes to women who spun the most, made loans available to those who wished to spin and set up spinning schools for poor children. Even women who were in hospital or jail were expected to spin to pay off the cost of their upkeep. Prostitutes had to produce so much yarn in their off hours. Women became so identified with spinning that in the seventeenth century unmarried women in England began to be called 'spinsters'. Wages however were kept so low that a woman could not support herself let alone her family.
Another area of work where there were mainly women was in retail (selling). we saw earlier that country women brought a lot of hoods to market to sell. In the cities, most taverns, inns, kitchens and street stalls were run by women. There were no shops or supermarkets as we know them. The craft guilds made and sold most items in the cities of Early Modern Europe. This meant that all skilled trades people and craftspeople such as carpenters or clock-makers had to be a member of a guild. They were run by men. Each had a workshop where they produced their goods and a shop attached from where they sold their goods. They employed jouneymen to sell goods for them in other places. There were a few all-female guilds but in general less guilds allowed females to become members. Even the master's wife was restricted by this time in the amount of time she could operate a shop.
Workers were afraid that women would put them out of a job by working for less. When work was plentiful and labour scarce women were tolerated in the guilds area of work but when times were hard attitudes changed. Women as a group then were not able to protect their right to work in this area.
Other jobs
Daughters often took on the same job as their mother. For example the washerwoman's daughter became a washerwoman, the seamstress' daughter a seamstress. Daughters often worked on the family business whether that was a inn or a farm. Many women worked in charity organisations such as hospitals or orphanages. In many cities women also distributed poor relief to families in their own homes. A girl born of working class parents was unlikely to become a servant to textile worker. Instead she often took up an option in the garment trade as a seamstress, mantua worker, milliner, glove stitcher or embroiderer, or in the service trade as a washerwoman, street seller, stall operator or prostitute. For some women, crime or begging was their job.
Upper class Women
Sometimes we imagine that wealthy women in the past had little to do except play the piano and entertain guests, This would be wrong. Even for the early modern upper class women many skilled were essential for her to learn. She had to organize and run a large staff for an almost self-sufficient household. Her families' health, food, clothing and education depended on her skilled. Unless her husband was a dike or an earl she often had to do the cooking for the household as well as some housework. She generally had to have a good knowledge of farming, spinning, weaving, dressmaking, pickling and conserving foods added to this she had to be able to ride, sing , embroider and entertain guests. In a book on good housekeeping in Tudor England the wife of a country gentleman was advised to do the following:
More evidence
"She must be up at the cracke of dawne to milke the cowes, make butter and cheese, doe the gardening, spin and weave ye clothe . . Let thy distaffe [stick holding wool or flax for spinning] be always redye that ye be no ydlle . . . . She must helpe her husbande fill the mucke wayne or dunge carte, dryve ye plough, lode corne, hay and suche other, and goe to market and sell butter."
The Treasurie of Kidden Secretts, 1600.
1. List the tasks that the gentle woman has to do?
2. What words and spellings are different to those we use nowadays?
3. Unlike today, Elizabethan English spelling was not standard. Can you find any
proof of this in the text?
General questions on this section
1. Could women own property?
2. Can you make a list of the type of jobs that women were excluded from?
3. Can you list the occupations women were involved in? How would you categorize
this work?
4. Why did women get lower wages than men?
5. Are there any types of jobs nowadays that are considered to be male jobs and
female jobs?
Work: a different experience for men and women:
Men and women in the 1500s did much the same work. There were, however, differences in how they were seen in relation to their work and b y 1800 there were important differences in the work that men and women did.
Male and female views of work
Most men had the same job for life. Women as we have seen from this section did a greater variety of work. She often changed occupations especially when she married. A man's status and self-esteem came mainly from his work, a woman's came from being a wife and mother. For example men of the same occupation such as carpenters usually marched together in a parade at a festival. The only woman known to have done this were midwives.