This essay will deal with women’s role in Early Modern Society - their position in the family and the roles they undertook in the household. Although usually living as inferior beings to their male counterparts, women, as I hope to demonstrate, played a vital role in keeping the family afloat monetarily, educating the family religiously, farming and providing the family with food and drink from their own land, and many other activities. With the typical view of the Modern Early Household being one of a Male dominated one, where everything in the household is due to the actions of the male, I hope to prove that this was most definitely not the case.
Early Modern Europe was a patriarchal society. As such, Women were seen as “weaker vessels”
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While higher classes could hire out minders, this luxury was not usually afforded to women in lower classes. In fact, women from lower classes could often obtain work minding and caring for the children of higher class women. There were a number of other common jobs that women could do to make money, oftentimes juggling several different jobs. Alice Clark describes the “archetypal Elizabethan housewife” as “brewing, baking and marketing”. Small scale domestic beer brewing, usually done by women, could be sold at market and brought money in to the household. Some other female domestic work such as farming hens for eggs or growing various crops could equally supply her family with money. Besides generating revenue, these practices also produced food and drink for the family, making families’ self-sufficient and reducing living costs of the lower class families. Women also spent large amounts of time making clothes or bedding on a spinning wheel, in what Margaret Spufford names “the great reclothing of rural England” . In larger households, the women would not complete the tasks themselves but would instead act as supervisors to servants who completed the various tasks on her behalf. In a humorous recording from the second Earl of Clare, he grudgingly documented his wife’s practice of sending the laundry out to be washed elsewhere by someone else …show more content…
Taking responsibility for almost every aspect of the house - producing food for sale and domestic consumption, weaving linen and other clothing for their family, co-managing the economy of the house (or taking full control if the male head of house is absent , ensuring the children are properly educated religiously and practicing their faith, working outside the house to bring in their share of money or any other activity, such as taking her husband’s students as lodgers in my early referenced example – women certainly proved to be more than simply a child bearer for the husband in the patriarchal society. It can be strongly argued that women played as important a role, if not an even more important role, than their husbands in the Early Modern
Even though some women did work, it was more commonly thought of only men who did labor. Labor rarely mentioned housewives, domestic servants, and female outworkers. The idea that the men were the head of the house meant that he, not the wife, should bring in income to support his family (Foner 351). According to the newspaper Workingman’s Advocate, “Capitalism tore women from their role as ‘happy and independent mistresses’ of the domestic sphere and forced them into the labor market, thereby undermining the natural order of the household and the authority of its male
“Come on, come on! You are pictures out of door, bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchens, saints in your injuries, devils being fended, players in your huswifery, and huswives in your beds.” (l.122-125. 2.1) Iago states that women only have two jobs- take care of the home, and give pleasure to their husbands in their beds. The Wife of Bath in Chaucer's, “The Canterbury Tales”, is a successful cloth maker, “At making cloth she had so great a bent she bettered those of Ypres and even of Gent.”
A few of the duties that women had during the 1600s were cooking, cleaning, taking care of their children and husbands, and also assisting their husbands in agricultural work. Furthermore, women were also expected to give birth every two years until they reached the menopause stage. Overall, women were not pleased with their
In her article, “Three Inventories, Three Households”, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich argues that women’s work was crucial not simply for subsistence but that “women were essentials in the seventeenth century for the very same reasons they are essentials today-for the perpetuation of the race” (Ulrich 51). She believes, women were expected to do everything. They were not only to take care of the children, but they were also cook, clean, raise the greens and ranches. Mainly, women plays important role for the survival and continuation of life.
Early American women were considered housewives. A few of their daily chores consisted of churning butter and spinning wool, as so the legend claims. But they did much more than that. Even from the earliest of the years, housekeeping involved a variety of household tasks, even including trade. Moreover, housekeeping was not only an economic role, but a social role as well.
The Gradual Unbinding of Revolutionary Women Women back in the 17th to 18th century were labeled insignificant and served no major roles in any life-changing events. The fate for most of the women, was being confined in their own living spaces- left to prioritize housework duties such as cooking and cleaning. The etiquette of women was subjected to remain obedient to men. The inferiority of women forced imposition of loyalty and obedience towards men; the respect to women remained unrecognized in society. Preluding to the beginning of the 18th century, before the American Revolution arose, the position of a woman was strictly only to maintain household orders and comply towards the necessities of men.
In the 19th and into the 20th-century women had specific duties. Wives were to clean the house, cook eat meal, and take care of the children. Few women were well-educated with their own property; unmarried of course. They wanted more opportunity and excitement.
Throughout history the existence of patriarchy has threatened women’s rights to equality and self-determination. Patriarchy manifested itself in the marriage practices of early modern European society and became the foundation on which couples built their love and partnership. During the sixteenth century, literature describing ideal wives and husbands was a popular genre, but works about female gender roles were more prevalent. The Bride, a poem published by Samuel Rowland’s in 1617 details the duties of a good wife and life partner.1 The duties listed in Rowland’s poem were very common for women at that time and can also be seen in Steven Ozment’s book, Magdalena and Balthasar. Ozment’s book documents the relationship of Nuremberg Merchant Balthasar Paumgartner and
Women in this time were expected to be the ones to take care of their children so even if there was an opportunity to get a job the wife normally couldn’t since most wives were stay-at-home wives. The husbands are normally seen as the man of the house and this was especially true in the late 1800s. They were known to be the ones who were in control of everything and the women had to listen to them because that was expected of them. So when their husbands didn’t allow them to obtain a job the wives had no choice but to listen to them. The husband preferred for their wives to take care of their child since there was nobody else that could take care of them and that was a norm for women.
Not only, did Mrs. A. J. Graves support the pastoralization of housework and gender spheres so did Catherine Beecher. Beecher argued that housework was hard work, but believed women’s work in the home administered the gentler charities of life. Boydston writes, “Beecher enjoyed the new standing afford middle-class women by their roles as moral guardians to their families and to societies, and based much of her own claim to status as a woman on the presumed differences between herself and immigrant and laboring-class women.” For middle-class women, women were given more of an influence in their
There were high standards for women in society as well as in the home, as their main job was to be
As Richard Steele tried to define women, he said that '' a woman is a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother, a mere appendage of the human race…'' Here as we can see, a woman from the moment that she was born, not as she was, regardless of social background, were defined by her relationship with a man. She was respectively under the responsibility of her father and her husband, so women should honor both of them and must obey both. During the marriage process, the contribution of women was very significant in terms of the construction of new family. This implementation was applied in the upper and middle classes of the society throughout the early modern period in a rigid way. Families from these groups do prenuptial agreements for their children because at that time the marriage was not just a decision of the two people, it was decided collectively.
The Homestead Act is a special Act that promoted migration to the western part of US. Public lands were made easily accessible to settlers with a small filing fee in exchange for 160 acres of land to be used for farming. Homesteaders received ownership of the land after continuously residing on the land for five years. Homesteaders also had an alternative of acquiring the land from the government by paying a specified amount per acre, after six months of residency. The Homestead Act resulted in the distribution of million acres of public land (Library of Congress n.p).
Women of the Medieval Times Women have always had a significant role in history even though they were treated horrible in most cases. During the Medieval Times was really the first time women were allowed to become more than just a house wife. The fight for equality has always been a struggle and even in today’s society is still an ongoing battle. Although women of lower and middle class were treated poorly in the Medieval Times, some powerful women held great responsibility and were looked up too by both men and children; despite being admired, “men were thought to be not only physically stronger but more emotionally stable, more intelligent, and morally less feeble” (Hopkins 5). “The position of women in the Medieval Society was greatly influenced by the views of the Roman Catholic Church” (Heeve).
Introduction Women in the Middle ages were treated as the second class members within their social class. They were taught to be obedient to their husbands and were expected to run the household and raise children. Their role in the society, however, was much more complex, while some medieval women achieved a high level of equality with men. In the Middle Ages women had a secondary role, coming second after men.