Women and Walled Towns
-
Upload
daquan-burch -
Category
Documents
-
view
42 -
download
0
description
Transcript of Women and Walled Towns
Women and Walled Towns
1. Attractions2. Dangers
3. Reactions
A walled town-Montereggioni
Montereggioni
Looking toward Florence
View from the countryside
More walled towns-Ireland
Opportunity or danger?
• 14th to 17th century walled towns show 20-30 % more women than men– More younger women (14 to 17) than
younger men
• Reasons?– push-pull factors– “masterless” (German expression)– break serfdom
• Results?– By 1600s, 60% domestic servants– This occupation remained the most
dominant urban employment for women until the 1940s
– Others became “the poor”
The Poor
• The history of the working poor is their ability to “multitask”
• Women would spin, card linen and wool, tat lace, do piecework
• Take in lodgers, make a room into an alehouse, run an inn
• Made food and sold it door to door
• Went outside the walled city looking for second-hand clothing, tallow, wheat, beer, fish, anything that could be sold in town
• “Buy, sell, look for the margin” Itinerant work as a washer woman
Blurry picture of women killing themselves rather than be
raped
Occupations, livelihoods, whores again?
The rise of the guilds
• At first (13th century), women did become members of the newly-formed guilds
• By the end of the 13th century in many parts of Europe, women were not permitted to join most guilds
• The “journeyman” that Anderson & Zinsser claim were the dream of the chambrière, were the ones most responsible for preventing women from joining
Inside tailor’s shop
Merchant’s Wives
• Educated, wealthier merchant class women contributed more fully to the family business
• Yet, their hands never idle, they still spun
Natural Disasters and War – London Fire 1666
Disease
• The Black Death, the Maiden’s death or Pest Jungfrau
• “The contagion only ever hits the poor people….God by his Grace will have it so.” (Citizen of Tolouse in 1561)
Childbearing
• Demographically, females number fewer than men only in infancy (0-4 years old) and young adulthood (23-27 years)
• Correlation with childbirth
Faith in God, repentance and the saints
1348 flagellants from the Black Death days
Morality, mystery, Mary Magdalen
• One path of religious instruction came from mystery plays
• Many turned to worship of the saints
• Others looked to Mary Magdalen
Mary – as mother-as Queen of heaven
• The humble mother was also featured in mystery plays
• And as Queen
of Heaven