1450-1750 Europe

Women usually wielded their influence behind the scenes: around the family hearth, over the
backyard fence, at the town well. They labored in public, too, often as the agents and partners of
their husbands, or in their steads when they were widowed. Women have always been
responsible for the business of everyday life: having and raising families, feeding, clothing,
sheltering, and healing the human race.
The sixteenth century did produce a large number of notable women who were heads of state and
made a notable impact in the public sphere. These include Queen Elizabeth of England, and
Queen Catherine de' Medicis of France. Both had to deal with being both a sovereign and a
woman, and each chose to solve it in her own way.
Elizabeth remained a Virgin Queen (politically, anyway), using her marriage prospects as a
diplomatic tool, and retaining England's (and her own) independence in the meantime. She was
certainly one of the key shapers of the national character of England.
Catherine de' Medicis was a quiet queen during her husband's lifetime, fading into the
background. When Catherine inherited the kingdom, she maintained a strict public image of the
proper, severe, widow protecting her children. She was widely hated for her deviousness in spite
of this; she managed to balance the crown of France between three powerful factions for 30
years.
However, the lives of these famous women in history do not necessary reflect the experiences of
the average woman. As always, a woman's life experience varied by social class. Among the
nobility, a woman's chief duty was to make dynastic marriages, serving as the vehicle for her
family's political and social ambitions. Marriage for a woman of this class was as much her job
as the command of troops was her brother's, and such women often married young.
A woman of the urban artisan and merchant classes was usually a de facto full partner in the
family business, even though she may not have held an "official" position. Keeping work and
family separate was a luxury the lower and middle classes could rarely afford. Magdalena
Paumgartner was the wife of a Nuremburg merchant during the time of Le Poulet Gauche. While
he travelled throughout Germany and Italy, placing orders, buying goods at great mercantile
fairs, and trading in currency, she managed affairs at home. Her duties included receiving the
goods (examining them for damage after their long journey), distributing the orders once they
arrived, and collecting payments. She also managed their household staff and a small number of
tenant farmers. Magdalena frequently advised her husband on what to buy and was not shy about
letting him know when the goods she got were not as she specified.
Widows "stepping in" to take over their late husbands' businesses were sometimes a source of
resentment to journeymen who could not buy or inherit a business and become a master of their
guild themselves. When a woman married, she was choosing a trade as well as a husband.
Among the lower classes, women have always worked. Since women were paid less than men
and were usually more reliable (less prone to go get drunk on their wages), women workers were

often preferred for hired farm work, and certainly for domestic work. Women have always been
a majority of the household servants. When a country family needed money, they would often
send the daughters out to service or to day labor.
A husband had the right to beat his wife and could get away with murder in the case of adultery.
Women exerted a lot of social control in a village or urban neighborhood by means of "gossip."
The old wives knew everything, and often the fear of social censure kept some of the more
fractious elements in line. This didn't always work; Montaigne mentions a woman in Bergerac
who threw herself off a bridge because she could not bear her husband's mistreatment anymore.
Women were also an integral part of the armies of the day. Not as combatants, but as the support
services necessary for any army. There were no field hospitals -- soldiers depended on these
camp followers to take care of them when they were sick or wounded. The fighting men counted
on their women to help carry their gear while on the march, to put up a tent and cook a meal at
the end of the day. Many of these women were carting babies along with their 50 pounds of
clothes, tents, and cookware. Leaders often wanted to get rid of them, considering them a source
of disorder, but until standing armies were organized with steady pay, medical services, and
reliable logistics support, this just could not happen.
The convent represented another option for women. For the most part, the best positions in
convents were only open to women of high birth. Poorer women could join as lay sisters, where
they did much of the domestic work of running a convent. Some women exercised vast political
and social influence from convents. St. Vincent de Paul organized an order of women to do gritty
social work among the poor. Hospitals were still staffed by nuns. The closing of convents where
the Reformation took hold was probably a considerable loss for many women. The Protestants
thought they were "liberating" the nuns, but a number of them probably didn't feel that subjecting
themselves to a husband and having a dozen children or so was an improvement in their lot.
Protestants were a "people of the book," and it is likely that the new religion appealed to
women's intellects, letting them slake up learning and live in a world imbued with more
significance than pots of burnt porridge and crying babies. The priesthood of all believers
included them, and they made the most of it while they could.
Prostitution was another option for independence for women. In the earlier years of the 16th
century it was not uncommon for a town to support a municipal brothel, as a way of containing
possible public disorder. In a public brothel she had protection from abusive customers, food,
shelter, and medical care. On the street, she had none of that. An ordinary prostitute's life, out in
the public space with no man to protect her, made her vulnerable to violence and disease, not to
mention periodic social persecution.
One cannot discuss the history of women during this time without discussing the craze for
burning witches. This is a trend which seemed to have been seriously fanned by the printing
press. The publication of the witch hunter's guide, the Hammer of Witches at the end of the 15th
century and its popularity in print probably caused a great deal of harm. Witch persecution is a
subject that deserves a huge amount of historical examination. It is clearly a social force directed
against women.

For example, witches appear to have been often older women, usually widows, often living
alone. Sometimes they had property, and sometimes they were beggars. Propertied old women
are an obvious target for greed, while poor women seem to have been victimized because their
begging was a nuisance. "She asked me for a pan of milk, and when I would not give it to her,
she cursed my cow," seems to be the sort of evidence given against them.
However, there were villages were not a single adult woman was left alive after the witchhunters had been by -- which would seem to be socially quite counterproductive, as some of the
dead were no doubt young mothers whose loss would impact the viability of the next generation.
A society composed only of men is a tad sterile, so woman-hating is a bizarre phenomenon
involving a great deal of double-think -- another treatise well beyond our scope.
Women have always practiced "traditional medicine." This was part of any housewife's expected
regimen, but some women were specialists. Some of their herbs and potions actually worked, but
these were viewed as hedge witchery by scholars. Midwives knew all the mysteries of birth and
they were sometimes feared and suspected of being able to cause miscarriage and abortion as
well. The unclear line between medicine and magic was quite normal, but could be turned
against a woman.
Women were generally less literate than men. Those that were literate often probably put their
pens to use keeping the family accounts and writing letters to keep up the web of social fabric. A
few prominent women wrote memoirs, and someone like Catherine de' Medici had a voluminous
correspondence that has been preserved. However, few wrote books or left their thoughts and
experiences to posterity. It means that even in the midst of the Renaissance, one has to dig for
their history like one was looking for Troy.

The Education of Women in Early Modern Europe

Source: Greenspan, Karen. The Timetables of Womens History, A Chronology of the Most Important
People and Events in Womens History. (New York; Simon and Schuster, 1996.) pp. 138-139.

As Europe moved into the 16th century women continued to be considered intellectually
inferior to men. However, the rebirth of classical learning prompted some humanists, notably
the Italian nobleman and writer Baldassare Castiglione, to argue for the education of women. A
few outstanding women such as Louise Labe- a poet, linguist, musician, horsewoman, and head
of the Lyons School of writing- provided models for women of intellectual ability.
Except in Spain and Italy, women in the early modern period were prohibited from
attending universities. Nevertheless, women who were taught to read had more opportunities to
become educated. The invention of the printing press made books more available; in the
Protestant movement women were encouraged to become literate so they could read scriptures.
Outside of convents, the sole source of education for women was a private tutor, possible
only for the privileged. While most people still thought of educated women as oddities,
unnatural and not quite feminine, the evidence that women were fully as capable as men of
sophisticated thought was growing.

Women and Labor Roles in Early Modern Europe

Source: Hughes, Sarah Shaver and Brady Shaver. Women in World History, Volume 1,
Readings from Prehistory to 1500. (New York: M.E. Sharpe Armonk, 1995.) pp. 79-80.
Womens horizons narrowed in Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The worldwide voyages of exploration, trade, and conquest were mainly male ventures. Men
traded over distant oceans and continents, and as their companies and partnerships increased in
scope and capital, the partnership of husband and wife eroded. The transformation was gradual
and uneven before the process of industrialization took hold in the nineteenth century.
Agriculture was the occupation of the vast majority of European families during the early
modern period. Farm work was gender specific, with women in charge of the house, barn,
outbuildings, and gardens. Men were responsible for the fields. Sometimes, women were
expected to get the wood for hearth and cooking.
Women were most numerous in urban crafts that involved womens traditional skills,
such as provisioning and beer brewing. In the Middle Ages, women could belong to guilds
occasionally as masters. But by the sixteenth century, European women were being excluded
from guilds, even as widows inheriting a husbands trade.
Furthermore, as household production gave way to commercial production, women lost
jobs.
All over Europe, women were excluded from high-status labor as guilds became male
professional associations and corporations or joint-stock companies replaced family production.
Some women, against great odds, managed to find riches for their enterprise.

A Female Merchant in Early Modern Germany

Source: DiCaprio, Lisa and Merry E. Wiesner. Lives and Voices, Sources in European Womens
History. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.) pp. 200, 202.
Through most merchants in early modern Europe were men, women did invest in trading
ventures, and a few conducted them on their own. One of the best known of these is Glickl Bas
Judah Leib (1646 or 1647-1724, traditionally known as Gluckel of Hameln), a Jewish woman
born in Hamburg. Glickl married while in her teens and had eight children. She also assisted her
husband in his growing trade in gold, pearls, jewels, and money. When she was in her early
forties, her husband died accidentally, and Glickl continued his business, traveling to the fairs
where many commercial transactions were made. (Jewish women were freer to engage in
business beyond their own town than Christian women and often knew people in faraway cities,
as they relied on such networks to find marriage partners for their children. Glickl was still
accompanied on her trips by one of her older sons, as respectable women Jewish or Christian
did not travel alone.) She also began to write her memoirs to help her get over her grief,
composing these in Yiddish, the everyday language of Jews in central Europe.
At that time I was busied in the merchandise trade, selling every month to the amount of five or
six hundred Reichsthalers. Further, I went twice a year to the Brunswick Fair and each time
made my several thousands profit, so in all, had I been left in peace, I would have soon repaired
the loss I suffered through my son.

My business prospered, I procured my wares from Holland, I bought nicely in Hamburg

as well, and disposed of the goods in a store of my own. I never spared myself, summer and
winter I was out on my travels, and I ran about the city the livelong day.
My credit grew by leaps and bounds. If I had wanted 20,000 Reichsthalers banko during
a session of the Bourse, it would have been mine.

Womens Work in 18th Century Europe

Source: DiCaprio, Lisa and Merry E. Wiesner. Lives and Voices, Sources in European Womens
History. (Boston; Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.) p. 197.
womens work has generally been discussed within the context of the household economy,
rather than as a separate topic, for most work occurred within a family setting, for many women
in early modern Europe this situation continued: rural households continued to be the main
agricultural producers, marital couples ran shops together in cities, and even the most highly
developed merchant companies were essentially family businesses with some additional
employees. All of these enterprises were increasingly linked together by international trading
networks, however, with monetary transactions becoming more common and more complex.
This process is usually described as the growth of commercial capitalism, and the changes it
brought were different for women than for men. Women rarely controlled enough financial
resources to become major traders, and ideas about womens honor often prevented them from
engaging in occupations that required them to travel.
Capitalism also brought a change in the definition of work, from something one did to
support ones family to something one did for money; this meant that womens work, which was
often unpaid, came to be regarded as not really work, but as housework or at most helping
out. Such value judgments were used as a further rationalization to pay women low wages, with
the argument made that they were just helping out or working for pin money (money to
provide small luxuries), even if the woman did have a family to support. This gender division
between real work (that done by men) and womens work also shaped the division between
skilled and unskilled labor developing in this period, with jobs traditionally done by men
regarded as requiring more skill than those done by women, even if the actual skill level was the
same. Glass cutting and goldsmithing, for example, were both viewed as mens occupationsand thus well paid while lace making was a womens occupation, whose practitioners were never
adequately rewarded for their skill, dexterity, and concentration.

Women, Education and Humanism in Early Modern Europe

Source: Reilly, Kevin. Readings in World Civilizations, Volume 2: The Development of the
Modern World. (New York; St. Martins Press, 1995.) pp. 98-100.
The excitement of the new discoveries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in
particular, inspired a few gifted women scientists to formulate their own theories about he
natural world, to perform their own experiments and to publish their findings. In contrast to
those educated strictly and formally according to Humanist precepts, these women had little
formal training, and chose for themselves what they read and studied. Rather than encouraging
them, their families at best left them to their excitement with the wonders of the Scientific

Revolution; at worst, parents criticized their daughters absorption in such inappropriate,

inelegant, and unfeminine endeavors.
All across Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries these women found
fascination in the natural sciences. They corresponded and studied with the male scientists of
their day. They observed, and they formulated practical applications form their new knowledge
of botany, horticulture, and chemistry
For examplein the eighteenth centuryFrench noblewoman and courtier, Emilie du
Chatelet (1706-1749) gained admission to the discussions of the foremost mathematicians and
scientists of Paris, earned a reputation as a physicist and as an interpreter of the theories of
Leibnitz and Newton.
From the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries privileged women participated in the new
intellectual movements. Like the men of their class, they became humanist scholars, naturalists,
and scientists. Unfortunately, many of these women found themselves in conflict with their
families and their society. A life devoted to scholarship conflicted with the roles that women,
however learned, were still expected to fulfill.

Witch or Worker?
A European-style family emerged. Ordinary people married at a later age, and a primary emphasis on the
nuclear family developed. The changes influenced husband-wife relations and intensified links between
families and individual property holdings. Later marriage was a form of birth control and helped to
control population expansion.
Witchcraft hysteria reflected economic and religious uncertainties; women were the most common
targets.
A few Enlightenment thinkers argued for more specific goals, for economic equality and the abolition of
private property and for womens rights.
Changes in marriage arrangements - Most marriages in the rest of the world were still arranged by
families, but the custom of young men and women choosing their own spouses started in early modern
Europe. This change was partly due to separations between generations that occurred when younger
people moved to towns, but also to the growing trend toward later marriages.
Craftworkers and the poor had to delay marriages while they served as apprentices or built their dowries,
and bourgeois men delayed marriage in order to finish their educations. The need for education was
growing because of the demands for business success. For example, participation in long-distance trade
often meant learning new languages and/or acquiring legal expertise. Since people were older when they
married, they tended to be more independent from their parents.