The History of Peasant
Women
1.
Anderson pp. 87-118
1. The Life
2. The Year’s Activities
3. Children and Nutrition
4. Threats to Survival
2.
Anderson pp. 119-150
1.
The Family and Marriage
2. Access to the Land
3. Impossible choices
4. Survival Outside the Family
5. Giving Value
Pre-Industrial Rural Economics
Book of Hours:
15th centuryOctober
1. The Life
2. The Year’s
Activities
3. Children and
Nutrition
4. Threats to
Survival
Pre-Industrial Rural Economics
• How do you re-create
peasant life when
there are few records
by peasants?
• One way:
– Household
accounts
– Manor rolls
– Court and parish
records
• These records
demonstrate:
– Obligations to
landlord
– Fines they
owned
– Births and
deaths
Pre-Industrial Rural Economics
• Other sources include:
– 14th and 15th c.
illuminators and 16th –
19th c. artists
• Peasants at seasonal
tasks
– 19th and 20th c.
folklorists and
anthropologists
• Stories, songs,
photographs
• These sources “testify
to peasant women’s
strength”:
– Veneration of the land
– Acceptance of
responsibility for the
survival of the family
– Willingness to work
– Comfort from beliefs
Pre-Industrial Rural Economics
• Book of Hours (July)
• Piers the Ploughman 14th
century poem (on
woman’s work):
– “rock the cradle cramped in
a corner” rise “before dawn
to card and comb the wool,
to wash and scrub and
mend…and peel the
rushes for their rushlights”
• Differed little from a
Bretonian man’s
recollection of his
mother’s life except for
state-supported
education for children
Book of Hours-July
What role does religion play in this
examination of economics?
• The countryside was
a world of spirits
• This melded into
Christianity where
“the shrines of
Christian saints were
built over older places
of worship” (90)
Shrine – Finero, Italy
What role does the land play?
• This is a map of the world’s original forests
• Note Europe – virtually covered
• By the 1500s, about 15% of the forests had been
demolished
What role does the land play?
• Today, about 70% of Europe’s forests have been cut
down
• Almost no “frontier forests” remain in Europe (those that
do, are mainly in Russia)
• The major impact to the land occurred in the 19th
century, with Germany experiencing industrialization at
the most rapid pace
“The Common”
• Around the seigneur’s
desmesne was “the
common” and forested
land
• The common was shared grazing land for animals
• The forest supplied lumber, but also firewood,
gathered in a process called “gleaning” (like with leftover what - women’s work)
• Both “the common” and “gleaning” would be severely
curtailed in the late 18th through 19th centuries in
Europe
Housing
• Not too different from
homesteading sod
houses, in fact
• This picture is “faux
medieval”; tarted up to
appear as it might have –
it’s a bit more elaborate
than really existed except
for the better off paysan
The Year’s Activities
• Lammas-Michelmas (Aug
1–Sept 29)
• Michelmas–Christmas
(Sept 30-Dec 25)
• Christmas to Easter (Dec
25-whenever the hell
Easter is)
• Easter-Michelmas (and
back to Aug 1)
Sept. harvest-most
important time of the year
Lammas to Michelmas - Harvest
• Harvesting
• Celebrations of the
harvest
• Flax for linen
Millet – “Bruising flax” 1850
Hemp – it’s natural, dude
• Hemp for making
rope and sacks
• French women in
Baugeois spun hemp
as an offering to the
Virgin Mary on their
wedding day
Michelmas-Christmas
February in
two Books
of Hours
Easter-Lammas
June in two
Books of
Hours
Spring Rituals-Christian/pagan
Trying to
recapture
MayDay or
Beltrane
•
•
•
•
“The Christian Church absorbed many of the ancient rituals” (103)
MayDay, on the other hand, was banned by Charlemagne and the Church –
far too pagan, rebellious and anti-hierarchical
Celebrated pagans include: Diana, Herne (who transform into Queen of the
May and the Green Man or Robin Goodfellow)
Also known as the night of witches and translated to Irish “mummery” (still
practiced in Newfoundland today)
Constants for peasant women-life
cycle stuff and war
• “The rhythm of the
seasons structured
peasant women’s lives
as it had those of women
before them and
remained a constant
throughout the centuries.
Another constant was
their reproductive life.”
(105)
Children and Nurturing
• Women’s childbearing
years remained relatively
constant – about twenty
years
• Demographers estimate
that a woman might have
five to seven successful
pregnancies at 2 ½ year
intervals
• Celebrate pregnancy
even in older women, as
seen here in icons
Elizabeth with John and Mary with
Jesus – Andrea del Sarto 1519
Just because you want to know
• Childbirth “ease”
– Physical condition of
the mother
– Size of her pelvis
relative to the size of
the baby’s head
– Position of the baby in
the uterus
Still available after all
these years – the
birthing stool
• Other “aids” came
from the “wisewomen”
and their herbs
And even more graphic
By the 18th c. forceps
were used if the baby
was in transverse or
breech
• Midwives brought their
own experience,
knowledge of herbal
medicine, intuitive sense
of measures
• Prior to the modern
equipment pictured at left,
midwives often used the
“podalic” version of
maneuvering the fetus
into the best position
Care of the infant
•
•
•
•
•
"And this will be a sign for you:
you will find an infant
wrapped in swaddling clothes
and lying in a manger" (Luke 2,12)
How common was this? What
was it?
Greek, Hebrew, Germanic and
Roman custom – only Celts left
“nature alone” to determine the
baby’s shape
Breast-fed
Peasant mothers took all
responsibility for children until
about age five
Nursing
Not really Christ, but a
good example of shroud
•
•
•
•
Healing was a special knowledge
Centuries of experience, flashes
of intuition, acts of faith,
accumulated lore of herbal
medicine
Still, infant mortality was about
25% (ask me about Montreal in
the 19th century, though
As in birth, death was women’s
special province, including making
the shroud, wrapping the body,
praying over the body; into the
twelfth century women tended
their gravesites
Threats to Survival
•
•
•
•
Extreme cold and extreme heat
Pestilence
Pneumonia, pleurisy, tonsillitis
Black Death (1348-1380s) wiped out 40% of Europe’s population
More on the Black Death
War…what is it good for?
Painting of Thirty
Years War
• Thirty Years War (16181648) significant on
women’s lives for the
occupation of the land by
so many
• Other wars included this
gem: “The war has begun
and the peasant have
been pillaged…our
armies are still intact”
(Joseph II, 1778)
What about threats specific to women?
On the one hand:
• Customary laws of German
and Celtic peoples (13001600) show that women’s
bodies and their lives were to
be protected
• Frankish law included wergild
(blood money) for killing
women
• Appenine gang rape of priest’s
sister in 1400 led to four men
being executed
On the other hand:
• Equally ancient traditions that
protected men from false
accusations:
• Burden of proof on accuser
• Assumption that conception
meant enjoyment on part of
woman
• Class system that gave little
recourse to a woman of a
lower class who had been
raped
Family and Marriage
Breugel - 1568
• Why get married?
• Status as adults, freedom from serfdom
Custom and Marriage
• Like Roman times, the father transferred
ownership of woman to new husband
• Also like pre-Christian ceremonies, these
marriages signaled obligation of groom and his
family and bride and hers.
Charivari - 1310
Women and the land
• “The new couple needed access to fields, pasture and to forest” (124)
and they had a right to the land
• What about women on their own? Some examples of female
landholders in England in 12th and 13th century records
• “From the earliest European centuries a peasant woman had access to
the land in her own right, or as a wife.” (125)
• She had no rights as a “bonds-woman”: no family, no protection, no
liberties
The beginnings of feudalism
• Although the church was
against slavery, it survived until
the 9th and 10th centuries
• With marauding Arabs, Magyars
and Vikings, it became
impractical to keep them
• These former slaves and former
free women and men became
serfs, vassals of the lord. Free
or slave? Somewhere in the
middle
• Now tied to the land, not
desiring to have a piece of it
Creeping capitalism
• As the relationship between
lord and vassal became
more monetary rather than
reciprocal, it coincided with
a break between groups of
peasants – the “wealthy”
who owned more than five
times the land as the poor
• This left poor women with
the responsibility to make up
the difference by selling
surplus: wheat, wine, eggs,
milk, butter, cheese, wool,
vegetables and “piecework”
Weaving and spinning for money
Tapestry from 12th century
• Weaving became an important way for women to
supplement income – this was piece work that helped
the merchant a great deal
• In the 18th century it gave way to spinning
Impossible Choices
• One of the most important discoveries by
demographers was that:
–
–
–
–
Most families were “nuclear”
Most families were between four and six people
This could include intergenerational families
This meant that couples were limiting their births –
“From the 800s to the 1900s peasants allowed their
families to grow only when conditions improved.”
(135)
Survival Outside the Family
• “As soon as there are records in England,
in France, in Spain, from the 16th to 20th
centuries, they show that peasant women
remarried much less often than their male
counterparts….Local custom might
guarantee her care in return for giving over
her rights to the family fields.” (142)
Survival Outside the Family
• “Peasant women without family, without access
to enough land, perhaps too old for extra labour,
had few alternatives to choose from in order to
survive….On the whole, by the end of the 1500s
local and royal governments had taken over
what charity there was from individuals and
religious orders.” (143)
• They could become prostitutes or thieves