1. Attractions
2. Dangers
3. Reactions

View from the countryside
Looking toward Florence

• 14 th to 17 th 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

The rise of the guilds
• At first (13 th century), women did become members of the newly-formed guilds
• By the end of the 13 th 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

• 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

• 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)

• 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