Gender in Early Modern Europe

Eric BeckmanAnoka HS (MN)

Sources:Merry E. Weisner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe

Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial WomanSara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England

Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia

Terms: Sex vs. Gender

Sex=biology Gender=culture

Terms: Patriarchy

Control by men– Families headed by fathers– Societies structured around patriarchal

families Patriarchy in Early Modern Europe

– Male headed households– Political authority almost entirely in

male hands

Terms

Misogyny– Hatred of or hostility toward women

Gender in Early Modern Europe

Ideas Law Family Work

Ideas

As recorded by men, early modern European thought viewed men as superior to women– Classical heritage– Religion– Science

But, increasingly, counternarratives challenged misogyny

Ideas:Classical Heritage

Aristotle and Plato viewed women as imperfect men– “monstrous”– A woman was “a deformity, but one

which occurs in the ordinary course of nature.”

Ideas: Judeo-Christian Heritage

Women as impure Women as a source of

sin– Eve

Excluded from priesthood

Complications of Mary Space for women

Ideas: Science

Scientific writing justified male authority and control of women– Males seen as inherently rational and

creative Women as more sexual

– “wandering womb” Some overemphasized male

contribution to conception

Ideas: Honor

For women honor = sexual purity Men defend women’s honor from

other men Varies throughout Europe

– An extreme: In Muscovy (Moscow, and surrounding area) elite women confined to separate quarters

Ideas: Counternarratives

Christine de Pizan, City of Ladies (1405) Image of Mary Some defenses of women in popular and

scholarly literature

“Women then being the last of creatures, the end, complement and consumation of all the works of God, what Ignorance is there so stupid, or what Impudence can there be so effronted, as to deny her a Prerogative above all other Creatures, without whom the World itself had been imperfect.” –Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, German humanist (1529)

Law: Patriarchy Enforced

Secondary status for women– Especially for married women– Limited legal rights– Increasing restrictions over time

Limited control of property Wifely obedience expected

Law: Men Controlling Women with Violence

Little legal protection for women from domestic violence– Varies from place

to place Some places only

allowed “moderate correction”

“Song of how one should beat bad women”

Now I will sing so gailyHit thy wife on the headWith cudgels smear her dailyAnd drink away her dress…Her body be sure to well poundWith a strong hazel rod;Strike her head till it turns round,And kick her in the gut.

Germany, mid-16th Century

Men Controlling Women with Violence: Russian Proverbs

“Hit your wife with the butt of the axe, get down and see if she’s breathing. If she is, she’s shamming and wants some more.”

“Beat your wife like a fur coat, then there’ll be less noise.”

Family

Economic unit– Family economy

Focus on property and reproduction

“Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, dear me!”

Traditional lament of Russian peasant brides

Family: Women Controlled by Custom

Woodcut by Anton Woensam (1500-41), c. 1525

Family, Gender, and the Life Cycle:

Women defined by life cycle Daughter/virgin-wife-mother-

widow “All women are thought of as

either married or unmarried.”—The Lawes resolution of women’s rights, London, 1632

Women’s productive labor shaped and ordered by reproductive role

“Women are created for no other purpose than to serve men and be their helpers. If women grow weary or even die while bearing children, that doesn’t harm anything. Let them bear children to death; they are created for that.”—Martin Luther

Childbirth

Women’s event

Communal Traditional

Albrecht Dürer, The Birth of Mary, c. 1503

Firm Parenting

“Der Kinderfresser” [child-eater]

“So if you do not want to be quiet right now, I will give you to him. Therefore be silent and still, come in the house, so that he will not find you crying outside.”

Family, Gender and the Life Cycle

Men defined by productive role

All the world’s a stage,And the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages…

-William Shakespeare

Work, Gender, and the Family

Family economy Little distinction between work and

home Gendered work Wage labor

– Not common in most of Europe– Men paid more

Work: Domestic Labor Was Gendered Female

Hard work Gendered

female– Domestic

servants Domestic

production

Geertruydt Roghman (Dutch, born 1625), A Woman Cleaning, after ca. 1640

Work: Agricultural Labor Gendered As Female

Close to home– Animal

Husbandry Milkmaids

Subsistence – Gleaning– Gathering

Production for local market– Eggs and

cheese– Beer

Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857

Work: Agricultural Labor Gendered Male

Heaviest Physical Labor– Plowing– Scythes

Furthest from the house

All participated in planting and harvesting

When Harvest comes, into the field we go And help to reap the Wheat as well as you,Or else we go the ears of corn to glean,No Labour scorning, be it e’er so mean,But in the Work we freely bear a part,And what we can, perform with all our Heart.

Mary Collier, The Woman’s Labour (1739)

Work: Gender and Urban Work

Family economy– Guilds– Workshops– Merchants

Family Economy

Domestic Industry– Spinning– Weaving– Straw plaiting

Views of Labor: Community production, community well-

being Commentators often viewed

women’s and men’s production as vital to the economy

“In an age of agriculture, dispersed cottage [domestic] industry, and small commercial enterprises, women laborers were recognized as industrious and productive.” – historian Deborah Valenze