Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century

by Alice Clark

The economic field has been chosen because, though woman no more than man lives by bread alone, yet without bread assuredly she cannot live at all, and without an abundant supply of it she cannot worthily perform her maternal and spiritual functions. These latter are therefore dependent upon the source of her food supply. The economic position has a further attraction to the student because it rests upon facts which can be elucidated with some degree of certainty. When these have once been made clear the way will have been prepared for the consideration of other aspects of women’s lives.

The period under review, namely the seventeenth century, forms an important crisis in the historic development of Englishwomen. The gulf which separates the women of the Restoration period from those of the Elizabethan era can be perceived by the most casual reader of contemporary drama. To the objection that the heroines of Shakespeare on the one hand and of Congreve and Wycherley on the other are creations of the imagination, it must be replied that the dramatic poet can only present life as he knows it. It was part of Shakespeare’s good fortune to live in a period so rich and vivid in its social life as was the reign of Elizabeth; and the objective character of his portraits can be proved by the study of contemporary letters and domestic papers. Similarly the characters of the Restoration ladies described in the diary of Samuel Pepys and by other writers, confirm the picture of Society drawn by Congreve.

So profound a change occurring in the character of women indicates the seventeenth century as a period of special interest for social investigation, and consequently the economic position has been approached less from its direct effect upon the production of wealth than from its influence upon women’s development. The mechanical aspect has in fact only been touched incidentally; an attempt being rather made to discover how far the extent of women’s productive capacity and the conditions under which it was exercised affected their maternal functions and reacted upon their social influence both within and beyond the limits of the family.

Generalisations are of little service for this purpose. Spinoza has said that the objects of God’s knowledge are not universals but particulars, and it is in harmony with this idea that the following chapters consist chiefly of the record of small details in individual lives which indicate the actual relation of women to business and production, whether on a large scale or a small. The pictures given are widely representative, including not only the women of the upper classes, but still more important, those of the “common people,” the husbandmen and tradesmen who formed the backbone of the English people, and also those of the tragic class of wage-earners, who, though comparatively few in numbers, already constituted a serious problem in the seventeenth century.

In the course of the investigation, comparison is frequently made with the economic position of mediæval women on the one hand, and with women’s position under modern industrial conditions, on the other. It must be admitted, however, that comparisons with the middle ages rest chiefly on conjecture.

Owing to the greater complexity of a woman’s life her productive capacity must be classified on different lines from those which are generally followed in dealing with the economic life of men.

For the purposes of this essay, the highest, most intense forms to which women’s productive energy is directed have been excluded; that is to say, the spiritual creation of the home and the physical creation of the child. Though essentially productive, such achievements of creative power transcend the limitations of economics and one instinctively feels that there would be something almost degrading in any attempt to weigh them in the balance with productions that are bought and sold in the market or even with professional services. Nevertheless it must never be forgotten that the productive energy which is described in the ensuing chapters was in no sense alternative to the exercise of these higher forms of creative power but was employed simultaneously with them. It may be suspected that the influences of home life were stronger in the social life of the seventeenth century than they are in modern England, and certainly the birth-rate was much higher in every class of the community except perhaps the very poorest.

But, leaving these two forms of creative power aside, there remains another special factor complicating women’s economic position, namely, the extent of her production for domestic purposes—as opposed to industrial and professional purposes. The domestic category includes all goods and services, either material or spiritual, which are produced solely for the benefit of the family, while the industrial and professional are those which are produced either for sale or exchange.

In modern life the majority of Englishwomen devote the greater part of their lives to domestic occupations, while men are freed from domestic occupations of any sort, being generally engaged in industrial or professional pursuits and spending their leisure over public services or personal pleasure and amusement.

Under modern conditions the ordinary domestic occupations of Englishwomen consist in tending babies and young children, either as mothers or servants, in preparing household meals, and in keeping the house clean, while laundry work, preserving fruit, and the making of children’s clothes are still often included in the domestic category. In the seventeenth century it embraced a much wider range of production; for brewing, dairy-work, the care of poultry and pigs, the production of vegetables and fruit, spinning flax and wool, nursing and doctoring, all formed part of domestic industry. Therefore the part which women played in industrial and professional life was in addition to a much greater productive activity in the domestic sphere than is required of them under modern conditions.