Women and Walled Towns

1. Attractions2. Dangers

3. Reactions

A walled town-Montereggioni

Montereggioni

Looking toward Florence

View from the countryside

More walled towns-Ireland

Opportunity or danger?

• 14th to 17th 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

Occupations, livelihoods, whores again?

The rise of the guilds

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

• By the end of the 13th 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

Merchant’s Wives

• 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

Disease

• 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)

Childbearing

• 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