MIDWIVES, MADONNAS AND WHORES (MIDTERM)

Early Modern

1500-1700

Salic law

inheritance through men (no female rulers)

Jewish ideas on women

• excluded from priesthood

• impure during menstruation/ birth

• second wives (forces obedience)

Christian ideas on women

• Adam and Eve (Devil’s gateway)

• praise of virginity

• nuns = brides of Christ

• women = deformity of men

Academic ideas on women

• women intellectually weaker

• emphasis on Mary (good woman)

  • unattainable (Virgin Birth of Christ)

Women praised for

• piety

• chastity

• modesty

• obedience

Protestant ideas on women

• marriage + family for moral discipline

• obedience over all

The “women question”

Enlightenment

• women inferior because of inferior education

• moral superiority?

• different strengths

Roman law + the status of women

• negative effect

• women secondary

  • no military service

  • gender based guardianship

  • subject to husband

  • fatherly over parental authority

• could be tortured + executed like men

• women who killed husbands charged with treason

Honour

• worst thing for women to be called = whore

• worst thing for men to be called = coward/ thief

Stages in female life cycle

1. childhood and adolescence

2. marriage

3. pregnancy and childbirth

4. motherhood

5. single women

6. widow and old age

Ideal wife

marriage manuals

• obedient

• chaste

• cheerful

• thrifty

• pious

• silent

ideal husband

• responsible

• firm

• honourable

Households + marriage in NW Europe

• nuclear family (maybe 1 extended member)

• fewer pregnancies per woman

• women married later

Households + marriage in South + Eastern Europe

• teenagers married

  • lived with 1 set of parents for a long time

• or older man + much younger women

• complex families

Protestant ideas on marriage

• spiritually preferable state (over celibacy)

• allowed divorce

• emphasis on parental consent

Orthodox ideas on divorce

• divorce only for adultery/ religious vows

Catholic ideas on divorce

impossible (sometimes annuled)

Jewish ideas on divorce

allowed if both agreed

Muslim ideas on divorce

• man can divorce woman (but has to support her)

• woman can divorce man (gives up right to support)

Rural marriage practices

• earlier marriage

• complex households

• more remarriage

Upper class marriage practices

• earlier age of marriage

• large age differences in couples

Marriage as a mark of social adulthood

• men allowed to be part of community governing body

• women had authority over dependents of household

Masterless women

• seen as moral + economic problem

• laws passed to forbid single women from moving to cities except as domestic servants

Determining pregnancy

• early signs: no period, nausea, breast enlargement

• quickening: when the baby moves (4-5 months) the only sure way to tell

Abortion + Infanticide

• abortion punishable by death (sometimes only if after quickening)

• more women executed for infanticide than any other crime except witchcraft

  • eg. French women required to declare pregnancy, death penalty for any woman whose undeclared infant died before baptism

Man-midwives

• fashionable for wealthy

• could access discussions/ anatomical classes

• invented forceps

• only in NW Europe

Orthodox view on birth

• everything associated with childbirth defiled

• purification ritual after 40 days

  • until this can eat in her company/ any contact restricted

Jewish view on birth

• purification ritual

• contact not as restricted as Orthodox

Catholic views on birth

• purification ritual

  • contact not as restricted

  • can leave house until this (not even for baptism)

Motherhood

• mother’s manuals

• nursed for 2 years (or wetnurses)

  • lactation has a contraceptive effect

  • husband decides whether wife nurses
    

Widowhood

• imagery

  • ugly + old

  • greedy

  • promiscuous

• remarriage could be bad for children of first marriage

Old age

• marked by menopause

  • believed to cause an increased, demonic sex drive

• children cared for elderly parents

  • sometimes contracts to ensure

How did professionalization affect women?

• pushed them out of fields

  • eg. male midwives + pushing local healers out for doctors

By-employment

• second employment

• proto industrial

• often textiles

Putting-out

merchant giving family supplies, then taking the product to a weaver

Restrictions on “unmanaged” women

• can’t dress above status even if they have money

• mothers fined if daughters returned home for holidays instead of working

Urban work

• domestic servants

  • room + board

  • salary often paid yearly or when they left

• involved in work of head of household (eg. in workshops but not as apprentices)

• sent away from families to work

• selling in markets

  • fishwives, vegetable sellers

Begging women

• laws passed to ban beggers/ force them into workhouses

• some impoverished women in Ireland kidnapped + sent to British colonies

Slavewomen

• from Eastern Europe in Italy

• from Africa in Spain/ Portugal

Spinners

• unmarried women

• wages kept low intentionally

  • idea was all women were married or to be married

• how many women supported themselves (sometimes lived together)

Rural work

• Family unit hired out

• tasks close to home to care for children (eg. animals/ dairy)

• paid less than men in wages + food

• married women paid less than widows

Prostitution

• most cities had a brothel

• marginal work

• more regulation in late 15th century

  • rules on how to dress (different from “honourable” women)

  • less freedom of movement

• Protestant reformation led to closures of brothels

  • still supported by Catholics (sin contained)

• could be imprisoned (some did on purpose if struggling economically)

Women + guilds

• usually excluded

  • informal participation

  • couldn’t partake in rituals

• female dominated guilds

  • dress makers

  • mantuas (France)

Martin Luther’s Ideas on Women

• women created to serve men + bear children to death

• stressed marriage + family

Greek view on women

• woman = imperfect man

• colder + wetter

• uterus = source of hysteria

Positive Stereotypes

• maid, wife and widow

• good woman defined by relationship to man

Negative Stereotypes

• scold, whore and witch

• disorderly women despised

• challenged patriarchal control

Asylums

• fallen women

• run by churches or authorities

• women in danger of becoming prostitutes

• unwed mothers required to give up children

• could leave to marry

Same-sex relations

• less bad than male ss relations

  • but in Judaism its worse

• kind of masturbation (lesser sin)

• associated with witchcraft/ paganism

• harsher penalties for nuns + women who assumed “male role”

Midwife-witch myth

• midwives targeted + prosecuted for being witches

• Malleus Maleficarum: claimed midwives were witched who stole infant’s bodies for magic

• used in 70s feminism to say they were being excluded from science

Typical social profile of midwives

• older, married women

• often literate + more affluent

• prestigious career

Legal duties of midwives

• required to ask mother for father’s name + report illegitimate births

• expert witnesses in legal cases (rape, infanticide)

• examine for signs of recent delivery

• could perform emergency baptisms if baby was going to die

Martha Ballard

• midwife who recorded work in dairy

• 816 deliveries

• detailed record