Marriage and Work

Ling, Sofia; Jansson, Karin Hassan; Lennersand, Marie; Pihl, Christopher; Ågren, Maria

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190240615.003.0004

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…72 Harrold's comments suggest that to some extent, men subscribed to the notion identified by Ågren and her colleagues as the two-supporter model: husband and wife needed to work together to support their common livelihood. 73 Within lower-middling households, business decision-making and oeconomic management were joint endeavours. Harrold's economic relationship with his wife might be described as co-operative.…”

Section: Defining Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Marriage, by some accounts, gave women authority over the household and power to command the labour of others. 77 However, control over economic resources and household authority were also clearly part of gender difference. If we were to observe the household diary of a woman, we would be unlikely to find her accounting for her husband's work.…”

Section: Defining Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accounting for Men’s Work: Multiple Employments and Occupational Identities in Early Modern England

Paul

2018

History Workshop Journal

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Like most people in the eighteenth century, Edmund Harrold made his living by working multiple jobs. A barber by training and title, he rented a small shop in Manchester where he shaved customers' heads, bought and sold hair, and crafted wigs. In the hours unfilled by shaving, cutting and weaving, he also performed 'cupping', a medical service offered to lactating women. In addition to these principal employments, Harrold undertook other temporary income-generating activities or by-employments. He worked as a book dealer, and eventually as an auctioneer, selling various items in alehouses within Manchester and in outlying towns. In 1713, when times got hard, Harrold took on paid employment offered by civic authorities and worked as a dog muzzler. He lent out money, when he had it, earning ten percent interest on his holdings. Harrold's household also depended upon the productive activities undertaken by his wife and dependents. His wife Sarah managed the rental of a room in their house to lodgers, retailed secondhand clothing, and operated a business washing clothes. In addition to these income-generating activities, Sarah contributed to the household's maintenance by producing foodstuffs including bread. 1 Edmund Harrold's experience of multiple employments, described in a diary that he kept between 1712 and 1715, was typical of the occupational fluidity that characterized eighteenth-century working lives. Whether measured by the tools and goods in probate inventories, the work or maintenance activities described by the litigants and witnesses in court records, or the debts that individuals contracted, we know that occupational titles did not fully describe men's productive activities and that occupational plurality was the norm. Individuals tended to combine different forms of work, and to move during their lives from one form of employment to another. 2 For Harrold and others, this occupational plurality was a feature of maintaining what he described as a 'computency of living' in a precarious economic environment. 3

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Section: Defining Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Defining Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for Men’s Work: Multiple Employments and Occupational Identities in Early Modern England

Paul

2018

History Workshop Journal

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“…Ling et al identify this as 'a considerable boon of the marital estate', arguing that within the verb-oriented studies undertaken by the Gender and Work group unmarried women's work was poorly represented within categories that required authority and the exercise of power. 105 Marriage apparently conferred a certain power in business relations. There are numerous indications in the letters that Elizabeth acted on her own authority.…”

Section: Managing the Businessmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘You do manage it so well that I cannot do better’: the working life of Elizabeth Jeake of Rye (1667–1736)

Murphy

2018

Women's History Review

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This article contributes to the debate around early modern women's work. It concerns not waged labour but rather the unpaid contributions made by women to both home and the business undertaken by their husband. It focuses on Elizabeth Jeake, the wife of Samuel Jeake, a merchant from the Sussex port of Rye. Through the letters exchanged between the family, it explores Elizabeth's skilled work in support of her husband. This included giving instructions to contractors, gathering and disseminating business and investment information, negotiations with Samuel's business partners and acquaintances, managing property and tenants, negotiating credit relationships and purchasing and selling commodities.

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Worthless Witnesses? Marginal Voices and Women's Legal Agency in Early Modern England

Shepard¹

2019

J. Br. Stud.

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This article explores the distribution of women witnesses in a selection of English church courts between the mid-sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries, in order to assess the extent to which women's participation as witnesses in these jurisdictions might be characterized as a form of legal agency. It shows that women's participation was highly contingent on their marital status and between places and over time and was shaped by the matters in dispute as well as the gender of the litigants for whom they testified. Although poverty did not exclude women witnesses (higher proportions of female witnesses than male claimed to be poor or of limited means), women were more vulnerable than were men to discrediting strategies that cast doubt on their authority in court. Such findings show that the incorporative dimensions of state formation did not deliver new forms of agency to women but depended heavily upon patriarchal norms and constraints.

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Marriage and Work

Cited by 6 publications

References 1 publication

Accounting for Men’s Work: Multiple Employments and Occupational Identities in Early Modern England

Accounting for Men’s Work: Multiple Employments and Occupational Identities in Early Modern England

‘You do manage it so well that I cannot do better’: the working life of Elizabeth Jeake of Rye (1667–1736)

Worthless Witnesses? Marginal Voices and Women's Legal Agency in Early Modern England

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