working life of women seventeenth century - School of Economics ...

CONCLUSIONIt has been shown that this policy answered wellenough in the days of Domestic and Family Industrywhen the husband and wife worked together, andthe wife therefore reaped the advantages of thetrading privileges and social position won by herhusband. It was only when Capitalism reorganisedindustry on an individual basis, that thewife was driven to fight her economic battlessingle handed, and women, hampered by the wantof specialised training, were beaten down intosweated trades.The second explanation for women's lack of specialisedtraining is the doctrine of the subjection of womento their husbands. While the first reason was moreinfluential during the days of Family and DomesticIndustry, the second gains in force with the developmentof Capitalism. If women's want of specialisedtraining had been prejudicial to their capacity forwork in former times, such training would not havebeen withheld from them merely through fear ofits weakening the husband's power, because the husbandwas so dependent upon his wife's assistance. Therewas little talk then of men " keeping " their wives ;neither husband nor wife could prosper withoutthe other's help. But the introduction of Capitalism,organising industry on an individual basis, freed mento some extent from this economic dependence ontheir wives, and from henceforward the ideal of thesubjection of women to their husbands could bepursued, unhampered by fear of the dangers resultingto the said husbands by a lessening of the wife'seconomic efficiency.A sense of inferiority is one of the prime requisitesfor a continued state of subjection, and nothingcontributes to this sense so much, as a markedinferiority of education and training in a societyaccustomed to rate everything according to itsmoney value. The difference in earning capacityCONCLUSIONwhich the want of education produces, is initself sufficient to -stamp a class as inferior.There is yet another influence which contributedto the decline in the standard of women's educationand in their social and economic position, which is sonoticeable in the seventeenth century. This periodmarks the emergence of the political idea of the" mechanical state " and its substitution for thetraditional view of the nation as a commonwealth offamilies. Within the family, women had their position,but neither Locke, nor Hobbes, nor the obscure writerson political theory and philosophy who crowd the lasthalf of the seventeenth century, contemplate the inclusionof women in the State of their imagination. Forthem the line is sharply drawn between-the spheres ofmen and women ; women are confined within the circleof their domestic responsibilities, while men shouldexplore the ever widening regions of the State. Thereally significant aspect of this changed orientationof social ideas, is the separation which it introducesbetween the lives of women and those ~f men, becausehitherto men as well as women lived in the Home.The mechanical State ~ud State did not yet existin fact, for the functions of the Government did notextend much beyond the enforcement of Justice andthe maintenance of Defence. Englishmen werestruggling to a, realisation of the other aspectsof national life by means of voluntary associationsfor the pursuit of Science, of Trade, of Education, orother objects, and it is in these associations that the trendof their ideas is manifested, for one and all excludewomen from their membership ; to foster the charmingdependence of women upon their husbands, all independentsources of information were, as far as possible,closed to them. Any association or combination ofwomen outside the limits of their own families wasdiscouraged, and the benefits which had been extendedto them in this respect by the Catholic Religion