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

CONCLUSIONwere specially deprecated. Milton's statement sumsup very fairly the ideas of this school of thoughtregarding the relations that should exist betweenhusband and wife in the general scheme of things.They were to exist " He for God only, she for Godin him." The general standard of education resultingfrom such theories was inevitably inferior ; and theexclusion of women from skilled industry and, t%eprofessions, was equally certain to be the consequencesooner or later, of the absence of specialised training.The general effect upon women of this exclusion,which ultimately limited their productive capacityto the field of household i! xdgery, or to the lowestpaid ranks of unskilled labour, belongs to a muchlater period. But one point can already be discernedand must not be overlooked. This point is the alterationwhich took place in the value to her family ofa woman's productive capacity when her labour wastransferred from domestic industry to wage-earning,under the conditions prevailing in the seventeenthcentury. When employed in domestic industrythe whole value of what she produced was retainedby her family; but when she worked for wages herfamily only received such a proportion of it as she wasable to secure to them by her weak bargaining power inthe labour market. What this difference amounted towill be seen when it is remembered that the wife ofa husbandman could care for her children and feedand clothe herself and them by domestic industry,but when working for wages she could not earn enoughfor her own maintenance.This depreciation of the woman's productive valueto her family did not greatly influence her positionin the seventeenth century, because it was then onlyvisible in the class of wage-earners, and into thisposition women were forced by poverty alone. Theproductive efficiency of women's services in domesticindustry remained as high as ever, and every familyCONCLUSIONwhich was possessed of sufficient capital for domesticindustry, could provide sufficient profitable occupationfor its women without their entry into the labourmarket. Independent hard-working families livingunder the conditions provided by Family andDomestic Industry, still formed the majority ofthe English people. The upper classes, as faras the women were concerned, were becoming moreidle, and the number of families depending whollyon wages was increasing, but farmers, husbandmen andtradesmen, still formed a class sufficiently numerousto maintain the hardy stock of the English race unimpaired.Thus, while the productive capacity ofwomen was reduced in the seventeenth centuryby the idleness of the nouveau riche and by the inefficiencyof women wage-earners which resulted fromtheir lack of nourishment, it was maintained at theformer high level among the intermediate and muchlarger class, known as " the common people."Though from the economic point of view intenseproductive energy on the part of women is no longernecessary to the existence of the race, and has beengenerally abandoned, an understanding of its effectupon the maternal functions is extremely importantto the sociologist. No complete vital statisticswere collected in the seventeenth century, but anexamination of the different evidence which is stillavailable, leaves no doubt that the birth rate wasextremely high in all classes, except perhaps that ofwage-earners. It was usual for active busy womenamongst the nobility andgentry, to bear from twelveto twenty children, and though the death rate wasalso high; the children that survived appear to havepossessed abundant vitality and energy. Neither doesthe toil which fell to the lot of the women among thecommon people appear to have injured their capacityfor motherhood; in fact the wives of husbandmenwere the type selected by the wealthy to act as wet nurses