{"title":"Needed but Deplored: Spinners and Singlewomen in Industrial Coventry, c.1490–1525","authors":"Judith M Bennett","doi":"10.1093/pastj/gtae023","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Late medieval Coventry attracted so many in-migrating singlewomen that it might have seemed a city of women — for every ten women, only seven men. Some of these peasants-turned-townswomen supported themselves as labourers, domestic servants or prostitutes, but it was the demand for their industrial labour as spinners of cloth-yarn and cap-yarn that drew most women to the city. Coventry’s merchants and masters, who needed spinners’ work but deplored women’s autonomy, tried with considerable success to push these spinners into supervised living within the city’s established households. The experiences of Coventry’s singlewoman-spinners show that ‘maidservants’ were sometimes industrial workers; that singlewomen were corralled into ‘little commonwealths’ well before Protestantism; and that ‘girl power’ was more about economic growth than the empowerment of women.","PeriodicalId":47870,"journal":{"name":"Past & Present","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Past & Present","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtae023","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Late medieval Coventry attracted so many in-migrating singlewomen that it might have seemed a city of women — for every ten women, only seven men. Some of these peasants-turned-townswomen supported themselves as labourers, domestic servants or prostitutes, but it was the demand for their industrial labour as spinners of cloth-yarn and cap-yarn that drew most women to the city. Coventry’s merchants and masters, who needed spinners’ work but deplored women’s autonomy, tried with considerable success to push these spinners into supervised living within the city’s established households. The experiences of Coventry’s singlewoman-spinners show that ‘maidservants’ were sometimes industrial workers; that singlewomen were corralled into ‘little commonwealths’ well before Protestantism; and that ‘girl power’ was more about economic growth than the empowerment of women.
期刊介绍:
Founded in 1952, Past & Present is widely acknowledged to be the liveliest and most stimulating historical journal in the English-speaking world. The journal offers: •A wide variety of scholarly and original articles on historical, social and cultural change in all parts of the world. •Four issues a year, each containing five or six major articles plus occasional debates and review essays. •Challenging work by young historians as well as seminal articles by internationally regarded scholars. •A range of articles that appeal to specialists and non-specialists, and communicate the results of the most recent historical research in a readable and lively form. •A forum for debate, encouraging productive controversy.