The Ties That Bound

by Barbara A Hanawalt

  The time of accident was given very roughly in the inquests, but nonetheless a definite pattern of greater and lesser risks for men and women appears as they pursued their daily routines. Both rose at dawn, but women had only 4.2 percent of their accidents then, compared to 9.8 percent for men. The morning work was more risky for women, with 15.6 percent of their fatal accidents occurring at that time, compared to 9.8 percent of the men's. Noon was high-risk for both, as they tired of their labor and became hungry: 20.8 percent of the women's fatal accidents occurred then and 17.7 percent of men's. Women might have had a slightly higher number of accidents because they were involved with cooking at noon. For both sexes afternoon represented a lull in activities leading to fatal accidents (4.2 percent of female deaths and 7.5 percent of male deaths, and may indicate a postprandial nap. But evening saw another increase (15.6 and 18.9 percent for females and males, respectively). Night was truly hazardous for both sexes at 39.6 percent for women and 33.9 percent for men.

  When one looks at the causes of women's accidental deaths and the places they occurred at these hours, the round of daily work becomes apparent. The morning, noon, and some evening deaths are connected with fetching water from wells for washing and preparing meals. Working with large animals and brewing also appear in the morning and at noon. The afternoon deaths were from laundry or seasonal fieldwork. The high number of deaths at night resulted from dangers in the home, usually house fires or walls falling on unsuspecting sleepers, or from wandering about at night without candles. There were, as we have observed, many bodies of water and pits and wells that one could fall into and drown after nightfall.

  The seasonal pattern of women's and men's deaths were parallel, except that women had a significantly higher percentage of fatal accidents in May (12.9 percent, compared to 7.7 percent). This is puzzling. The cause of death indicates that women were more prone to falls and drowning during May, but their work does not seem to be particularly seasonal. It is possible that more women were pregnant or recovering from pregnancy, but sixteenth-century data indicate that births were most frequent in February and March.'8 The two high months for men's accidents, June and August, can be readily explained by harvest and other heavy fieldwork.

  The division of labor by sex was set early in a child's life. As we shall see, by the age of two or three the accidental-death patterns of children reflected that of their respective parents.19

  Women's work in peasant households has been largely misrepresented by modern historians who tend to equate peasant women with pioneer women. Medieval peasant women did not spend much of their time producing from scratch the basic necessities for their families. Instead, most households availed themselves of specialists in weaving, tailoring, and even brewing and baking. A second misconception that must not be allowed to stand is that women's work involved fewer hours than men's or that, because women had fewer accidents, their work was not as strenuous.20

  Women's daily household routines are very well summed up in the "Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband." The goodwife of the poem had no servants and only small children, so that her day was a full one. She complained that her nights were not restful because she had to rise and nurse the babe in arms. She then milked the cows and took them to pasture and made butter and cheese while she watched the children and dried their tears. Next she fed the poultry and took the geese to the green. She baked and brewed every fortnight and worked on carding wool, spinning, and beating flax. She tells her husband that through her economy of weaving a bit of linsey woolsey during the year for the family clothes, they would be able to save money and not buy cloth from the market. Her husband insists that all this work is very easy and that she really spends her day at the neighbors' gossiping. But she retorts:

  The housewife's first task in the morning was lighting the fire. She had to go into the close to get kindling or straw to light the embers and get the wood started. One woman, we are told in a coroner's inquest, went out early in the morning to get kindling, climbed into a tree leaning over the common way, and fell. A housewife who was over seventy went to her straw sack to get straw to start a fire, as she had done for many years, but fell from her ladder on this occasion.22 The fire started, the housewife heated the morning porridge and other food for breakfast.

  Cleaning house occupied very little of a woman's time. As we observed in Part I, the houses were small and furniture rudimentary and the peasants owned few pans and dishes. The floors were covered with straw, and chickens, pigs, cats, and dogs wandered in and out at will. But the primitive nature of housing should not lead one to conclude that the housewives were slovenly and cared nothing about cleanliness. As archaeological evidence has shown, floors were swept frequently enough that the brooms left U-shaped depressions on house sites.

  Of the 237 women whose activity at the time of death is specified, the cause of death of 37 percent of them related directly to work around the house. The most dangerous task was drawing water from wells and pits (17 percent). The water was for cooking, washing, and drinking. Either the housewife or the children got water for the household. Doing the laundry was also a dangerous activity, with 3 percent of the women either drowning or being scalded. The earth around wells, ponds, and ditches became treacherously slippery with water splashed on them, so that it was easy to slip in. Thus one woman washing linen cloth by a ditch in December 1348 slid into the water and drowned. Other accidents involving work related to maintaining the house included cutting wood, baking, cooking, taking grain to the mill, and general housework.23

  Women's routine work for the household also included agricultural work. The women milked the cows and helped at calving time. They also kept the poultry: geese, hens, and maybe doves. The pig was in their charge, as was the garden in the close that produced vegetables and fruits. When their help was needed in the fields, they hoed, weeded, turned hay, tied sheaves, and even reaped. They gleaned when the harvest was over, a back-breaking task of picking up stray grain. One old woman was so tired after her day's gleaning that she fell asleep among her sheaves and failed to put her candle out.24

  Women had charge of the domestic animals, including milking and butter and cheese production. [Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 764, fol. 44.]

  In making our economic boundaries too rigid, we assume that peasants did not hunt and gather. Women picked nuts, wild fruits, herbs, and greens from the woods and roadways and if they lived near the shore, they also gathered shellfish. They collected firewood, carrying fagots of sticks from the woods on their backs. Although men usually did the heavy labor of cutting turves from peat pits, occasionally women did as well. One woman, over forty years of age, went to cut turves for the family fire when a piece fell on her.25

  One of the most significant contributions a wife could make to the household economy was the bearing and training of children. Children were an asset in the peasant economy; by the age of seven they could already be a help to the housewife in her daily round of chores. The early years were difficult, however, as the woman in the "Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband" pointed out. During that time the housewife added the burden of caring for young children to her other chores. But the production and training of the new work force was essential for a successful peasant household; otherwise one had to hire servants.26

  Women could also diversify their labor to bring more cash into the family economy. In addition to the usual egg, butter, and cheese production, some women engaged in fairly large-scale beer and bread making. Both these occupations required investment in large vessels or ovens. In Broughton the wealthier peasant families tended to be the chief producers of beer on a large scale.27 Brewing was an arduous and rather dangerous activity, since it involved carrying twelve-gallon vats of hot liquid and heating large tubs of water. Five percent of the women in the coroners' inquests lost their lives in brewing accidents, usually by falling into vats of boiling liquid or spilling the hot wort on themselves.28

  Spinning was the traditional supplemental economic activity for
women. The spindle could be taken anywhere to occupy idle minutes. The woman may or may not have turned the thread into cloth. Most likely, she sold it to a weaver unless she was making rough material for daily wear and sheets.

  Women could also work as wage laborers to aid the family economy. In a poor household supported by very little land, both the husband and wife would have to hire out their labor. We do not know yet if women received equal pay for equal work. The matter will require considerably more study because of the problems of assessing the nature and difficulty of tasks performed. For instance, a thatcher received 2d. a day in the thirteenth century, but his female assistant received only Id. Her work was gathering the stubble and handing it up to him while he did the more skilled labor. In general, manors hired female laborers and boys for such unskilled agrarian tasks, and consequently their pay was low. The work of picking over seed grain, however, was a highly skilled occupation in which women excelled and, therefore, tended to be paid more. When men and women did the same work, they received equal pay. Thus, although women did not normally work for the lord by either hoeing or stacking hay, when they did so they received the same pay as men.29

  Women processed the wool to make into thread. [Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 6, fol. 101 verso.]

  The wool was turned into thread with a spindle. The spindle was the woman's most characteristic implement. She could carry it with her to work on thread making in her free moments. [Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 1504, fol. 34.]

  Some historians have maintained that with the decline of population after the Black Death women's wages became competitive with those of men.30 More systematic data will have to be accumulated to demonstrate this, however, for the statutory information indicates that women were supposed to be paid less than men. A statute of 1388 decreed that female laborers and dairymaids should earn Is. less a year than the plowman. In 1444 women servants would receive 10s. annually for their work compared to 15s. for the men, and in 1495 women's labor was still to be reimbursed at only 10s. annually, but men's had climbed to 16s. 8d.31

  The village credit and land market as well as fairs and regional markets attracted women.32 A variety of sources show women aggressively engaged in market activities. For instance, Mabel the Merchant was charged in 1294 in Chalgrave court with taking ash trees. Women made loans to other villagers that are recorded in the court rolls. And there is even a case in the coroners' inquests of a woman who went out to negotiate a debt, leaving her nine-month-old baby alone in the house, so that it died of a fire in its cradle.33 Since women could inherit property and buy it as well, they played a fairly active role in the village land market even after marriage. Married women sometimes sold land they had brought with them to the marriage to help the family through a difficult time, or they might buy or inherit land that would eventually go to a child's marriage portion. Women were somewhat disadvantaged in the marketplace because, while they could bring suit on their own, they had no access to magisterial roles and seldom even used attorneys. Their pledges had to be men, although one woman tried to use all women in her case.34

  One can easily overlook the extralegal contributions women made to household ease and even survival. Olwen Hufton has emphasized the economy of makeshift that both peasant and urban women practiced in preindustrial France. These petty illegalities, or tolerated transgressions, were usually a source of additional food. In France the rioting for bread was the woman's provenance.35 In medieval England illegal gleaning was the most common way for a woman to get extra grain for her family. Gleaning after the main harvest, as observed earlier, was limited to the old and decrepit, but it was so profitable that wives of even prominent villagers did it. Reaping could pay only 1 d. a day for women, but gleaning would bring in considerably more. Even being caught and fined was worth the risk because the fines were so low. The illegal gleaners appear in the coroners' inquests where they are caught in the act and a death ensued. Amicia, daughter of Hugh of Wygenale, died warding off an illegal gleaner. She had been hired by Agatha Gylemyn to guard her grain. During the night Cecilia, wife of Richard le Gardyner, came to steal the grain and threw Amicia to the ground when she tried to stop her. Three illegal gleaners got their punishment through an "act of God." They became frightened during a bad storm as they were gleaning illegally and hid in a haystack. Lightning struck them.36

  The only limit to these illegal, petty economic gains was the imagination. It was common to graze animals on other people's crops, to reap grass illegally, to dig turves and collect nuts and wood in prohibited areas. In Yorkshire Alice, daughter of Adam, the son of William, dug a pit for iron and another woman dug up the high road for coal. Occasionally women were even accused of bleeding a cow for blood sausage or clipping sheep in the pasture for their wool. Isabel of Abyndam came to the fields of the abbess and took three pounds of wool from four sheep there. When the shepherd found her, she fought him off so that he was forced to hit her in the legs with his staff in self-defense. She was taken into custody but was so frightened that she refused food and drink and died of hunger.37 Poultry theft and other petty thefts also appear frequently in manor courts.

  In clearly felonious activities women also showed their concern for provisioning the family. They stole sheep and poultry rather than larger animals and stole proportionately more household goods and foodstuffs than did men. In the period of famine in the early fourteenth century, the number of females indicted for crimes increased to 12 percent and dropped to 9 percent after the period of dearth.3'

  When the day was done, it was the woman of the house who tucked in the family and turned out the light. We know about this sex-specific role because of the times that a housewife forgot to blow out the candle and it fell onto the straw on the floor, setting the house afire. For instance:

  On Tuesday [April 24, 1322] a little before midnight the said Robert and Matilda, his wife, and William and John their sons lay asleep in the said solar, a lighted candle fixed on the wall by the said Matilda fell by accident on the bed of the said Robert and Matilda and set the whole house on fire; that the said Robert and William were immediately caught in the flames and burnt and Matilda and John with difficulty escaped with their lives.39

  We have argued that the woman's sphere of activity centered largely on production for the home, both in providing food and supplementary earnings for the household economy. She also reared the children and put them to work in the house and close at an early age. We have yet to investigate the value that the society placed on this contribution. Two historians, Joan Scott and Louise Tilly, have argued that "the separate spheres and separate roles did not, however, imply discrimination or hierarchy. It appears, on the contrary, that neither sphere was subordinate to the other."40

  But we must still ask who wore the breeches in the medieval peasant family. Were economic decisions joint ones, with both husband and wife participating, or did the husband take the role of economic planner? Was it only a shrew who could don the breeches and control family investments? Literary sources are not neutral on their opinion of women. The clergy did not have a monopoly on the antifemale traditions, and popular lyrics often fault women who gossip, cheat, and scold:

  Others praise women for their constancy and counsel and advise men to place their trust in their wives:

  Even the tyrannical husband indicated that the wife's work was half the productivity of the household and whatever the personal attributes of a wife, laziness would have been the most disastrous.

  Sources other than literary are better for assessing appreciation of the wife's contribution because the latter are so steeped in a misogynist tradition that they are difficult to use. Wills are perhaps the best source. As a man lay on his deathbed he often considered how he could ensure his family's well-being and reward all for their contribution to the household economy. Wills showed that the men entrusted their wives with considerable responsibilities and rewarded them generously for their contributions during their lifetime. Most men (65 percent) made their wives e
xecutors. Others indicated through specific phrases the reliance they placed on their wives. One man left his son a bequest if he would obey his mother; others made the wife responsible for choosing a profession for a son; and one Yorkshire father went to great lengths in his charge to his wife: "that my wiffe have a tendire and faithfull luffe and favour in brynging uppe of hir childir and myne, as she will answer to God and me." He went on to direct her to "reward them after her power for us both."43

  Most men leaving wills, therefore, trusted their wives to raise a family of young children and run both the house and lands. The widow with young children thus had an increased burden for maintaining the household. She would either have to hire labor in the fields, rely on other family members for aid, or remarry. It was not tradition alone that kept women from doing the plowing themselves, but rather their already full work load. Although women tended to outlive men and were more likely to be widowed, widowers were also left in dire straits in managing the household economy. They also would have to hire servants or rely on kin to rear young children and take care of routine household chores. In the poll tax the great majority of cultivators were married couples, because it was the most efficient unit. It is rare to find households composed of father/daughter or mother/son.