Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century

Effect of environment on Women's development. Possible reaction on men's developmentImportance of seventeenth century in historic development of English womenInfluence of economic positionDivision of Women's productive powers into Domestic, Industrial, and ProfessionalThree systems of Industrial OrganisationDomestic IndustryFamily IndustryCapitalistic Industry or IndustrialismDefinition of these termsHistoric sequence. Effect of Industrial Revolution on Womenin capitalistic classin agriculturein textile industriesin crafts and other trades. Transference of productive industry from married women to unmarried womenwith consequent increase of economic independence for the latter and its loss for the former. Similar evolution in professions shows this was not due wholly to effect of capitalism. Hitherto the historian has paid little attention to the circumstances of women's lives, for women have been regarded as a static factor in social developments, a factor which, remaining itself essentially the same, might be expected to exercise a constant and unvarying influence on Society. This assumption has however no basis in fact, for the most superficial consideration will show how profoundly women can be changed by their environment. Not only do the women of the same race exhibit great differences from time to time in regard to the complex social instincts and virtues, but even their more elemental sexual and maternal instincts are subject to modification. While in extreme cases the sexual impulses are liable to perversion, it sometimes happens that the maternal instinct disappears altogether, and women neglect or, like a tigress in captivity, may even destroy their young. These variations deserve the most careful examination, for, owing to the indissoluble bond uniting the sexes, and the emotional power which women exert over men, the character of men's development is determined in some sort by the development which is achieved by women. In a society where women are highly developed men's characters are insensibly modified by association with them, and in a society where women are secluded and immature, men lack that stimulus which can only be supplied by the other sex. It may be true, as Goethe said, that the eternal feminine leadeth us onwards, but whether this be upwards or downwards depends upon the characters of individual women. Owing to the subtle reactions which exist between men and women and between the individual and the social organism in which he or she lives, accurate and detailed knowledge of the historic circumstances of human life becomes essential for the sciences of Sociology and Psychology. The investigation, of which the results are described in the following chapters, was undertaken with the object of discovering these circumstances as regards women in a limited field and during a short period.

Dettagli