Male-centric views of sexuality frame singlewomen either as lonely and frustrated (spinsters) or as dangerously promiscuous (whores), but this dichotomy ignores the possibility of the sexual desires of singlewomen being satisfied by other women. There is an idealized image of pre-modern lesbian that finds its epitome in the Ladies of Llangollen type from the late 18th century.
singlewomen
The study of the lives of non-married women, regardless of their affectional preferences, identifies contexts in which women who preferred not to marry men would be unremarkable.
LHMP entry
The actual demographics are hard to reconstruct (see previous entry), in part because attitudes towards singlewomen affected how records were compiled. The belief that women should be "under men" led to ignoring those that weren't. Tax records didn't list wage-earners so entire classes of single employed women might be absent. Marital status is not always retrievable from how names were recorded. A woman recorded as “X wife of Y” is clearly married, but “X the Occupation” might or might not be.
The article looks at Venice in the 16-17th centuries. Social commentaries framed singlewomen who were not under male control as “dangerous”. Charity aimed at this sector focused on dowries and making young women more mariagable. This paper proposes that worsening circumstances for singlewomen in the16th century resulted in expanded and new opportunities, especially female communities. There is discussion of the usual problems with documentation. In the 16th c. the best source is church 'censuses’ of baptismal status.
The article looks at category differences between never-married women and widows. There can be a problem with conflating the two despite superficial similarities. Widowhood was more respectable, while singlehood was both pitiable and suspect. Singles were sometimes twice as common as widows, only emphasizing differences in treatment in the records. Widows were viewed as being a deputy for her late husband but the never-married were expected to be dependent, either on a father or as a member of another (male-headed) household.
Introductory chapter to a collection of papers on the topic described in the title. The collection in general addresses the question of women living outside the “nuclear family”, and especially looks at systems and categories rather than treating singlewomen as isolated anomalies.
Medieval English practice allowed for a fair amount of variability in how a specific person was named in a legal document. Surnames were not fixed and the popularity of certain given names, occupations, and descriptive nicknames meant that the clear distinction of individuals could be difficult. The Statute of Additions instituted in 1413 attempted to address the problem of clear and distinct identification by suggesting specific types of additional personal designations for use.
This chapter looks at the labeling of women in a series of tax rolls from the later 14th century. The series of taxes occurred in close enough succession that interesting patterns can be identified in the documents used to track and record them. At the same time, the nature of the levies changed slightly, especially in terms of how women were treated, which provides the context for the examination in this chapter.
Within the context of penitential literature (concerned with the identification and classification of sins), the strict position is that there is no conceptual position for the sexually active singlewoman who was not a prostitute (with a slight allowance for the concubine--sexually active with, but not married to, a specific man--as contrasted with the prostitute who was "common to all"). But detailed treatises such as the early 15th century Jacob’s Well reveal more differentiation.
This chapter is concerned not so much with craft guilds but with “social guilds” which served as semi-social semi-religious associations that provided various types of support to members. An analysis of the organizational and membership documents of these guilds indicate that the assumed default member was a married man whose wife may or may not have also had membership privileges. All of them made allowances for single men to join, and many made explicit provision for single women as well.
Beattie’s work looks at the classification of women for social and legal purposes with respect to marriage status--maid, wife or widow--and the consequences for those who did not fit neatly into those categories, as well as the intersectionality of gender categories with social status and age.
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