Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800Judith Bennett, Amy Froide University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999 - 352 pages When we think about the European past, we tend to imagine villages, towns, and cities populated by conventional families—married couples and their children. Although most people did marry and pass many of their adult years in the company of a spouse, this vision of a preindustrial Europe shaped by heterosexual marriage deceptively hides the well-established fact that, in some times and places, as many as twenty-five percent of women and men remained single throughout their lives. |
Contents
A Singular Past | 1 |
Singlewomen in Medieval and Early Modern Europe The Demographic Perspective | 38 |
It Is Not Good That Woman Should Be Alone Elite Responses to Singlewomen in High Medieval Paris | 82 |
Single by Law and Custom | 106 |
Sex and the Singlewoman | 127 |
Transforming Maidens Singlewomens Stories in Marie de Frances Lais and Later French Courtly Narratives | 146 |
Having Her Own Smoke Employment and Independence for Singlewomen in Germany 14001750 | 192 |
Singlewomen in Early Modern Venice Communities and Opportunities | 217 |
Marital Status as a Category of Difference Singlewomen and Widows in Early Modern England | 236 |
The Sapphic Strain English Lesbians in the Long Eighteenth Century | 270 |
Singular Politics The Rise of the British Nation and the Production of the Old Maid | 297 |
Demographic Tables | 325 |
List of Contributors | 345 |
347 | |