Economic Partnership in Marriage

Sources

Urban Family Units. One of the most significant features of marriage among urban artisan groups was its function as an economic partnership. Marriage was unencumbered by the demands of lineage and patrimony, and the extended family exerted little control over the individuals. Households tended to be small. A husband and wife with their children were the basic family unit. These people lived and worked together because the household was also an economic unit. Husbands and wives were also business partners, working together in the family shop.

Equal Partnership. The result of this economic interdependence was a more companionate view of marriage and a less hierarchical family structure. Both the husband and wife contributed to the household economy and the financial well-being of the family. Moreover, before marriage, during their teens and early twenties, wives had usually experienced a period of relative autonomy while living away from parental supervision as servants or workers in other families’ households. Thus, women entered marriage having made decisions, earned money, and spent it independently. Such a woman did not easily accept a husband who expected to wield absolute patriarchal authority over her and their children.

Rural Cooperation. Much the same situation pertained in the countryside. A peasant’s holding required the labor of husband and wife equally, and both contributed to the financial burden of establishing the household. Wives could also inherit land, either because there were no sons, or because they received bequests from relatives, or because they were widows entering a second marriage. Thus, in some cases, the family was established on the wife’s land rather than the husband’s.

Gender Roles. Farming tasks tended to be gender specific: men ploughed the fields; women looked after the garden and animals. Each spouse made an essential contribution to the household economy. Though her contribution gave the wife status within the household and family, it did not influence her public role. Women were excluded from village offices and did not serve as jurors or pledges, but they were often fined by the manorial court for a variety of infractions and frequently appeared to pay their own merchets (marriage fines) or legerwites (fines for being caught fornicating or giving birth to illegitimate children).

Supplemental Income. Part of a rural woman’s work brought in supplemental income. Thus, women typically spun cloth or sold eggs, butter, or other produce at the market. They also frequently brewed and sold ale. This activity was particularly well suited to the busy mother with young children. It did not require a significant outlay for equipment because ale could be brewed using standard household items such as pots and spoons. Moreover, small children could help, for example, by stirring the vats. In fact, women with children engaged in brewing more frequently than childless women and widows.

Sources

Judith M. Bennett, Women in the Medieval English Countryside. Gender and Household in Brigstock Before the Plague (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).