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Introduction: Recollecting New England Regionalism

J. Samaine Lockwood

in Archives of Desire: The Queer Historical Work of New England Regionalism

This introduction argues that New England regionalism included not only fiction writing but a range of women-dominated cultural practices including colonial home restoration, history writing, antique ... More

This introduction argues that New England regionalism included not only fiction writing but a range of women-dominated cultural practices including colonial home restoration, history writing, antique collecting, colonial fancy dressing, and photography. Using the example of Elizabeth Bishop Perkins, this introduction demonstrates the alternative intimate forms and temporalities central to New England regionalism's history-making project. It explicates how regionalist writers placed the unmarried daughter at the center of New England history, representing her as cosmopolitan, mobile, and queer. In foregrounding the unmarried daughter of New England as the ideal inheritor of a legacy of dissent, these regionalists theorized modes of white belonging based on women's myriad alternative desires rather than marriage and maternity.Less

The Unmarried Mother

in The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany

This chapter analyzes the story of the unmarried Apollonia Vöglin, who, early in the morning of Saturday, January 18, 1578, gave birth in secret to a baby girl, which she later admitted strangling. ... More

This chapter analyzes the story of the unmarried Apollonia Vöglin, who, early in the morning of Saturday, January 18, 1578, gave birth in secret to a baby girl, which she later admitted strangling. Seventeen days later she was arrested for the crime and thereupon began the fight to save herself from the executioner's axe. Apollonia's sad tale is a variation on a familiar literary topos: an unmarried girl, impregnated and jilted by a young cad, is forced by shame to hide her pregnancy, and finally, in desperation, murders her newborn child. In early modern Germany, a confluence of several demographic and social developments threatened to make infanticide a more common reality than at any time since antiquity. Most notably, an economic downturn from the mid-sixteenth century on exacerbated the late marriage tendency already common among Western Europeans.Less

Virtuous, Active Women in the Greco-Roman World

Susan E. Hylen

in A Modest Apostle: Thecla and the History of Women in the Early Church

This chapter describes the social context in which Christianity emerged, with attention to the legal, economic, and social conventions that shaped women’s lives. Hylen argues that multiple and ... More

This chapter describes the social context in which Christianity emerged, with attention to the legal, economic, and social conventions that shaped women’s lives. Hylen argues that multiple and conflicting norms created variety in acceptable behaviors for Roman women, and that the use of modesty as a civic virtue in this period made room for women’s civic participation. The chapter also challenges the conventional view that marriage restricted women’s agency. Evaluating particular kinds of action—like property ownership or social influence through patronage—for differences between married and unmarried women, the chapter concludes that marriage was not a primary factor determining women’s agency.Less

Modernization and the Rise of Women's Wage Work

in To Live to Work: Factory Women in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945

This chapter presents an overview of the peninsula's historical and geopolitical background, and reviews the progressions of colonial economic development and the emergence of women's wage work from ... More

This chapter presents an overview of the peninsula's historical and geopolitical background, and reviews the progressions of colonial economic development and the emergence of women's wage work from the late 1910s to the 1930s. It also tries to provide broad numerical and proportional sketches of colonial workers in general and wage-earning women in particular. A woman's role in household production relied on her marital status and life stage; responsibilities also differed for mothers and daughters. It is also noted that women's contributions to political economies were driven by familial, personal ties. The economic position, landholdings, and status of the husband in premodern Korea influenced the work of their wife. Married women could work in industrial sectors and settings, and in the service industry. Furthermore, most unmarried working women in early twentieth-century Korea could not depend on networks of kin to provide for their future welfare and therefore relied on themselves.Less

Introduction

in Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Japan

This book offers an account of what it is to be an unwed mother in contemporary Japan, and demonstrates how unwed motherhood challenges the basic norms associated with childbearing and childrearing. ... More

This book offers an account of what it is to be an unwed mother in contemporary Japan, and demonstrates how unwed motherhood challenges the basic norms associated with childbearing and childrearing. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with single unwed mothers and two unmarried women in the last trimester of their pregnancies, it reveals the choices open to Japanese women as well as the institutional, social, legal, economic, and normative factors that make them resolutely cling to marriage. The book also examines how unwed mothers in Japan are viewed and view themselves in relation to divorcees, as well as the effect of the growing divorce rate on their numbers. Moreover, it looks at the pregnancy solutions potentially open to premaritally pregnant women, including marriage, abortion, and raising the child outside wedlock; the stigmatization and shame associated with unwed motherhood; and the fears and dreams women have for their children.Less

Unmarried Women Investing for “Retirement”

Amy M. Froide

in Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during Britain's Financial Revolution, 1690-1750

This chapter examines how unmarried women utilized the new investment options offered by the Financial Revolution to fund their retirement years and to maintain themselves in old age. Spinsters and ... More

This chapter examines how unmarried women utilized the new investment options offered by the Financial Revolution to fund their retirement years and to maintain themselves in old age. Spinsters and widows put their capital into government funds, both lottery loans and annuities, in particular. A survey of the women who invested in the government funds is provided, with a particular close up on those women who bought Life Annuities in 1745. Such investment options offered a decent rate of return, but more importantly provided security, dependability, and transferability. As such, they may have appealed to women more than living off of rents or private securities. The chapter includes two cases studies of families of women, Barbara and Gertrude Savile and Teresa and Patty Blount, to show how stocks and shares provided these women with an independent retirement.Less

Delay

Rachel Chrastil

in How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children

Since the early modern period, women have postponed marriage and therefore, in many cases, remained childless. By putting off marriage and childrearing for a decade or longer, women could achieve ... More

Since the early modern period, women have postponed marriage and therefore, in many cases, remained childless. By putting off marriage and childrearing for a decade or longer, women could achieve other goals: a job, some savings, and the respect of their neighbors. To survive, these early modern women learned to take risks, make plans, and act responsibly. In the end, some women never married, and others waited so long that they turned out to be infertile by the time of marriage. These women risked poverty, dependency, and cruel mockery, yet a few articulated the preference for the single life. This chapter examines this early modern period and childlessness.Less