Women

So far women have sat at the edge of the story. Their apparent passivity was both conditional and contingent. The relationships of property and family could not work without the active and influential intervention of women within the family network. This was especially true when the family economy and strategies were tested by the insecurities of demography and the economy. The ideal offered to the readers of law books and advice manuals was a matter of a man with wife and children but, in practice, that was an option available to around half the will makers. Whatever the books and the theory of domesticity might say, a significant number of women were involved in the decisions of family and property. The dominant elements in the historical literature have two dimensions. One mapped the exclusion and subordination of women in the world of property ownership and the market economy. This detailed the mechanisms of shutting out from the world of work and business, and suggested that this provided vital support for male economic activity. The other strand of literature outlined the extent to which women held property and were able to enter specific areas of the market economy. There was uncertainty as to whether the economic space available to women was increasing or shrinking in this period. The relationships and tensions of gender were certainly asymmetrical, but they had a dynamic impact on the relationships of property and the flows of capital.