#peasant women

[haggishlyhagging]

Demographers tell us that there has always been a group in each population, estimated as reaching as high as one-third of all women, who were single, that is, not-yet-married, never-married or widowed. Yet, until the 19th century the choice of remaining single was only a choice of one kind of dependency over another. Single women might choose celibacy and the religious life, in which case they depended on their superiors and the male clergy; they might choose celibacy and dependency on male members of their family of origin; they might barely make a living as servant or governess in the household of strangers, in which case their dependency was thorough and humiliating. A single woman might choose the life of prostitution, in which case she could hardly be considered independent, since her very existence depended on the "protection" and sanction of various authorities. A small percentage of all women led economically self-dependent lives on the margins of society (in the Middle Ages literally on the outskirts of towns) as peddlers, vagrants, beggars, thieves. Additionally, there were throughout the period under consideration always a small percentage of single women working as spinsters, brewers, innkeepers and farm workers. There also were propertied widows who could live independent lives, but their properties originated in a prior dependency on a man. For the vast majority of women, marriage and motherhood were their lot and their main means of securing access to resources and economic protection. This was the reason women could not readily concep-tualize bonds of sisterhood or develop a consciousness of common interest through their status as wives.

But motherhood was different, both as an actuality and as a unifying concept. Women shared the life experience of motherhood—frequent pregnancies, miscarriages, births, deaths of children and birth-induced disabilities. Even those who could not conceive did not escape that cycle of female tribulations, since they too were subject to menses, attempted pregnancies, and the ever-present threat of rape. For peasant women who were serfs or domestic servants in the manors of their lords, sexual attack by their masters was a constant and unavoidable threat.

The meaning of motherhood differed for women by class. Until the middle of the 18th century in Europe and the United States, 90 percent of women lived in the countryside, so we should consider peasant women first. The lives of peasant women followed remarkably constant patterns throughout the Christian era despite the vast political and technological changes occurring in the states and nations in which they lived. Peasant women, generation after generation, accepted the double burden of work and reproduction, taking responsibility for the survival of their families and doing whatever work it was necessary to do. Demographers estimate that women's life expectancy was less than that of men in the early Middle Ages, but that it changed dramatically in the 11th century owing to changes in agriculture that brought better nutrition. Still a survey made in the commune of Florence in 1427 shows the average age for men to be 28 years and the average age for women 28.51.

Demographers generally hold that women might have five to seven successful pregnancies during twenty years of their childbearing age; given the life expectancies just cited, four to six successful pregnancies would seem more likely. With the high rate of miscarriages and stillbirths before the 20th century, this meant that a woman would be pregnant or nursing a child for most of her adult lifespan, while working without letup in home and field. Infant mortality rates were high; peasant women could expect half of their children to die before age twenty. Twenty-five percent of children born in England up until the 18th century died in their first year.

Had the average peasant couple produced three adult children out of an average six births, the peasant population of Europe should have grown, but in fact it did not. Only in the aftermath of mass disasters, such as the bubonic plague of the 14th century and the Thirty Years War of the 17th century, did peasant populations increase. This indicates that peasants, living under conditions of bare survival, controlled their birthrates. They did so by delaying the age of marriage, practicing various forms of birth control and, when times were bad, resorting to infanticide, usually the killing of female children. Even though it is impossible to know whether these demographic decisions were made by women or by men and women jointly, one can interpret the overall patterns to mean that motherhood for peasant women was part of their fate—not to become a mother was considered a failure-but also that they exerted some measure of control over the frequency of their pregnancies.

-Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (9/20/22) Philipp Malyiavin (Russian, 1869-1940) Peasant Women (1905) Oil on canvas, 205 x 159 cm. The Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg

Maliavin introduced a new type of peasant woman into Russian art —- a stately, proud and sometimes intrepidly independent woman. His models were the inhabitants of the villages of Ryazan Province, dressed in bright festive attire. The painting is a sublime and romantic image of Russian womenfolk, with their wholesome characters and inner stature. The two heroines are strong and healthy women, filled with a sense of their own dignity and virtue. They display integrity of character and inner strength. The faces of the girls are meaningful, the looks in their eyes are intent and enigmatic, the colours of their attire glimmer in a bewitching manner. The expressive images are intensified by the artist’s inspired and temperamental painting. Maliavin contributed "Peasant Women" to the World of Art exhibition of 1906 and Sergei Diaghilev’s L’Exposition de l’Art Russe in Paris and Berlin.

For more of this artist's work, see this MWW gallery/album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=TheMuseumWithoutWalls&set=a.3287892311316115

[effemar]

psuedo-medieval fantasy AU ✌️✌️✌️

everyone give it up for ronan's great kilt i had to google so many diagrams to try and figure out how they worked. also big thank you to my mom for gansey's dumb hat btw she was like 'you HAVE to keep the dumb hat'

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

The Peasants dir. Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman (2023)

[patron-saint-of-lesbeans]

Very interesting (concerning) that while there’s a general consensus of “of course there’s queer Muslims and Jews and Christians we love them!” But that love is conditional. You can be religious but not too religious. You can be spiritual as long as it’s not actually that important to you. You can be observant of your religion’s dogma and traditions as long as you keep it away from everybody else.

But I don’t want to cut myself into smaller pieces. I don’t want to take a part of my life and culture and being and hide it away behind closed doors. It’s just…hypocritical and disappointing when people, who clamor about their love for the contradictory and self-authentic, hate when they’re confronted with it.

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Laureano Barrau Buñol (Spanish, 1863-1957) Women weeding the field, 1891 Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

[p9fttt]

chłopi (2023), dir. dk welchman & hugh welchman

[pissmoon]

'WHY did women fight for the right work haha' omg ur so quirky and funny haha. Hahahahah. So original, never heard this one before. But since its so funny i cant even treat it as a joke ill explain its because when ur financially dependent on the husband he has power over you and you wont be able to leave him no matter what he does with no money of your own. You are straight up property they can buy and take for granted. Thats why probably

[keepchangingandneverstop]

160 - Hi. I started reading light novels. Keep getting stuck on the most throw-away plot points.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Peasant women from Uskub, modern-day Skopje, North Macedonia

Serbian vintage postcard

[margridarnauds]

I'll never forget that time that I read a book that was a retelling of Beowulf from the POV of his Grendel's mother.

Okay, okay, normal enough, normal enough. Possibly a nice way of adding a little bit of a female perspective to a story that can be a little bit lacking in that department goo--

Except for, besides being very weird in general and going with the idea of Women's Oppression™ Throughout History Looked Exactly The Same And Resembled Something From A Bad Fantasy Book, it gave me Grendel's mother hating dresses because they restricted her work in the fields.

*So restrictive*

You can't even FIT Corset Discourse on here because this is before the corsets even EXISTED as garments. This is before the GRANDMA of corsets existed as a garment. A woman at this point in time is not wearing RADICALLY more cloth than a man, honestly. You are functionally wearing a pretty loose fitting dress and then something over it that is also loose fitting.

[nadia-cannot-think-straight]

BABE WAKE UP NEW CHŁOPI CLIP IS OUT ON YOUTUBE AND IT'S ONE OF MY FAVORITE SCENES IN THE WHOLE MOVIE YAHOOO

[throughtheages]

Clothing of the Ankara Vilayet

Bashi-bozouk/Mercenary soldier

Muslim shepherd

Married Muslim peasant woman

Istanbul, Turkey, 1873

Pascal Sébah

[blood-orange-juice]

Childe's gender is knightcore.

[stopthefeeling]

Oh the misogyny is... rancid

[calabria-mediterranea]

Vintage photo of Calabrian peasant women

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