Title: Women's roles prior to and during the evolution of the industrial revolution in England.
Introduction:
Women prior to the industrial revolution were recognized as valuable contributors to the wealth of the nation, they were central in the textile and cheese making industry. This was to change drastically as the disappearance of "traditional" aspects of society evolved into the process called industrial revolution. New technology and capitalistic organization removed women from the primary role in production and deprived them of an accessible source of income. There was an abundant supply of unemployed women who became an exploitable pool of cheap labor. So women in need of income were subject to take low paying jobs in order to make a "living wage." By the 1830's the popular notion was that women's place was in the home making up a majority of domestic service. This allowed relations of difference and subordination between the women of different classes middle and working class to thrive. Isolated by these ideologies and rigid social class distinctions, the lower class began to resent the industrialist that employed them. Engaging in acts of carousing and debauched behavior that were rebellious social statements emphasizing the lower classes rejection of the hypocritical social restraint the middle class attained to, dividing the classes and women's roles for many decades following the early 1800's.
Leading up to the industrial revolution women worked everywhere, they worked as rural labors and servants .Women helped produce the nations food supply. Their skill in the dairy was "undisputed and universally acclaimed." The women also did the spinning, knitting, weaving, stitching, and lace making, that supported its own trade both domestic and foreign. This was based on the traditional Agrarian economy in which everyone worked the land together in common. This meant part of a community using a common field system. This however didn't turn a huge profit. It hardly produced enough for the people to survive. They weren't using their land to its full potential. For the families to survive the women had to pick up odd jobs on the side such as spinning and weaving. The women would also do something called gleaning. Gleaning was the taking of left-overs after the harvest for the private sell or use. This too became illegal after the industrial revolution
The industrial revolution changed many things, the economy was growing as well as the population, increasing the prices for wheat, making it a more viable crop. This started the agriculture revolution. The big land owners and businessmen saw a potential to make lots of money. The common lands were inclosed making the use of it illegal. There was also consolidation of the land strips by large farm corporation. At the same time, the old two-thirds field rotations became obsolete. They then switched to the three field rotation, leaving no fallow land at any time of year. Thus, along with the new crops, tools, and new hybrid breeds of livestock brought and end to working the land in common. The land was now privatized and enclosed forcing many people off the only land they ever knew. Now people had to work for a wage economy. Where before they barely had enough sustenance to live on. Now working for wages they had even less.
The implications of this for the small farmer and women were great. They now found themselves having to travel to distant towns to work for meager wages. Single women or widowed women had the worst of it. They were no longer held in high esteem, and were competing with the men for what few jobs there were. The women had to rely on parishes or what they and their children could steal from the now enclosed land. This thrusting laboring women into a unflattering and often damaging limelight. The hard circumstances of their lives contributed to the deterioration of their public image
Being of this poverty level these deserted women and girls did what was necessary to survive, as would anyone in their situation. The women of this era suffered greatly acts of suppression and discrimination. They at one time were thought of as great assets to the economy, but now they are thought of as a burden to the economy as well as to society.
Industrialization had a very big impact on women's roles in the work force. Women prior to the industrial revolution were central in the textile, and cheese making industry. New technology and capitalistic organization removed women from the primary role in production and deprived them of an accessible source of income. So women in need of an income were subject to take low paying jobs in order to make a "living wage." By the 1830's the popular notion was that a women's place was in the home, away from the factories where women who worked there were thought of as less morale with an absence of grace and feminine manners. This put women in a very poor light.
Since the factories had moved into a mode of efficiency and profit they needed a cheap work force that didn't cause a lot of problems. Women and children were a perfect match because they were thought of as docile and "naturally subordinate." Women did a lot of hard work without complaint, without being offered the same upward mobility. Women were also more "easily induced to undergo severe bodily fatigue than men." Women clearly thought they had no choice but to comply. Unlike their male counter parts they seldom questioned the factory managers orders, and were much less likely to join unions. The employers of the factories did not believe women needed to be paid as much money as men for several reasons. Employers assumed that they were dependent upon a household that was headed by a male and therefore did not depend on her wages for subsistence. Women were usually paid by piece rate, making their earnings more irregular than the flat rates of men. Female labor was not rewarded with high rates of pay or favorable working conditions. Gender determined not only the jobs women could find and the pay they received, but also their prospects for advancement possibilities within the system.
Not all working women were factory workers but factory workers influenced all working women. The public opinion during the age of the factory played a big part in shaping the future for women. The factory female acquired a reputation as a "fallen creature disposed to indecency." Some of the detrimental effects that industrialization had on women's reputation are summed up here
"..immodesty brought about by wearing scanty clothing because of the heat, precocious sexual development, fondness of drink and stimulants required by fatigue, solitary night travel necessitated by hours of work that lasted into the night, and cravings for excitement created by long hours of monotonous work."(Valenze, pg.99)
It is easy to see that women were in a sort of spiral every action had a reaction, they needed to work to survive, but to work meant to abandon their grace and feminine manners, they had no delicacy of figure, no retiring bashfulness. To one member of parliament commissioner his opinion was that "the race of women" found in industrial areas was on the decline. However the only reason the critique of a factory girl can be made was because there was a model of women of higher class to compare the two too.
It was a difficult time during the industrial revolution in England for the women working in the factories. Women had many obstacles put in front of them and were treated quite unfairly compared to today's standards. The women did what they could to survive, they however were not given equal treatment and this caused the downward spiral of society and the reputation of the factory girl.
During the industrial revolution women found themselves in a declining status. They up to this point had been able to do spinning in the home to supplement their household needs. Then came mechanization of the spinning wheels in which the women found herself unable to compete. She then was forced to find alternate means of earning wages. The cottage industry was readily available to women. The compatibility between the needs of women and those of merchant manufactures led to an auspicious marriage of convenience. Their was an abundant supply of unemployed women who became an exploitable pool of cheap labor. The cottage industry became associated with impoverished circumstances, and women earned criticism not praise, for engaging in such work. To survive women had to adapt to these new found situations and fight back or resist against these movements.
Women showed a remarkable capacity for self-exploitation, adapting to any condition or level of payment.
"Occasionally this adaption of the organization of familial work to the conditions of survival went even further. It could lead to the reversal of traditional roles: where the necessities of production compelled women to neglect household æduties,' this æloss of function' could be compensated by the men's assuming traditional women's roles... It was here that æ men....cook, sweep, milk the cows, in order never to disturb the good diligent wife in her work."(Valenze p. 115)
This is said to have led to the decline of the moral of the family and society. The dual impact of the public perception of degradation and economic fluctuations trapped women in cottage industries. Exploiting these factors were the middleman, who made considerable profits at the expense of the country women. He would not pay her what it was worth and sometimes paid in candles and bread, this almost always worked to the disadvantage of the worker, it gave them less flexibility to obtain food and materials they needed. The system that evolved because of technology multiplied the number of middlemen, who would put out the work. Thus developing many levels from worker to buyer reducing the price paid to the worker greatly.
There was a case in 1842 of lace runners organizing to protest against the unfair practices in distribution and payment. Here lace runners attempt to gain support from the "male portion of society" they failed. Most industry was unregulated, and most regulations were not enforced. So once again the cottage industry looks better and better. They could escape the controls of factories and factory towns because the cottage industry was off the beaten path. Independent cottagers were free to express dissatisfaction with economic and legal injustices. These according to E.P. Thomson " these people where the ones that populated the crowds of protesters and rioters in the eighteenth century. The workers in the cottage industry were also able to enjoy more freedom in their social and sexual behavior. Thus allowing marriages at a younger and younger age, increasing the children born, to help out around the house later.
Even the women that were not married were able to make enough to survive and sometimes would live with other women to supplement their earnings. While enhancing the power of women within the laboring community, women's work in cottage industry also may have propelled women into situations where political and social struggles were taking place. In 1835 for example, the introduction of the controversial New Poor Law at Ampthill, an imposing crowd of women mobbed the new relieving officer as he arrived at the village, vowing "they would not have bread instead of money." The Methodist sectarianism offered cottagers the opportunity to form domestic based religious societies that defended people against economic insecurity and hardship.
Women began being pushed out of the "public sphere" around the mid nineteenth century. To combat this they started to work in factories even though they were not paid properly. Then the men decided those jobs should be for them pushing women out once again. Thus women had to find a way to offset their income. They then became pawns in the cottage industry in which they were able to make some progress and stability by joining the Methodist sects. "Women never gained the entrance to high-paying jobs occupied by men but instead, moved into wholly new positions, at low wages, created by changes in technology."(Valenze p.127)
Working-class women of the 1800's were made up of domestic services. By being of a working-class status this allowed relations of deference and subordination between women of different classes. Domestic working women were thought of as a nonproductive activity. Mistresses and masters demanded obedience, deference, and respect in return for wages, room and board. Drawing authority from their superior social class, employers were allowed by law to beat or dismiss servants at will for infractions of household rules or disobeying orders. They simply dictated the terms of the social and sexual lives of their servants and did their best to enforce them. With these ideas and the loss of jobs for working-class women to do they found themselves once again looked upon in a negative and bad light. Socialism, the idea of community interest was slowly being replaced by liberalism the idea of self interest. Even the middle class women reinforced the idea of liberalism to by setting the example of not working. This led to conflicts between the working-class and the middle class that only served to widen the gap between them. The history of domestic service is full of such contradictions..
The trend for hiring servants to maintain a particular style of life became apparent among the middle and lower ranks at the end of the eighteenth century. The wealthier wives of tradesman and farmers began to express distaste for the hard labor of housewifery and affix greater value to having many "maid servants." By the 1830's, domestic service was on a grand scale. A substantial middle class, largely urban and professional, cultivated a domestic life that required the constant attendance of menials. The expansion of industry and commerce boosted even larger numbers of people to higher levels of security and comfort. Though not every middle class family employed a servant, many did. The rise of domestic service "favored female rather than male servants" because of the nature of the new standards of housekeeping that accompanied the increasing wealth of the middle class in the eighteenth century. Household and personal cleanliness, caring for the details of domestic furnishing, and waiting on the needs of others were subordinate tasks often requiring meticulousness. Generating its own hierarchy, the work required the woman of greater means acting as supervisor over one or more lower-class servants. Her leisure became a measure of her gentility and servants likewise a measure of her wealth. The hierarchy absolutely depended on the denigration of household tasks as unbefitting a true lady. These developments make the relationship between mistress and maid one of the most revealing employer-worker relations in the nineteenth century.
The fact that a servant's duties involved her in maintaining the mistress in personal ways were significant. The commonalities of female identity created a special rapport between mistress and maid, functioning as a "bridging occupation," domestic service facilitated the dissemination of middle-class values throughout the working class, while acquainting the middle class with working class ways. Female servants have then been cast into the role of conciliators between classes, particularly as they appeared to demonstrate a conservative, individualists outlook in their struggle for upward mobility. Although this may not be the case in all situations since the wielding of power can have its own consequences. The occupation of service appears fraught with tensions and conflict. The right to exercise power appears to have signified a great deal to women on both sides of the divide. For the mistresses it became important not to relinquish"old- fashioned" terms of employment that demanded childlike subordination and loyalty from servants. For servants, judging from the outcry against their growing demands for æIndependence," few relished the degree of self-effacement demanded by their position. The domestic context probably accentuated any differences of wealth and power between women. Far from uniting mistresses and servants under the banners of domesticity and womanhood, the ideals of Victorianism drove them apart.
In the nineteenth-century contest between mistress and maid, the middle-class woman forced the surrender of her working-class servant. The working class women was no longer seen as productive, she was defined by subordination. Servants were cast as petty thieves and lazy lay-abouts, and they were generally believed to be self-serving and scheming. Since the working-class women were looking out for themselves only they started to outfox their employers. According to the standard script servant:
"delighted in bamboozling" masters and mistresses, who were repeatedly outwitted by an inexhaustible store of cunning."(Rowland p.167)
Middle-class women made domestic service a vehicle for the expression of class consciousness and, more to the point, class antagonism. To the servant, the more prosperous middle-class woman owed her independence, or at least her freedom from manual labor. Yet required as she was to live with this visitor from another class, she could hardly tolerate her.
Mistresses viewed servant girls across a chasm of class difference. Lower-class people were closer to nature and less pure and clean than the more civilized middle-class. Female servants suffered from the double stigma of gender and class, and the effect was a foreignness approaching racial difference. The framework of Victorian sexuality subjected lower-class women to inferior status from every point of view.
Given the decline in the working girls status, public opinion regarded domestic service as a solution to the problem of working-class women. Domestic service facilitated the training of skills in household maintenance, while getting proper female behavior through discipline and training. The domestic relations between mistresses and servants reveal the importance of class difference between women in industrial England. Some of these ideas we still see in effect today. Like the idea of women's work being in the home and of a domestic nature. Liberalism helped create the idea for the middle-class to liberate themselves from doing the household chores, by giving them to the working-class which in turn took those ideas of liberalism for themselves to the current place in history.
