Wiesner, Women and Gender, 51-134.
Chapter 2
Identify: foundling hospital, Mary Magdalene, churching, wet nurse, dowry, patrilineality
1. Throughout Chapter 2, Wiesner identifies several debates that have divided and continue to divide historians. What are these debates? Does Wiesner take sides in these debates? Do you?
2. How have the implications of their life cycle remained the same or changed for women?
3. What effect did incorrect assumptions about female sexuality have on early modern ideas about women and on the experiences of early modern women?
4. When did early modern women know they were pregnant? What options did unmarried pregnant women have? Which options did they more commonly exercise?
5. Wiesner investigates how women "deviated from accepted norms of behaviour" (59). What are were the "somewhat contradictory attitudes" (71) toward same sex relationships between women?
6. When did women get married? What value was placed on marriage? Why did some women not marry?
7. How did women experience childbirth? How did they prepare for it? What was the typical setting for childbirth? What was the role of midwives? What happened after childbirth?
8. What problems and opportunities did widowhood present for women?
9. When did women become "old"? What were the challenges and popular views of old age?
Chapter 3
10. How did gender effect work identity and concepts of work? How was women's work "both marginal and irreplaceable" (106)?
11. What sort of work did women perform in rural areas? What economic disparities did they experience? Did gender difference have an effect on rural work?
12. How were women employed or self-employed in towns or cities? What economic disparities did they experience? Did gender difference have an effect on urban work?
13. How did towns and cities regulate prostitution?
14. What role did women play in guilds? Why were they eventually excluded from guilds?
15. Did capitalism "expand or shrink" women's "opportunities for active investment and management of property? How did capitalism shape their purchasing, and how, conversely, did gender differences in consumption shape trade and production?" (129).
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