Women as Providers of Labor

Early modern women functioned within a surprising number of areas across the actual labor market, whether in official or unofficial capacities, and some businesses were traditionally run and administered by women. In considering women’s literary work, it is important to examine it within the contexts of the more traditional labor in which women were engaged, not only for the ways in which these experiences are referenced in autobiographies, diaries, letters, and literature, but because the idea of “literary work” was an immersive concept, one that emerged directly from other kinds of labor. The sense of a literary market only came into being when the idea developed that writing was a material entity that could be printed and sold; but, unlike other kinds of created goods that were fabricated by men and women within the traditional guild structure, there was no organization to provide authors with training, formation, guidance, or other kinds of professional support, or to secure social standing for authors within the social hierarchy. Consequently, women’s participation in traditional work eventually led to their employment and acceptance in less conventional occupations. Further, women writers, regardless of social status, seem to have sought recognition of their writing by aligning it with traditional kinds of labor. One key example, Isabella Whitney (fl. 1567–73), the author of A Sweet Nosgay (1573), broke new ground by defining her published poetry as a kind of “work” for which wages were due.