"Those who don't make mistakes don't make
anything."
More than a century after its first publication, The Working
Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century remains one of the most important
studies ever written on women's labour in early modern England. First published
in 1919, the book pioneered an attempt to reconstruct the economic lives of
ordinary women through careful examination of archival sources. It challenged
the prevailing assumption that women were static and largely insignificant in
historical development, arguing instead that changes in women's productive role
were central to understanding broader social transformation.
If modern historians now take the study of women's work for
granted, it is largely because scholars such as Alice Clark helped establish it
as a legitimate field of enquiry. Her book deserves its status as a classic not
merely because it was among the first serious investigations of women's
economic activity, but because its central arguments continue to provoke debate
among historians of gender, labour and capitalism.
Alice Clark: Industrialist, Suffragist and Historian
At first sight, Alice Clark seems an unlikely pioneer of
women's history. Born in 1874 into the wealthy Quaker family that controlled
the Somerset shoe firm C. & J. Clark, she did not follow the conventional
route into academic life. Poor health interrupted her education, and she spent
much of her adult life working in the family business, eventually becoming a
director when the firm incorporated in 1904.
The Clark family combined commercial success with a
tradition of social reform. As Quakers, they supported a variety of progressive
causes and were active in educational, philanthropic and political campaigns.
The family was deeply involved in the women's suffrage movement. Clark herself
served as secretary of the Street Women's Liberal Association, joined the
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, helped establish the Friends
League for Women's Suffrage, and became a prominent figure in the campaign for
female enfranchisement.
Her historical career began relatively late in life. After
prolonged illness, she moved to London. She took up serious historical
research, obtaining a Shaw Research Studentship at the London School of
Economics in 1913 under the supervision of the economic historian Lilian
Knowles. Despite lacking a conventional university education, she quickly
became a formidable researcher.
The result of this research was The Working Life of Women in
the Seventeenth Century, published in 1919. The book immediately distinguished
itself through the breadth of its evidence and the originality of its argument.
A Revolutionary Approach to Women's History
Clark's work is remarkable for the seriousness with which
she treated ordinary women's labour. Writing at a time when political history
dominated historical scholarship, Clark argued that understanding the
conditions under which women lived and worked was essential to understanding
social development as a whole. She rejected any notion that women were merely
passive participants in history. Instead, she sought to reconstruct their place
within society's economic organisation.
Her archival research was exceptional in scope. Clark drew
upon letters, diaries, household accounts, guild records, apprenticeship
registers, Quarter Sessions records, poor relief documents, municipal archives,
tax returns and court proceedings. These sources let her move beyond the lives
of elite women and examine the experiences of farmers' wives, artisans, widows,
servants, and wage earners.
Today this approach appears familiar. In 1919 it was
extraordinary. Many of the techniques later associated with social history and
"history from below" can already be found in Clark's work. Long
before these approaches became fashionable, she tried to recover the
experiences of those who rarely appeared in traditional political narratives. Her
focus on women made her achievement all the more remarkable.
Capitalism and the Transformation of Women's Work
The book's central argument concerns the relationship
between economic development and women's position in society. Clark believed
that women in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries held a more
significant place in the productive economy than they would later. In
agricultural households, workshops and family enterprises, women contributed
directly to production. Economic activity centred on the household, and women
took part in numerous tasks essential to family survival.
As economic organisation changed, however, Clark argued that
women's productive role increasingly diminished. The movement of work away from
the household, the expansion of commercial production and the growth of
capitalist relations altered the balance between men and women. Labour became
more specialised and increasingly organised outside the home. Men came to
dominate many occupations women had previously shared, while women's work
increasingly became confined to lower-paid or unpaid domestic labour.
Clark's interpretation was controversial when it appeared
and remains controversial today. Modern historians have challenged portions of
her chronology and questioned whether she exaggerated the degree of female
independence in earlier periods. Some developments she associated with the
seventeenth century may have become more significant during the eighteenth
century. Other scholars argue that market-oriented production was already
widespread before the transformations she described. Nevertheless, even critics
acknowledge the book's enormous importance in placing women's labour at the
centre of historical analysis.
Class and the Working Woman
One of the most enduring strengths of Clark's work is its
attention to class differentiation. She understood that women experienced
economic change differently depending on their social position. Wealthy women,
farmers' wives and wage-earning labourers lived under very different
circumstances. Rather than creating a single category called "women,"
Clark examined how economic developments affected different social strata.
This class focus distinguished her work from many later
studies that concentrated primarily on ideology, representation, or discourse.
Clark never lost sight of the material conditions shaping women's lives. Her
discussion of poverty remains among the book's most powerful sections. Drawing
upon parish and legal records, she documented the devastating effects of low
wages, poor housing and undernourishment upon working-class families.
Particularly striking is her argument that the suffering of wage-earning women
had catastrophic consequences for child survival and health.
In one memorable passage, she noted that the extreme
mortality experienced by labouring families was not the result of excessive
female employment, as many contemporary commentators claimed, but rather of
poverty itself. Women worked under conditions of chronic deprivation that
undermined both their own health and that of their children. These observations
gave the book a powerful humanitarian dimension and linked economic history to
broader questions of social justice.
The Limits of Clark's Analysis
Recognising the achievements of Clark's work does not
require accepting all its conclusions. Her understanding of capitalism was
imprecise by modern standards. She used the term broadly, encompassing both
traditional landed elites and families enriched through trade and commerce. She
offered no systematic analysis of capitalism as a social relation or mode of
production. Indeed, she openly acknowledged the difficulty of defining the
term. The book's conceptual framework therefore lacks the theoretical precision
later historians would bring to similar questions.
Nor was Clark a Marxist. Although her account frequently
criticises the consequences of capitalist development, her perspective emerged
primarily from Quaker social reform, Liberal feminism, and the traditions of
economic history. She sought to explain how economic changes affected women's
lives rather than advance a revolutionary critique of capitalism.
Nevertheless, the book contains a persistent scepticism
towards the assumption that economic modernisation automatically produced
social progress. Clark recognised that wealth and commerce could grow alongside
new forms of inequality, dependency, and hardship. In this respect, her work remains
relevant.
Enduring Significance
The centenary celebrations marking the publication of The
Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century demonstrated the esteem in
which historians continue to hold it. Scholars of gender, labour and early
modern England still return to Clark's work, not because every argument remains
valid, but because she identified questions that continue to shape historical
debate.
Her achievement was considerable. Without formal academic
training, she produced a scholarly work of remarkable breadth and
sophistication. She challenged prevailing assumptions about women, pioneered
the use of neglected sources and insisted that ordinary people's lives deserved
serious historical attention.
If portions of her interpretation have been superseded, the
book's wider contribution remains secure. Clark demonstrated that women's
labour was not marginal to historical development but central to it. In doing
so, she helped lay the foundations for generations of subsequent research.
More than a hundred years after its publication, her study
remains essential reading for anyone interested in women's history, social
history, labour history, or the transition from early modern to modern society.
Few historical works can claim such influence. Fewer still can claim to have
helped create an entire field of study. Alice Clark's great book did both.
