Abstract
The history of single people, be they divorced, widowed or never married, has rarely been considered a happy one. Until the late twentieth century, the single status was not a desirable state in most cases. In a society that expected everyone to marry, singles were stigmatised, marginalised and had a hard time making ends meet. This image of vulnerable singleness dominates the historiography and permeates all early modern and nineteenth-century literature. In Jane Austen’s work, for instance, a woman with no fortune could not hope to survive if she did not have a husband. This is in sharp contrast to the image in contemporary mainstream culture and media. Fiction and films, such as “Bridget Jones” or television series like “Ally McBeal” that emphasise the singleness of the main characters, depict unmarried women, and to a lesser extent men, living in trendy cities, making their own money, answering to no one and living life to the fullest. The sitcom “Sex and the City” especially celebrates the urban single lifestyle. In their representation of empowered, confident singles, these series, which invaded our screens in the late 1990s, are indicative of how the status of singles has changed over the years.1
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Notes
These studies tend to concentrate on early modern women especially. For England: Amy Froide, Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
Bridget Hill, Women Alone: Spinsters in England, 1660–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)
Pamela Sharpe, “Dealing with Love: The Ambiguous Independence of the Single Woman in Early Modern England”, Gender & History 11:2 (1999), 202–32
Christine Peters, “Singlewomen in Early Modern England: Attitudes and Expectations”, Continuity and Change, 12:3 (1997): 325–45
Olwen Hufton “Women Without Men: Widows and Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century”, Journal of Family History, 9 (1981), 355–76
Judith Bennett and Amy Froide, eds, Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).
Betsy Israel, Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century (New York: HarperCollins, 2002)
Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780–1840 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)
Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850–1920 (London: Virago Press, 1985).
Silvia Evangelisti, Margareth Lanzinger and Raffaella Sarti, and an edited volume by Lanzinger and Sarti, Nubili e celibi tra scelta e costrizione (secoli XVI-XLX) (Udine: Forum, 2006).
Geneviève Guilpain, Les célibataires, des femmes singulières. Le célibat féminin en France (XVIIe-XXIe siècle) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012)
Jean Claude Bologne, Histoire du célibat et des célibataires (Paris: Fayard, 2004)
Catherine Dollard, The Surplus Woman: Unmarried in Imperial Germany 1871–1918 (New York/ London: Berghahn Books, 2009)
Eric Klinenberg, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (New York: Penguin Press, 2013), 11
John Hajnal, “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective”, in D.V. Glass and D.E.C. Eversley (eds), Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography (London: Arnold, 1965), 101–43.
This trend is quite pronounced, although its strength varied from region to region. On average, the age at marriage in western Europe fluctuated during the early modern period between 26 and 28 years for brides, and 28 and 31 years for grooms. Isabelle Devos and Liam Kennedy, eds, Marriage and Rural Economy: Western Europe since 1400 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999).
Katherine Lynch, “The European Marriage Pattern in the Cities: Variations on a Theme by Hajnal”, Journal of Family History, 16:1 (1991), 83.
Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 75
Dykstra and Poortman examined the impact of economic resources on the likelihood of remaining single in the Netherlands, and found that having many resources resulted in an increased likelihood of partnership formation for men, and a decrease for women. Pearl A. Dykstra and Anne-Rigt Poortman, “Economic Resources and Remaining Single: Trends over Time”, European Sociological Review, 26:3 (2010), 277–90.
Martha Vicinus, “The Single Women: Social Problem or Social Solution?”, Journal of Women’s History, 22:2 (2010), 191–202.
For example, see: John Henderson and Richard Wall, eds, Poor Women and Children in theEuropean Past (London/New York: Routledge, 1994)
Derek Philips, Well-being in Amsterdam’s Golden Age (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008)
Manon van der Heijden, Richard Wall, Ariadne Schmidt, “Broken Families: Economic Resources and Social Networks of Women who Head Families”, Special issue of History of the Family, 12:4 (2007) 224–25
Bruno Blonde, De sociale structuren en economische dynamiek van’ s-Hertogenbosch, 1500–1550 (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 1987) 55–60.
Janine Lanza, From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris: Gender, Economy, and Law (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 116–20
Ariadne Schmidt, Overleven na de dood: weduwen in Leiden in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2001), 146–54.
See for example Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, “Market Wage or Discrimination? The Remuneration of Male and Female Wool Spinners in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic”, Economic History Review, 63 (2010) 165–86
Sandra Cavallo, “Bachelorhood and Masculinity in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy”, European History Quarterly, 38:3 (2008), 375–97.
Silvia Evangelisti, Margareth Lanzinger and Raffaella Sarti, “Introduction”, European History Quarterly, 38:3 (2008), 367.
A recent and worthwhile example is Simonton and Montenach, eds, Female Agency in the Urban Economy: Gender in European Towns, 1640–1830 (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2013).
Ariadne Schmidt, “Women and Guilds: Corporations and Female Labour Market Participation in Early Modern Holland”, Gender and History, 21:1 (2009) 170–189
Beatrice Moring, ed., Female Economic Strategies in the Modern World (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012).
Judith Spicksley “‘Fly with a duck in thy mouth’: Single Women as Sources of Credit in Seventeenth-Century England,” Social History, 32:2 (2007), 187–207
See also the discussions by Martha Vicinus, “The Single Woman: Social Problem or Social Solution?”, Journal of Women’s History, 22:2 (2010), 191–202
Cordelia Beattie, Medieval Single Women: The Politics of Social Classification in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Theo Engelen and Jan Kok, “Permanent Celibacy and Late Maniage in the Netherlands, 1890–1960”, Populaüon-E, 58:1 (2003), 67–96.
Amy Erickson, “The Marital Economy in Comparative Perspective”, in Maria Agren and Amy Louise Erickson (eds), The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain 1400–1900 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 15.
See, for example, Nathalie Le Blanc, Solo: Waarom steeds meer mensen alleen wonen (Antwerpen: Bezige Bij, 2014)
Gretel Van den Broeck, Leven zonder lief: de liefdes van de single (Leuven: Van Halewyck, 2001); and Klinenberg, Solo.
Richard Wall, “Leaving Home and Living Alone: An Historical Perspective”, Population Studies, 43:3 (1989), 372.
Merry Wiesner has found a similar pattern of all-male residencies and male bonding in sixteenth-century Germany. There, it mainly concerned journeymen who showed particular hostility towards working women. When they endangered public order, some city governments even tried to suppress such shared housing arrangements. Merry E. Wiesner, “Wandervögel and Women: Journeymen’s Concept of Masculinity in Early Modern Germany”, Journal of Social History, 24:4 (1991), 767–82.
Peter Laslett, “Family, Kinship and the Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-Industrial Europe: A Consideration of the Nuclear-Hardship Hypothesis”, Continuity and Change, 3 (1988), 153–75.
Myriam Carlier, “Solidariteit of sociale contrôle? De roi van vrienden en magen en buren in een middeleeuwse stad”, in Myriam Carlier, Anke Grève, Walter Prevenier and Peter Stabel (eds), Hart en marge van de stedelijke maatschappij in de late middeleeuwen (Leuven: Garant, 1997), 71–91
Richard Wall, “Beyond the Household: Marriage, Household Formation and the Role of Kin and Neighbours”, International Review of Social History, 44 (1999), 55–67
Katherine Lynch, Individuals, Families and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2001)
Tine De Moor, “Single, Safe and Sony? Explaining the Early Modern Beguine Movement in the Low Countries”, Journal of Family History, 39:3 (2014), 3–21.
Research by Dykstra also indicates that the absence of supportive friendships, rather than simply being single, is an important factor in loneliness: Pearl A. Dykstra, “Loneliness among the Never and Formerly Married: The Importance of Supportive Friendships and a Desire for Independence”, Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 50:5 (1995), 321–29.
Amanda Vickery, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2009), 42–89.
Although Daniel Roche must be credited with having paid a great deal of attention to domestic servants in his ground-breaking account of the changes in material culture among the eighteenth-century residents of Paris: Daniel Roche, Le peuple de Paris. Essai sur la culture populaire au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1981).
Jan De Vries, The Industrious Revolution. Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
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© 2015 Ariadne Schmidt, Isabelle Devos and Bruno Blondé
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Schmidt, A., Devos, I., Blondé, B. (2015). Introduction Single and the City: Men and Women Alone in North-Western European Towns since the Late Middle Ages. In: De Groot, J., Devos, I., Schmidt, A. (eds) Single Life and the City 1200–1900. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137406408_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137406408_1
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