Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 2 (2008), p. 249

Nancy Locklin’s detailed and innovative study of the lives of women in Brittany in the eighteenth century will appeal to a range of readers, including those interested in gender history, local and regional history, legal history and French history. It is ambitious and holistic, attempting to provide, as the introduction tells us, a study of women encompassing ‘their work, their lives, their rights, their tragedies, and their triumphs’ (p.1). Brittany, distinguished from the rest of France by a number of laws and customs, is chosen because it potentially offers a unique regional case-study. Locklin suggests that such an approach can be used to challenge some of the generalizations and models that have defined the history of women (and particularly women’s work) in the last couple of decades.

The book begins with a demographic overview of women in Brittany from childhood to widowhood, utilising as its main source capitation tax rolls. The data will be useful for comparative purposes and throws up some interesting and perhaps unexpected insights. Locklin finds, for example, that a relatively high number of married women kept a separate trade, independent from their husbands, and this enabled them to provide considerable support to their family’s subsistence. The percentage of households headed by unmarried women was surprisingly higher in small towns and villages than the larger cities, probably because of inheritance of property and tenure rather than economic opportunities, which remained limited in rural areas. The next chapter deals in more detail with the complex question of women’s work and identity. It begins with a comprehensive analysis of the position and treatment of women in guilds, and then goes on to look at ‘non-guild’ urban and rural work. Although there were no exclusively female guilds some, such as the tailors’ guild of Quimper, took female members on roughly the same terms as men. In the world of work outside the guilds, the women of Brittany, like most of their European counterparts, were concentrated in a limited number of ‘female’ trades, notably food, clothing and textiles, cleaning and caring. In rural areas peasant women contributed to the family economy through vital but gender-segregated labour, although Locklin struggles to really shed light on this as such women ‘are largely invisible in early modern sources’ (p.71). The strengthening of the sexual division of labour in the textile industry, which dominated much of rural Brittany, is handled in more detail, with an again familiar pattern of female-spinner and male-weaver emerging by the late eighteenth century. Locklin concludes that this position arises as much out of cultural and social assumptions as from biological or patriarchal explanations.

The third chapter analyses the position of women under Breton law and, although beyond the expertise of this reviewer, I thought that in many ways it provided the most compelling material. Locklin argues that a grasp of the range of legal codes and customs that guided women’s lives is necessary to gain a real understanding of their work and identity, and here the focus on Brittany as case-study really reaches fruition. She shows that Breton law gave women certain rights and protection that they simply did not have elsewhere in France, or in other European nations. Partible inheritance was the most important, giving women access to resources on the death of parents. Unmarried women and widows were also allowed to maintain businesses and property, and could make wills or donations that were protected from demands of other heirs or kin. Although Locklin does not deny that patriarchal power was strengthening in the eighteenth century, she shows that Breton women’s unique position in regard to law gave them ‘greater latitude as they negotiated society and the economy’ than women elsewhere were allowed (p.111). Women were also aware of their rights and responsibilities and were able to defend them through recourse to law where necessary. This is illustrated in the final substantive chapter, where women’s social life, friendship networks and codes of honour are explored largely through legal records.

This book is a welcome addition to regional studies of women’s work and lives in early modern Europe. Whilst women in eighteenth-century Brittany endured many of the hardships, impediments and suppositions that were familiar to women in other areas of Europe, in some respects they enjoyed favourable rights and resources, which in turn aided their social and economic position. I would have liked more explicit analysis of how the major findings of the study connect with the key concepts in women’s history (separate spheres, continuity and change, etc.) in the conclusion, but this is undoubtedly an interesting and valuable exploration of the complexity of women’s lives in the past.