Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #6 – Stuard 1999; #7 - Karras 1999

(I explain the LHMP here.)

In order to get a little ahead of myself, I busily scribbled notes on the next five articles from Singlewomen, however I was a bit too clever and was taking notes using my Livescribe pen and app, which is supposed to automatically transcribe my handwritten notes into e-text. But I got bogged down with trying to transfer the files from my iPhone (which syncs with the pen) to my iPad (which is one model to old to sync directly, but is better for doing the recognition and editing). So to get my entry posted before midnight, I'm skipping ahead a couple articles to cover two very short entries. They're short because the content is mostly irrelevant to my purposes, but I decided to include the entire contents of the collection anyway given that most of the articles have at least some relevant content.

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Stuard, Susan Mosher. 1999. “Single by Law and Custom” in Bennett, Judith M. & Amy M. Froide eds.  Singlewomen in the European Past 1250-1800.  University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.  ISBN  0-8122-1668-7

Included for completeness’ sake as the collection in general is relevant. However as this article concerns itself with women who are “single” due to slavery, it provides essentially no useful information relevant to economic and social independence.

The article looks at enslaved women as an “unmarried” class. Some did marry, but in general their legal status made them undesirable as wives. There was some persistence of slavery from classical times, particularly in the Mediterranean region, which increased in the late 13th century as gains by the propertied classes created a need/desire for additional household servants. These were overwhelmingly women (90%) and young, typically from the Crimea and Balken areas up to the 15th century. After that, increasingly from Africa (both northern and sub-Saharan). After 1500 slavery expanded greatly into the New World.

Keywords: none

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Karras, Ruth Mazo. 1999. “Sex and the Singlewoman” in Bennett, Judith M. & Amy M. Froide eds.  Singlewomen in the European Past 1250-1800.  University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.  ISBN  0-8122-1668-7

Included for completeness’ sake as the collection in general is relevant. However as this article concerns itself with the heterosexual activities of singlewomen it has little relevance to the project.

Women who did not fit the categories of virgin, wife, or widow were labeled prostitutes regardless of the nature of their sexual activity (i.e., whether commercial or not). This label was not typically applied to sexual activity between women unless a male role were being assumed/usurped, e.g., with “devices”. The article only mentions lesbian activity to exclude it from the following discussion.

Keywords: sex