Curious Femme

Introduction

The medieval period (c. 1100–1500) provides the earliest substantial records of single women’s participation in economic life. Unlike married women, who were legally subsumed under the doctrine of coverture, unmarried women, whether never married or widowed, retained the status of feme sole, which granted them legal independence. They could hold property, sue and be sued, and enter contracts in their own name. This autonomy allowed single women to play active roles in markets, trade, and credit. Yet cultural suspicion and institutional exclusion limited their opportunities. This chapter explores these dynamics, focusing on brewing, textiles, retail, and religious communities.

Legal Status: Feme Sole and Feme Covert

Under English common law, an unmarried woman was recognised as a full legal person. She could appear in court, enter into contracts, and control property. By contrast, a married woman (feme covert) lost her legal identity upon marriage; her assets, wages, and contractual capacity were transferred to her husband (Erickson, 1993). The distinction meant that singleness, paradoxically, conferred greater legal independence than marriage. Widows, in particular, could inherit their husband’s tools, premises, or property rights, placing them in stronger economic positions than never-married women.

However, legal autonomy did not equate to equality. Single women were still excluded from voting rights, many guild offices, and most forms of civic authority. Their economic activities were therefore shaped both by the opportunities of feme sole status and the constraints of patriarchy (Beattie, 2007).

Brewing and Victualling

Brewing was one of the most important trades dominated by women in medieval England. Small-scale ale production was often carried out by widows and unmarried women working from their households. Bennett (1996) demonstrates that before 1350, women were the majority of ale-brewers, selling directly to neighbours and travellers. In some towns, as many as two-thirds of brewers were female.

Brewing required relatively little capital investment and could be combined with domestic responsibilities, making it accessible to single women. Yet by the late fourteenth century, the trade underwent commercialisation. Larger-scale production, stricter licensing under the Assize of Ale, and guild regulation increasingly pushed women out. While women had pioneered the trade, men consolidated control as brewing became more profitable (Bennett, 1996).

The decline of female brewers illustrates a recurrent pattern. Women, particularly singlewomen, dominated low-capital trades but were displaced as sectors became institutionalised and capital-intensive.

Textiles and the London Silkwomen

The textile sector provided another major sphere of employment for single women. In fifteenth-century London, silkwomen organised workshops producing luxury goods such as embroidered vestments and fine cloth. Dale (1998) shows that many were widows or never-married women who ran businesses, employed apprentices, and supplied elite clients. They left wills detailing inventories of goods and tools, proving that they managed wealth as independent economic actors.

The silkwomen’s success depended on female skill networks and elite patronage. Yet their lack of a formal guild left them institutionally vulnerable. By the sixteenth century, men in mercers’ companies increasingly monopolised luxury textiles, echoing the earlier displacement of women from brewing.

Retail, Markets, and Credit

Unmarried women also played prominent roles in petty retail. Market records show singlewomen fined for selling food with false weights, evidence that they were active participants in the everyday economy (Hanawalt, 1993). Fishmongering, dairy sales, and candle-making were common trades for singlewomen.

Goddard (2019) highlights that single women also appeared frequently in debt litigation as both creditors and debtors. This indicates their integration into neighbourhood credit systems, where trust and reputation functioned as collateral. For women without marriage ties, financial credibility was fragile, but many nonetheless sustained viable enterprises.

Religious Communities: The Beguines

On the European continent, beguine communities offered unmarried women collective economic and spiritual independence. Beguines were lay religious women who did not take permanent vows but lived communally, supporting themselves through weaving, nursing, and retail. Newman (2016) shows that Parisian beguines owned shops and properties, managed collective workshops, and provided healthcare services.

England lacked strong beguine traditions, but the continental example demonstrates how unmarried women could pool resources to overcome individual vulnerabilities. Communal structures mitigated the risks of credit, reputation, and poverty that single women faced alone.

Constraints and Limitations

Despite their legal personhood, unmarried women faced significant constraints:

• Guild exclusion: Many craft guilds restricted membership to men or admitted women only as widows continuing their husband’s trade (Kowaleski and Goldberg, 1989).
• Regulatory bias: Licensing regimes such as the Assize of Ale disproportionately targeted women brewers, burdening them with fines and surveillance (Bennett, 1996).
• Moral suspicion: The category of “singlewoman” often carried connotations of sexual disorder or poverty, making credit and respectability fragile (Beattie, 2007).

These factors limited single women’s ability to scale their businesses or accumulate wealth across generations.

Critical Evaluation

The medieval economy reveals both the possibilities and vulnerabilities of single women’s enterprise. As feme soles, they were legally autonomous in ways that wives were not. They brewed ale, ran textile workshops, managed shops, and participated in credit systems. Yet their gains were fragile, as sectors shifted towards guild regulation and capital accumulation.

Historians must therefore resist two extremes: portraying singlewomen as marginal or exceptional, and romanticising them as proto-feminist entrepreneurs. The evidence suggests they were integral yet precarious actors in medieval commerce, structurally present but persistently vulnerable to exclusion.

Conclusion

Medieval singlewomen were neither invisible nor anomalous. They contributed substantially to brewing, textiles, retail, and communal economies. Their autonomy derived from their legal status as feme soles, but their opportunities were curtailed by patriarchal regulation, moral suspicion, and institutional exclusion. The paradox of autonomy and constraint established in this period would shape the trajectory of single women’s history for centuries to come.

References (Harvard style)

• Beattie, C. (2007) Medieval Single Women: The Politics of Social Classification in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bennett, J.M. (1996) Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dale, M.K. (1998) ‘The London silkwomen of the fifteenth century’, The Ricardian, 10(133), pp. 1–18.
• Goddard, R. (2019) ‘Female merchants? Women, debt, and trade in later medieval England c. 1300–c. 1500’, Journal of British Studies, 58(4), pp. 683–708.
• Hanawalt, B.A. (1993) Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kowaleski, M. and Goldberg, P.J.P. (1989) ‘Crafts, gilds, and women in the Middle Ages: fifty years after Marian K. Dale’, Signs, 14(2), pp. 474–488.
• Newman, B. (2016) The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.