Making Marriage Work: Daughters, Wives, and Widows in the Sixteenth Century Parisian Print-Trade (0524115 GODDARD)

Abstract

Philippe Renouard’s 'Répertoire des imprimeurs parisiens' (1898), the most complete repository of sixteenth-century Parisian printers, provides an exceptional opportunity to gain insight into the daughters, wives, and widows of the book-trade and new ways of thinking about labor, marriage, and its intersection both within and without the bounds of domestic space. This thesis seeks to understand the extent of the socio-economic role marriage played in the sixteenth century Parisian print-trade: how might a marriage have influenced a printer's commercial or economic prospects? What might have been the labor expectations for his bride? What kinds of marriages took place in the print-trade? What did the juxtaposition of the household and the professional workshop mean for printer’s wives? With a focus on their social origins, marriages, children, and widowhoods, this study of over four hundred women offers a series of new statistics to view both the trade and the women in it from a new perspective. Ultimately, it argues for a reconsideration of marriage with an emphasis on its labor aspects and the specific social, labor, and economic capital possessed by printers’ wives.