The not-so-merry widows of Amsterdam, 1740-1782

Journal of Family History

Volumn 24, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 441-467

  McCants, Anne E C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0033211926     PISSN: 03631990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/036319909902400403     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. 1. Joost van den Vondel, from the poem December (in the series The Twelve Months of the Year) written to accompany a cycle of paintings produced in 1643 by his friend Joachim von Sandrart depicting the months as clearly recognizable personages. Thus, December is the elderly widow whose candle is about to go out. Wayne Franits, Irans., Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press [CUP hereafter], 1993), 168.
2. 2. This trope has long been of interest to the critics of Restoration drama. See, for example, E. Mignon, Crabbed Age and Youth: The Old Men and Women in the Restoration Comedy of Manners (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1947). However, it has only recently been picked up on by social historians. See, in particular, Barbara Todd, "The Remarrying Widow: A Stereotype Reconsidered," in Women in English Society, 1500-1800, edited by Mary Prior (London: Metheun, 1985), 54-92; and Vivien Brodsky, "Widows in Late Elizabethan London: Remarriage, Economic Opportunity and Family Orientations," in The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 122-54.
3. 2. This trope has long been of interest to the critics of Restoration drama. See, for example, E. Mignon, Crabbed Age and Youth: The Old Men and Women in the Restoration Comedy of Manners (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1947). However, it has only recently been picked up on by social historians. See, in particular, Barbara Todd, "The Remarrying Widow: A Stereotype Reconsidered," in Women in English Society, 1500-1800, edited by Mary Prior (London: Metheun, 1985), 54-92; and Vivien Brodsky, "Widows in Late Elizabethan London: Remarriage, Economic Opportunity and Family Orientations," in The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 122-54.
4. 2. This trope has long been of interest to the critics of Restoration drama. See, for example, E. Mignon, Crabbed Age and Youth: The Old Men and Women in the Restoration Comedy of Manners (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1947). However, it has only recently been picked up on by social historians. See, in particular, Barbara Todd, "The Remarrying Widow: A Stereotype Reconsidered," in Women in English Society, 1500-1800, edited by Mary Prior (London: Metheun, 1985), 54-92; and Vivien Brodsky, "Widows in Late Elizabethan London: Remarriage, Economic Opportunity and Family Orientations," in The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 122-54.
5. 3. See Jacob Cat, Houwelyck (Middelburg, the Netherlands, 1625), chap. 6.
6. 4. Pieter Janszoon Twisck, Troost-brief der weduwen (Hoorn, the Netherlands, 1630), 43-44.
7. 5. Erasmus, "De Vidua Christiana" (1529), in The Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 66, by J. T. Roberts (Toronto, 1988), 252.
8. 6. Twisck, Troost-brief, 70. As Franits notes, this passage was quoted almost verbatim from Erasmus, De Kersten Weduwe (Amsterdam, 1607).
9. 6. Twisck, Troost-brief, 70. As Franits notes, this passage was quoted almost verbatim from Erasmus, De Kersten Weduwe (Amsterdam, 1607).
10. 7. Simon Schama has a long discussion of this literature in his The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Knopf, 1987), 402-8.
11. 8. Barbara Todd, "Demographic Determinism and Female Agency: The Remarrying Widow Reconsidered . . . Again," Continuity and Change 9, no. 3 (1994): 429.
12. See also Jeremy Boulton, "London Widowhood Revisited: The Decline of Female Remarriage in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries," Continuity and Change 5, no. 3 (1990): 323-55, which precipitated Todd's response.
13. 9. Francis Douglas, Reflections on Celibacy and Marriage; in Four Letters to a Friend (London: L. Hawes, J. Clark, and J. Collins, 1771). Reprinted in Randolph Trumbach, ed., Marriage, Sex, and the Family in England, 1660-1800 (New York: Garland, 1984), 11.
14. 9. Francis Douglas, Reflections on Celibacy and Marriage; in Four Letters to a Friend (London: L. Hawes, J. Clark, and J. Collins, 1771). Reprinted in Randolph Trumbach, ed., Marriage, Sex, and the Family in England, 1660-1800 (New York: Garland, 1984), 11.
15. 10. See Jan de Vries, European Urbanization, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 186-87. Many of the contributions to the conference volume of the 1979 Kristiansand Colloquium on remarriage reference this phenomenon as well: Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past. Edited by J. Dupaquier et al. (London: Academic Press, 1981).
16. 10. See Jan de Vries, European Urbanization, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 186-87. Many of the contributions to the conference volume of the 1979 Kristiansand Colloquium on remarriage reference this phenomenon as well: Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past. Edited by J. Dupaquier et al. (London: Academic Press, 1981).
17. 11. Indeed, much of the data collected in Appendix B offer only indirect evidence of remarriage rates. However, this evidence is consistent with Barbara Hanawalt's work on sixteenth-century English parish registers, which finds a remarriage rate of 25 to 30 percent for widows. Unfortunately, she did not include male remarriage rates in her study. See Barbara Hanawalt, "Remarriage as an Option for Urban and Rural Widows in Late Medieval England," in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, edited by Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 147.
18. 12. These 914 inventories include 49,920 separate enumerations of household goods, 6,266 separate listings of debts outstanding, 571 credits outstanding, and 950 notations for goods still at pawn (lombard briefjes).
19. 13. Margaret Spufford, "The Limitations of the Probate Inventory," in English Rural Society, 1500-1800, edited by John Chartres and David Keys (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1990), 139-74; and Alice Hanson Jones, Wealth of a Nation to Be (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1980), 141-45.
20. 13. Margaret Spufford, "The Limitations of the Probate Inventory," in English Rural Society, 1500-1800, edited by John Chartres and David Keys (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1990), 139-74; and Alice Hanson Jones, Wealth of a Nation to Be (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1980), 141-45.
21. 14. See de Vries, European Urbanization, 189.
22. 15. One other factor affected the overall sex ratio of the data and that was the higher number of former female orphans to be inventoried than former male orphans. The reasons for this are institutional (and financial) rather than demographic and do not factor into the analysis here of marriage and remarriage. However, this phenomenon speaks as well to the relative disadvantage of women in the early modem economy.
23. 16. Herman Diederiks, Een Stad in Verval. Amsterdam Omstreeks 1800 (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 1982), 92.
24. 17. It should be noted in this context that it is possible to ascertain the precise age of some of the individuals in the larger data set. Some of the deceased orphans who appear in the latter years of the sample can be linked to the deaths of their own parents earlier in the data where they appear as children with a given age (almost always in both years and months). Sixteen former orphans have been so linked, ranging in age at death from eighteen to forty. In addition, many of the individuals who were inventoried because they were relatives of former (or current) orphans were grandparents. For these cases, it would be reasonable to add yet another "life stage" category of "elderly." However, for most of the work presented in this article, the data have been restricted to the parent subset, which precludes the "elderly" grandparents anyway.
25. 18. See M. Drake, "The Remarriage Market in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain," in Dupaquier, 287-96.
26. 19. With the possible exception of those cases where the gap between the children from the first and second marriages is quite narrow, allowing us to infer more precisely the moment of transition. These cases are quite rare, however, and would certainly not be representative.
27. 20. It should be noted however, that the very nature of the probit estimation procedure makes this difference likely. The properties of the cumulative normal function are such that it is much more difficult to generate a given percentage change in the probability of success near one of the extremes of the function than in its middle. Thus, for a subpopulation with a low overall probability of remarriage (as in the case of these women), it will be harder to reduce that probability than for a subpopulation with a higher mean rate of success (as in the case of these men). This fact makes the relative strength of the bar to a remarriage for the woman with additional children all the more significant.
28. 21. Erasmus, De Vidua Christiana, 251.
29. 22. Ibid., 243.
30. 23. Ibid., 242, 244.
31. 24. See Margaret Pelling, "Old Age, Poverty and Disability in Norwich," in Life, Death, and the Elderly, edited by Margaret Pelling and Richard Smith (London: Routledge, 1991), 74-101.
32. 25. It should be noted that lower debts (somewhat counterintuitively) are an indication of lower economic status. This is because bills were only reckoned infrequently in this society, and a large number of debts outstanding at death are thus a good proxy for a large number of economic transactions in the period prior to death. This was especially true for women for whom the correlation between assets and debts outstanding was .7906, while the comparable figure for men was only .4737. See Anne E. C. McCants, "Men, Women, and Debt: Gender and Access to Credit in Eighteenth Century Amsterdam," unpublished working paper.
33. 26. See B. A. Holderness, "Widows in Pre-Industrial Society: An Essay upon Their Economic Functions," in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, edited by Richard Smith (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1984), 423-42.
34. 27. Those widows who did run shops (which can be identified by trade) seem to have been of two types. The first group with more substantial assets were continuing the artisanal trade of their deceased husbands or at least the management of the male laborers in the shop. This group included two bakers, two carpenters, a cobbler, one tin maker, and a glass maker. The second group consisted of less prosperous establishments, which seem to have been the woman's own, including three food shops, a secondhand furniture shop, and a cloth shop. Four other widows can be identified as either seamstresses, thread winders, or spinners, and one final widow was owed wages for taking in washing. The dearth of spinning wheels in this population is surprising. Only 10 inventories out of the total 914 listed this item, most often for married couples. Only 2 widows out of the total 348 had a wheel.
35. 28. See Cissie Fairchilds, "The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris," in Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), 228-48.
36. 29. See, for example, J. A. Faber, "Inhabitants of Amsterdam and Their Possessions," in Probate Inventories: A New Source for the Historical Study of Wealth, Material Culture and Agricultural Development, edited by Ad van der Woude and Anton Schuurman (Utrecht, the Netherlands: Afdeling Agrarische Geschiedenis, 1980), 149-55.
37. 30. Erasmus, De Vidua Christiana, 248.
38. 31. See James Riley, "That Your Widows May Be Rich," Economisch-en-Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek 45 (1982): 58-76.
39. 32. See Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1997), 76-77.