The chapters in this volume are bound together around essential questions about what it meant to be urban and single in early modern Europe. In what ways did economic, social and cultural factors at different times and places impact on the experience of single life? What opportunities and constraints did single people face in the city? How did gender interact with marital status? To address these issues, the collection spans a variety of urban settings in the Low Countries, England, Scotland, Sweden and France. The chapters are peopled with all sorts, from the lowest rungs of society to those of aristocratic birth; and range from case studies on individuals and groups to more comprehensive profiles of single populations in towns. One of the strongest contributions of the collection as a whole is the diversity of the experience of single life defined within its pages.
The introductory comments from Ariadne Schmidt, Isabelle Devos and Bruno Blondé provide solid context, reviewing the evidence for high proportions of single people in urban populations until the mid-nineteenth century. They pull together the many threads that run through the following essays, drawing out comparative refrains across the core themes of: constraints and opportunities; group experience and particularities; and home and material culture. At the heart of the collection is a commitment to problematising definitions of singleness by unpacking how distinctions based on geographical location, legal differences, age, gender, living arrangements and socio-economic standing nuanced what it meant to be single in the city.
The first section of the book addresses the image of ‘vulnerable singleness’ (p. 1) that pervades much of the historiography and contemporary literature, particularly on women. The chapters affirm the harsh poverty that could be associated with single status but also move beyond it, demonstrating economic agency in a range of circumstances. Peter Stabel's analysis of the labour market in Late Medieval Flanders suggests that the development of guilds, rather than demographic change associated with the Black Death, was the most significant factor in narrowing single women's options for making a living, because marriage and households became the key contexts for production. Juxtaposed with this is Anne Montenach's study of single women's practical negotiation of guild-controlled economies in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Lyon, Grenoble and Briançon. Using examples including salt and calico smuggling, she demonstrates the blurring of boundaries between the formal and informal economy and the complex relationships between corporations and non-guild workers. These chapters highlight the ways that urban structures and institutions could act to present opportunity and impose limitations.
Dag Lindström's piece probes the urban context further. His study of four Swedish towns from 1750 to 1855 demonstrates that although there were usually higher rates of single people in urban areas compared to rural locations, the differences between towns is important. He finds that rapid industrialisation attracted single people, but that different groups led vastly different lives. Wendy Gordon narrows in on how single marital status affected the experience of poverty by analysing poor relief applications from the Scottish town of Paisley in the mid-nineteenth century. She finds that single people had different coping strategies to married people and a greater flexibility to choose between the options available to them.
The second section examines how singleness affected specific groups. P. J. P. Goldberg's broad survey of the lives of single men questions whether marital status or gender impacted most on individual circumstances and opportunities, tracing similarities between young single men and women in later medieval England. Kim Overlaet's study, in contrast, focuses in on a case study of the Great Beguinage of St Catherine in the sixteenth century. She argues that the reasons for joining a beguinage were probably linked to women's economic opportunities in the Low Countries, but sincere religious beliefs cannot be discounted as an important motivation. The last contribution to this section expands the focus to women who were married, but living apart from their spouse. Maja Mechant's study of grass-widow prostitutes in eighteenth-century Bruges concludes that about half had not been abandoned, but had made their own decision to end a marriage. She argues that their agency ought to be recognised alongside their vulnerability, and that they chose the most advantageous of the options available.
The last section turns to living arrangements and material culture, integrating experiences of singleness into narratives that have often been based on assumptions about the nuclear household. Inneke Baatsen, Julie de Groot and Isis Sturtewagen's study of living arrangements and material possessions in fifteenth-century Bruges confirms the diversity of single households. While some owned few possessions, there were others with a range and quantity of goods commensurate with the households of married and widowed people. David Hussey and Margaret Ponsonby outline how singles fared in eighteenth-century England, suggesting that wealthier single women fostered a distinctive material culture, utilising their homes for entertaining and consuming new, fashionable goods. Among the less well-off, single females appeared to live in slightly better conditions than single men, whose homes were transient and sparse. Their sample of inventories did not contain examples of wealthy single men, but Jon Stobart's close study of an elite man, Edward, fifth Lord Leigh, in the second half of the eighteenth century, offers one perspective. Stobart argues that inheritance rather than marriage allowed Leigh the financial freedom and impetus to establish a household furnished to his taste. Being unmarried equated to freedom from family influence and guidance, and close family relationships shaped consumption choices.
Taken together, these essays offer a comparative perspective on how singleness was experienced, not only over time and place, but according to a host of other significant variables. The volume provides a wealth of material on single men and women in a wide range of circumstances, and is a very valuable addition to the historiography on single life and urban history.
