_________________________________________________________________________Swansea University E-Theses Women in the rural society of south-west Wales, c.1780-1870. Thomas, Wilma R How to cite: _________________________________________________________________________ Thomas, Wilma R (2003) Women in the rural society of south-west Wales, c.1780-1870.. thesis, Swansea University. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa42585 Use policy: _________________________________________________________________________ This item is brought to you by Swansea University. Any person downloading material is agreeing to abide by the terms of the repository licence: copies of full text items may be used or reproduced in any format or medium, without prior permission for personal research or study, educational or non-commercial purposes only. The copyright for any work remains with the original author unless otherwise specified. The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder. Permission for multiple reproductions should be obtained from the original author. Authors are personally responsible for adhering to copyright and publisher restrictions when uploading content to the repository. Please link to the metadata record in the Swansea University repository, Cronfa (link given in the citation reference above.) http://www.swansea.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/ris-support/ Women in the Rural Society of south-west Wales, c.1780-1870 Wilma R. Thomas Submitted to the University of Wales in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of History University of Wales Swansea 2003 ProQuest Number: 10805343 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10805343 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 LIBRARY Declaration I declare that this thesis ‘Women in the Rural Society of south-west Wales, c.1780-1870’ is the result of my independent investigation and that all indebtedness to other sources is acknowledged by explicit references in the text or in the notes to the text. I declare further that this thesis has not already been accepted in whole or in part for any degree, and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any other degree. Candidate: Director of Studies: Date: ...........5 . 5 ? . .^v£).£>..3>. Abstract This thesis has sought to fill a gap in Welsh social history in its focusing on women's role and status in rural society. It is claimed, moreover, that the period covered allows us to capture the position of women within the traditional rural economy before the huge changes setting in during the final decades of the nineteenth century, not least the movement of women out of agriculture, and, of many, out of the countryside altogether, worked for the young in particular a profound change in their circumstances. The approach is an overarching one which deliberately seeks to explain the subject from as wide a perspective as possible. As such, it may be open to criticism that insufficient focus is given to certain areas as women’s migration, spinsterhood, old age and to those few privileged females occupying the middling and upper ranks in society. The defence I make in adopting this comprehensive treatment is that it the more easily allows us to perceive the total world inhabited by women and to appreciate their predicament within the larger society. The thesis falls naturally into two sections, namely, first, women's participation in the rural workforce and their material circumstances, and, second, their public responsibilities and recreational pursuits and their private lives. The three chapters in section one cover female employment, women and the domestic economy, and coping with poverty. It will be demonstrated how precarious life was for small farmers' and cottagers' families and the vital role which women played in their continuing survival; of significance here was the fact that young girls were expected to enter farm service and domestic service in order to support themselves. Section two will examine their life outside the sphere of work. This will, firstly, explore their recreation and leisure activities and seek to understand their system of values and beliefs. The discussion will then turn to examining women's public role within the community, and here particular attention will be drawn to their importance as providers of nurture and care and as upholders of the community's morality and enforcers of what they perceived as natural justice. In the second place, the discussion will focus on women's private and domestic lives. The main themes here will cover marriage and sexuality, which exploration will range over aspects like illegitimacy, wife-beating, adultery and infanticide. The overwhelming disadvantaged position of women within matters pertaining to sexuality and private relations will be emphasised. Acknowledgements I wish to record my indebtedness to various institutions and people for their assistance in the preparation of this thesis. In the first place, I would like to thank the members of staff of a number of libraries and record offices for their unfailing assistance and guidance; in particular, I thank those of the National Library of Wales, of the University of Wales Swansea library, and of the Carmarthen and Haverfordwest Record Offices. My greatest debts are to a small number of individuals. To Dr. Jill Lewis and Professor David Howell I owe my thanks for their painstaking supervision of my work at every stage. Mr. Nick Woodward of the History Department and Mr. Brinley Jones, sometime of the Education Department at Swansea, both helped me with identifying and interpreting a number of primary sources. I am indebted, above all, to my husband, Alun, my children, Isobel and Roderick, and to my father, for their patience and constant encouragement. Contents Abstract Acknowledgements Relief and Settlement Map of south-west Wales 1 Introduction 2 Part I The Material World 1 Female Employment 17 2 Wives and the Domestic Economy: A Multiplicity of Roles 59 3 Coping with Poverty 101 Part II Public and Private Lives 4 Beliefs, Culture and Sociability 137 5 Public Life, Protest and Popular Politics 172 6 Aspects of Marriage 208 7 A Question of Sex . 243 Epilogue 297 Bibliography 318 I *<d Relief and settlement map of South-West Wales Introduction When a pioneering Deirdre Beddoe focused on the omission of Welsh women from the history books in her paper "Towards a Welsh women's history", published in 1981, she alerted the people of Wales to a wide gap in the country's historiography which urgently needed addressing.1 Certain reasons were forwarded to explain this omission; in a male- dominated society, and with Welsh historians themselves mainly male, there was a bias, however non-conspiratorial and unconscious, towards writing about the history of men.2 That omission, she observed before an audience of Welsh labour historians, extended to Welsh labour history. Her explanation was that like British labour historians in general, those writing of their Welsh experience confined themselves to labour organisation and work, waged labour at that, wherein males enjoyed an overwhelming dominance of numbers and influence. Beddoe was to return to her theme in her chapter entitled "Images of Welsh women", published in 1986. Her opening statement was uncompromising: "Welsh women are culturally invisible. Wales, land of my fathers, is a land of coalminers, rugby players, and male voice choirs. Welsh cultural identity is based almost entirely on the existence of these three main groups." Left out were, she observed, Welsh women, classes other than the working class, and occupational groups outside the industrial sector. In an attempt to explain women's absence, she developed her earlier arguments o f 1981; three powerful factors were at work, namely, "Patriarchy, Capitalism and History".4 By the latter, she meant the tendency of middle-class male historians to select the past deeds of men. Beddoe acknowledged in her 1981 lecture that there were cheering exceptions, not the least in the field of women and labour the rich, recent study of Angela John entitled By the Sweat of their Brow. But these were exceptions, and she concluded by making certain suggestions for Welsh labour historians to follow in undertaking future research: for instance, the notion of the word "labour" should be widened to include all kinds of work, paid and unpaid; again, the existence of working-class "families", as distinct from merely working- class men and their wives, should be acknowledged; and, finally, historians should seek out evidence for women's struggle "wherever it took place".5 In calling for this new approach Beddoe was echoing what had become a rallying call amongst Britain's female historians. During the last few decades of the twentieth century, the popularizing of social history allied with the re-emergence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s and 1970s saw women's history come out from the historical wilderness as a subject worthy of close scrutiny and wider research.6 Heightened female awareness and solidarity spurred a forging of interest in examining women's past lives resulting in their history at last finding its voice. Welsh women's history, as a subject on its own, accordingly came to be addressed with the publication of a number of well-researched and ground-breaking books and papers. Some measure of a female presence also appeared in mainstream social histories.