Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France

by Daryl M. Hafter

"In the eighteenth century, French women were active in a wide range of employments--from printmaking to running whole-sale businesses--although social and legal structures frequently limited their capacity to work independently. The contributors to Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France reveal how women at all levels of society negotiated these structures with determination and ingenuity in order to provide for themselves and their families. Recent historiography on women and work in eighteenth-century France has focused on the model of the "family economy," in which women's work...