What Was The Role Of Girls In A Family Of Artisans?
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Answer:
The text shows that the identity of female artisans was entangled and ambiguous and was ... of her sex (namely her role as wife and mother concerned about the well-being of her family).
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This article focuses on a petition presented by a Turinese artisan to the king asking to be admitted to the guild of button-makers and to take advantage of reduced fees for the mastership. The text shows that the identity of female artisans was entangled and ambiguous and was the result of a stratification of cultural and economic factors. Women were able to negotiate their place in the labor market. On the one hand, the petitioner supported her requests with arguments that explicitly evoked her economic role in the household and made use of typical stereotypes of her sex (namely her role as wife and mother concerned about the well-being of her family). On the other hand, she explained that she invested her dowry in her workshop; therefore she alluded to the risk of wasting her dowry and of becoming “indotata” with the consequent social and economic loss.
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Mots-clés :travail des femmes, dot, économie familiale, suppliques, Italie
Keywords :women work, dowry, household economy, petitions, Italy
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“Angela Maria Negro, wife of Giuseppe Cora, affirms that she has always, for the past twenty-two years up to this day, exercised the craft of making silk and gold buttons, enabling her to support herself and her family, composed of eight children, a responsibility that the Father is unable to assume because he is too poor, earning his living as a servant, which is why the Supplicant was obliged to invest her dowry of 250 lire in the aforementioned button business. However, as she is not permitted to keep shop because she has not produced a masterwork, she must exercise the said craft using the name of a certified worker, whom she must pay exorbitantly for his products, making it impossible for the poor supplicant to provide for her large family when calamity strikes; and so, day after day, the aforementioned dowry has been shrinking; moreover, if she had to produce the masterwork, it would be at great expense, a hundred lire or more. Under such circumstances, therefore, the Supplicant has no other means to prevent the imminent depletion of her assets and to continue to make her living but to turn, as she has in fact done, to Your Majesty, and she was told to provide evidence to justify her claims, and to this effect such justification has been presented, as indicated in the certified documents dated the 16 and 21 March of last year signed by Franco and Pautriero, and upon whose honor and past appeal she prostrates herself again before Your Sacred and Royal Majesty, humbly pleading that His Majesty will, by exercising his special grace, after considering with benevolence the aforementioned circumstances and the unfortunate condition of the poor Supplicant, and her sincere will to earn her living through her labor, deign to exempt her from producing the masterwork required by the Memoriale a capi [statute] of the button manufacturers’ University and if necessary, to make an exception to it as required in this case (…).”
1 Archivio di Stato di Torino, sezioni riunite (henceforth AST, sez. riun.), Consolato di Commercio, (...)
“His Majesty, by an act of grace, in view of the circumstances described and the supplicant’s long experience in the art of making gold, silver, and silk buttons, authorizes the Magistrate of the Consulate to permit her to exercise said craft, after confirming her skill through an oral examination or other test that he deems necessary for her to take, His Majesty having exempted her from the obligation to