Labouring Bodies: Gender, Work and Skill in Early Modern England, with Special Reference to Yorkshire, c. 1660-1750

In recent years, historians have drawn attention to the many ways in which our knowledge of women’s work in the early modern period is still lacking. Questions have been asked about how we analyse sources, where we look for evidence of work and the importance of regional studies. Despite this evolving scholarship, I suggest there are still gaps in the scholarship. Namely, in regard to analysing how women’s work was valued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and examining how labour skills were embodied by women. In particular, I take issue with the fact that scholars have overlooked descriptions of skill in contemporary sources. Women’s bodies are at the core of this research. Carnal sociology has shown how the body is affected by social surroundings, and I seek to demonstrate that this can be applied to gendered labour practices and knowledge transfer in the early modern period. With skill embodiment at the crux, this thesis is an original contribution to the scholarship on gender and work in its use of novel methodologies and interpretations. It also examines many hitherto neglected sources from Yorkshire, showing the need to move beyond London and the South in order to fully understand gender and work.