WIDOWHOOD
At a time when divorce in most European states was unavailable or restricted, for most couples it was the death of a spouse which brought a partnership to an end. Most often it was the woman who was left to manage alone as a consequence of females marrying younger and living longer than men (and widows especially survived their bereavement far longer than widowers).
In France at the end of the century, 43 per cent of all women over the age of 50 were widows. Of those who survived to the age of 70 in 1891, almost 70 per cent had lost a husband.94 Moreover, a widower was more likely to remarry — and remarry quickly often to a younger, single woman — than a widow, partly on account of a man's dependence upon a woman's household labour, but also owing to a widow's lack of physical capital in the marriage market. In the Auffay textile region of France, almost half of widowers remarried after an average of less than two years, whereas 81 per cent of widows never found another marriage partner and lived, on average, another 14 years.95 However, there were some circumstances in which widows were desirable marriage partners. In male-dominated industrial communities where young immigrants outnumbered the available women, it was said that widows were spoilt for choice for a new husband even before the funeral was over. Their skill at household management was an appealing quality to a single working man who needed a woman (and her children) to assist him in his work.96The widow occupies an ambiguous position in European society. She was notionally independent in a world where women were supposed to be dependent. She might have the means to continue her late husband's business in a society in which femininity and business activity were increasingly seen as mutually exclusive. And she may have chosen not to remarry in order to protect her legal status, hold on to her property and her moral authority.97 Studies of widows in early modern Europe underpin this ambiguity: on the one hand they are economically active and engaged in public activity.
They capitalised upon the independence gained from their former marital status. Some did manage to continue in the trades of their husbands, although operating as an independent artisan was difficult owing to guild restrictions. The story of the German-Jewish Glikl bas Judah Leib (Gluckel of Hameln) is a nice example of how a widow could build upon her husband's success in business.98 When her husband died unexpectedly, Glikl assumed control of their business trading pearls and other luxury goods. Amongst Jewish and Christian women in seventeenth-century Germany, Glikl was not unusual, but we are accustomed to thinking that by the nineteenth century the independent, economically active widow had been consigned to the past. For England it has been argued that the middle-class widow experienced a deterioration in conditions on account of the law which passed the control of a married woman's property to her husband. Upon his death it was less likely at this time that the widow would gain her full inheritance. It was usual for a widow who remarried to forfeit any interest in her former husband's estate. Yet evidence from Glasgow suggests widows of wealthy businessmen in the city had inherited considerable property and possessions enabling them to lead very comfortable independent lives. Moreover, a widow had a right to her own earnings, unlike a wife before the 1882 Married Women's Property Act (1881 in Scotland). Some widows had benefited from ante-nuptial contracts drawn up to protect her interests should the marriage end. Widowhood, then, could bestow benefits on a woman desirous of independence if her husband had accumulated sufficient wealth. Thus, when Isabella Elder was left a widow in 1869 upon the death of her husband John, a Clyde shipbuilder, her lifestyle was not at all cramped. Not only did she take over the management of her husband's shipyard for a few months, but she became an active philanthropist and traveller. When she died in 1905 her legacy toScotland was considerable including the premises housing Glasgow University’s Queen Margaret College for women.99 Whatever her economic circumstances, it is worth noting that a widowed woman assumed a new status upon her husband’s death.
She did not revert to the singleton state but rather became identified as her husband’s widow in the community.100 She was never accorded the degree of anxiety or hostility directed at the spinster.The legal status of the widow was more advantageous than that of a wife in respect of property ownership. But, the majority of older widows were likely to suffer a decline in status and income; indeed, widows formed a high proportion of those claiming poor relief and the prevailing characteristic of the widow was her relative poverty at a time when retirement from the labour market on the grounds of age was rare and pensions were even rarer. In 1901 in the manufacturing industries in France, 69 per cent of all women over 60 were still working.101 In England and Wales just 28 per cent of women between the ages of 65 and 74 had retired from an occupation.102 Indeed, a high proportion of widows were recorded in the census as economically active at the end of the century: 41 per cent in Germany, 39 per cent in France and 29 per cent in Britain — figures which almost certainly underestimate the numbers of widows earning their own living.103 Only the German state introduced pensions before the end of the century and these were very limited in scope. State pensions were introduced for the over-70s in Britain in 1908. Since this benefit was means tested and targeted the very poor, the majority of recipients were female.104 Elsewhere the use of widows’ funds and other forms of insurance was patchy. A woman in old age was at the trough of her wage-earning potential and may have teetered on the brink between independent survival and reliance on charity, especially if she lacked children or extended family. A widow’s difficulty in finding well-remunerated employment also affected the likelihood that she would remarry. In the rural proto-industrial economy of much of Europe, households were reliant on the complementary activities of each partner as the saying went: ‘None but a fool will take a wife whose bread must be earned solely by his labour and who will contribute nothing towards it herself.’ In the Auffay region of France, those widows who desperately needed to remarry found it hard to do so on account of their age (widows over the age of 30 had a low chance of remarriage) and their poor wage-earning capacity from agriculture or cottage industry once spinning had been mechanised and moved away from the villages.105 In England, by the nineteenth century and especially in towns, a widow’s moral claim to relief was diminishing.
Widows were increasingly required to show that they were respectable, responsible and were willing to help themselves, and indeed were probably forced to fall back on kinship networks and mutual aid in order to survive in the early industrial economy which privileged young workers.106Typical of the plight of the elderly widow was the case of 77-year-old Margaret Laurenson living with her two unmarried daughters aged in their thirties, in the north of Scotland. She had been a widow for 14 years, had been evicted from the tenancy of her croft and was dependent for a living upon the income from her knitting and the meagre earnings her daughters made from gutting fish. Although Margaret Laurenson housed a pauper lodger, it was said the five shillings a week she received barely paid for his board. In 1891 she applied to the sheriff court to force her married crofter-fisherman son to support her. According to the evidence of her daughter Helen:
[my mother] is not able for outdoor work or for indoor work owing to her infirmities.... One cow is promised to a neighbour who advanced money for the rent... My mother could not subsist without help from me and my sister. I have been very ill for four years with chronic bronchitis... My sister Joan does most of the work on the croft. We have had to hire help for ploughing, cutting grass and peats and cutting and building the corn and hay and carting the peats. I have not worked at [fish] curing stations for five years. Sometimes I am too ill to knit and when I could knit I have to help my sister. I have not earned above two pounds a year recently. We have a pauper lunatic as boarder, 73 years old, for whom we get 5 shillings a week. He is of no assistance to us and we have no profit after paying for his keep. Last Martinmas rent is not paid and we are due a little for meal and groceries. We were able to sell nothing last year. The year before we sold a foal for seven pounds... We have had to buy meal and oilcake. Last year I paid twenty two shillings for cartage. What we all make together is not sufficient to support us. It would take almost all we have to pay our debts.107
Margaret Laurenson's plight was not unusual although few widows were as unlucky. Most would have been able to rely on their children to care for them in their infirmity. Few widows conformed to the stereotype of the rich, lustful woman — the ‘merry widow' of the popular imagination. Poverty and loneliness were more likely to accompany the rest of her life.