Becca remarks
If I remember the statistics right, something like 38 percent of womyn in
19th century England held jobs. The upper class (where Dickinson was), had a
much lower percentage
And this only counts women who had a full-enough time job to be classified
under that occupation in the census returns. Few women who did something
besides running a household to keep the family finances going--from occasional
prostitution (e.g. wives of sailors) to taking in laundry to running a small
dame-school (see Mrs Garth in George Eliot's 'Middlemarch) to writing novels
(there seems like a whole group of Victorian women writers who had to churn
out novels, articles, etc to keep their invalid/dead-beat male relatives in
the style to which they believed themselves accustomed)--would be recorded
under anything but marital status.
Lesley
Lesley_Hall@classic.msn.com
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