Working-class women
The printing press provided employment opportunities for working-class women, who worked as binders, hawkers, or paper cutters, while chapbooks offered them a simple and cheap way to educate themselves (albeit with some dubious knowledge) and engage with the stories. Comparing the fables found in chapbooks with upper-class instructions for young ladies, there are some notable similarities between the stories targeted towards women and the governesses' teachings.
In the tale The seven wise mistresses, seven women teach a queen how to outwit her evil advisors who intend to defile her daughter. Each mistress shares a valuable story with the Queen that eventually helps her navigate the patriarchal circle around her. The narrative conveys to the female reader the importance of wit, intelligence, and faith – lessons that are evidently similar to those taught to upper-class students.
As mentioned previously, chapbook readership was frowned upon by aristocratic circles. However, John Simons also found that the ‘educated elite’ became ‘anxious about the political effects of chapbook reading’, as chapbook readership increased literacy levels amongst the working-class. Thus, the misconception that chapbooks were unsophisticated is refuted: as in Elizabeth Appleton’s Private education, when the Governess uses the common chapbook romance Sleeping beauty in the wood, to instruct young ladies on the importance of preserving their hymen: ‘but yet this fable seems to let us know, that very often Hymen’s blisses sweet … and that we nothing to lose by such delay.’ In this example, chapbook stories were evidently read by both the upper and lower classes.
Title page of: Sleeping beauty in the wood: a tale Despite the inclusion of women in the public sphere created by literary works, the industry remained heavily dominated by male ideology and proved to be a dangerous business for some women. As an example, Katherine Fromm found that it was common for female hawkers to be accused of either vagrancy or prostitution and they were usually exploited by their male counterparts.
Even the female religious writer, Hannah More, proclaimed that ‘a woman selling penny literature is reprimanded by the minister for poisoning the souls of young girls,’ whilst Bishop Porteus continued to preach that ‘there is a central set of booksellers, that are to the full as mischievous as your hawkers, pedlars, and match-women, in vending the vilest penny pamphlets to the poor people, and I am told it is incredible what fortunes they raise by this sort of traffic, and what multitudes of the lowest rabble flock to their shops to purchase their execrable tracts.’
Both More and Porteus represent the moral attitude of the period, seen through their disdain for popular literature; and their condescending tone was directed towards the working classes, who were seen to lack discernment between good and bad literature. Overall, these accounts portray how entrenched the social and cultural hierarchies were in the 18th century and underline the widespread concern over the impact of popular literature on the moral foundation of society.
In addition, most stories featured in chapbooks present the woman as the subject of ridicule or a passive character, and this is seen in the tales of Mother Bunch, Sleeping beauty in the woods, and in the Cambridge jests, or Wit’s recreation.
The following section will delve into these stories in further detail.
In this exhibition
- Introduction
- Women and 18th century print
- Women in print
- Class structures and readership
- Working-class women
- Female representations in chapbooks
- Further contexts
- Select bibliography