Women'S Voices. Echoes Of Life Experiences In The Alps And The Plain (17Th -19Th Centuries)

The volume is centred on the voices of women belonging to various generations, religious faiths and social classes, and presents a range of possible life courses for women in the Alps during the ancien régime and the early 19th century. Focusing on complex lived experiences that have emerged from a gender-conscious reading of the sources, the contributions illustrate how migration led women to take on roles of responsibility, or to follow their husbands in their careers as artists, traders and businessmen. There also emerges a widespread literacy that is combined with practical skills and knowledge marked by biological, legal and religious preconceptions: features that permeated the communities studied, where ties of family, religion and patronage prevail upon the dichotomy of public sphere/private sphere.