Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-Century Household

Consumption is a loosely defined concept and its historiography is skewed. With an eye to the economic transformations of the eighteenth century, English historians have tended to concentrate on the period after 1650 and to focus on the consumption by middling and elite (often urban) groups of such items as sugar, tea, cottons, china, silverware, clocks and looking-glasses. Probate inventories have been the most favoured source. On the other hand, Joan Thirsk’s idea of developments based in the extensive production and widespread consumption by the later seventeenth century of relatively low-cost goods such as pins, buckles, starch and knitted stockings is applicable to a broader social spectrum, and she places the origins of these changes much earlier. Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths adopt a different approach again. They interpret ‘consumption’ widely and are hence concerned as much with everyday consumables, in the form of basic foodstuffs, fuel, soap and candles, as with luxury items and status objects. Medical care, education (radically different for boys and girls) and other provision for the younger generation are included in the analysis, as also are building works, estate developments and the employment of servants and other forms of labour

Archaeology · China · Consumption (sociology · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Elite · Estate · Historiography · Political science · Probate · Social science · Sociology · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law