> I thought my use of 'working girl' in inverted commas indicated (in a
> slightly tongue-in-cheek manner) that I meant prostitutes?
Exactly as I took it. My point is that there were other low-status
occupations for females as well, and many of them involved mixed duties,
barmaids, servants at an inn, kitchen sculls, milk maids, goose girls; so
many who could be induced into the bedwarming role... also, that those
females of higher status who used their feminine whiles cleverly (eg,
mistresses, even wife-candidates such as the Boleyn girls) had their adult
roles to play.
> In
> this period women's status was in a state of change, reaching a
> highpoint of legal rigidity in the 18th century.
So many plague years helped to create opportunity that the guild system
sought to deny.
> Standards of moral behaviour were as always not quite according to the
rule, but in general loose sexual behaviour, in women, was not
acceptable as it also showed some kind of escape from male control.
Yes, and the last is seen most emphatically in the persecution of Joanne
D'Arc.
Ah, but just between the guys, so many drinking songs laud the lass with a
generous heart. ("...pray, give me some MORE of Watkins Ale!", "Il estoit
une fillette...", and even just 'la chase' "Matona mia cara..."
--
Dana Emery
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