The Spinning Wheel: A Reminder for Women?

  The article "Women at Work" in the course packet focuses on the lives of Medieval peasant women and the various jobs they undertook. One such job was spinning but Leyser, the author of this article, brought up an interesting idea that the invention of the spinning wheel was not in the interest of women.  According to Leyser, "Spinning wheels speeded up work, but, unlike spindles, they could not be carried around. They were an unsociable invention that would keep a woman in her place in a hitherto unaccustomed manner" (CP 147). Spinning has been an art form for centuries and it has traditionally been linked to women's work. But the argument that spinning wheels acted as a way to trap women within the home is an intriguing idea.
 Women in the Middle Ages provided for their households the same, if not more so, than their husbands. One of the most popular ways women earned an income was from spinning. According to John Styles, "Hand spinning- of wool, flax and increasingly cotton-became the principal income-generating activity pursued by women. For many of those women, it was also an essential means of furnishing their own families with textiles" (1). Spinning was a way in which women could provide directly for the household, such as clothing, but it also allowed women to earn money by selling the cloth to other women.
  Before the spinning wheel, women spun using a distaff. Through this process, women could spin anywhere thus they had more "freedom". However, the invention of the spinning wheel forced women inside the home. Women could no longer spin wherever they pleased. The spinning wheel forcefully reminded women that their place was in the home not outside of it.
Questions:
 1) Do you think the spinning wheel was created to force women to work within the home?
 2) Why do you think spinning has always been labeled as women's work?

Images:
-The first image shows a women inside the home at a spinning wheel.
-The second image shows a woman using a distaff, the precursor to the spinning wheel.

Works Cited
Leyser. "Women at Work." In Course packet compiled by Dr. Wolbrink, 2014.
Styles, John. "Spinning In The Era of the Spinning Wheel, 1400-1800." http://www.johnstyles.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/spinning.htm.
Images from Google