Women's voices

This volume is centred on the voices of women belonging to different generations, religious faiths and social classes, and presents a range of possible life courses in the Alps and the pre-Alps during the Ancien Régime and the early 19th century. Focusing on life trajectories 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 follow their husbands in their careers as artists, traders and businessmen. They also reveal a widespread literacy that was combined with practical skills and knowledge marked by biological, legal and religious preconceptions ; these features permeated the studied communities, where family, religious and patronage ties prevailed upon the dichotomy of public sphere/private sphere.

The essays in this book deal with the web of complex social networks that served to sustain the mutual autonomies as well as the strategies of living together. The vitality and agency of the presented female figures help to dispel the image of backwardness and passivity often associated with women living in mountain regions.