it shuld have ben more grevous unto me a great dele, said she, if ye had hade me to take no hede to my goodes than to bydde me to be dilygent aboute that that is my owne. For me thinketh, that like wyse, as it is naturally given to a good woman, rather to be diligent aboute her owne chyldren than not to care for them, Lyke wyse it is more pleasure for an honest woman to take hede to her owne goodes, than to set noughte by them,” etc.
In caring for her goods as she would her children, she has clearly come to take a proprietary interest in them. In exhorting the housewife to “mother” her household stuff, English domestic manuals were in a sense asking women to treat the moveables they were charged with “keeping” as if they were their “owne goodes,” in spite of the law of coverture.
In response, perhaps, to the potential danger posed by the housewife’s affective bond with “her” household stuff, Isomachus proposes a far less threatening (though no less naturalizing) characterization of it: “me thyn-kethehe says, “that god hathe caused nature to shewe playnlye, that a woman is borne to take hede of all suche thinges, as muste be done at home,” and having “ordeyned, that the woman shulde kepe those thynges, that the man getteth and bringeth home to her, and … knowynge verye well, that for to kepe a thynge surely, hit is not the worste poynte to be doubtful and fearefull, he dealed to her a greatte deale more feare, than he dyd to the man.”50 Here, the housewife’s affective attachment to her goods becomes an indication of her “doubtful and fearefull” disposition, which, it is implied, is an essentially feminine rather than a masculine trait. The wife’s role as “keeper” is thereby construed as a sign of women’s “natural” weakness, rather than of their “manlye stomach” or strength.
A roughly contemporaneous version of this notion appears in Richard Hyrd’s 1529 translation of Juan Luis Vives’s The Instruction of a Christen Woman, which cites Aristotle (or the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica, which itself borrows heavily from Xenophon) as its authority:
Aristotle sayth that in house kepynge the mannes duetie is to get and the womans to kepe. Wherfore nature semeth to have made them fearfull for the same purpose lest they shulde be wasters and hath gyven them continual thought and care for lackyng. For if the woman be over free the man shall never gette so moche as she wyll waste in shorte tyme: & so their house muste nedes sone decaye. Hit is nat becommynge for an honeste wyfe to be a great spender. Nor they be lyghtly no great sparers of theyr honesty that be so large of theyr money…. Therefore let her use her householde to sobrenes and measure. For that is more the womans duetye than the mannes.51
The woman’s duty to keep what the man gets is again linked to her naturally “fearfull” disposition, which is here described more specifically as a “continual thought and care for lackyng.” Female subjectivity is defined not so much in relation to household objects, but rather the perpetual fear of their loss. This anxious subjectivity centers not on possession, on caring for what is one’s own, or even on caring for what, by virtue of that care, is treated as if it were one’s own, but rather on the ever-present possibility of loss, lack, or dispossession.
While the fear of dispossession is attributed to women, however, it seems clear from the consequences it is designed to ward off that this attribution may be a projection. For the danger posed by the unfearful or “over free” wife is one that the husband has good reason to fear himself: his goods and income “wyll waste in shorte tyme,” his “house muste nedes sone decayeand his wife’s “honesty” or chastity will be “lyghtly” undone. Underlying the anxious subjectivity attributed to the wife lies the acknowledgment that the “womans duetye” of keeping the house affords her a measure of control over the household economy; the specter of her unsupervised spending and disposing of property haunts the mind of the husband with the “continual thought” that he does not have complete control over his wife’s consumption and domestic management.
The passage reappears in Thomas Paynell’s 1553 translation of Vives’s The Office and Duetie of an Husband in a slightly modified form:
Nature … hath geven unto man a noble, a high, & a diligent minde to be busye and occupied abroade, to gayne & to bring home to their wives & familie, to rule them & their children, & also all their houshold. And to the woman nature hath geven a feareful, a covetous, & an humble mind to be subject unto man, & to kepe that he doeth gayne.52
In the latter treatise, directed to husbands rather than wives, the wife’s role as “keeper” is not surprisingly taken to be a sign not only of her “feareful” and “covetous” feminine disposition, but of her natural “subject[ion] unto man.” Any suggestion that her active, managerial role within the household economy may pose a threat to her husband’s authority, much less to his property, has been entirely effaced. We have come a long way indeed from the “manlye stomach” of the housewife who “overse[es] the stuffe, vessell & implementes of [her] house none other wise than the capitaine of a garison overseeth and proveth the soudiers.” While it seems clear that the woman’s role as keeper of household stuff had become central to conceptualizations of female subjectivity in domestic treatises of the period, it is equally clear that these conceptualizations were highly contradictory, suggesting first activity then passivity, labor then leisure, spending then receiving, profligacy then frugality, courage then fearfulness, lusty assertiveness then timid humility, sexual largesse then chary chastity, “manlye” forms of governance and then “subject[ion] unto man.”53
To better grasp the contradictions inherent in early modern women’s role as keepers of household stuff, it may be useful to consider the complex and divergent notions of what it meant to keep during the period. The word keep, according to the OED, derives from the Old English cepan (“‘to lay hold’ with the hands, and hence with the attention, ‘to keep an eye upon, watch’”). While keep is not related to any other known words in cognate languages, it was used to translate the Latin observare (“to watch, keep an eye upon, take note of”), and its subsequent development appears strongly influenced by the senses of the latter term, and the related conservare, praeservare, and reservare. The word keep also bears a close affinity to hold; indeed, the two were sometimes used interchangeably, although keep, we are told, “implies the exercise of stronger effort to retain.” The strength of this “effort to retain” is apparent in the earliest senses of keep, current from the eleventh to the late thirteenth century: “To seize, lay hold of; to snatch, take, … catch or get.” In contrast to this notion of active seizing or snatching, however, the early senses of keep also included a more passive or receptive notion: “To take in, receive, contain, hold.” In the sixteenth century, these divergent strands became still more complex. The former, more active, strand evolves to mean: “Actively to hold in possession; to retain in ones power or control; to continue to have, hold, or possess,” and even more assertively: “To withold (from); implying exertion or effort to prevent a thing from going or getting to another.” The witholding of the thing possessed might also involve concealment, as in the sense: “To hide, conceal; not to divulge.” The active “exertion or effort” (in a word, the labor) involved in keeping is likewise apparent in the related senses: “To guard, defend, protect, preserve, save,” “To be on one’s guard against,” “To take care of,” “To pay attention or regard to,” “to look after, watch over,” “To maintain accounts of money received and paid,” “To provide for the sustenance of; to provide with food and clothing and other requisites of life,” “to reserve: to lay up, to store up,” “To keep in repair,” “To keep from deteriorating or disappearing.” By contrast, the more passive conception of what it means to keep evolves as: “To have regard,” “To have care,” “to observe … or dutifully abide by (an ordinance, law, custom,… promise,… a thing prescribed …),” “To stay or remain in, on, or at (a place); not to leave,” “To reside, dwell, live, lodge.” In addition, there were conceptions of keeping that lay somewhere between