Ihanteista irrallaan. Hämeen maaseudun nainen osana perhettä ja asiakirjoja 1600-luvun alusta 1800-luvun alkuun.

Onko vapaa sinkkuelämä sittenkään moderni 2000-luvun ilmiö? Korkea avioitumisikä, uusperheiden ongelmat ja yksinhuoltajuus olivat arkipäivää suomalaisella maaseudulla jo 1600- ja 1700-luvuilla. Väitöskirjatyö tuo esiin hämäläisen maaseudun asukkaiden arkipäivää naimattomien naisten elämänkohtaloiden kautta. Millaista oli elää sinkkunaisena esimodernin ajan suomalaisella maaseudulla? Monen nuoren naisen elämään kuului pitkä naimattomuuden jakso ennen 30 vuoden iässä solmittua avioliittoa. Nuoret aikuiset tekivät työtä palkollisina, etsivät sopivaa aviopuolisoa ja solmivat suhteita, jotka eivät aina johtaneet avioliittoon. Avioton syntyvyys tuo esiin maaseutuyhteisön naimattomat sinkkunaiset , joita on vaikea löytää lähteistä. Kirkon ja oikeuslaitoksen asiakirjoissa heidät merkittiin maineensa ja asemansa menettäneiksi, koska salavuoteus oli rikos. Todellisuudessa aviottoman lapsen synnyttäneet naiset pysyivät vahvasti osana omaa perhettä, sukua ja kyläyhteisöä. Näkemys hyljeksitystä ja paikasta toiseen vaeltavasta aviottoman lapsen äidistä on myytti, jolle ei löydy vahvistusta asiakirjoista. Väitöskirjassa pohditaan sitä, kuinka hyvin naimattomat naiset pystyivät vaikuttamaan itseään koskeviin asioihinsa suvussa ja kotitalouksissa sekä paikallisyhteisössä. Naimattomat talollisten tyttäret ja säätyläisnaiset jäivät kotiin palkattomiksi palvelijoiksi, mutta tilattomien kohdalla tilanne oli toisin. Palvelukseen lähtö on usein tulkittu pakoksi, joka vei nuoren tytön vastentahtoisesti kauas kotoaan vieraiden armoille. Tilanne ei todellisuudessa ollut aina näin. Piiaksi lähteminen avasi nuorelle naiselle myös mahdollisuuden edetä yhä paremmin palkattuihin tehtäviin sekä tarvittaessa päästä pois ahtaasta sukupiiristä. Piikoina naiset pystyivät ansaitsemaan omaa rahaa eikä avioituminen ollut heille ainoa keino turvata tulevaisuus. Naiset saattoivat 1700-luvulla yhä paremmin määritellä itse avioitumisensa ajankohdan ja valita itsenäisesti aviopuolisonsa. Iän myötä hyvin ansaitsevan ja taitavan piian mahdollisuudet paranivat avioliiton suhteen. Kiinnostavaa on sekin, että usein tilattomien keskuudessa naiset olivat jopa useita vuosia aviomiestään vanhempia. Naimattomien naisten kautta on mahdollista tarkastella myös talonpoikaiston perherakenteita 1600- ja 1700-luvuilla. Ydinperhevaltaisuus korostuu niin henkikirjoissa kuin kirkonkirjoissakin mutta todellisuudessa tilanne saattoi olla toinen. Asiakirjoissa näkyy selvimmin ydinperheenomainen perimysperhe, joka oli sidottu perintöoikeuteen ja maanomistukseen. Isovanhemmat, vanhemmat ja lapset eroteltiin muusta suvusta omaksi erityiseksi yksikökseen. Virallisen ydinperheen ulkopuoliset lähisukulaiset voitiin merkitä tilattomiksi tai palkollisiksi, vaikka he olisivat kiinteästi kuuluneet kotitalouteen. Lähteiden syntyyn liittyvä problematiikka onkin väitöskirjassa keskeisessä roolissa. Asiakirjat ovat syntyneet tietynlaisen ihanteen pohjalta eivätkä ne välttämättä suoraan kerro siitä, millaisia olivat perheet todellisuudessa ja miten yhteisössä suhtauduttiin aviottomien lasten äiteihin. Eri lähdeaineistoja vertailemalla on mahdollista päästä käsiksi aikakauden ihanteen ja todellisuuden väliseen suureen ristiriitaan, joka eri asiakirjoissa ilmenee.In this thesis, I examine the role and social status of unmarried women in primarily three types of population registers from the beginning of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century: household (census) registers, registers drawn up by local communities, and provincial administration registers. I focus on three rural parishes in the historical province of Tavastia (Häme) in the western part of Finland: Hauho, Luopioinen and Tuulos. In each one of these, the rate of illegitimate children born was high at the end of the 18th century. As the well-known historian John Hajnal demonstrated in 1965 based on nuptiality levels, Europe was divided into two regions. To the west of what came to be called the Hajnal line, the average age of women at their first marriage was 23 or older; the region to the east of this border was characterized by a lower mean marriage age for both sexes. Since then, family historians have been discussing the differences in nuptiality and family structures identified in these two regions. The three parishes I have examined are located just on this border between the two main patterns of marriage and family formation. Finnish family historians have assumed that the entire Tavastia region in the past was dominated by the nuclear family households typical for Western Europe. Nonetheless, my findings indicate that the basic family formation in Tavastia during the 16th and 17th centuries was the multiple-family household, similar to the ones we find in the provinces of Karelia and Savolax in East Finland and in the Eastern European countries. During the 18th century, this system gradually changed due to the Western-European ideal of the nuclear family. Peter Laslett, another famed family historian, concluded that North-western European households in general were small and structurally simple whereas in many parts of southern Europe households could be much larger and far more complex in structure. In 1983, Lasslet published his now classic work Family Form in Historic Europe based on a large quantity of church-record data that he and his research assistants the so-called Cambridge group had analyzed. It is on this set of data that Laslett bases his famous theory of European family patterns. However, Laslett and his colleagues did not sufficiently consider all aspects of source criticism related to this particular type of source, nor did they question the consistent presentation of families and households as nuclear families in the church records. Although each written source reflects its time of origin, often source criticism is regarded as something primarily related to establishing how and for what purpose a document was created. When evaluating data from the types of sources mentioned above, it is essential to consider the concept of what constituted a correct and proper family in Western Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries: a hierarchical, nuclear-type family within which land and property were transferred from generation to generation. Almost all sources emphasize the dominance of men. Men controlled the family households and the land that had been inherited from father to son or son-in-law. Women did have a right to inherit goods but in the nuclear-family system this right was treated as a transfer of her inheritance to her husband. It was common not to name the woman in official documents related to transactions involving her property. Instead, it was her husband or some other male relative that appeared as the concerned party. In reality, however, the situation may have been different, with women acting more independently and more freely than expected. For example, judicial records include many family members especially women that are never listed in the tax registers. There we find women planning and making decisions and performing duties of various kinds. They participate in sales and purchases of land, they litigate claims for payments, and they fight for what they consider to be their rights. This discrepancy between the hierarchical family structure presented in tax rolls and the dynamic family patterns revealed in 17th-century court records is the reason for my decision to use and compare both types of sources. The official 17th-century world view was undeniably patriarchal. The society had a strict hierarchical structure with a particular place for each person depending on status and gender, combined with a built-in resistance against allowing people to move upwards in the system. Class distinctions between farmers and gentry were high and rigid. Within the social class of farmers, there was a corresponding, pronounced segregation between landowners and landless people and these two categories separated even more in opposite directions during the 18th century. The legislation strongly supported the nuclear family. Only one person in the family, a man, could have the status of master and landowner. The other household members must accept and submit to his authority. The household was like a hierarchical microcosmos reflecting the structure of macrocosmos where God ruled and exerted his power over the entire creation. Since this type of household is also the one presented in the provincial administration registers, it would be natural to assume (as many scholars have done) that the local community was strictly and patriarchally hierarchical as well. However, in this thesis I demonstrate how official sources tend to reflect the officially embraced, hierarchical nuclear family in their account of household structures rather than the actual construction. Reality was different. As Peter Laslett said, illegitimacy has been called a social problem for the last two centuries and a moral problem from time immemorial. Illegitimacy was very closely associated with the lifecycle of unmarried women. During my research in the primary sources (mainly court records), I made some observations that I found particularly interesting: When an unmarried woman in the 18th century gave birth to one or even more illegitimate children, she usually lived in the household of her parents or her brother or another relative. It was when living there the sexual relationship started and it was also there she gave birth. That is contrary to what has formerly been expected they were not shunned, landless women who wandered from one village to another. A similar situation existed in the 17th century in these three parishes: some unmarried women continued to live in the home of a close relative while having one or several illegitimate children. And, in both centuries, some of these women later got married and began to lead a so-called honorable life at an age of around 30 to 40. How was this seemingly modern-style single life behavior compatible with the culture of honor in which they lived? I show in this thesis that a particular group of women, those being a yeoman s only child and heiress to the land, actually could be granted a higher level of sexual freedom. This is far from saying that such a woman had the possibility to sleep with anyone she liked; nevertheless, a sexual relationship with a man, whether he was her fiancé who later broke the betrothal or another man, did not result in a permanent ruin to her virtue. For landless, unmarried women, marriage was not the only means to safeguard against poverty. Entering into service in a household enabled her to earn money of her own to hopefully secure her future to some degree. Some women advanced to a position as a housekeeper or forewoman. In some cases, we may even speak of them as making a career. A highly experienced servant or housekeeper could expect a good salary, and sometimes she eventually got married at an age over 30. Interestingly, among landless married couples the woman was often in no less than 35% marriages studied older than her husband. From the middle of the 17th century, the birth rate of illegitimate children in Finland started to increase. In the 18th century, we see a gradual change in the social status of unmarried mothers, now often servant girls or landless women. The fathers are usually soldiers, servants or young, unmarried estate owners. This situation reflects the overall change in demographics. The number of landless people escalated in the 18th century, something which affected traditional marriage customs. It became increasingly common for young soldiers, male servants and farmhands to break their betrothals or (occasionally) to abscond before their pregnant brides-to-be gave birth. At the same time, marriage customs and particularly courting customs started to change as well. For example, many young noblemen lived together with a maid or their housekeeper in a sexual relationship. This setup, a man having a relationship with a woman who professionally is in a state of dependence to him, is also noticeable among self-owing peasants and landless men. Since only one child in a yeoman or gentry family could inherit the land (unless it was possible to break up the immovable property into lots), the other children had to find some other means by which to earn their living. Sometimes younger sons in a yeoman family remained living unmarried in the household. Meanwhile, while looking out for a suitable prospective wife such as a yeoman s widow, they often begot one or several illegitimate children. In most respects, these younger sons were more of landless men rather than yeomen. However, in the church records they would frequently be mentioned with the epithet yeoman s son , a designation indicating a social status higher than the one of an ordinary landless man. In the early 17th century, civil servants, officers and noblemen established stately residences and mansions in the western part of Finland. Married and unmarried men and women were employed by the larger manors, whose owners kept acquiring the surrounding land. Independent, self-owning peasants ended up as tenant farmers or event farmhands. At the same time, family structures began to change. The joint-family households gradually transformed into nuclear-family networks. As a consequence, young married couples and unmarried family members had to move out, to support themselves as soldiers, tenants or servants in the large manor houses. Frequently they would keep moving from one place to another in search for a living. The transformation from being yeomen to landless people also led to a change of their social class and status as well. Still, family ties were strong. Adult, unmarried women sometimes would move between several nuclear families to which she was related. In church records, such women would usually be registered as farm maids. If such a woman got a child out of wedlock, priests, the Crown s officials and civil servants would normally refer to her in official sources using the term qvinsperson (literally female person ), a derogatory epithet indicating that she from the authorities viewpoint had lost her virtue. But this status was imposed by the Church and did not automatically change the woman s or her family s actual social status. Nor did it necessarily have any major impact on her daily life in the local community. If she was part of a family network, she and her child would often find support and protection there. Church records and tax registers tend to give a distorted image in their presentation of actual family structures since they focus on the order of succession of family headship and property rather than aim at providing an accurate description of the entire family or household and the relations between the individual family members. There are considerable discrepancies between church records, tax registers and provincial administration records on the one hand and judicial records on the other in their description of how families were structured. There was no compelling reason to keep track of each individual that lived in the same household during the period of time examined. Civil servants and priests created their respective registers based on ideological and legal patterns. The ideological patterns were reflections of the official world view in which patrilinearity was the only acceptable basis for defining family and kinship. The legal patterns were based on the Crown s and the local authorities interest in mapping the transfer of ownership of land within a yeoman s family. This required a clear identification of who was the master of the house and the landowner from a legal point of view. As a consequence, the nuclear family imaged in the official sources during the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries tends to be more of a legal entity rather than a true representation of the actual family structure. Since church records and tax records in particular are sources often used in studying family forms due to their availability and easy-to-read disposition, their built-in tendency to standardize the description of the family form based on the nuclear-family model may easily be overlooked. The Church s censure of illegitimacy does not necessarily reflect the local community s opinion. Naturally, for the Church the birth of an illegitimate child was the result of a serious sin, and through humiliating public rituals the Church demonstrated its condemnation of the unmarried mother s behavior. However, this religiously conditioned censure, often carefully noted in the church records, should not be mistaken for an expression of the feelings of a local community in which premarital, sexual relationships had been considered a normal part of unmarried couples courting. A genealogical analysis is required to identify the actual family structures behind the official sources. Reality in these small, local communities was considerably more complex than presented in the official, touched up sources. Without genealogical micro-analyses, it is not possible to trace the intricate, far-reaching ties of kinship that surrounded the individual, that acted as lifelines and that were able to safeguard her or him against life s misfortunes. A large kin group could prove more important to the individual than any patriarchally defined nuclear family; especially for women, this multifaceted family network could function as something resembling a social class in itself. But by the end of the 18th century, this situation changed, and gradually the term landless became synonymous to kinless