Women, accounts and numeracy in 17th century England

"While a considerable amount of time and energy has been spent investigating the extent of women’s literacy in the early modern period, little, if anything has been written about their levels of numeracy. This omission is at least in part the result of difficulty in its measurement, and not just among women. As Keith Thomas revealed some years ago, numeracy did ‘not leave evidence which can be readily measured’; moreover, levels of numeracy are ‘entirely a matter of degree.’ Though the ability to count may have been considered a distinctively human quality in the Tudor and Stuart periods, simply knowing ‘how many beans made twenty was hardly proof of great numerical dexterity’. Yet the survival of a considerable number of personal, household, and business accounts that can be directly attributed to women appears to challenge the notion that arithmetic ‘was not a normal part of the education of a lady’, and that ‘women lagged behind in numeracy, perhaps even more than they did in literacy.’ Mathematics may not have been part of the female curriculum, but in this paper I intend to argue that in terms of basic arithmetical skills – numeration, addition and subtraction – women of gentry status, at least, may well have been more numerate than their male counterparts. This was in essence the product of a gendered system of education, in which boys studied the classics, rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, while girls acquired social and domestic skills: reading, writing, housewifery and spinning or needlework, with the addition of musical pursuits and the romantic languages for those of higher status. For as Thomas himself argued, the emphasis of the humanist curriculum on the acquisition of knowledge rather than skills may have put men at a disadvantage in terms of basic computation. Gentlewomen, on the other hand, were considerably more accomplished in this area, for the acquisition of housewifery skills remained the pinnacle of achievement, and with it, the upkeep of the household accounts. During the seventeenth century mathematical skills for men grew in importance – both in terms of pure and applied mathematics – and numerical analysis, as Thomas has revealed, ‘established itself as one of the dominant forms of intellectual enquiry.’ Women remained largely excluded from this mathematical revolution and their knowledge of arithmetic was restricted: the construction of accounts could have been completed with knowledge of addition and subtraction alone, and women may have ventured little beyond these areas. Nevertheless, gentlewomen at least may well have been more adept at basic computation than historians have been inclined to accept."