Introduction

Leisure is not a modern invention. Despite the demands of child-rearing, family care, work in fields and factories, religious instruction and devotion, women have always found opportunities in their days for private joys or civic revelling. Throughout recorded history in Europe, religious and political authorities, poets and prose writers have pondered the ‘problem’ of leisure, and they have worried about the potentially disruptive influence of popular culture. Such critics wondered how people would fill their time in seasonal downturns such as the bleak winter months and pondered whether idleness would lead to devilry. For much of European history, it was assumed that, except for a small portion of very wealthy men and women at the upper echelons of society, leisure time caused problems. Drinking, gambling, fighting and idolatry were only some of the feared pastimes in which working people could engage; more disastrously, they could participate in political intrigue or unrest. As industrialisation progressed in fits and starts during the nineteenth century, leisure time became a goal of workers and a mark of status and respectability, but it also emerged as a period to be filled with activities. Idleness was even more a subject of derision by the nineteenth century as middle-class reformers sought to create a rationalised and sober society, where leisure time was spent in ‘improving’ activities. What had changed by 1900 was that all people in European society expected that they deserved and required leisure time for a happy life, and they thought leisure activities and pursuits would help define their sense of self. Where leisure in the pre-industrial period might be a short respite from work such as a trip to a local fair, leisure in the modern capitalist world meant establishing an identity apart from work and family and escaping from the predictability and lack of autonomy in many industrial occupations. Even for aristocrats and the wealthy middle classes, leisure activities defined status and character more than work did.

In the midst of these changes, it is important to note that women, in particular, have always had a complicated relationship with leisure time. Women, after all, had often been called upon to facilitate the leisure of others by preparing food for feasts, packing

And preparing children and their toys for a vacation, and cleaning up after a party or event. With industrialisation and the emphasis on waged work as a determinant of ‘real’ work, women’s leisure often fell by the wayside. How does one define leisure time for a woman whose day is filled with activities? Consider the middle-class volunteer working for the suffrage campaign in Britain by sewing banners, distributing pamphlets and attending meetings. Do these activities count as unpaid work or leisure? She certainly derived pleasure from them and they counted as participation in popular culture, but these activities may have served more as occupation or vocation than leisure. So one of the problems of studying women’s leisure is finding and defining it.

One way to deal with the problem of identifying women’s leisure is to look at how women’s claims to and opportunities for leisure have changed. Their demands for and access to leisure have expanded over the past 300 years often because women themselves sought out additional spaces and times for participation in the popular cultural milieu. Although these are not exclusive categories nor do they entirely represent the fluidity and diversity of women’s experiences, this chapter uses three stages to explore the changing nature of women’s leisure in Europe: (1) Community (1700-1800), (2) Nation (1800-1900) and (3) World (1900-60). These chronological and thematic divisions represent concentric circles of women’s leisure pursuits and provide a way of understanding women’s broadening world view with their increased leisure opportunities.

The first section examines women’s participation in popular cultural entertainments in the pre-industrial world, with special emphasis on the ties of community and homosociality in defining women’s leisure. The eighteenth century was marked by a variety of socialising activities that allowed women to interact with each other and with men both at home and in the broader community. By the late eighteenth century, governments sought to restrict these communal entertainments, and while some disappeared, others continued in transformed and strengthened forms. Women’s public leisure activities, as cross-class and often rowdy entertainments, changed in the wake of moral and social reform movements. With the emergence of Enlightenment ideas regarding political participation and education, rising literacy rates gave women new avenues for filling their time, while clubs and societies emerged in which women could participate.

New political ideas led to a transformed relationship between nation-states and their citizenries by the nineteenth century. The second section looks at women’s incorporation as citizens of the modern nation-state and their demands for further rights within this polity. With industrialisation, changing family patterns and new consumer options, women could increasingly tap into a wealth of leisure activities, both inside and outside the home. Also, the growth of European empires, especially in the late nineteenth century, helped reconfigure women’s understanding of their place in the nation and provided a whole new arena of consumer products aimed at women. Likewise, the evolution of housing and home economy affected women’s vision of their roles in families.

Imperialism, nationalism, the women’s movement and other emerging ideologies led to a new consciousness for women of their place in the nation as citizens and consumers, which accelerated with the twentieth century. The advent of welfare states, state leisure provisions, militarisation and the global economy brought to women a staggering array of leisure options, without erasing some of the historical problems women have had in finding time and energy to take advantage of these opportunities. World wars, political invasion into private homes, decolonisation, tourism, new communication forms and mass-culture pursuits helped transform women’s world view, broadening their options but also bringing challenges. With the dawn of the twenty-first century, women’s leisured worlds had expanded exponentially over the 300-year period.