Women’s Work: Candle, Parsnips and Carrots, Flogger

Madeleine Barnes

Women’s Work is a project that aims to explore the associations between women’s domestic embroidery, agency, labor, and the policing of female sexuality in early modern England. By creating embroideries that de pict sex toys from this time period, I hope to gain insight into women’s sex lives and needlework practices while engaging with existing texts, conversations, and research around these subjects I aim to conjure up a sense of playfulness that would speak to the ways that embroidery might have allowed women to subvert society’s expectations in unprecedent ed ways. The moral and aesthetic aspects of embroidery were thought to stave off idleness—an idleness that would give way to unacceptable sexual behavior. An art form encoded and denigrated as feminine, nee dlework was aligned with virtue and gave women the opportunity to “prove” their worth and defend their chastity. It served as a way to en sure that women were using their free time wisely and in ways that kept them out of the public sphere, an arena reserved for men.

These three particular embroideries, “Candle,” “Parsnips and Carrots,” and “Flogger” all depict images that might not be recognized as sexually significant at first. My hope is that these pieces will help people learn more about women’s sexuality and its many interesting expressions and manifestations, as well as the anxiety that surrounded women’s free time in the early modern period.

Barnes 79

Flight of the Miner’s Wife

Alaina Pepin

I remember my mother’s yellow dress as I drive across a flooded road in the middle of North Dakota, where the telephone poles and cattle sink to their knees in mud. Little birds smack against my windshield and I just close my eyes I was six and her skin still smelled like Crisco and curdled milk, even at the bottom of the mine. But now it’s been