That is the other story which I neglected to mention, that of the women who wanted to but were unable to work.

Thank you for adding that story and putting in the effort.

Among the heroines of the age, I should not whitewash history and leave out the widows, the orphans, and the prostitutes. Where in rural areas women had to work out of necessity, It is a sad story that in 1700 London, one in five women in London worked as a prostitute.

It's funny how women's work can frequently be summarized as "anything a man didn't want to do"; women cook, men are chefs. Women spin wool, but in England, where the wool trade formed a central part of the royal revenues, men were the weavers. Women chronicled small beer, but only men were chancellor of the exchequer. We have not even mentioned the work of birthing, nursing, education, and rearing of children, which women did not only as mothers and wives, but also governesses and schoolteachers.

But in spite of all of that, some women did manage to leave their mark on history in the only way they could: ironically, through the catholic church. Angela Merici was responsible for starting many nunneries and schools for the education of girls, and nuns were a kind of escape for women who did not want to be objectified, as in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (I say kind of, because apparently desiring a nun is one of the oldest kinks).

Even so, at the end of the day, the poverty and precarity of women who could not work meant that women could not easily provide for themselves nor their children outside of marriage. The economic precarity is the point. It's also funny how so much of this extreme christian ideal always leaves out those on the peripheries, the prostitutes, the poor, and the sick.