ABSTRACT
Amy Louise Erickson We are accustomed to thinking of marriage as the core of social life. But marriage is also the heart of economic life. The marital partnership is the most fundamental economic relationship because, over time, it is the one on which all other economic activities depend. Historically, the vast majority of households were headed by a married couple, or the surviving half of a couple. And historically, the household was responsible not only for reproduction, but also for production, distribution and consumption. Husband and wife, as the joint heads of household, both had responsibility for these processes. The marriage of two people was the first step in creating an ‘oeconomy’, which in the early modern period referred specifically to the household. Early modern ‘oeconomy’ depended overwhelmingly on the industry of husband and wife, and on their capacity to cooperate.
