ABSTRACT
In an anonymous ballad, printed around 1660, a male speaker overhears the complaint of a housewife, who recounts scenes of daily drudgery, from cleaning and making a fire to preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner, caring for her children, knitting, spinning, sewing and washing (Figure 11.1). 1 Each stanza closes with a variation on the refrain, ‘A womans work is never done’, altered to most obviously comic effect in a stanza describing those conjugal labours ‘which I cannot shun / Yet I could wish that Work were oftner done’. The ballad presents a model of marital femininity familiar to scholars of the period: the good housewife remains at home, constantly busy and focused on the needs of the family.
