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Women In 18th-century Louisbourg
The first women to join the settlement in Louisbourg originated from Acadia, Quebec, and the four corners of France. This garrison town and busy seaport called for an enormous number of young unmarried males. In the 1720s, adult males outnumbered females approximately eight or ten to one. There is no accurate estimation on the number of women since they were not all recorded in the census. Servants, slaves, and wives of fishermen were some of the women who were not always accounted for. Women would have been mentioned in conversation and historical records usually if they were the wife or daughter of an influential male property-owner.
The shortage of women had an enormous impact on marriage in the colony. Many men were left unmarried since most of the women were already taken. Widows would often remarry; some widows remarrying several times. The average age of first marriage in Louisbourg was quite different from the Canadian average in today's society. Most women were married at approximately 20 years old and men at 29 years old. The age gap between spouses was significantly larger than today's averages in Canadian society. The husbands of these young women were usually much older in age ranging from 26 to 36 years of age.
There were few career choices for a young girl. Stereotypical roles assigned to women included being a wife, mother, and servant. A higher proportion of women were servants. Women servants or servantes were not well recognized for their work possibly since housework and caregiving did not represent a solid and meaningful contribution to the economy. Recordkeepers were not very interested in who worked as a servant, but only the number of servants working at each household. Interestingly, many women servants were christened with Christian names, most commonly Marie, while their family name was forgotten.
An ambivalent attitude exists about the status of women in the legal domain. Women did have some rights but were considered the weaker of the two sexes. For instance, the Custom of Paris somewhat guarded women against an unsatisfactory husband. She was not able to divorce him but a marriage could be dissolved by a corporal separation or by a separation of property if he represented a threat to the common goods. The administration of property was a right and duty of the husband, but the wife had some say over it also. The husband could sell, give away, or mortgage common property. Yet, he needed to get his wife's authority over her "biens propres" before doing anything with it. Even though the wife participated in family affairs and retained some control over property, she could not launch a business deal without her husband's consent.