12. Feb, 2022
Women at Work: Images of Life for Women in the Highlands
"You would be amused to see what useful people women are in the far north. They drive carts, hold the ploughs, in short, do all the manual labour, and if a cottager loses his horse or ox, or any other beast of burden, he marries a wife to make up the difference." So observed Catherine Sinclair in her book Scotland and the Scotch (1840). She was not alone amongst visitors to the Highlands to note what was expected of females. John MacCulloch suggested that "the fair sex in this country is unquestionably the most active and useful part of the community." In addition to domestic work, ranging from grinding corn to cooking to carding, dyeing, and spinning, women were expected to help in work that involved hard labour, especially in carrying items like peat, seaweed, etc. There are plenty of images that bear witness to this state of affairs, some of which I shall post on a photo-album page on this website.