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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 26 JUNE 2016 17 News of the main strengths of Malta's economy in the 18th century was agriculture. This was one area where women were employed, working on family farms as daugh- ters and wives but also in paid la- bour. Paid work in agriculture for ei- ther men or women was not a typi- cal arrangement for 18th century Malta; but a register I found proves that women did in fact do this type of work. This register shows a list of labourers employed at Marsa to work in fields owned by the state, that is, by the Order of the Knights of St John, in the period August 31st, 1771, to May 7th, 1774. It contains information on the week- ly wages paid to the employees. About a quarter of the labour- ers were female, grouped together at the bottom under the heading "women". From their surnames one can only conclude that a num- ber of the male workers must have been related to the female workers, and in all probability were their husbands. Unfortunately the work they did is not specified but here you have a clear case of working married women. As in other European countries, textile production was particu- larly demanding of female labour. There are various examples in the records of Maltese women who were cotton spinners or weav- ers, or who worked in the cotton business. In 1786, Maria Lafortuna quarrelled with Grazia Micallef, who lived near the staircase upon the bastions of Marsamxett over the payment for cotton. Maria La- fortuna had apparently given Gra- zia two rotolos of cotton to work for her and she gave her 14 tari in advance. Grazia must have been a spinner and this shows that even in Val- letta women must have engaged in spinning on behalf of other people. It is also interesting to note that Grazia was in the employment of another woman. Women were also frequently shop-owners. The records reveal a number of women complaining throughout the eighteenth century that somebody had damaged their shop or that their shop had been broken into and robbed. Maria Camilleri declared in 1796 that "I have a grocer shop" and she re- ported that it had been "robbed". Further evidence of women shop- owners in an 18th century manu- script shows lists of shop-owners' licences. This register was issued by the authorities for the keeping of shops in the period 1788-1796. It is subdivided into sections and out of the 829 permits in the regis- ter, women were directly involved in 199 (24%) of the cases. Women owned businesses in partnership or alone in cotton production, haberdashery, coffee shops, delica- tessen dealing, millers and taverns. The holy and the profane Women can even be found the highly influential dimension of the Roman Catholic faith and its values in Malta. One way women could attain religious status was to join religious orders and become a nun. Religious life for Maltese women was also possible when they did not take monastic vows yet chose to live ascetic lives as lay sisters or members of Tertiary Orders, sometimes referred to in Maltese as Bizoche. One such woman, mentioned by De Soldanis, was Teresa Muscat. In order to follow the wishes of her brother and her parents, she married Francesco Cagniolo in the parish of Attard in 1681. Soldanis relates that, despite the good ex- ample of his wife, her husband led a loose life and left her a widow af- ter just a few years. The widowed Teresa took the dress of St Francis and accompanied by two bizoche tertiary sisters, Sister Giacoba and Sister Rosa tal-Ktell, she dedicated her life to penance and solitude. Soldanis notes that she was always to be seen alone or in the company of the bizoche. On the other hand in 18th cen- tury Malta, the belief in magic and its power was fairly widespread and Christianity never succeeded in uprooting it entirely. There are various cases of incidents where Maltese women were brought in front of the Maltese Inquisitor's tribunal accused of dabbling in the occult. This is how women fared in a strong Catholic society, in these two very different trajectories where women enter religious life, and the other where women use magic as part of religious ritual. Several cases of women from the Inquisitors' archives previously unrecorded by other historians in- clude, to cite just one example in 1710, Beatrice, who was married to a Neapolitan, and threw a pa- per packet in the face of a Maltese woman. This packet was found to contain white powder, olive twigs and birds' feathers. Beatrice did this to put a curse on her victim's family after the other woman's brother, Francesco, a barber, had ended his love affair with her and was about to marry a certain Elizabetta. In an example from 1721, two sisters, Maddale- na and Anna, together with their friend Catharina, stated in con- fession that they had collaborated with an older woman, Grattia, in the making of a magic potion with salt, charcoal, palm leaves, olive leaves, fire and water. This mix- ture was supposed to make them charming and attractive. In such instances women were not rejecting religion in favour of magic, but rather folk beliefs and superstitions were being incor- porated into religious beliefs and rituals. Like two faces of the same coin, both religion and magic ap- pealed to women because they could offer an alternative to the limited mother/wife role imposed on them by their society. Both these roles were alternatives to tra- ditional gendered roles of women and in fact in some ways served to empower women. I find my 18th century women fascinating and it is high time the stereotyped images of Maltese women in the past are debunked. Naturally gender is socially con- structed and there is no way these women were not also part of their society's gender construct; simi- larly even today women like myself also behave and act within the ac- cepted gender role assigned to us by our society. I'm sure there is truth in the ro- manticised paintings and recorded conversations of 18th century men about women. But irrespective of what society dictates about wom- en's roles and behaviour, the per- sonalities and characters I encoun- tered manage to shine through. Yosanne Vella is a historian. Her latest publication on women's education in 18th century Malta is published in the Sacra Militia: The Journal of the History of the Order of St John, issue 12 Women were not just troublemakers but also victims of violent crime… There is an uncomfortable feeling of familiarity in these 300-year- old cases Several raped women reported their attackers. One cannot not admire the audacity of Gratia Psaila (1705) who refused the option of marrying her assailant Antoine de Favray's 'The Visit', confirming a stereotypical view of Maltese women in the 18th century, but Yosanne Vella's research shows that women of the time were not just confined to their homes and parlours