The changing structures of what we would now think of as “the economy” during the Middle Ages (c. 450 – c. 1500) left deep and extensive marks on the period’s writing and storytelling. Significantly, this was due to the presence of at least two economic systems developing in parallel: an agrarian-based manorial system and a cash-based commercial system. The chance survival of texts from this period does not provide a unified vision of economics throughout England or even from every century of the medieval period. What texts do survive, however, show us that economics in the literature takes many forms beyond simply the exchange of money for goods and services, the establishment of credit and banking, and the development of complex and varied trade networks. It also appears in how a household is run, in gift-exchange, and even in the language of reckoning of sins with punishment or penance.

Grandmothers were household managers. They assigned household duties to their daughters, daughters-in-law and, in wealthier households, servants. They supervised food prepartion for daily meals, and for storerooms. They directed the handcraft work that made households self-sufficient in clothing, bedding and shoes, and taught the younger women handcraft skills. In many parts of China handcrafted goods were produced in the home for the market, including for export. The sales brought in income for the family.

Grandmothers marshalled the preparations for family festivals, notably marriages, and for the many festivals that punctuated the year, most importantly the New Year, which demanded the attendance of the whole family. Grandmothers supervised the preparation of food, clothing and ritual items, for an occasion that cemented the family together. Family celebrations went into abeyance from 1937, through twelve years of war and during the Mao Era. They are now back in full force. Hundreds of millions go home in the run-up to the New Year. For labour migrants the two-week holiday is the only time they spend at home with their children.

This chapter highlights the impact of the war on women’s private everyday lives and explores how the wartime state increasingly reached into the home. It demonstrates how previously personal issues became political as women were urged to express their patriotism through their careful household management and by maintaining model homes and families for their absent husbands. The chapter also assesses the impact of the war on the standard of living of women in Ireland, interrogating previous interpretations of wartime prosperity and contrasting the urban and rural experiences. It explores the impact of the war on maternal and infant health, and the consequences of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic for women in Ireland. The chapter argues that the war resulted in much greater intervention of the state in women’s everyday and personal lives and brought significant hardship to many women. Far more women became reliant on governmental welfare through separation allowances, pensions and initiatives under the Prince of Wales National Relief Fund. Memoirs, diaries and letters are used to explore the experience of separated couples during the war and how women coped with the emotional hardship of the soldiers’ war service.