Genevieve
Digital Print
70 x 70 cm
Museum Collection
Geneviève is a young lacemaker from the Valenciennes region of France. Born in the mid-eighteenth century into an impoverished family, she was sent at the age of seven to a charitable religious institution to learn how to make bobbin lace. Under constant supervision in a highly regulated environment, Geneviève learned lacemaking techniques alongside other girls, eventually becoming proficient enough to gain a place at a lace workhouse. Here, she makes a modest, although unreliable, income working long hours under harsh conditions. Lacemaking, one of the few trades available to women in the eighteenth century, enables Geneviève to avoid abject poverty. Her hard-won skill also widens the range of options available to her. With the measure of financial independence lacemaking offers, Geneviève can choose whether to marry and perhaps have children, or to ascend to the ranks of her industry as a teacher. Either way, her early education at the lace school has improved her life.