During the Renaissance, women entered marriage in their mid-twenties. Laborers and those in the middle class often married later because they needed more time gathering the things required to set up a house. Marriage came with two main expectations: (1) that the woman would be a virgin before marriage and would remain sexually faithful to her husband once married and (2) that the woman would concern herself with and converse about only that which pertained to women (Hobby, 3). In Arden of Faversham, Alice, the wife of Arden who is a member of the landed country gentry, clearly rejects the first of these two expectations:
“Sweet Mosby is the man that hath my heart,
And he (Arden) usurps it, having nought but this –
That I am tied to him by marriage.
Love is a god, and marriage is but words,
And therefore Mosby’s title is the best (Scene I, lines 98-102).”

The second of these expectations is expressed by Richard Brathwait in The English Gentlewoman:
“Modesty affecteth silence and secrecy; a chaste woman solitariness and privacy. If you have business with the judge of any court and you much fear the power of your adversary, employ all your care to this end, that your faith may be grounded in those promises of Christ,Your Lord maketh intercession for you."

The second expectation is also revealed in the "middling sort" of the city in The Shoemaker’s Holiday where we find Simon Eyre, a journeyman in a trade, specifically shoemaking, who is a member of the "middling sort," yet is also Lord Mayor, speaking harshly to his wife:
Margery: “Good my lord, have a care what you speak to his Grace.”
Eyre: “Away, you Islington whitepot! Hence, you hopperarse, you barley pudding full of maggots, you broiled carbonado! Avaunt, avaunt, avoid, Mephistophilus! Shall Sim Eyre learn to speak of you, Lady Madgy? Vanish, Mother Miniver-Cap, vanish! Go, trip and go, meddle with your partlets and your pishery-pashery, your flews and your whirligigs! Go, rub, out of mine alley! Sim Eyre knows how to speak to a pope…(Scene 20, lines 48-56).”
Sim Eyre clearly indicates that the authority to speak is his and not his wife's.

Also from The Shoemaker’s Holiday can be seen the obvious dominant position men assumed over their wives:
Margery: “It is almost seven.”
Eyre: “Is’t so, Dame Clapperdudgeon? Is’t seven o’clock and my men’s breakfast not ready? Trip and go, you soused conger, away (Scene 4, lines 120-123)!”
Notice the harsh tone Sim Eyre takes with his wife in this passage and the passage above.

Moreover, in Eyre’s question, “my men’s breakfast not ready?” it is revealed that cooking was a woman’s job within the family both to provide for her children and to participate in the family business of feeding laborers. Even women like Alice in Arden of Faversham, who, as mentioned above, is married to a man of the landed country gentry, and has a servingmaid, still appear to partake in cooking for her husband and his men, regardless if it is in an attempt to poison her husband.
Arden: “Meanwhile prepare our breakfast, gentle Alice (Scene I, line 91).”
Alice: “Husband, sit down; your breakfast will be cold (Scene I, line 360).”

Cooking was just one task carried out by women in the household. A number of others are depicted in John Fitzherbert’s A Book of Husbandry:
“When thou art up and ready, then first sweep thy house, dress up thy dish-board, and set all things in good order within thy house; milk thy kine, feed thy calves, sile up thy milk, take up thy children and array them, and provide for thy husband's breakfast, dinner, supper, and for thy children and servants, and take thy part with them. And to [send] corn and malt to the mill, to bake and brew withall when need is. And [measure] it to the mill, and from the mill, and see that thy have thy measure again beside the [count], or else the miller deals not truly with thee, or else thy corn is not dry as it should be. Thou must make butter, and cheese when thou may, serve thy swine both morning and evening, and give thy [poultry] meat in the morning; and when time of year comes, thou must take heed how thy hens, ducks and geese do lay, and to gather up their eggs, and when they wax broody, to settle them there as no beasts, swine, nor other vermin hurt them."

However, the household duties of women in the Renaissance should not be interpreted with respect to the modern-day housewife. During the Renaissance, the household was a much greater economic base than it is today in both the country and the city. The work of the "middling sort" tradesmen and craftsmen, like those in The Shoemaker's Holiday, was closely tied to their homes. Their workshops were usually located on the ground-floor of their homes and here they did their own work and marketed and sold their products. Master craftsmens would take in an apprentice to live in his home as the apprentice learned marketable skills. So a woman in the Renaissance contributed to the family business by feeding those working under her husband.

Women, in both the country and city, also contributed to the family business as alewifes. For example, Elynour Rummyng, although not part of a nuclear family, could be found occupying such a role. Her labors, the labors of an alewife, are further detailed here.

Women were also physically participating in the fields of the countryside. From the Hock-Cart, line 41,"Then to the maids with wheaten hats," suggests the strong ties women had to agriculture, as further detailed here. The families of the countryside survived by producing food for those in the city, thus, as women helped in the fields, they were partaking in the family business. Further evidence of women's active roles in the countryside were mentioned above in the excerpt from John Fitzherbert’s A Book of Husbandry.