Women Of The Middle Ages

By any metric, the middle ages in Europe was not an egalitarian society. Gender roles were heavily ingrained in the culture, with men meant to have aggressive masculine traits, and women to have fragile feminine traits.The practice of minting coins was perfected by Roman Emperors such as Augustus, Vespasian, and Diocletian, and as many Roman customs did, it became adopted by medieval kings, particularly Anglo-Saxons ones. The minting of coins not only served as a way to facilitate the exchange of goods and services, but they also were political tools utilised by leaders. Cynethryth, Queen of Mercia and Wife of Offa the Great, was the only Anglo-Saxon Queen we know of who issued her own coinage1. This not only has implications for the political eptitude of Cynethryth, but also has significance to understanding of medieval gender roles and how women in power operated and exercised authority.

Households were strictly patriarchal in which the man of the house made all the important decisions. Women's jobs at the time were mostly relegated to domestic service and occasional work at harvest time. The jobs were always of low pay, low status, and required little training. In addition to this females were not legally permitted to inherit land or property. This was the bleak life of a woman, with little hope or power, and always the subordinate of men.

“ The belief that women were inherently inferior in intelligence, strength, and character was so persuasive that for men like Knox, a woman ruler was almost a contradiction in terms” (“Documents for Chapters 5&6”). In the 16th century, women were looked upon as a gender that should stay in the house and work, not have power and rule over a country. Discussing the govern of Queens during the 16th century, such as Mary Tudor, Lady Jane Grey, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I, allowed prejudices to be lessened but never completely be erased. No matter how these four notable ladies came into power, the accomplishments they overcame, achieved and wrote about proved to be great and substantial in making history as it is written today.

All over the world, societal roles of women are different. This has not changed despite centuries of time passing. Roman and medieval women, though parts of different cultures and separated by distance, were very similar.

A woman’s alternative would be becoming a nun, giving up all social freedoms and dedicating your life to serving the poor and God. Women who were subject to this life received a much more thorough education than other women, in order to properly learn religious concepts and theory. Otherwise, a woman’s education was limited to basic reading abilities paired with instruction on how to do homely activities. A woman of this time period had utterly no voice in politics. Law was man’s law. The life of these women were controlled by the men who surround them, their opinions meaning little to nothing. The life of a woman in medieval times was bleak and varied little. Romantic literature was on the rise, full of damsels in distress that only further perpetuated negative stereotypes of women during these times. These romances were full of helpless women in situations only a man could get them out of, or else they would be doomed. Despite this cultural oppression of women in this time period, some strong female characters were erected in medieval romances. A perfect example of an abnormally strong and independent female main character would be Enide from Erec and Enide written by Chrétien de

Women during this time had many restrictions in terms of not being able to vote, gain education and receive inheritance money. Regardless of their social position, they were never allowed to vote. The majority of women never attended school unless their family was considerably wealthy. Reading, writing, dance and skills like needlework were taught through husbands or parish priests. Many women however, remained illiterate. Women could neither inherit their father’s titles. All titles were passed from father to son or brother to brother.

Throughout the three literary periods: The Ancient World, The Middle Ages, and The Renaissance; women have been portrayed and treated in different ways. The Iliad by Homer is about the Trojan War fought by the Achaeans and Trojans which was over the capturing of the wife of King Menelaus, Helen of Troy, by Paris. In The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, it is about a group of 29 people who are all on a pilgrimage to Canterbury to worship St. Thomas’s shrine; however, as Chaucer describes all these types of people not many of them are very religious and the stories they tell show the perspective and portrayal of women in this time. In Francis Petrarch’s poetry Rhymes, he describes his love and admiration for a woman who doesn’t love him back, yet Petrarch still confesses his love for her through his poetry. Through these stories and poems, The Iliad, The Canterbury Tales, and Rhymes, from the three time periods, the role of women is a progression of how they were looked at and their role in that time period, by men.

The hardest life to live during the middle ages was most likely that of a peasant woman. Many of the roles that these peasants had go undocumented and are rarely seen in famous literary works of the time. In “Women in the Medieval English Countryside : Gender and Household in Brigstock before the Plague” by Judith M. Bennett, she describes the peasants woman’s role as “Under a new authority- that of their husbands” (100). These peasants, much like the noble women of the time, were to do as their husbands told them. These women, unlike the nobles, would actually do manual labor work. Their roles were to work in the house as well as work in the field plowing and gathering crops. In “The Wife’s Lament” the narrator ,the wife, speaks about being banished to live in the forest. This shows the misogynistic views of the time in comparison to today where no woman would be forced to leave a town and be told to “...Live in a grove of

The history of the Middle Ages typically places women in one of two roles; they are either placed upon a pedestal of holiness or reviled as whores and allies of Satan. Historians, Marty Williams and Anne Echols, attempt to combat that idea with their text Between Pit and Pedestal: Women in the Middle Ages. Williams and Echols succeed in showing that the traditional female role did fall somewhere in between, but there was a lot of variety in what was in between. Women were wives, merchants, land owners, and doctors, but where does the "traditional" female fall in this picture? As scholars and historians, we are fortunate to have documents written by a woman in the Middle Ages: the letters of Heloise to her husband, renowned teacher and philosopher, Peter Abelard (referred to as Abelard).

The roles in medieval Europe, available for women were restricted because. Some women did have important roles, such as a queen or and abbess (head of an abbey of nuns), but these were not opportunities for a peasant woman as such. Most women were peasants, nuns, wives, mothers or noblewomen. Noblewomen ran their husband’s estates whilst they were at war, but still could not make any decisions of importance, such as money, . They usually had around 7 children, most of which did not live past the age of three. Peasants were expected to marry and become wives and mothers. Some took up spinning and sewing to make clothes and earn money to support their family. Men were able to work in varying roles, no matter what they did, they

The women during this time had many responsibilities, not only in the household but also in the community. During that time some of the jobs common women would have were, taking care of the children in the house, working in the field with their husband, participated in vital cottage industries,preparing food, and taking care of livestock. This was for the women with just a regular life. There were some women that had the opportunity to work in the king's court, yet that

Marie de France lived in a time when social graces were paramount to a good reputation, lordships and to securing good marriages. A woman was considered less valuable if she lost her virginity; a wife was subjected to her feudal lord, father, brother or son after her husband’s death. According to Angela Sandison’s article “The Role of Women in the Middle Ages”, this was because in the Middle Ages the Church and the aristocracy controlled public opinion and the legal system. These authorities of the times believed a woman’s place was in a submissive role to a man. In The Lay of the Nightingale, we will see how this social and religious hierarchy will impact the behaviors of the three people involved.

Women were expected to basically be merely an object, even a trophy for their husbands. They were expected to stay home and clean, as well as cook. With all these expected tasks, women hardly had any time to branch out and figure out what they wanted to do with their life. They had no time for leisure activities of any kind because, of course, their activities involved taking care of the house. Women were also seen as the weaker sex, always submissive to their dominant male counterpart. Although the women were submissive, they were held to a higher moral standard. Adultery was twice shamed upon if committed by a woman rather than a man. (Hughes par.3) A woman could be stoned to death, but people would turn their cheek for a man while the woman still was expected to stay beside the man.

Women withstood a multitude of limitations in the medieval era. Due to the political, social, and religious restrictions women encountered, historians neglected to realize that they demonstrated agency. The female experience is something that has been overlooked until recently. Unfortunately, without the knowledge of how women found ways to exert their power, we are experiencing a deficit of knowledge in this period. Through the close examination of the primary sources: The Gospel of Mary, Dhouda’s Liber Manualis, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the creative means of female force are displayed.

Women from the medieval times had clear roles. The women had strict rules to follow by. When it came to marriage, the wives had to submit to their husbands and follow their lead. Women were supposed to be cleaning, stay at home with the kids, cook, make clothes, etc. The women who steered away from these “typical” roles, made very interesting characters. The majority of gender expectations came from the church and biblical history. Since Eve was the cause for the fall of man, there were a lot of anti-feminist feelings. Women were held accountable for the majority of man’s suffering, and were consequently inferior and to be dominated by men. Purity, holiness, and chastity, were all presumptions of women from outstanding role models like the Virgin Mary.