Women During 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.

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.

The second area that saw the littlest change for women in the Renaissance was the expectations that came with their social status. Overall women were deemed to be a lower class in terms of gender, and men often treated them with less respect as a result. Within social classes, stereotypical beliefs regarding women and their role were held. Lower class women were expected to be housewives and take care of everything to do with the house. The expectation of working-class women, however, was slightly different. They were expected to work for their husbands and help them run their business, although they couldn’t partake in any of the work by themselves or outside of the house. However, this different expectation wasn’t necessarily new and was upheld from previous times, supporting this idea of women not receiving a Renaissance in the area of social class. Some women in the elite were able to become slightly more independent from their husbands and gain more responsibility, but the vast majority of women in the Renaissance continued to be used for the sole benefits of the men; as providers of a dowry, homemakers

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.

Women in Medieval Europe lived the life one may expect them to live from the 5th and 15th centuries. We know today that women are treated equal compared to men (in most cases), and we also know that Women were not always given the freedoms that they have today. This was no different in Medieval Europe during these times. Women were expected to hold jobs in which they took care of children and tended the household, occasionally helping their husbands with crops during the busy part of the planting year (bl.uk). Also as we would expect, men had complete power and say in the relationship (wikipedia.org). Women lived a lot more different back in Medieval times than they do today, but it was their lifestyle, and they did what society asked of them, whether they wanted to or not.

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).

Life was not easy for women and children in the middle ages. We have abusive spouse and such in today’s time period, but in the Middle Ages abuse was even encouraged “as a way to keep women under control” (Lawler). The children had it worse. The children of the Middle Ages, were abused by men, women and even servants to make them behave. In the Middle Ages, the law did not intervene. If you were a woman of upper class then you were lucky! They typical did not go through the abuse that the lower-class women did. As long as a man didn’t kill his wife during the abuse, he wasn’t doing anything wrong according to the Canon law. (Lawler)

This investigation strives to compare and contrast of the role of women during the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages. The inquiry is significant because in order to understand the culture and ethics of the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages it is crucial to understand the importance of women. The issues that will be addressed include: the role of women in the Roman Empire, the role of women in the Middle Ages, and the similarities as well as the differences of the two major time periods. This investigation will focus on the time period of 27 BC to 1485 BC and the places investigated will include Europe, more specifically Rome. This will be accomplished through a detailed examination of the role of women in the

As many would believe, women were thought and viewed to be inferior to men throughout history. Based on this, they were not seen as ones to take on the same important roles as men would in their societies like political jobs, warfare, influencer and innovators, and scientists. During the Medieval period, women rose and began defying the normal stereotypes, even more than usual, and were recognized by their actions. One woman was Margaret of Anjou, the queen consort of England. Margaret was the daughter of René of Anjou and the wife of Henry VI. Her home country France was at war against England and she was offered to King Henry VI as a peace treaty. Being a queen consort, she did not rule and was an asset to the king. When King Henry suffered from an illness, Margaret believed she was the one who should temporarily rule in his place. Unfortunately, title was given to the Duke of York. This occurrence caused a rivalry to emerge between the House of Lancaster and the House of York; This was called the War of the Roses as Lancaster wore red roses in battle and York wore white. The second woman is Lady Murasaki, a daughter of Fujiwara family and a Japanese novelist in the Heian period. She was very intelligent was a young girl and her father still allowed her to get an education despite it being unsuitable for girls. After the death of her husband, she went to court and wrote in a diary about the life she has in court and her thoughts. It is believed that Murasaki sensed 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 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.

Compared to men, women had limited agency and mobility in many parts of the medieval and early modern period. Moreover, there is evidence that women faced obstacles when they tried to enact their agency. Nevertheless, there are many examples where women were able to affect societal structures and navigate around conflicts. For example, women could manifest their agency through the medieval justice system, by being directly involved in societal movements such as Catharism, or through the use of Gossip. The question is than, to what extent did women have agency in the context of historical documents.

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.

Women in this time lived a hard life as well. Regardless of their status in society, they were tied to household tasks (“The Middle Ages”). This including duties such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, sewing, and baking. Along with these jobs, women also