Women In Medieval Peasant Women

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 Khmer Empire ran from 802 to 1431 AD and was the largest empire at the time. During this time, Medieval Europe (590-1455 AD) was referred to as the dark ages. These societies shared both similarities and differences. There were many differences such as treatment of women. On the other hand, there were similarities in crime and punishment as they both were very cruel in punishing suspects.

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.

The women in medieval times had not much power over their life and decisions affecting them. Men had all the power and women where tossed aside as only being there for marriage, babies and housework. They were encouraged to stay inside, unless their work compelled them to do otherwise. Were they valued in society? Or were they just there to do as they are told and clean?

During the medieval times, women were not seen as they are today. Although in the world today there are still those who are full of misogyny, it was much more common and intense during this time period. Women during the middle ages had specific roles assigned to them in society. These roles depended on the type of women they were, whether it be a peasant, noble woman, or an evil temptress. These roles that women have served have shown up in numerous stories from the middle ages including: Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife’s Lament.

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.

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

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)

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.

In the social spectrum, women differed greatly on what was expected of them depending on their socioeconomic status in nineteenth-century Europe. Peasant women tended to have more children due to not having birth control available, needing more people to work the land, and the high infant mortality rate. On the other hand, upper- and middle-class families nurtured and sheltered their children and did not use them for income since they had birth control and had enough resources and did not need extra income from their children. In t-e workforce, it was more accepted in society for a peasant woman to be working than a middle class woman. This was best shown by the cottage industry that lasted from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century.

After a long history of various cultures ruling over the Iberian Peninsula, modern Spain and Portugal, Muslim forces entered and dominated the region for about 800 years, from 711-1492. Islam had successfully infiltrated most of the peninsula within about 200 years and resisted the Christian forces trying to regain the land for several centuries (Martinez, 2017). During this time, Muslim and Christian communities occupied space within Al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain, while each community’s religious faith guided the relationships between them. Although legal scholarship has primarily focused much of their work on the roles of males during this episode in history (Burns, 2006), it is important that we decrypt the roles of women as well as the lack

Firstly, the second class will be mentioned, also known as the peasants. Peasant women were commonly thought just another worker. Although they were thought of as equally in their social class, they were only thought of as equal to the man while they were working and doing labor work. Peasant women also did not lead themselves to be pushed around by the common man, they did have to snow a considerable amount of respect though. That was only toward their fathers and late husbands. Peasants were married by purchase, by capture, and also by mutual consent. When peasants would be content to get married, they were only little children at the age of fourteen. Ladies after marriage, would have their first child at fifth-teen, then pass by the ages

Reason is arguably the greatest ability a human has. Whether you are a man or a woman, you are born with this power. Not much separates men from women other than the obvious; physical differences. Though people believe this now, it was not always viewed this way. In 16th century Britain, men, as well as women, believed that women were inferior; their sole purpose in life was to marry and reproduce. The majority of women did not realize their own abilities because of misogynistic problems within society. Women did not have access to education which led to the underlying feeling of inferiority. Being provided with access to proper education and not being treated as men’s domestic assistants, women would have the opportunity to live life equally.

“ 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.

Although many women lacked vast political power during the medieval period, some women were able to contrive power through the ownership of property. Often garnered through inheritance, both noble and lower class women were able to make some sort of gain either in terms of status or power via ownership. While lower class women maintained some level of equality among men in their class due to the need for an equal share of physical labor and trade efforts, they still lacked significant power, and many had little means of increasing their status is society. In the upper class, while women may have been titled, they often lacked political power. However, both aristocratic and peasant women gained power through land ownership, as it made them more