The New Murrey and Blue blog

Hard time to be a woman?

, ,
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Of late I have read quite a few posts on Facebook bemoaning the tough lot women had in the Middle Ages. Well yes, their lives could be very hard. But so could those of medieval men. It’s important not to generalise too much.

There were certainly men who valued their wives very highly. We need scarcely mention King Richard II, so upset by his wife’s death that he had the whole palace where she died demolished. What about Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel? He actually renamed a castle after his young wife, calling it Castle Philippe (Castle Philippa.) Then there was Sir John Mohun, Lord Mohun of Dunster, who valued his wife to the point that he gave her jointure in his whole estate. (She proceeded to sell the reversion, thus stripping their daughters of their heiress status.)

We can also mention William Beauchamp, Lord Bergavenny. He was another who gave his widow, Joanna Fitzalan, jointure in all his lands. Their son died before his mother and never inherited his father’s lands.

What about Joan Beaufort? Again, her husband Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, left her a huge jointure. She was able to use this to largely disinherit the eldest son of his first wife in favour of her own son.

Then consider the huge dowries that fathers and brothers were required to provide. Thomas Earl of Kent paid £4000 so that his eldest daughter, Alianore, could marry the Earl of March. It was of course an excellent way of providing for her, given that March was next only to John of Gaunt in value of estates. But if Kent had not valued Alianore, if he had seen her as a mere pawn to be used for his benefit, would he really have stumped up £4000 to advance her? Be aware, £4000 was big bucks back then. The minimum endowment for a dukedom was an annual income of £1000. An ordinary person might have to live on £4 a year or less.

To near-quote Mr Knightly, men did not want silly wives. There were good reasons for this. Except for the bottom tier of society, men were often away from home. Even merchants had to be away for weeks on business. Simple county gentlemen would have to serve on juries, and might well find themselves appointed JPs or Coroners. They might well also be in the service of a lord, or even the King, and spend months away in another household or undertaking estate management duties. They might be MPs or Sheriffs. At some time or another they would almost certainly have legal business in Westminster. More important men might even be on the King’s Council. All of them might have to perform military service. At times this could involve being away in another country for (literally) years.

Who acted as deputy in their absence? Their wife. And she might have to undertake a whole range of tasks from dealing with a sheriff’s writ to defending their house from attack. She could not text, phone or email for advice or instructions. She might be able to send a letter, but a reply could take weeks to arrive. So, inevitably, she would have to take executive action on her own initiative more often than not. Small wonder then that many men valued their wives and saw them as partners in whatever the ‘family business’ might be.

It is true, of course, that women had few life choices. Broadly they could:

  1. Marry. (Probably for advantage not love.)
  2. Become a nun. (This required a dowry too)
  3. Serve in some other woman’s household as a waiting-woman or carer of children. (This was a career path some followed, but for the higher ranks it was not really an option beyond youth.)
  4. Run a business. (Not open to higher ranks. Often if not invariably coupled with Option 1.)
  5. Persuade the family to grant her a manor or two and live as Femme Sole. (Not an option open to all, but I did come across a case lately, to my surprise.)

But it must be borne in mind that their brothers had little choice either. For the typical son of a noble, it lay between being a knight and being a priest. And the priest option was only really open if you were not either an heir or a spare. It was no use telling Daddy you wanted to be an architect. You were stuck with it.

Subscribe to my newsletter

  1. giaconda Avatar
    giaconda

    So being loved should be enough for any woman? Who needs rights or freedoms if your husband will name a castle after you? Multiple pregnancies, domestic abuse written into the law, ‘deputising’ for your male relatives and not being regarding as ‘silly’ if you managed to do it all flawlessly. Can’t imagine what they could have to moan about. Was this article written in 1950?

    Like

    Reply
    1. sighthound6 Avatar
      sighthound6

      Women had very limited choices in the middle ages. So did men. There were virtually no ‘rights’ for anyone, male or female, except within the very strict limits society allowed. These depended more on your social status than your gender. Multiple pregnancies were the norm for women up until about 1920, after which science and changing moral rules began to set them free. This issue was by no means confined to the middle ages and the only alternative was celibacy, which some medieval women chose for themselves, either as nuns or as widows. On the other hand, some medieval women took on huge responsibility, either as wives or widows, and some ran independent businesses as a ‘femme sole’. A tough life? Yes. But it was equally tough for men. That is the point of the article, apart from pointing out that some women, at least, were highly valued by their fathers and husbands.

      Like

      Reply
    2. Solae_V Avatar
      Solae_V

      It is a rather narrow view to imagine “rights” are the be-all, end-all of every woman’s happiness. Firstly, it has been rightly pointed out that no one in the middle ages had “rights” as defined by any modern person. In fact, to the medieval mind one had duties they were obliged to discharge and in order to do so they had seveal tools. Amongst these it was the duty of the patriarch to protect his family and to that end he had power over the members of his family, be they male or female. A son had a duty to obey his father as much as a daughter, and all children had the duty of advancing the standing of the family, either by marriage, service of nobility or service of God. To that end then a father decided for both sons and daughters careers paths, marriages and so on, so forth and when he thought it necessary he might take to disciplining them, but that is because said father would have to bear the legal repercussions.

      On the matter of multiple pregnancies, I can only say that is a natural occurence when two people have marital relations for prolonged periods. Most women viewed it as both their duty and their personal pride and joy to produce children, not only because a woman can usually be relied upon not to view her own children as so much baggage, but because that meant her own line might continue down through the ages. You also forget that the people of the middle ages were deeply religious and might view the begetting of children as simply fulfilling God’s commands. There were also no truly reliable contraceptive methods in that time period and so women would have found it rather difficult to prevent pregnancies within marriage. Those who had no calling to motherhood often chose a monastic life.

      On the matter of domestic abuse, I do not know of a Christian society that views it positively. There are certainly different definitions of what constitutes abuse and what exactly can be regarded as merited chastisement, however, ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have punished wife-battering and the killing of the female spouse to the point where the batterer might even lose his life. Medieval Europe did not view abuse any more kindly. The predominant belief was that women could be chastised and even bodily punished, but only when they were seen/caught committing an offence and certainly not whenever the man just woke up feeling like he’d enjoy beating his wife. In fact, wife battering is known to have been prosecuted, hence it was seen as a crime and thus not acceptable in the eyes of the law. Of course this does not mean there were no abusers; there were plenty, but the idea that it was viewed as the normal behaviour in most circles utterly rejects the idea that men are human and not some unfeeling monsters. Or to suggest that most fathers, brother, husbands and sons had no regard for their female kin is somewhat odd.

      And for the record, Christian medieval socities dedicated no small amount of resources to the education of women – particularly of the noble class, both in a religious context and outside of it. They were not veiwed as “silly”. Many of them were depended upon for the good running of estates and since things seem to run smoothly for the most part, we can assume they were successful in asserting their authority and must have thus been viewed as an equal of their husband’s.

      If anything, this response to the post lacks ant amount of nuance.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a reply to giaconda Cancel reply