In today’s society, marriage and family life are considered the center of our societal make-up. Everything that we do in life is affected by our familial relationships. That being true, is it any surprise that the same could be said of the families of the Middle Ages? In fact, in a way marriage and family life was even more important then. A person’s family affected every instance of an individual’s life. Coming from a good family, with a reputable reputation for breeding, greatly improved a woman’s chances of a good marriage. For men, choosing a wife from a good family meant making proper legal ties which would perpetuate the fortunes of, and in certain instances improve, his line. However, as important as marriage was to life in the Middle Ages, very little documentation has been discovered from which we can learn about this important institution. What records are available come through the filter of those with a particular view of how things should have been, not necessarily how they actually were.
While tracing the actual history of marriage is complicated; tracing the history of the married lives of women through their own perspective in nearly impossible. The information there is on the lives of women come through the filter of men, particularly members of local clergy and the aristocracy. In this paper I have teased out some of the available information on marriage and family life from the medieval woman’s perspective. As I have mentioned previously, the center of life in the Middle Ages was one’s marriage and family. This was especially true for women. From birth, a young woman’s sole use to her father was contained in her potential as a breed-able wife. For this reason, a young woman’s prized virtue was her virginity, whi...
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This book offers up an easy to follow explanation of women's lives in the Middle Ages including information on the different social levels and their lives at home.
Houts, Elisabeth M. C.. Medieval memories: men, women and the past, 700-1300. Harlow, England: Longman, 2001.
Jewell, Helen M.. Women in medieval England. Manchester: Manchester University Press ;, 1996.
Lucas, Angela M.. Women in the Middle Ages: religion, marriage, and letters. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983.
This book goes into detail about life as a wife during the Middle Ages- Not specific to Italy, let alone Venice.
Power, Eileen, and M. M. Postan. Medieval women. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Offers a quick overview of the mindset toward women in the Middle Ages.
Skinner, Patricia. Women in Medieval Italian society 500-1200. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, 2001.
The work begins with Section I, ‘The Background’ which consists of a general overview in medieval women’s social and religious history. The first section delineates the basic societal framework for Western European women in the High Middle Ages and outlines the cultural forces at work in shaping their lives. The second part of this section reviews the changes in religious consciousness concerning sacramental practices and fasting, from the Church Fathers to the late medieval hagiographers. It should be noted here that although more careful attention is given to the practice of ‘fasting,’ especially in the latter portion of the work which I will be examining in more detail, the ‘feasting’ in question more generally denotes the ‘love feast’ of the Eucharist than the fe...
Thiebaux, Marcelle. The Writings of Medieval Women: An Anthology. New York: Garland Publishing. 1994. Print.
In the article “Courtly Love: Who Needs It?” by E. Jane Burns, the author establishes what would be considered the quintessential female persona as it appears in medieval literature, particularly in the romance genre. She begins by calling attention to the similarities between the expected mannerisms of women in the structure of courtly love and the modern book The Rules. The text is a self-help guide for women who are looking to attract a husband by employing medieval methods of attraction (Burns 23). It employs outdated strategies to encourage women to become unemotional and disinterested, but also subservient, with anticipation of attaining the unwavering affection of a potential suitor. Thereby perpetuating the well-established “ideology
One of the aspects of the Middle Ages which is explored by numerous scholars today is that of the antifeminist stereotypes which pervaded literature and cultural mores during the period. In an era governed by men, the fact that women were treated as inferior is unsurprising; archetypal visions of femininity fit neatly into medieval history. However, most people would like to believe that such pigeonholing has been left in the past, allowing for more liberated times in which women are portrayed realistically and as the equals of men.
Medieval society was completely dominated by men, making a women’s life at the time difficult. Medieval law at the time stated that women could not marry without their parents consent, could not divorce their husbands, could not own property unless widows, could not inherit land if they had surviving brothers, and could own no business with special permission (Trueman, “Medieval Women”). When a woman married a man, he would get any property she owned and she would forfeit any rights she had to him. When the husband dies she would get one third of the land to live on and support herself. Unmarried women who owned land had the same rights as men (Hull). Whenever a woman got into trouble it would be her closest male relative who would appear in court, not the woman herself (Medieval).
This course dove into medieval history and touched on all of the most critical elements of the period giving a well-rounded look into the lives and cultures of the middle ages. As the class moved forward it became evident that religion is central to understanding the people, advances, and set backs of this period. We learned how inseparable the middle ages and religion are due to how completely it consumed the people, affected the art, and furthered academics. Since, there is a tendency to teach about history and literature separately from religion and since religion possessed a dominant position in every aspect of a medieval person’s life, while many of us had already looked into the period we missed some crucial cultural context allowing
“Love and Marriage.” Life in Elizabethan England. Elizabethan.org, 25 March 2008. Web. 3 March 2014.
To understand the interest in married women we must first understand what marriage meant to the nobility. Far from the happily-ever-afters of romantic fairy tales, marriage in Occitania was a business arrangement with very little –if any- thought given to the emotions of the couple involved. “On the whole, marriage for them was merely an economic and political venture: its goals were the expansion of the fief, consolidation of power, and continuation of their lineage.” Land and power was accumulated and passed down within the family and as such the ability of a wife to bear legitimate children was tremendously important. “…[T]he aristocracy, which in the twelft...
Shawna Herzog, History 101-1, Class Lecture: 11.2 Society in the Middle Ages, 27 March 2014.
Were the Witch-Hunts in Pre-modern Europe Misogynistic? The “YES” article by, Anne Llewellyn Barstow, “On Studying Witchcraft as Woman’s History” and the “NO” article by, Robin Briggs, “Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community,” will be compared, and summarized.
Michael Pierre, Martha Prosper. The Human Story: Europe in the Middle Ages. New Jersey: Silver Burdett Press Inc., 1988.
In this conclusion to the "marriage debate" Chaucer makes his case against courtly precept and social custom, as well as against the religious ideas expresses in medieval times. The case he makes establishes his own highly civilised and indeed Epicurean idea of "gentillesse" in general and in particular, in marriage.
Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England 1550-1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 37-9 Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/journals/parergon/v019/19.1.crawford.pdf
Women in different societies around the world, during the Middle Ages, experienced different hardships and roles. These hardships and roles helped shape how they were viewed in their society. Some women were treated better and more equal than others. In Rome, Medieval England, and Viking society, women’s legal status, education, marriage and family roles were considered diverse, but also similar. In certain nation’s women have more or less power than women in other nations, but none equal to the power that women have in America today.
Many women in this period would engage in “arranged” marriages which were widely accepted and indeed, one of the most practiced forms of marrying at this time. Usually a marriage of convenience rather...