In the Middle Ages, many different attitudes about women started to appear: Literature about women became more influential, due to the chivalric notion of courtly love. The Canterbury Tales, Le Morte Darthur and the Lais by Marie De France demonstrate this, with tales of knights, romances and beautiful women. However, despite women appearing more often in writing, it mustn’t be assumed that a new, respectful emphasis on women was being displayed; literature only depicts the ideals of the writer, or rather a minor percentage of society. Although these texts may show a slight change in attitude, the actual place of women in the medieval era was not likely to have endured a great deal of change. Some commonly perceived ideas about women that appeared
The role of women in learning and education underwent a gradual change in the Afro-Eurasian world and the Americas between the 11th and 15th centuries. As societies in Africa, Middle East, India, China, Europe, and America grew more complex they created new rights and new restrictions for women. In all regions of the world but the Middle East, society allowed women to maintain education in order to support themselves and their occupations. Women slaves in the Middle East were, however, prized on their intelligence. In Africa, women were trained in culinary arts. In India, women learned how to read and write with the exception of the sacred verses of the Vedas.
Women were always viewed as weak, dependent, and powerless in the Middle Ages. Not only is it a common view during that time period, but this also is often stereotyped labeled to women today as well. In the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the hatred of women is portrayed throughout. However, while women are certainly looked down upon, they also are influential to the knights. This romance also portrays how a woman having different characteristics, could change the way she was viewed as well. Although women in the Middle Ages appeared to lack power, the women in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight have a hidden influence over the men and actually drive the action of the medieval romance.
Some say women can get the worst out of a man, but in The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1485, proves it. The tales were originally written as a collection of twenty four tales, but has been narrowed down to three short tales for high school readers. The three tales consist of “The Miller”, “The Knight”, and “The Wife of Bath” along with their respective prologues. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer shows the weak but strong role of women throughout the “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” to contrast different human characteristics and stereotypes on the spectrum of people.
Looking back through many historical time periods, people are able to observe the fact that women were generally discriminated against and oppressed in almost any society. However, these periods also came with women that defied the stereotype of their sex. They spoke out against this discrimination with a great amount of intelligence and strength with almost no fear of the harsh consequences that could be laid out by the men of their time. During the Medieval era, religion played a major role in the shaping of this pessimistic viewpoint about women. The common belief of the patriarchal-based society was that women were direct descendants of Eve from The Bible; therefore, they were responsible for the fall of mankind. All of Eve’s characteristics from the biblical story were believed to be the same traits of medieval women. Of course, this did not come without argument. Two medieval women worked to defy the female stereotype, the first being the fictional character called The Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The second woman, named Margery Kempe, was a real human being with the first English autobiography written about her called The Book of Margery Kempe. In these two texts, The Wife of Bath and Margery Kempe choose to act uniquely compared to other Christians in the medieval time period because of the way religion is interpreted by them. As a result, the women view themselves as having power and qualities that normal women of their society did not.
“Culture does not make people. People make culture” said Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian writer and educator, in a presentation on feminism in a TedTalk. The culture in which Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written was misogynistic and it shows in the writing of the poem. Medieval cultural misogyny manifests itself in multiple ways in SGGK. This paper will examine the negative relationships between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and gender by discussing: the representation of female characters, gendered violence, and Christianity in the Middle Ages.
Medieval and Renaissance literature develops the concepts of love and marriage and records the evolution of the relation between them. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Christian love clashes with courtly love, as men and women grapple with such issues as which partner should rule in marriage, the proper, acceptable role of sex in marriage, and the importance of love as a basis for a successful marriage. Works by earlier writers portray the medieval literary notion of courtly love, the sexual attraction between a chivalric knight and his lady, often the knight's lord's wife. The woman, who generally held mastery in these relationships based on physical desire and consummation, dictated the terms of the knight's duties and obligations, much like a feudal lord over a vassal. This microcosm of romance between man and woman was anchored by the macrocosm of the bonds among men and their fealty to their lord. The dominance of women and fealty to the leader in courtly love contrasts with the dominance ...
characteristics. In 'Les Quatre Sohais Saint-Martin';, 'The Chevalier Who Made Cunts Talk';, and 'The Miller's Prologue and Tale'; medieval women are portrayed in similar ways. Women are imaginative and therefor their thoughts must be controlled. They also, in the Fabliaux, crave sex and have sexually creative minds. These three Fabliaux texts present women that are similar and represent commonly held views about the female sex of the time.
The Middle Ages interpreted the female ideal as silent and submissive, evoking images of Coventry Patmore’s misogynistic 19th Century poem “The Angel in the House”. That said, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, set in this era of misogyny and subjugation, has often been depicted as presenting females contrary to this perception, portraying the Romance genre as “essentially the theatre of its feminine figures”(Heng 501). However, this can be regarded as a misconstrued perception of the work as, rather than advocating feminine power, the Gawain-poet can be perceived as following the tradition of his age in positing woman as either weak or sinful.
Marie de France’s the Laustic demonstrates courtly love and its foundation that women in romance are of high nobility. Although women were viewed as more of a prize than in previous literature periods, they were still represented as under the status of men. Marie de France introduces the woman in her story as the “courtly and elegant wife” that was given to a knight, which shows the courtly relations and theme to the story (83). Since most of the time women did not play a role in the decision of who they were to marry, adultery became a common theme amongst many stories. This theme demonstrates women’s power in that although they are forced to marry a courtly man without much choosing, they usually choose to love another behind their husbands...
Anglo-Saxon literature was based on Germanic myths about battles, heroes, diseases, dragons and religion. Writers did not pay much attention to female issues, and there are only few poems that talk about them. Beowulf and “"The Wife’s Lament"” are two examples that briefly consider women’s lives in that time. Anglo-Saxon history and poetry portray women’s lives as uneasy and dependent on their husbands’ positions. Women had to endure arranged marriages, abuse and male dominance.
The narrative of each of these texts demonstrate how gender is presented as a main issue in Old and Middle English, although femininity is not necessarily viewed as a weakness. In The Wife’s Lament, the wife expresses her sorrow regarding ‘the misery of exile’ after becoming
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales provides valuable insights on the roles women, their experiences, and the strategies they embraced to appropriate their quota of socio-political influence available to them during the Middle Ages. The text exhibits various discourses on female status and how it is projected, specifically through the use of women characters. Chaucer illustrates a spectrum of feminine ideals during the Middle Ages, individuals who fall short of these ideals, and solutions of those who seek happiness. However, the context women are portrayed in varies, whereas they are either idealized and worshipped—or loathed and monstrous. For instance, in The Knights Tale, Emelye is a beautiful noblewoman who exists only
In the 1300’s women had little to no rights, yet to be here in 2017 where women have equal rights to the male gender. The world has obviously come a long way in the past seven hundred years. In this time frame, the feminist approach was eventually developed and designed to focus on finding and exposing suggestions of misogyny (negative attitudes toward women) in literature (Polukis 59). The feminist approach is applicable to Geoffrey Chaucer's, The Canterbury Tales, in which he depicts women in a negative light. Throughout his tales, specifically in The Knight's Tale and the Wife of Bath's Tale he portrays women in a certain manner. The overall manner in which Geoffrey Chaucer displays women negatively, is due to his suggestions that women
Throughout history, women have been looked upon as sources of beauty. From medieval times, the women that are remembered and well-documented in poetry and story-telling are presumably all one thing: beautiful. A woman’s beauty does not simply represent their physical beauty, but the knowledge, power, personality, and even hardships that woman has endured. Strong, significant women from this time and prior periods have entire works of literature dedicated to their beauty and appearance. Goddesses, such as Aphrodite or Venus, the Virgin Mary, Nature; these women are central figures in the beginning of the Anno Domini era, through medieval literature, all the way to present day. In medieval times, ‘everyday’ women in the literature are even described by their beauty. Women who have the strong, driving roles in works of this time period impart wisdom, kindness, the feeling that although men were the superior gender, the women are still the ones who bring life to this world and make this life worth living. In the writing’s of Boethius, Alan de Lille, and Chaucer, there are three women whose beauty and physical characteristics are central in the understanding of their personalities and the works themselves. The women are that of Lady Philosophy, Nature, and the White Queen. Each woman’s beauty is described to that of which the author wanted the reader to focus on in the woman’s personality: intellect in Lady Philosophy, the high status once held and the role as mother by Nature, and the good heart and kindness in the White Queen.
Lucas, Angela M. Women in the Middle Ages: Religion, Marriage, and Letters. Great Britain: Harvester Press, 1983.