Comparing Canterbury Tales, Burgermeister's Daughter and the Writings of Thomas Aquinas

Image of Women in Canterbury Tales, Burgermeister's Daughter and the Writings of Thomas Aquinas

What was the predominant image of women and women's place in medieval society? A rather sexist or misogynistic view--by twentieth century standards of course--was prevalent among learned clerics. The writings of the theologian Thomas Aquinas typify this view. But although the religious of Europe's abbeys and universities dominate the written record of the period, Thomistic sexism was not the only view of women's proper role. In his Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer portrays women in a much more positive way, characterizing them as somewhat empowered. Actual historical events, such as the scandal and subsequent litigation revolving around Anna Buschler which Steven Ozment details in The Burgermeister's Daughter, suggest something of a compromise between these two literary extremes. While it is true that life was no utopia for medieval women, neither was life universally horrible or society thoroughly misogynistic.

The Church's views on women had deep scriptural roots. In his letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul writes "Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness" (1 Tim. 2:11). This view rests on the story of Eve's creation as a helper--not an equal--to man from the rib of Adam in Genesis. It also condemns Eve, and by association all women, for allowing the serpent to trick her into Original Sin. In Summa Theologica, Aquinas extends Paul's argument for female inferiority even farther:

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect i...

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...quinas did not by themselves represent the views of society at large--although society by no means completely ignored them. Aquinas and Chaucer's Wife of Bath represent two extreme views of medieval women, while the real nature of women's condition in the period lay somewhere in the middle. Any 20th century ideas of wholesale female oppression in the middle ages are relativist "myths" which serve to glamorize the modern period rather than describe historical reality.

Endnotes

1 By the 11th century, roughly two centuries before Aquinas, even parish priests had become generally celibate, suggesting the widespread adoption of this practice among clergy by the 13th century (Western Heritage, 190).

2 Interestingly, the knight's crime is rape, a crime against women. His quick punishment for the rape further highlights some security enjoyed by medieval women.