Ancient Celtic society was a little bit different from those of today. They were governed by a council of nobles; the king was not the law maker, but rather law applier. Their religion and believes also differ from those of today. They had a polytheistic religion which included the existence of more than one divine-being just like Greek or Norse mythology. Women were prominent in the society, they had more rights than that time Roman and Greek women did. They lived on better conditions than most of the modern world women live today. They went to fight in the battle while other society’s women looked after their children, cleaned their houses and cooked for their husbands. Ancient Celtic women did all of those things, too, except for these ones; they could own their own property, get a divorce, choose their own husband, be a judge, doctor, teacher, poet, a druid; briefly they even have chance of getting a job . Little girls were trained to fight with weapons like swords. Even in Ireland of 1940’s, women were responsible for the care of vegetables, pigs and some farmer animals, just a few of women worked outside and they lost these jobs on marriage.
I will give some information about both ancient Celtic women and modern Irish women in order to be able to conduct a further investigation and also to compare and contrast the subject. They lived in a better condition than most of the women live today, but they had some problems, too. I will explain these problems with reasons and results by comparing and contrasting with modern Irish women and their conditions.
Celtic society was matrilineal, which is a system based on one’s mother lineage. In Ancient Celtic society women were prominent; they had economic ...
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...blem, husbands used their power against wives and there were any law for it. It’s stated on Muckross House website that;
On the family farm, the woman of the house was usually responsible for the care of the small livestock, the poultry, pigs and calves. She would also attend to the vegetable garden and to the growing of fruit. Usually there was no running water or electricity, sanitation was poor and there were few modern conveniences. Few women worked outside of the home and they usually lost their jobs on marriage. For instance, women teachers, who qualified after the 1st January 1933, were obliged to retire when they married. From the early 1940s on, sympathy was growing for the woman in the home and the difficult conditions under which she had to labour. (N.p).
There are some similarities between ancient Celtic women and modern Irish women.
In the early 1900’s, women who were married main jobs were to care for her family, manage their houses, and do housework. That is where the word housewife was come from. During the 1940's, women's roles and expectations in society were changing quickly and a lot. Before, women had very limited say in society. Since unemployment was so high during the Great Depression, most people were against women working because they saw it as women taking jobs from men that needed to work. Women were often stereotyped to stay home, have babies, and to be a good wife and mother. Advertisements often targeted women, showing them in the kitchen, talking with children, serving dinner, cleaning, and them with the joy of a clean house or the latest kitchen appliance.
Prior to World War II women were expected to be housewives by cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children. Women were discouraged to work outside of the home and often judged by the rest of society. Bobbie Ann Mason gives great examples of the duties expected by women of the time period and her grandmother is a perfect model of domesticity. At one point Mason talk about a conversation between her grandmother and mom. Mason’s mom, Christy, decides to go back to work, but her grandmother disapproves and says she should be home taking care of her girls (Mason, 116). Christy on the other hand is an example of the modern woman. A woman willing to go to work outside of the home to help support her family when needed. Christy gets a job at a clothing company. Mason says that many women were leaving the farm and taking work in factories (Mason, 83). During and after World War II many women began to work outside of the home changing the idea of what it meant to be a women and the duties that accompanied.
In the times of darkness where women used to be worthy enough just to take care of the housework, kids, and husband; accordingly, women were categorized as housewives while men were the ones who work for the livelihood. It is important to highlight the women role in World War II because besides the war, deaths, ambition and misfortune; women during the World War II where for first time in the history; women were valued and they free themselves from the stereotype role they had. The time of labor inequality in the World War II between women and men was staring to break down; however, women were still stigmatized to just be able to work in jobs such as nurse and the textile industry. The timing of the initial advance
“The Pastoralization of Housework” by Jeanne Boydston is a publication that demonstrates women’s roles during the antebellum period. Women during this period began to embrace housework and believed their responsibilities were to maintain the home, and produce contented and healthy families. As things progressed, housework no longer held monetary value, and as a result, womanhood slowly shifted from worker to nurturer. The roles that women once held in the household were slowly diminishing as the economy became more industrialized. Despite the discomfort of men, when women realized they could find decent employment, still maintain their household and have extra income, women began exploring their option.
Most of the jobs that women held were the same type of jobs that they would be doing as a housewife such as a nanny, teacher, or cook. Unfortunately for them, once they became married, they were expected to quit their jobs to become the dutiful housewife for their husbands as Chummy did in Episode 1, Series 3 of Call the midwife (Episode 1, Series 3). Their life would revolve around her husband and the home because the role of the female is domesticity, but many struggled with having to give up their career. They did not want to be defined as just a mother or wife. Due to lack of birth control, having kids was an inevitable part of married life, as seen in Episode 5 of Series 2 (Episode 5, Series 2). Creating and nurturing children was looked at as the most important thing about being a woman. Abortion was still an abomination to the female
Thesis Statement: Men and women were in different social classes, women were expected to be in charge of running the household, the hardships of motherhood. The roles that men and women were expected to live up to would be called oppressive and offensive by today’s standards, but it was a very different world than the one we have become accustomed to in our time. Men and women were seen to live in separate social class from the men where women were considered not only physically weaker, but morally superior to men. This meant that women were the best suited for the domestic role of keeping the house. Women were not allowed in the public circle and forbidden to be involved with politics and economic affairs as the men made all the
Markale, Jean. The Celts, Uncovering the Mythic and Historic Origins of Western Culture. Rochester, VT. Inner Traditions. 1993.
Though much is lost to history, we do still know a considerable amount about Irish Celtic cultures and practices. The records that we do have come from a variety of secondary sources including Roman records of the Celts, Catholic documents, Secular prose and poetry, and even a few primary ancient Irish texts (2, 6). The script of pre-christian Ireland is known as Ogam, the earliest examples of which date back as far as the fourth century (2). However, because early Irish mythology was a mostly oral tradition, more widespread literacy in Ireland did not begin until Christianity came to the island in the early 400s (2). Pope Palladius sent the first Catholic missionaries to Ireland in 431 C.E. (2). Their goal of spreading the Catholic gospel created the need for literacy among the newly establi...
In the article, Cult of True Womanhood, the underlying theme is of what society thought was the ideal woman. Women of that time where thought of as homemakers “deeply shaped by the so called “cult of womanhood” a collection of attitudes that associated “true” womanhood with home and family.” Women were supposed to stay home and clean and take care of the children while men worked and provided for their families. The misconception that housework was not hard and that even these women didn’t work as hard as paid labors was a strong opinion of the time. “With economic value calculated more and more exclusively in terms of cash and men increasingly basing their claims to “manhood” on their role as “breadwinners,” women’s unpaid household labor went largely unacknowledged.” Many married women ran their households and took on extra work to support their families and many in underpaid positions. Many of these were even in the service of other’s houses working in “true womanhood”
Throughout the myths of the Celtic and Germanic peoples of northern Europe tales of epic heroes and their extraordinary deeds abound. These tales depict heroes performing a variety of incredible feats; many of which appear to be magical, superhuman, and, quite honestly, utterly impossible (e.g., wading across oceans, defeating armies virtually single-handedly, and other astounding exploits). Since the Celtic and Germanic tribes of antiquity inhabited neighboring lands and lived in close proximity to one another (as many of their modern descendants continue to do: i.e., in Great Britain), it is not surprising that they often established intimate relationships with each other via commerce, conquest, and the spread of religious beliefs. In light of this intimate association, it is not astonishing that the cultural and consequent poetic traditions of these ethnic groups were often remarkably analogous.
Working women took jobs for various reasons. Some worked to help financially while others took jobs out of desire for a larger role in society. Women's roles in society changed, and so did their households. Some negative effects took place as a result of women working. Family members were under more stress because of the absence of the main caregiver during working hours. Children who once had their mother at home taking care of them were now being cared for by relatives or neighbors. Working women also had added pressures. Not only did they work out of their homes, but after work, they were expected to fulfill their household duties when they got home.
Evidence of their culture is basically archeological, it has also come from oral tradition, dating back to shortly before the fifth century AD. Knowledge of all the Druids besides the Celtic ones has been found from and around the third century BC to the fourth century AD. Blacksmithing was an important craft to the Celts. Tools of knives, shears and axe-heads were made to stock patterns across the Celtic World. Iron was also used to make decorative and functional pieces which were very elaborate. Iron again was used for spears, swords and defensive mounting of wooden shields. Bronze workers used a lot of copper and tin to make their intricately designed ornaments. The theme of the Celtic warrior played an important part, with the practice of single combat, the warriors feast and the prize of severed heads of defeated foes. Writing in the Celtic society was sort of restricted, it was not used for imaginative or traditional literature. Before the Roman conquest a state of conditional literacy intermittently existed among the Gaulish upper classes (Piggott 51). Greek letters were occasionally used.
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.
In the Iron Age and the Medieval Era lived a group of tribal societies, who we know as the Celts. The Ancient Celts were mysterious pre-Christian people, who had a legendary history. They were not an illiterate society, in fact they had a twenty-letter alphabet called Ogham, but they preferred to transfer their legends and knowledge orally to keep their sacred teachings as a secret. The regions where these people lived were wide spread. They came from Central Europe and populated much of Western Europe, Britain, and Ireland until they were replaced by the Romans, and later, Christianity.
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).