Toni Mount - The Medieval Housewife & Other Women of the Middle Ages

A straight-laced woman at the Battle of Bosworth re-enactment, 2014. ( Pat Patrick)

More has been written about medieval women in the last twenty years than in the two whole centuries before that. Female authors of the medieval period, like the Frenchwoman Christine de Pisan, and the Englishwomen Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, have been rediscovered and new editions and translations of their works produced. Queens are no longer thought of as merely decorative brood mares for their royal husbands and have merited their own biographies; examples of some of the most recent include The Last Medieval Queens by J. L. Laynesmith, Elizabeth Woodville by David Baldwin and Queens Consort: Englands Medieval Queens by Lisa Hilton. Tax records and manorial court rolls have revealed the names of thousands of ordinary women, while fascinating human insights can be gained from womens wills and letters.

From the London Borough records of 1281, we learn of this ruling on the wearing of fur:

It is proved and commanded that no woman of the City shall from henceforth go to market or in the kings highway, out of her house, with a hood furred with other than lambskin or rabbitskin, on pain of losing her hood to the use of the sheriffs, save only those ladies who wear furred capes; the hoods of these may have such furs as they may think fit. And this because regratresses, nurses and other servants and women of loose life dress themselves excessively and wear hoods furred with great vair and miniver in guise of good ladies.

However, administrative records were compiled for financial or legal reasons and the women who appear in them represent just a small fraction of the total female population. Therefore, historians know far more about widows who held property and who enjoyed legal independence than they know about wives whose legal identity was overshadowed by that of their husbands. More is revealed about women when they come up against the law, such as female ale brewers, or brewsters. For much of the medieval period, brewsters were fined regularly for bad practice, but hardly anything is known about women who worked as laundresses and seamstresses, since these crafts were never formally regulated. Any kind of record, read alone, can only give us one view of the total picture. Wills written by women reveal fascinating insights about their piety and personal relationships towards the end of life but say nothing of their attitudes and situation at other times during their lives.

Wife making medicine for her sick husband. (MS Royal 15 D I f.18, British Library The Blinding of Tobit, Bible Historiale of Edward IV, Bruges, 14709)

Mother and baby at the Battle of Tewkesbury re-enactment, 2014. (Pat Patrick)

Being female, wives were primarily responsible for managing the household and caring for the children, and this work (being womens work) was less highly regarded than the work done by men. Women of all social classes were depicted, not only as physically weaker, but weaker rationally and morally, likely to lead men astray. Generally, they had a restricted choice of occupation and fewer opportunities for education and the acquisition of property than men in the same social group. The material well-being of women was determined by their social class, affecting housing, diet, clothing and behaviour. Although aristocratic women enjoyed fewer rights than their brothers, they did have greater access to education, property and political power than any peasant woman.

The opportunities available to a woman varied, not only according to her social class, but also to the stage she had reached in her life. Daughters, whatever their rank in society, were legally under the control and authority of their fathers or guardians. Wives were subjected to the power and authority of their husbands, although some, like Eleanor de Montfort who was reprimanded by a friar for marital insubordination, did not necessarily give in quietly. Usually only widows had any measure of legal independence and this only applied to those with some degree of wealth, like Dame Elizabeth Cook (for her will, see chapter 3). However, women of lower ranks might also enjoy some degree of freedom at other stages of their lives. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the daughters of labourers and artisans often left home at the age of twelve or thirteen to work for others as servants and apprentices. Away from direct parental control, they were far freer to choose their own marriage partner than a young aristocratic girl whose parents regarded her marriage as a means to consolidate their property or expand their network of allies.

A medieval woman at the Loxwood Joust, West Sussex, 2014. (Glenn Mount)

Wives, in both countryside and town, who supplemented the family income by brewing, spinning or selling produce, could sometimes spend their earnings as they wished, despite their husbands legal authority. However, these same women, once widowed, might choose or be required to live with a married son or daughter and so relinquish some degree of independence. The legal independence that widowhood brought was of little value if the widow herself had few, if any, resources at her disposal.

In the past, historians have tended to look at what women could not do. Now we regard women as capable and independent people, able to cope with tricky circumstances, we can consider what rights and opportunities women did enjoy a case of seeing the glass half full, rather than half empty. This book looks at the lives of medieval women in a positive light using contemporary sources, such as the classics of medieval literature written by both men and women, wills, personal letters, household accounts and legal documents, in order to help us understand and visualise their roles.