Women in the Middle Ages
...zement.” (Rowling 74) Marriage was rarely for love, and if love was found it was after the couple had been married for some time. Couples that were married usually never had met before the arrangement was made. (Rowling 1698) Getting married was a very important aspect of a noble woman’s life. “Marriage prospects influenced their early education and place of residence, and the ceremony itself served as a symbolic rite of passage into ‘adulthood,’ something reflected in the vocabulary used to describe elite women.” (Stoertz 22) Women of nobility had little work, and much of it consisted of needlework. The woman of the house was the one who decorated all the garments for the home, and town even. The lady of the house was to be experienced in waiting on and serving company. They not only had to receive the guests but wait on them, and many times helping them bathe. Ladies had to work along side maidservants in honor of the guest to help get the work of a bathhouse done. “The life of the ladies in the castles, where they were comparatively well protected and safe, was affected by wars and strife. While their husbands were absent they frequently engaged in the arts of war.” (Rowling 1698) A noble woman’s etiquette was of high importance and was known to be very lady-like. The behavior of a noble woman was watched with care, in manners of the church. “For social life, something less austere was wanted, but even here demeanor was highly controlled.” (Winston 1975) “The life of the woman of the Middle classes was limited to a narrower sphere than that of the noblewoman.” (Harksen 16) The middle class was in a sort of limbo because they did not have as much as women of nobility but they had more than the women of the peasantry. The women of the middle class were often the ones who worked to try to become more like those of nobility. They followed the same morals and codes, but had to have a stronger grip on reality. Ladies had to have a more practical outlook on life because it was harder than the life of nobility. There was a point when a middle class girl reached adulthood and became old enough to get married. Adulthood for women was much younger than it is today. “Full social adulthood for these women could arrive at different times, depending on each woman’s age at marriage, early education, social position, motherhood, personality, and other factors.” (Stoertz 22) A woman had to only be of “marrying age” which was very young (in the early teens, starting at the age of 12). Young girls were married off to young men (in their late teens), to help the girls’ fathers. Like the nobility, the fathers were in charge of marrying off their daughters. (Gies 1987) A girl’s life depended fully on the marriage that their parents arranged for them. “It was not unusual for parents to arrange marriages for their children while they were still infants; even the actual marriage ceremony was sometimes performed when the bride and the bridegroom were so young that they had to be carried to the church and could not repeat all the words of the service.” (Salzman 254) Their lifestyles and education remained the same for young girls and then drastically changed once the marriage was final. The education in learning to manage a household became essentially useful in the marriage. (Stoertz 22) They worked hard for the jobs that they were given. Women often worked to help their husband or master’s business. The Middle Class woman, even as an adult, remained under the supervision of the male. (Stuard 1993) Middle class women were conformed and confined to the town in which they were given civic rights. Ladies were regularly the partners or helpers of their husbands. In helping their husbands, they could then have their own economic life through the town. The longer they worked with their husbands they could gain some independence of the trade. The middle class women were very independent in running their households. They thought it necessary to arrange their homes in a manner similar to the nobility. The women were also in charge of teaching their young girls the purpose for being a lady and how to become proper housewives. (Rowling 1968) Middle class women were also taught to read and write. The women were not as educated as well in the subjects as the women of nobility were, but the family practices were still somewhat similar. (Hanawalt 1995) Peasants in the Middle Ages were the lowest class on the social scale. In considering that woman were also on the lower level of the men and women social scale they each having similarities. Peasants were treated with such ill reform that the standard of living was far worse than any other. “They more than anyone else had to bear the burden of the great wars as well as of any lesser strife, since the aggressor always endeavored to weaken his adversary by damaging his property, by destroying his villages by fire and laying waste the fields of his peasants. Poverty and unremitting hard work characterized the life of the peasantry….” (Harksen 12) Unlike the nobility, peasant women had nothing to negotiate or bargain with for marriage. With nothing it left many women unmarried or married only to the man who could best help the woman’s father. “Marriage contracts involved detailed planning. Not all young people, however, had marriages arranged for them. Some were from poor families who had nothing to negotiate and hence would either not marry or marry whom they pleased. It was even possible that in times of land shortage, family interference in marriage was less common because they had nothing to bargain with.” (Amt 1993) Previously the women were bluntly known as “domestic laborers or symbols of sin” (Bishop 37), but immediately after the woman w...