Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality (1984-vol.2, 46) writes that according to Aristotle “woman is, as it were, an important male for it is through a certain incapacity that the female is female and the female, as female, is passive and the male as males is active. Foucault also states that Aristotle believed that the relation between men and woman was political; it was the relation of the ruler and the ruled. Therefore, according to Aristotle men are all that women are not and this entitles men with the privilege of exercising authority over women.
Aristotle being a biologist thought that every woman was a failed man. This system of gender that treats women as a category with unquestionable, inferior qualities was also taken up by the Christian fathers because it suited the ancient heresy of dualism, the idea that god’s creation can be divided into two as either good and bad. Although early Christianity had proclaimed the spiritual equality of all. Fathers preached that because women were weaker they required restriction and support. The supporters of masculine rule nationalized their attitude on the necessary submission of woman to man by making use of the Bible and of Saint Paul’s pronouncements like;
“A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of god; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither man was created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head. (I. Corinthians. XI, 1069)
By reversing the natural order not only did Christian fathers claim that woman was inferior and weak and that she was created from mans single rib therefore she was not the “mother of all races of men, but they even told Christian men to inhabit a separate world from women because women were also dangerous and threatening. In other words women were not only to be submissive but paradoxically they were also said to possess evil power. This, of course, was endangered by the Biblical story of the fall:
Eve fell into sin and let Adam into sin. Hence each woman was held responsible for destroying men and crucifying Christ as Tertullian in the third century remarked: “even though you may be free of the actual crime, you are not free of the odium attaching to it” (Vol. II, 2) similarly in Timothy we read:
“I also want woman to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls of expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship god. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became sinner. (II: 1108)
These contradictory representations of women in history, presenting woman first as a defective, weak person and secondly as a source of danger who is responsible for all the evils and disasters since the Fall, gave rise to a third view of woman, that of the virgin mother. In fact the Christian religion inherited the myth of virginity from the classical world. Edward C. Whitmont also mentions in “Return of the Goddess”, starting from as early as the stone age the ancients worshipped the earth mother or the great goddess and associated her with fertility, creation, birth and death. In other words to some ancients the earth mother represented the wholeness of natural existence, the endless tides of physical life. Unlike the later male divinities she was neither heroic, self-willed nor bent upon battling against opposition. (Whitmont 43) Rather she contained the endless flow of all oppositions, a continuum. Often as in the mythical figures of Artemis and Hera she appeared in the triple aspect of maiden, mother and crone-or youth., creativity and wisdom. At different times by different cultures she was given many names such as Au set, Anat, Brigit, Danu Hecate, Hera, Inanna, Kubaba and Cybele. For these pagan goddesses, as for Virgin Mary, virginity could go hand in hand with reproduction, as in the case of Hera, Wife of Zeus and mother of many children who renewed her maiden hood annually as she was dipped by Nymphs in the spring at Canathus. Yet that was because the ancients associated virginity with magic, strength and ritual purity.
Similarly celebrants of sacred mysteries of the ancient world prepared themselves by abstaining from sexual intercourse in order to acquire the condition of strength and purity appropriate to serving the gods. Also in the case of classical goddesses the sign of the virgin rarely endorsed chastity as a virtue. For example many of the love goddesses of the near east and the classical mythology like Venus, Ishtar and Anat are entitled to virginity despite their several lovers.
The Christian religion broadened the concept and interpreted the ancient mythological formula of virginity as the moral sanction of the goodness of sexual chastity. Moreover the shift from virginity to virgin birth transformed a mother goddess like the Virgin Mary to an effective instrument of female subjection. Especially in the Middle Ages when the idea that the mother of god should be a virgin overrode all other religious considerations, the image of Virgin Mary depended much upon the Christian definition of evil. On the one hand medieval heresies like Montanism was denouncing and outlawing. (Armstrong 72)
The Arabian love poetry of the middle age inspired the Europe and a new tradition started in Europe. Unlike the earlier masculine world where heroes only fought for fame and for god. A medieval knight would devote himself to a woman and spends his life to please her.
The feudal world of medieval was based upon landowning and was male-dominated. It is very hard to speak of Medieval Women in Europe. There are geographical differences, the timeline is too long and there are differences between upper classes and the lower classes. They were lower from the man and they had to fallow the orders of the man. If they are unmarried the father was the sole authority, after marriage husband. They had to listen the orders or they could be beaten. And the law was very masculine. The Woman population was more of the man because of the wars and the infectious diseases and the opening o several churches, there were lots of monks.
Marriages were mostly made between same social classes but because of the reduce in man population sometimes they had to marry to man of lower classes. It was father’s right to decide who the daughter will marry. Girls usually get married when they are fourteen of fifteen years old. When a girl marries a dowry was needed. If a girl does not have a dowry this was dishonorable for her. The unmarried women were more powerful in the society. Because they possess big lands. After marrying the husband takes the right to possess land. Before marriage woman can buy land or sell but after marriage, it is husbands right. But after the death of the husband or becoming widow, woman, again have these rights.
Upper Class Women:
Upper class woman had the chance for an education but this education was preparing young girls for the marriage. They were sent to the great ladies for education. Here they were learning how to become a good wife. They learn reading and writing, telling stories and playing musical instruments. They learn some medicine too but not much, to be seen as witches. In the medieval era husbands were going to wars and the wives must represent their husband. They manage everything including defense of the place, they live in.
The Nunneries:
In the Middle Ages, marriage was the goal of nearly every woman but the upper class women seemed to have more luck that they were provided with one other option in addition to marriage—being nuns in the nunneries. It was like a privilege because you have to pay for it. Noble man sometimes sent their wives to these nunneries, when they went to wars.
The middle class women:
Woman who works are called, middle class women, they worked in trade and crafts. They can both work at home or outside, shoemaking, food services but mostly paid lower than man.
The Lower Class Women:
They are the most crowded part of the medieval women. The peasants. They mostly live in country sides. They have the opportunity for education but what they can learn were the alphabet and religion. They do the housework but at the same time work for their husbands too. In farm and even in construction.
The lower class women could enjoy some sort of equality. Eileen Power cites medieval records as examples of how women performed almost every kind of agricultural labour and how they worked in food production and textile. Yet as she also points out, this equality was a limited one because first, women’s wages were lower and secondly “many craft regulations exclude female labor, some because the work was considered too heavy, but for most of the reason, with which we are familiar, that the competition of women undercut the man” (Power 412). The fact that woman worked does not mean that they could now take their place in the public realm because the kind of work that they were engaged in was part of the cottage industry which still kept women within the chamber of domestic life. In the Aristocratic classes, the sphere of women was the home, and weddings were arranged and dictated by the interests of land. Despite these advantages, however feudal wives enjoyed various responsibilities due to the inevitable absence of their husbands who left for long military expeditions, crusades and pilgrimage. As the natural guardians of their husbands, the wives were expected to be capable of replacing their husbands and even be able to act like amateur soldiers and healers (Power 417) Feudal women can inherit land, honors and offices or enjoy great power as guardians of their infant children. Eileen Power cites Blanche of Champagne who waged war for fourteen years and Blanche of Castile who governed a kingdom on behalf of their respective sons as examples of women who strongly influenced the history of the early thirteenth century Europe. Aristocratic women of the middle ages were also active in the cultural affairs of their time. The power that they enjoyed through inheritance and administration of feudal property enabled them to assume cultural roles as artists and patrons of art.
In the end of the Middle Ages in law the Roman notion “in foemina minus est rationis” (women have less reason) became so popular that judges imposed less severe penalties on women on the grounds that they lacked the mental and moral forces necessary to commit an intentional crime (Hale 127) Moreover laws that entitled widows to a proportion of their husbands property at their death were being set aside following the same argument. An English lawyer in the sixteenth century wrote that “Every feme covert [married women] is a sort of infant” (Miles 108)
References
Cogan, Michelle. “Medieval Women and Their Occupations in Chaucer’s Time.”
Online. 15 Apr. 2002.
Gies, Frances and Joseph Gies. Daily Life in Medieval Times. New York: Black Dog
and Leventhal Publishers, 1990.
Jennifer. “Medieval Women.” Online. 15 Apr. 2002.
Power, Eileen. Medieval Women. Ed. M. M. Postan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1975.
Rowling, Marjorie. Life in Medieval Times. New York: Perigee Books, 1979.
“Women In The Middle Ages.” Online. 6 Apr. 2002. < http://www.usm.maine.edu/
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