The Medieval Woman
April 2006 Meeting Report
Guest Speaker - Jean Townsend
The April 2006 meeting of The Keyworth & District Local History Society was held in The Centenary Lounge, Keyworth, on 7th April. The presentation was entitled “The Medieval Woman” and our guest speaker was Jean Townsend. Jean proved to be a very animated speaker and involved the audience at every available opportunity.
Jean began by asking everyone to imagine that they had a time machine and that they were going to travel 500 years back in time to Keyworth in the 16th Century. The ladies in the audience were invited to decide which strata of society they wished to live in when they arrived in 1506. The choices were; lower class, i.e. peasants, middle class, i.e. merchant’s wives, or upper class, i.e. the Lady of the Manor.
Not surprisingly only a few ladies decided that they would like to live the life of a peasant. The remainder seemed to be split fairly evenly between the middle and upper classes. Jean then invited the audience to suggest what they thought would be the principal differences between the lady of today and the lady as she would have been in 1506. The first obvious suggestion was dress, though this proved to be a little surprising. The peasant women would have been dressed in coarse homespun cloth, which was basically very serviceable. However, the middle and upper class of lady would have been able to afford materials made of the finest cloth and quality, these would include silks and velvets. The one thing which no women would ever have worn, or been allowed to wear, was trousers. These were a big no-no as far as the Church and “The Powers That Be” were concerned. The middle and upper class ladies were expected to dress in an ostentatious manner in order to reflect their husband’s wealth and prestige, (some things don’t change do they!)
The next difference that was identified was headwear. Only single women would allow their hair to be seen. Married women would invariable wear some sort of head covering. The reason for this was not immediately obvious to our audience. It would seem that what turned men on in the 15th century was very different to what would arouse their passions today. It seems that hair and ankles were the two main areas of arousal as far as the men were concerned. Thus single women would seek to lure the men folk into their clutches by displaying their tresses whilst the husbands of married women insisted that their wives covered their hair. They weren’t going to have other men ogling their wives most alluring features!
The choice of class also dictated how your days were spent. The peasant woman worked, usually of economic necessity and very hard. The middle and upper class ladies had a far different occupation!! In 1506 it was expected that all women would marry at the earliest opportunity, though the peasant women tended to marry a little later than the other two classes. The reasons for this were as follows; the principal role of the middle and upper class woman was that of child-bearer. She was expected to provide her husband with a steady supply of heirs and daughters. It was not unusual for the middle or upper class woman to be having a baby every year. Thus twenty years of marriage would provide nearly twenty babies. However, childbirth was an incredibly dangerous affair. Around 60% of married women died in childbirth making it, by far, the biggest single cause of death in that group of people. Fortunately for the peasant woman she was not expected to produce children at the same rate, which was just as well since economically and physically it would not have been possible. Indeed, whilst the middle and upper class women were having an average of one child every year the peasant women averaged only one child every three years. The reason for this was quite subtle. Middle and upper class women didn’t rear their own children. they were farmed out to wet-nurses who would suckle the babies for them. The peasant woman suckled her own children. In 1506 children were raised exclusively on mother’s own milk. There were no other baby foods available. The peasant woman would breast feed her child constantly for the first three years of it’s life. Indeed, it was usual for her to have her child with her all the time so that it could be constantly fed. It was the production of breast milk that stopped the peasant woman from being fertile and thus acted as a form of natural birth control. For the peasant woman who was usually physically stronger than her social superiors childbirth was not quite such a dangerous activity though still a fraught affair.
Marriages were brokered by fathers as soon as it was practicable to do. Prospective husbands were judged, not on their individual personal merits but on the size of their estates and wealth. Father’s would always be looking to increase and improve their own standing and wealth by having their daughters well married. It was not unknown for girls as young as nine or ten years of age to be married, often to much older men. It was not unknown for girls not yet past ten years of age to be married to men in there forties and fifties and to be producing children before they reached their teens. There is one instance on record of a twelve year old girl who had been widowed FOUR times, goodness only knows what she had been doing to her husbands!! Perhaps they died happy!! The peasant women had no such demands made of her father with regard to these matters. Indeed, whilst the middle and upper classes rarely married for love the peasant women were in a position where this could be the principal reason for choosing a partner. Because there was usually no parental pressure to marry the peasant woman tended to marry a little later than her social superiors.
The next topic that was touched on was physical appearance. With regard to height the woman of 1506 would not be greatly different in height to the women of the first half of the 20th Century. In general they would have been a little shorter, between 5’ 4” and 5’ 5”, though their build would have been slighter, certainly that of the middle and upper class women. The peasant woman would have been fitter and more developed than her more pampered superiors. Shoe sizes were not much smaller then either. The really big difference would be in actual physical appearance. The medieval woman would have lost most of her teeth by the time she was in her mid-twenties. The reasons for this were that the middle and upper classes had a diet that was sugar rich whilst the peasant had a diet, which was primarily composed of coarse-grained cereals. The sugar rotted the teeth, the cereals wore them out, either way smiling and laughing were unfashionable for obvious reasons. A woman with a good set of teeth in 1506 was a very rare creature indeed.
The next physical difference would be in the skin; in general it would be very poor. Apart from the peasant having very tanned and weathered skin and the middle and upper class women having very pale skin the most striking feature would be pock marks. In the middle ages the pox came in many forms. Nearly everyone would get it at some stage and the scars that it left would be scars for life. Like good teeth a woman with a good complexion was a very rare bird. The preparations that were applied to the face to fill in and hide these pock marks were in themselves very often a source of further trouble to the skin.
All women were, by today’s standards, incredibly dirty and unhygienic. Bathing was almost unheard of. Washing of any kind was perfunctory, even hair, the woman’s crowning glory was never washed. Brushing was thought to be more beneficial. Consequently head lice were endemic. Peasants had clothes that were worn for months on end without being changed; this was a fertile breeding ground for body lice. The middle and upper class women would almost certainly have a good wardrobe but she would still smell awful due to the lack of personal hygiene and be infested with lice. The state of the peasant woman must beggar belief when you consider that not only did she hardly ever washed or change her clothes but also that she would be in constant close contact with farm animals, livestock etc and all the odours, (and other unsavoury excretions), that such animals produced. Medieval women, peasant or otherwise, would be decidedly “whiffy”. When one was anywhere near you would know of the fact instantly. A walk across a field full of cows on a hot summer’s day may give a small taste of the odious aromas involved.
At the end of the presentation Jean reminded those women who had expressed an opinion as to who they would have liked to have been and asked them again if they thought that they had made the right decision. The general feeling that any choice was, at best, going to place you in the position of choosing between a rock and a hard place. Whatever the attractions of 15th century England, (and they seem to be very few in number), the general consensus was that you were much better off living today and that life 500 years ago might be alright for the Doctor Who’s and other sundry time-travellers to visit for a short while but it wasn’t somewhere that you’d want to stay.