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WOMEN’S ROLES IN SOCIETYIN MEDIEVAL TIME

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WOMEN'S ROLES

We can put the women into five categories based

on know they were known during medieval society.

Women from the class that was landed and free.

(Lady of Manor)

Religious Women. (Nun)

Townswomen.(Middle class)

Women of lower Estate. (Lower Class)

Peasants

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Lady of the Manor:

•Often ran manors, farms,

and castles.

•Influential person.

•The authority when

husband wasn’t present.

4

Religious Women:

•The convent was another

alternative for upper class

women instead of

marriage.

•Praying, study, and work.

•Worked 5 to 6 hours.

5

Townswomen:

•Middle class women

expected to..

•Maintain house hold.

•Assist their husband in

business. For Example..

•Help her husband in his

trade.

6

Women of lower Estate:

•Townswomen whose

occupations needed little or

no training skill.

•Lower middle class

perhaps urban poor.

•Many were immigrants

from countryside.

•Street-vendors.

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Peasant Women:

•Expected to share in all

their husband’s labor on

the farm.

•Traditional household

chores.

•Many didn’t marry due to

a shortage of eligible

partners.

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TREATMENT

Upper Class: well respected.

Religious women: important role, treated with

kindness but well disciplined.

Middle class: had authority in business; equally or

even superior to men.

Lower Class: Poor pay

Peasants: Slaves.

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AUTHORITY

Social Status.

Land/Property.

The richer you are the more authority you have.

Lower class had no authority what so ever.

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EXAMPLES/RFERENCES FROM CLASS!!

The Wife Of Bath:

Townswomen/Middleclass

from Chaucer’s Canterbury

Tales.

She belongs to the third

group of women workers.

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WORKS CITED Fox, Sally. The Medieval Woman: An Illuminated Book of

Days. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985.

Gies, Frances and Joseph. Women in the Middle Ages.

Barnes and Noble, 1978.

Robertson, D.W., Jr. " 'And for My Land Thus Hastow

Mordred Me?' Land Tenure, the Cloth Industry, and the

Wife of Bath." Chaucer Review 13 (1979-80): 403-20.

Stuart, Susan Mosher. Women in Medieval Society.

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976.