Social Prehistory of Modern Paris

Gender Roles and Social Status

Europe during the Middle Ages centered largely around feudalism. Man was defined by the amount of property he owned and how much power he had. Society was separated into three basic classes of nobility, clergy, and townspeople all divided into their own hierarchical rankings. The three castes were not miscible; serfs stayed serfs, lords stayed lords. The only possibility for a change in situation was for someone from the nobility or peasantry to join the clergy. Their status within the clergy, however, was also defined by their previous status so that peasants who joined the clergy remained at the bottom of the clergy hierarchy, while nobles would be higher. Each lord in the nobility had a piece of land which was tended and cultivated by the townspeople made up of serfs (who didn’t own any land of their own) and peasants (who owned a small amount of their own land). The serfs and peasants pledged their honor and loyalty when they worked for the lord and in return they would get the safety of the Lord.This is not to implicate, however, that their relationship was in any ways symbiotic. Lords controlled their courts in the strictest fashion and generally paid their workers little for their labor. Not much distinguished a serf from a slave, as a serf did not have the freedom to leave his lord’s land. Serfs loyalty and connection to a lord continued through generations, and all serfs that were born were born already in debt to their lord.
The role of women changed little from the time of the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. Life changed greatly, which in effect changed the actual lifestyle of women, however, by and large women were confined to their domestic spheres while men were expected to protect and provide for their families. This is not unlike many other European countries. Though women played significant roles in fighting for liberty, fraternity, and equality in 1789, they didn’t receive suffrage until 1944¹ .
During the Middle Ages, women played surprisingly similar roles in both the nobility and the peasantry. The most common example of this was the marriage. Peasant women were married by an arranged wedding as young as fourteen years old. Many had been engaged from the age of seven, and because the engagement vows were so similar to those at a wedding, many actually wedded at that age. Noblewomen also had arranged marriages, but they typically had more time before they married. Their grooms out aged them to a greater extent than the grooms of the peasant women. Both types of women were valued at the size of their dowry. The possibility for women to change classes was higher than for men. A jump from nobility to peasantry was extremely rare, but many women married lower than their status as their were more women to men. (2:1 According to one source.)
Men in the gentry and men in the peasantry both saw women as inferior and as an object of property. (Boccacio, Goodman of Paris...) This is not surprising, however, because despite their acceptance of women as good warriors, goddesses, queens and empresses by the Greeks and Romans hundreds of years earlier had also deemed women hundreds of years earlier as naturally inferior. The ordered and strict hierarchy of feudalism further encouraged a belittling of women. Despite this, there are a number of situations where French women did take over their households and act as alternate rulers. The Duchess of Bar ordered Jean de Vergy in 1433 to drive the English out of Lorraine and Bar. Eleonore de Roye insisted on the release of her husband, a leader of Protestant forces during the French Religious wars during the Renaissance, twice when he was first imprisoned for treason against the crown, and then when he was captured again. Duchess of Montepensier Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orleans acted on account of her family when unsatisfied with the actions of her father. She forged an alliance against the crown with the opposition and with the support of the townspeople of Orleans, ordered the shooting of Royal troops in Bastille during the 1652 attack on Paris.
Women in both the upper classes and lower classes found themselves in a highly confusing light. As one source put it, in the Middle Ages, “women perpetually found themselves oscillating between a pit and a pedestal.”² On such pit was the devastation of thousands of women who were convicted and killed because of their supposed witchcraft. France was the first country to make a law that ordered the arrest and killing of any woman accused of being a witch, for it was believed that killing a witch was the only way to save the woman from going to Hell.
The main thing that separated women’s roles were their activities. Neither type of woman typically received an education. Actually, it seemed ridiculous to presume that schooling should go to women when it doesn’t go to many men. Women in the peasantry for the most part contributed to work within the home, house work, taking care of the children, but they also worked along side their husbands in the fields. Ladies of court spent their time embroidering or involved in some other leisure activity. Women were expected to give support to their husbands, and there are only a few records of when women actually had any political power. The only place that may have showed some equality with the men was in cities such as Paris with women who were married to or children of merchants and artisans. Women were allowed to be artisans and apprenticed alongside young boys at the age of eight. They were allowed to join guilds and there are twelve guilds recorded that were solely made up of women.³
The size of households also distinguished families of the nobility from families of the townspeople. The size of the households of the peasantry generally depended on the conditions for that decade, including a better distribution of food, wages, land, etc.⁴ Examples of the response of families to the conditions are shown in the population rebound after the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death. However, for the most part, birth rates declined during hard times and increased during those that were favorable. Peasants also had a greater number of children than the nobility so as to attempt to defeat the mortality rate as well as to increase money flow. The general size of a feudal peasant family was about four to six people.
Religion played a remarkably big part of life during Feudalism, however, its significance continued throughout the ages. Religion and its role in the French household is explained more closely in the prehistory of Paris devoted to class and religion, however, there is much significance of its role in the life of French women. One famous order that was created during the Middle Ages lasted through the beginning of the French Revolution and then was reinstated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799.⁵ The Sisters of Charity was founded as an order that provided nursing care and charity. Besides nursing in their own hospitals, they also worked in prisons and military wards.
Though feudalism ended during the Renaissance, the role of women, and largely the basic structure of the classes stayed the same. The middle class evolved into a stronger and more significant group until it possessed enough power to begin and end the French Revolution forever changing the role of the previous aristocracy.

¹ The Economist 12/31/99
www.britannica..com/bcom/magazine/article/0,5744,15889,00.html

² Rowling, Marjorie. Everyday Life in Medieval Times (p.72)

³ Anderson, Bonnie S. A History of Their Own: Women in Europe (p. 370)

⁴ ibid, (p.135)

⁵ Anderson, Bonnie S. A History of Their Own: Women in Europe (p.241)