So the other night I was rewatching the movie "Knight's Tale" (Very historically innacurate, I know.) and it got me wondering, would a woman be allowed to become a blacksmith in Medieval Europe?
My area of expertise is Military History, and I know jack shit about gender roles during the time.
So, would a Woman A: Be allowed to become a blacksmith
B: Ever be successful?
C: Be able to be educated sufficiently on the subject?
The Holkham Bible (British Library Add. MS 47682) from 14th century England isn't a "Bible" in the standard sense. It's more like a biblically-based storybook, combining prose and poetry narratives that weave apocryphal legends into bible stories. This sort of narrative or historiated Bible isn't unusual for the later Middle Ages, nor is its vernacular (in this case, Anglo-Norman/a variety of French) language. What sets the Holkham Bible apart is its cycle of illustrations depicting everyday life in contemporary England along with biblical story depictions plus some whimsical imagery.
The blacksmith? Is female.
Women were generally prohibited from owning their own businesses by the late Middle Ages, although there were exceptions such as the all-female cloth-trade guilds of Rouen. However, there were certainly situations in which women worked in artisans' shops and could even own them. It's a fairly standard assumption that, if the husband/father of a family owned a shop, his family members would compromise some or most of his labor force. That would include wife and daughters. It was an important enough role for wives, in fact, that widows could sometimes inherit a shop directly from their deceased husband and own/operate it in their own right.