How did medieval gender roles effect the personality and character traits of women?

by googlybearJ

Culturally enforced gender roles contribute to which parts of one's personality are developed and which are repressed. Depictions of medieval women often show them as flighty and sentimental. Many depictions of men show them focusing on wedding off their daughters, with much less emotional attatchment to daughters than sons.

I was hoping to be connected to texts which would explain how much of this was common and to what extent personality and characteristics of medieval women differed from that of medival men and of contemporary folks.

sunagainstgold

Depictions of medieval women often show them as flighty and sentimental. Many depictions of men show them focusing on wedding off their daughters, with much less emotional attatchment to daughters than sons.

An excellent place to begin would be texts by women themselves! Not all women writers discuss gender directly, but some do, and of course you can learn plenty by analyzing non-specific works.

I recommend:

  • Christine de Pizan, The City of Ladies
  • Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies
  • (n.b. she also wrote a treatise on military tactics, adapted from Vegetius)
  • Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias
  • A translation of the trial of Joan of Arc (I like Hobbins' version, but you can also find older ones online for free)

The short version is that medieval women had a full range of personalities (including total badasses; check out Joan sassing the trial judges), including women who believe in--who argued for--the inferiority of women as a sex.