Antifeminist Tradition

In the volume Aristocratic Women in Medieval France, the contributing essayists develop the argument that, despite popular perceptions of women's subjugation and oppression in medieval society, high-born women in fact exercised a good deal of autonomy and even assumed positions of social and political authority. Livingstone cites historians' views that as the heirs of Charlemagne declined and the feudal system took hold decisively in France, the situation by the 11th century was that women "were relegated to a domestic sphere" (46) from which they never quite recovered. Livingstone cites evidence from public records in the area surrounding Chartres that this was by no means the case. Rather, women appear to have had the power to dispose of property in a variety of ways--from gran

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secular and ecclesiastical documents record women inheriting, acquiring, disposing, and bequeathing property. Women did homage and received homage for fiefs. They responded to inquests, they sealed letters on a variety of financial and feudal matters, and they contracted marriages for their children (Evergates 109). The evidence of medieval documents themselves is that women were socially as well as legally autonomous in a variety of respects. The importance of homage is especially instructive inasmuch as it is generally associated with the sometimes complex feudal relationships among knights and vassals and sovereigns--men, all of them. But if the social function of doing homage is considered as a regulator of medieval society, then the fact that women did homage reinforces the view that women had a central role to play in the preservation of the structure of society. Abundant evidence exists for the relative autonomy of aristocratic medieval women. It is difficult to discern the specific context for a letter dated AD 1160 from one Constance of Brittany to Louis VII of France (Eleanor of Aquitaine's first husband), although one suspects it may be relevant to a marriage contract of some kind; however, the rather personal natur
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3021
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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