Women in Medieval life and literature- REVISION POSTER
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The Merchant\'s Tale- Geoffrey Chaucer
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OCR
Book
The Canterbury Tales
This poster provides a detailed insight into the women in medieval life and literature, including links to other stories from within The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
The Merchant's Tale KEY QUOTATIONS WITH TRANSLATIONS
The Merchant's Tale- complete context notes
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English Literature
The Merchant's Tale- Geoffrey Chaucer
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Character tropes of wom
Women in medieval life and literature Perhaps the most comm
affiliated with women in
pure until they are wed a
Most people in medieval Europe lives in small rural communities, making their living from the land. Peasant women had many were to appear in literat
domestic responsibilities, including caring for their children, preparing food and tending to livestock. During the busiest of times, made into a virtuous, pu
such as the harvest, women often joined their husbands in the field to bring in the crops. Women often participated in vital cottage
industries, such as brewing, baking and manufacturing textiles. The most common symbol of the peasant woman was the distaff – a Witchcraft, folk magic, an
tool used for spinning flax and wool. Eve is often shown with a distaff, illustrating her duty to perform manual labour after the fall way back to illustrations
from Paradise. An image often seen in medieval art is a woman waving her distaff at a fox with a goose in its jaws; sometimes, in two types of witches, wh
satirical images, women are even shown attacking their husbands with a distaff or some other domestic implement. old women who worked
that have no cure. These
Women living in towns had similar responsibilities to those in the countryside. Just as rural women helped with their husband’s European society. Black w
work, urban women assisted their fathers and husbands in a wide variety of trades and crafts, including the production of textiles, practiced the secret art o
leather goods, and metal work, as well as running shops and inns.
Upon the many characte
literature, ‘The Whore’ is
widely considered lower
activities that men typica
Tropes in Chaucer:
Many of the female chara
Bath’s Tale’ Chaucer mak
and what women want. T
Wives and nuns: Women in power: ‘The Whore’ trope. In the
Although there were some powerful women in the Middle Ages, it is There were some women who were powerful or an authority figure on ma
important to remember that the overwhelming majority were not. Most exercised it, providing a challenge to the prologue gives us the incl
women, even those in privileged circumstances, had little control over stereotypical image of the medieval woman as Medieval women in litera
the direction their lives took. The marriages of young aristocratic oppressed and subservient although this was true below is a good example
women were usually arranged by their families. Once widowed, such for most. In the church, women could not hold woman is displaying some
women had legal independence and, in many instances, autonomy over positions of great responsibility as abbesses of ‘They hadde me yiven hir
considerable financial resources. convents. In some instances, such as monasteries hir love or doon hem reve
that housed communities of men and women the
The two main alternatives for medieval women were to marry, or to
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