Gender Flashcards
Clothing
Rykener apprehended ‘in women’s clothing’, origin of Rykener’s crossing of gender identity was when he ‘first dressed him in women’s clothing’ –> link between clothing + gender identity
-Rykener’s trail of dishonesty stemmed from him ‘stealing two gowns’
- Sub-culture of cross-dressing
– Blame initially with Elizabeth - ‘dressed him’, ‘calling him’ - not him doing it - blaming a woman
– Karras and Boyd = Rykener’s cross-dressing was a more central issue than prostitution and sodomy to contemporaries (Goldberg, 2014)
Sumptuary Laws (1363) = first attempt to regulate clothing according to social status
– Existence of this law shows that people were dressing beyond their social status
– But not enforced
– More male gendered – more male occupations / social ranks (e.g. knights, barons)
- Joan of Arc = English prosecution of her revolved around her dressing as a man
- Poem ‘Richard the Redless’ (‘Richard without Counsel’) talks of addiction to clothing as a key contributor to the spoilt youth (Fletcher, 2005)
Sex
Prostitution
– Prevalent – Rykener = 3 scholars in Oxford in a 5-week period, and 6 men in Burford in a 6-week period
– Rykener had sex with clergy for money – text wants reader to believe that the clergy were engaging with prostitution = criticisms of clergy
– A few months after the Rykener case the Lollard Twelve Conclusions said clergy celibacy ‘inducith sodomie in al holy chirche’ (Goldberg, 2014)
– Goldberg = Rykener and Britby being caught so quickly suggests there were active attempts at social regulation and stopping this behaviour
– Concerns of prostitution going beyond traditional role - compared brothel owners to male household leaders
- Identity – also had sex ‘as a man’ with Joan = changing sex roles
Law + crime (rape)
- Women were less likely to be convicted for serious crimes compared to men
– Male jurors might not have wanted to put women on trial
– Couverture = shifted responsibility to their husbands – no separate identity - 20% of convicted criminals were women
- Poor women were charged with petty crimes like assault, theft, verbal defamation
- Rape had low convictions – lack of proof, out of court settlements
- Domestic abuse was only reported to the courts when it was severe
- Legal documents only show the extremes – doesn’t show what most women experienced every day
Women’s voices often lost in the law + legal documents
– Only times when a women’s voice was at the centre:
(1) An appeal involving the murder of her husband
(2) An appeal involving her own rapist
– She told the story of events + named her culprit
– However, she may have told the story to men in the neighbourhood, the voice may be her father who’s saying effect on his daughter, there was a formula for processes to an appeal, the justices may have added their own words before concluding –> distortion of female voice
Rape shows ideas of sexual status
– Henry de Bracton = life imprisonment if he took a woman’s virginity, if married woman / widow it should be corporeal punishment (Hanawalt, 1998)
– Bratton = pregnancy only happened with consent
- Jurors believed castration / hanging was too severe a punishment for rape
– Emma, daughter of Christine, had been raped, but stated Emma wasn’t a virgin so the rapist shouldn’t be mutilated
- The jurors were very literal in their definition of virginity
– a 7-year-old who had been raped, they said because of her age the rapist could penetrate her but not take her maidenhead
- After Westminster II, only 10% of rape indictments resulted in conviction – usually involving young virgins
- Sometimes parties used monetary payments instead of the court system
– A man who sexually assaulted a child had to pay £40 which would be hers when she became an adult / married –> rape compensation was used as a dowry to make her more attractive for marriage (Hanawalt, 1998)
Masculinity + poaching
- The actual hunt itself = outsmarting foresters, camaraderie with joint exhibitions, could be economic motives (profits from selling meat)
Social interaction
- Poaching was a social activity, strengthening bonds between local clergy, knights and royal officials
- Poaching was a male bonding experience & form of entertainment
- For the nobility poaching was a way of strengthening local alliances + loyalties
– Simon Tuluse = cut off the head of a buck (male deer) and put a spindle in its mouth – sexual inversion (buck’s (male) mouth represented the vagina, and the spindle (female symbol) represented the penis) = poaching was a way of expressing masculinity and repressing women (Hanawalt, 1998)
- Spindle represented working-class women = statement about class as well as gender
– Hanawalt = Poaching thus set up a struggle for male domination of the forest
- Poaching was an act of rebellion, as they would do it even with the possibility of fines, imprisonment etc.
- Masculinity = danger, stealth, violence
- Robin Hood stories
– These ballads were meant to be entertaining and funny
– Mediaeval humour takes extreme violence as humorous in a way we wouldn’t - shows that this masculinity is accepted
– They admire men who are fit, healthy, able to hunt
Richard II towards end of reign took vow of celibacy – equality of a monk – not typical masculinity
- Goldberg = Rykener case symbolic of Richard II
– Using ‘feminine’ Rykener to mock Richard
- Suggestions of Richard II being a homosexual – Walsingham = ‘his “indecent familiarity” with Robert de Vere’ (Goldberg, 2014)
- John Gower = “The King, an undisciplined boy, neglects the moral behaviour by which a man might grow up from a boy” (Fletcher, 2005)
- Archbishop of Canterbury: Richard = ‘boy’ (puer), Henry Bolingbrook = ‘man’ (vir) (Fletcher, 2005)
Church
- Sinfulness + weakness of women
- Mary’s virtue was because of her painless childbirth, reformer Latimer, pilgrimage badges used sources to think about pilgrimage – cheap, accessible, where people are travelling, issues that mattered
- Women expressed their spirituality in practical ways, not just constrained by the Church
- A lot of objects related to childbirth – textual amulets, birthing girdle, jet bowl (jet believed to help during childbirth – object used explicitly by women in most scary times of their life in exclusively female setting)
- Churching – 60 days after childbirth expected to approach the altar, be blessed and reintegrate in the Church – eventually gets codified by the Church – initiated by women, not by the Church
- Unmarried women would travel to other Churches to be churched
- Saint Zita – was a servant in Italy, mistreated, her piety was enough to spiritually convert the family, and they appointed her as head of the household – could take it as submission, passiveness, or acknowledgement of responsibilities of women in the household and the Church (especially because she was depicted in Horley Church – women not unrecognised)
- Zita mentioned more in women’s than men’s wills
- Mediaeval Church buildings represented a house – women drew on household roles to help in Church – cooking, making candles etc.
Wales (see Wales)
- Welsh women couldn’t be witnesses against men in legal proceedings
- The law tracts say that the man is the ‘woman’s “lord” (dominus eius est)’ (Lansing, 2006)
- But husbands couldn’t act badly towards their wives without penalty
- Divorce possible, women could leave husbands for things like leprosy, impotence or bad breath
- Both free to remarry after divorce
- ‘Property arrangements were designed in such a way as to ensure the wife’s ability to support herself should the marriage fail’ (pg827)
- If they split during 1st 7 years of marriage and wasn’t due to a ‘fault of the wife’, she was entitled to a portion of the property, and if it was after 7 years they had to split all moveable property
- But 1517 – record of wife being “sold” ‘to another man by her husband’ (Lansing, 2006)
- Only 3 nunneries in Wales before the Dissolution, only around 35 (estimated) nuns in the country
- Gwerful Mechain – female poet (1460–1502) - but only female Welsh poet where many of her works have survived
