Gender Roles & Anti-Feminism

Question 1

Pejorative

Answer 1

‘She is a shrewe at al’ (1222)

Question 2

Heroic couplet, lecherous and lustful, commodification of women

Answer 2

‘Bodily delit on wommen, ther was his appetit’ (1249/50)

Question 3

Elongated sibilance, lecherous

Answer 3

‘O flessh they been, and o flessh as I gesse’ (1335)

Question 4

Genesis 27- Rebekke abused an elderly man’s blindness for gain

Answer 4

‘Good conseil of his mooder Rebekke’ (1363)

Question 5

Metaphor, perverted preference for younger women’

Answer 5

‘And bet than old boef is the tendre veel. I wol no womman thritty yeer of age’ (1420)

Question 6

Alliteration, malleable youth, impressionable, wax motif

Answer 6

‘Right as men may warm wex with handes plye’ (1430)

Question 7

Sibilance and plosives, simile, iambic pentameter, stasis contrasting
January’s dynamic verbs

Answer 7

‘The bride was brought abedde as stille as stoon’ (1818)

Question 8

Alliteration, May’s sexual desire

Answer 8

‘He dooth al that his lady lust and lyketh’ (2012)

Question 9

Metonym for ripe fruit, deception and abuse of courtly language

Answer 9

‘Myn honour, and of my wyfhod thilke tendre flour’ (2189/90)

Question 10

Iambic pentameter

Answer 10

‘The tresons whiche that womman doon to man’ (2239)

Question 11

Allusions to the Biblical Eve.

Answer 11

The story of the virgin birth was used in many anti-feminist literatures.
Women were held to both ideals of ‘daughters of Eve’ and the virgin Mary, two contradictory symbols. Eve representing sin and deception and Mary representing holiness, chastity and innocence.

Question 12

Position & status of women

Answer 12

Women were often sold as wives and had few rights, the same as a domestic pet.

Question 13

Benson on anti-feminist texts

Answer 13

‘The Merchant’s complaints are a convention piece of Medieval anti-feminism’-

Question 14

Hanson on May and the Biblical Eve

Answer 14

May ‘is devised out of January’s thoughts just as Eve is out of Adam’s’-

Question 15

Pearsall on Januarie’s romantic ideas

Answer 15

‘January has perverse romantic idealism’