The Female's Hard Knock Life

[mishalak]

-OR-
More Snarking On Off the Shelf Fantasy Kingdoms
(Previous Installment: Gays in Fantasy Kingdoms)
Life was quite hard for everyone, but it was especially hard upon women in centuries past. Women typically had a status that was lower than men, but it seems that it was most often so in agriculturally based societies. Indeed I cannot think of a single example of a culture that was primarily agricultural in food production where women having power were anything but exceptional. (This is the cue for hundreds of you to post counter examples that I don't know about.) I suspect three culprits making this so were biology, hierarchy, and poverty.

Women do not have the same potential for muscle strength that men have. This was a much greater handicap when so much labor was of the backbreaking sort, and more importantly all the weapons relied upon muscle power. So at first it is the men with swords and the physique to be warriors that dominate their neighbors. This is a simplistic explanation, but where I am going is to say that because women would have an exceptionally difficult time starting out on the bottom the tradition of male power becomes entrenched and it makes it difficult for women to jump in higher up or to get a start on the ladder.

Poverty, which is more common in agricultural societies, makes the bad situation worse. Poverty means there is more need for work than there are workers. No end of work on a farm, so someone is going to get stuck doing more. This isn't always true, but it is quite common because of the difficulty leaving. Living with another person or a lot of people makes life easier. So as hard as it is life outside the family or group might very well be impossible, so someone who can be physically dominated may feel or in fact be trapped. Plus human nature being what it is there would be a huge temptation for the physically stronger man to force the women to do work he doesn't want to do. Again this becomes entrenched in the society before technology has a chance to make life easier, and so the tradition continues beyond where economics is making it more likely.

None of this excuses bad behavior. This is me being like a criminologist. I hate that women have been oppressed and I would like to know why it happened and why it became so widespread. I think it is unlikely to have become the majority way of doing things without there being some reason. I think better of people than that. So it is totally possible that a fantasy kingdom could have women with a better status than they got in most real world kingdoms.

For one this could be the one exception. Though I would like an explanation as to why it is. Maybe there was a great respected religious reformer and also women are just as strong in the force/magic or whatever as men so that tips the balance in this one place, even if women with magic are hunted to preserve the order of things in others. If magic is just replacing technology giving a more modern society it isn't going to be medieval, as the standard off the shelf fantasy kingdom is, but it will be more equal. Or perhaps in this world women are just as strong as men physically. Why? Magic, the gods, whatever, this is fantasy after all. And it would make for a very interesting society in my opinion.

So there are lots of options, but not many (any?) if the writer wants to make it just like England 1300 (as a random example) with magic and without the lower social status for women. Because in my opinion such a setting will have the women in lower status except for the few with magic and those will probably have a similar status to noble women with power. They get to be exceptions if they don't challenge the order of things.

Comments

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

See, I would argue with the idea that in an agricultural system, women had no power. I would say that, in this case, EVERYBODY does backbreaking labor to keep the family and the culture going, and the women's backbreaking work of childraising and half the farming is no less important than the men's backbreaking work of fighting and half the farming. I'm with Terry Pratchett on this one: I forget the quote, but it's something like "Because many agricultural cultures were, in fact, completely dependant on middle-aged women in black dresses." (Only when he says it, it's actually funny). Men were, indeed, the ones who went off to war, and to rule the country, adn they got renown for that, but except among noble-women, I think women were seen as utterly different than men, but not really having less influence. Look at stories of people in these cultures: the men are perfectly likely to be "hen-pecked," and decisions for the family made by the wives.

I think this changed around the time of the industrial revolution. Before then, work was centered around the home/farm, and so men and women had very different roles, but about equivalent power. However, when the reward for work became money rather than "enough food for the winter", power shifted towards the person who went out of the home and brought home a paycheck. The wife of a millionaire and the wife of a janitor do essentially the same job (raise children, keep the house clean and be sure there's food on the table), but they get wildly different paychecks: their pay is half what their husbands are paid. This means that women's work becomes less well-regarded than previously, because what men do can be quantified by their paychecks, and since what women do can't, it must not be as meaningful.

I think that this change in valuing of "men's" and "women's" work does a lot to explain why twentieth-century women became so insistent on doing traditionally male jobs. At the moment, we value what someone does by his/her paycheck, and money is power. Therefore, women want that paycheck.

This is part of why I think you're right that women didn't really go out to be warriors and such in medieval settings: there was as much honor to doing women's work as to doing men's, whether the young men say so or not. A girl who was transgendered might want to try it, but you wouldn't have the modern assumption that what men traditionally do is higher-status, and better, so any woman of spirit would want to do that. It drives me nuts when fantasy writers assume that their female characters will all be dressing up as boys and going out to become knights. If you want risk, danger, and honor, try giving birth seven or eight times in a medieval setting.

Deeply interesting series of entries, by the by.

--R

Life Was Short, Brutal, and...

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Well certainly everyone does backbreaking labor, but women had it even worse from what I have read. Though without a time machine it is hard to say absolutely how things really worked for peasants, since mostly it was the middle to upper class that are written about. But from what I have read women could not inherit property or titles, unless there were no other boys, she didn't marry, and/or there were extraordinary efforts made. They couldn't be ruler either until Queen Mary and that was as England was starting to leave the medieval period.

Prior to that when Henry I wanted his daughter Matilda to succeed him he had to go around making all sorts of deals with the barons to support her. Then when he died they switched over to her cousin Stephen anyway. Women may be the power behind the throne, but they were almost never allowed to have power in front of it.

There are a number of actual documented cases of women dressing as boys to go fight, though they are quite few and far between. I suspect that those women are what we might call today tomboys. It would be terribly nice if a society would allow those women who want to do things like be knights to go out and do it, but as you say it is rather a modern thing to view being knights as better than raising children.

The thing is that from an adventuresome point of view women don't seem to get to do many of the interesting things. They don't get to be knights, they are not allowed to be actors, and they are not allowed to go off and do things without a chaperone. Getting around those things makes for an interesting story, but often it seems that the restrictions on everything from education to occupation that were allowed to women seem to get forgotten by writers who are otherwise lifting bits of various medieval settings without much thought.

And thank you, I'm glad my writing is interesting even when I'm being a bit more serrious.

(I'm probably going to go off on the subject of sweets next time. Grrrr, Chocolate in the medieval kingdom. Grrr.)

Re: Life Was Short, Brutal, and...

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're right about the lack of political/legal power. Drat.

Question re: being a knight or an actor-- we consider those to be things that are an adventure, I think because those are the things we have stories about-- because those are things that men did, and told to other men as being what an adventure is. And I'll agree that I enjoy reading about/writing about/pretending to do things like that-- but then, I was raised in this culture. One of the things I've always liked about Lois McMaster Bujold (you've read her, right?) is that her female characters will go out and fight, captain space-ships, etc... but that she describes things like giving birth as being just as much a risk and a quest. Which they are, I think. I'm not saying, obviously, that women should settle back and take traditional women's roles-- I don't think anyone should settle for just what they're supposed to do, because other things are such fun-- but I think it's a mistake to say things like raising kids aren't also an adventure. And one that it would be fun to see more male characters trying to take on. Genderfuck for all!

--R

On Industry

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

One other thing. Lots of women worked for a wage in the industrial revolution. In fact it was not uncommon for the man to be worn out by labor or drink and the women to still be working to support the family and several of the chilren as well. The whole of the weaving industry was staffed by women and children. The situation was very fluid, but it wasn't really until the 1950s that we got a situation where factory workers could support a family with just one paycheck. Before that it was a feature of the upwardly mobile middle class where the husband worked and the wife worked to raise children and present a graceful house.

Re: On Industry

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Yeah, good point, you're right. And in the working-class world, women worked all through the 50s and afterwards-- in families where they need every penny to stay afloat, women have always worked, like everyone else. But I believe that women were traditionally paid less, on the theory that their work wasn't what was supporting the family? And there's that whole difference in class-- working-class people work to survive, middle-class people work because that's how they get status and authority. And so middle-class women had to struggle to be allowed to work, where working-class women never had the choice not to. Neh?

--R

[lysana.livejournal.com]

Women indeed had lower social status, but they certainly contributed a lot to upkeep. Consider who had to run the households when the men old enough to have power and were physically strong went off to fight in wars. Women served as chatelaines of the holdings, tracking harvests, taxes, household finances, and so forth. There's a reason women have been referred to as the power behind the throne for a long time; they always have been.

[thette.livejournal.com]

The matron was, in Viking society, the one who kept all the keys.

I think it's an interesting indicator of status.

But How Aggie were Vikings?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Absolutely. But the Vikings had a culture that came out of hunter/gather roots rather than an agricultural society. They did farm, but a heck of a lot of their food still came from things like fishing or hunting as I remember. Same with the Celts who did farm but still did a fair among of food gathering. Where as the Latin culture in the Mediterranean that spread and came to dominate most of Europe seems to be more agriculturally centered. Thought perhaps I'm just seeing patterns where there aren't any.

As things get built up and things become less... tribal, women get pushed into the background. It seems. It's not fair, it's not right, but it seems like that is how history tended to go. Until the 19th and 20th centuries anyway.

Re: But How Aggie were Vikings?

[thette.livejournal.com]

(You just made kjn go "Mggn! Blln!" which means he dislikes the way you treat history.)

The oldest gods (the Vanes) were fertility gods, in the broad sense of the word.

(From "The Viking Age ABC:") The Viking age was expansive when it comes to agriculture. They used real plows. Animal husbandry and agriculture was the most important sources of food. Examples of cultured plans are wheat, rye, barley, oats, linen and hemp. It is likely that they used fertilizer. The most common farm animal was the swine, although sheep and cattle also was kept.

We've had agriculture for 3 000 years here. Remember also that they had thralls, which is a definite clue there is agriculture going on, as they can't be supported in a tribal society. (The number of thralls wasn't that great, though.)

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I would not say they didn't contribute a lot to upkeep of society. In fact their roles in rearing children is more critical than any of the wars fought. But as for power behind the throne, only when they were silently smarter and tougher than the men. A women could work for years to get her life arranged and then have it all blown away because her husband dies and legally everything goes to her chilren. She has to depend upon their good will rather than having an estate in her own right. Though I'm sure someone will correct me if I've got that wrong.