The Female's Hard Knock Life
Jan. 26th, 2004 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
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.
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Life Was Short, Brutal, and...
Date: 2004-01-28 04:52 am (UTC)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...
Date: 2004-01-28 04:42 pm (UTC)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