Traditionally widowhood has been portrayed as a positive experience for women.Was this the case?

By Saundarya Mitter

Edited by Charlotte Donnelly and Mark Potter

There are multiple reasons as to why widowhood in the medieval period was traditionally seen as a positive experience for women, yet it would be naive to assume that this was a “golden period” experienced by all women. Ann Crabb describes widowhood as the time with the most potential for women to gain autonomy, which this essay will use as the criteria for a “positive experience".[1] Regardless, historians have debated whether it was indeed the case that widowhood allowed medieval women to have the same degree of power as the head of the household. To add to the historiographical debate using Crabb’s definition, this essay will focus on three factors: the opportunities that widowhood presented women, how widows viewed their own identity and the choice of remarriage, alongside justifying why differing social status, situation, and attitudes meant there were disparities in their experiences.

To understand the typical medieval woman, one can look to Judith M. Bennet and Ruth Maz0 Karras. In their book, they describe how in the medieval period, women had significantly less options in life than their male counterparts, as they were on separate

levels.[2] Thus, we can view it as a time where the male was revered and placed on a pedestal by society, while the female was simply disparaged. A major influence on the lives of medieval women was religion. Within various religions practiced at the time, most teachings described how women and their attributes were subordinate, and so their submission to men was not just expected but mirrored of the expected submission of humanity towards God. Consequently, these deep-rooted ideals and this submission meant that a girl was considered the property of her father or male guardian, and the woman she became the property of her husband. Medieval wives themselves however were not just property in some cases, but a source of wealth for their husbands. Although inheriting less from their parents due to their gender, a medieval wife could bring land, money, and other goods into a marriage as a dowry, which their husband managed. Due to this, in addition to working women being paid

significantly less than men, medieval women and wives possessed very little wealth.

Widowhood was a positive experience for women, as it gave a woman the financial, social, and legal power they would have never achieved within their marriage. They were no longer in the shadow of their husbands or the lesser part of “one flesh”, but a woman in their own right. Caroline M. Barron explores this in her book, Medieval London Widows, describing how London widows were either entitled to one-third of her husband's estates and business for life – if the marriage had produced children – or one-half of the estate for life had it

not.[3] These widows were thus empowered and encouraged to run or start a business to support themselves. In widowhood, women were finally free to occupy both the workplace and family home in a position of authority, as part of both the economic and social aspects of their business. Despite still having full ownership of their dower due to its immediate registration to their husbands’ heir upon his death, as Bennet and Karras discuss, widows were in complete control of what they gained through Legitum. This was a custom where a widow was entitled to a share of her late husband’s movable goods that would be her wealth alone, with it being her decision who she bequeathed them to, or if she did at all. Nevertheless, widows could still bring a case to court to legally obtain any part of her dower

that had been withheld. Surprisingly, a widow was often successful in regaining part, if not all, of her dower, with some legally representing and fighting their own case without an attorney.[4]

Not all widows, however, had the same experience or access to the opportunities discussed above. A key point to note is that most of what is known today about medieval widows and widowhood is in respect to urban and wealthy widows, as it is their accounts and sources that are most readily available. Therefore, the lives of peasant and rural widows are easy to omit from consideration when debating if it is truly correct to label medieval widowhood as a status with which women could flourish. Barron acknowledges this, elaborating on how poorer women experienced widowhood as a time of struggle, rather than of freedom and advantage. Akin to how wealthy widows could overtake their late husband’s business, peasant widows had to take over their late husband's craft. This was often long and arduous work for which they were paid meagre wages or excluded from by other males in the profession. Additionally, London widows had more privileges compared to those in the rest of medieval England, such as how they were allowed to live in the “principal mansion” for the remainder of their life, whereas others could only do so for forty days. London widows were also often the executors of their husbands’ estates, and so held a greater deal of power than other widows.

Unlike married women, widows had the freedom to make their own testaments and wills, key in understanding how they saw themselves and their lifestyle. Gail McMurray Gibson describes these and their instructions for their burials as the first documentation of a woman’s “own sense of identity... priorities... convictions and affirmations of her significant...relationships”.[5] Barbara Harris uses her conclusions from her analysis of the last testaments of aristocratic women to gain a deeper insight to their life and mindsets.[6] There are accounts of women immortalising themselves through the construction of stained glass windows, tombs, monuments, and chapels, with a majority of these women being widows. One such widow was Margaret Bourchier, who married four times, and would adopt the social standing of her husbands to demand her own identity in her final testament. Ergo, it is plausible to assume that within widowhood, the security of a woman was not limited to her finances, but also that which came with her social status. Building on this, an aristocratic widow also had the authority to decide which families she wished to mention in their will, be it her natal family or the family of her husband. Commonly, widows would mention specific families and husbands if she had chosen to remarry, or even all of them. Furthermore, aristocratic widows could make a public statement about their identity when stating with which family they wished to be interred, unlike a wife who was expected to remain with her husband until death and beyond. Through this, a widow could decide which family and lineage she most associated herself with and let this be known openly to the generations that followed.

Nonetheless, one cannot use Harris’ analysis alone as it only focuses on a rich demographic. Her work does not offer an insight into how peasant and middle-class widows viewed themselves and their image. Thus, other sources should be used in conjunction with Harris. Although Katherine J. Lewis focuses predominantly on the wills of the wealthy in her work on testamentary discourse, her inclusion and analysis of the will of Joan Atwell provides a direct comparison of self-identity for widows of different social classes, alongside greater understanding of how widows outside the aristocracy viewed themselves and their

property.[7] Within Atwell’s will, who was likely in the cloth-making profession, there are no extravagant instructions on how she wishes to be memorialised, apart from the simple request that she wishes to be buried with her husband in her parish church.[8] Moreover, monetary sums are rarely mentioned within Atwell’s will, with most of her finances being left to the Church. In this regard, it can be inferred that while opulence, financial stability, and autonomy were central to a wealthy widow’s identity, this was not the case for peasant and middle-class widows, to whom profession and the continuation of it through her children mattered most. This explains why Atwell bequeathed cloth and woad to her children in her will. There is an important commonality nevertheless between widows of all classes: religion.

In both Atwell’s and Anne Latimer’s wills – the latter being a member of nobility – there is a

constant focus on God, and multiple items are bequeathed to the Church.[9] Due to this, widows were never completely free of the submissive and pious female ideal. Until their death, a widow's identity was strongly connected to her adherence to religion. Ironically, this same concept was used to justify a woman's submission to her husband.

Widowhood was a chance for women to finally make their own decisions about their lives,

including whether they were willing to remarry, and being able to choose whom they wished to marry. While a wife and daughter had their legal existence managed by their husband or father, a widow was free from this constraint and had full legal personality, allowing her – to some extent to do as she pleased. Sue Sheridan Walker remarks how, even though married life meant that a widow would lose the autonomy they had gained in widowhood, remarriage was very common.[10] Some widows even chose to remarry multiple times. It is plausible to say that the fact that widows had full control over the very option of remarriage constitutes the highest degree of autonomy a woman could have, as Crabb states, which suggests that widowhood was a positive experience.Yet, despite the option of remarriage, Walker goes on to explain how many widows decided against remarrying or would pull out of a marriage agreement after receiving their dower, judging that they had enough to sustain themselves for the rest of their lives and did not need the additional support of a husband. Widowhood consequently gave women not only freedom, but the confidence to accept themselves as the head of a household and carry out the typical role of a husband for themselves.

Nevertheless, the choice of remarriage was not available to everyone, nor was it always beneficial. Some widows often had less choice when it came to remarriage, with many of them remarrying due to financial compulsion, meaning they were never able to experience the “golden era” of widowhood. Peter Franklin discusses the case of Agnes Randolf, who struggled during the seventeen months after her husband's death until the time John Upton decided to marry her.[11] The very fact that the marriage was initiated not by her decision but Upton’s, shows how widows were still viewed as subordinate to men even if there were no men in their life, demonstrating constant male dominance. Furthermore, independent widows who chose not to remarry were still overshadowed by their old role as a wife, which fostered the expectation of widows to exhibit the peaceful and docile mannerisms of motherhood, due to both the fact that they had been a wife, and society’s expectations of how a woman should behave. Finally, Walker notes that although a woman may have had a new identity after remarriage, she faced the same experience once again as she had to give up any holdings to her husband and have her legal existence stripped away. Thus, widowhood was not always a positive experience for women, especially a remarried widow.

In conclusion, when discussing whether it is the case that widowhood was a “golden period” for women in medieval England, it is not a simple matter of “it was” or “it was not”, as every widow had different experiences, and it would be wrong to generalise them. It does stand true that widowhood was a legal rebirth, enabling a woman to finally be acknowledged, respected, and documented as an individual. Not all the benefits of this however were experienced by every widow. Due to this, it is vital that we understand the lives and struggles of peasant and middle-class widows and are careful not to overshadow them as history has done so. This leads us to the conclusion that that although widowhood has traditionally been presented as the period with the most potential for a woman's autonomy to come into fruition, it is incorrect to state that it was a “golden period” experienced by all widows.

Notes

[1] Ann Crabb, “Widowhood”, Renaissance and Reformation, 10 (2012), p. 4.

[2] Judith M. Bennet and Ruth Mazo Karras, The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (England: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 2–10.

[3] Caroline M. Barron, Medieval London Widows (England: Bloomsbury, 1994).

[4] Barron, Medieval London Widows.

[5] Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 71–72.

[6] Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450-1550 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), pp. 119–125.

[7] K.J. Lewis, “Women, Testamentary Discourse and Life-Writing in Later Medieval England”, in Noël James Menuge (ed.), Medieval Women and the Law (London: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 57–75.

[8] The Will of Joan Atwell, 1485, in F.W. Weaver (ed.), Somerset Medieval Wills (1901).

[9] The Will of Anne Latimer, 1402, in Jennifer C. Ward (ed.), Women of the English Nobility and Gentry (Manchester, 1995).

[10] Sue Sheridan Walker, Wife and Widow in Medieval England (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1993).

[11] Peter Franklin, “Peasant Widows "Liberation" and Remarriage before the Black Death”, The Economic History Review, 39/2 (2010), pp. 186 – 204.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

The Will of Anne Latimer. 1402. In Jennifer C. Ward. ed. Women of the English Nobility and

Gentry. Manchester, 1995

The Will of Joan Atwell. 1485. In F.W. Weaver. ed. Somerset Medieval Wills. 1901

Secondary Sources

Barron, Caroline M. Medieval London Widows. England: Bloomsbury, 1994

Bennet, Judith M. and Karras, Ruth Mazo. The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in

Medieval Europe. England: Oxford University Press, 2013

Crabb, Ann. “Widowhood”. Renaissance and Reformation. 10. 2012

Franklin, Peter. “Peasant Widows "Liberation" and Remarriage before the Black Death”. The

Economic History Review. 39/2. 2010

Gibson, Gail McMurray. The Theatre of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages. London: University of Chicago Press, 1989

Harris, Barbara J. English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450-1550. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018

Lewis, K. J. “Women, Testamentary Discourse and Life-Writing in Later Medieval England”. In Noël James Menuge (ed.) Medieval Women and the Law. London: Boydell Press, 2003

Walker, Sue Sheridan. Wife and Widow in Medieval England. Michigan: Michigan University Press, 1993