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Women
By Madeline | January 7, 2008
Since I was on the topic of marriage yesterday, it created an unplanned segway for my next topic of discussion: women in the Tudor age. Women really did have a difficult time in history. As children, they were born and raised with the knowledge that they were inferior to all males and that they were ultimately nothing more than an evil temptation. Very few women were educated with tutors and few were literate. As an example, two of Henry VIII’s wives were almost completely illiterate – Catherine Howard and Jane Seymour. I suppose that’s actually not bad – two of six.
So what education did women receive? Poor women learned whatever trade their mother worked whether it was wool working, sewing, etc. and they learned to cook and care for children. These women were usually married by 14 or else they were considered almost too old for marriage and ran the risk of becoming an old maid. Daughters of the rich were educated in little more than the poor and learned from an early age how to manage an estate and embroider. Though they didn’t typically marry as early as the poor – after all, marriage negotiations take time – they were basically being raised to be wives and mothers.
As I stated previously, once a woman was married, she was expected to completely obey her husband and be subservient to him regardless of how he treated her. The ultimate goal of every woman was to bear their husband an heir to his name. An ideal wife was not only wholly subservient to her husband, but also bore him one child a year. In a world where one had a better chance to survive going to war than having a child, many women lost their lives trying to accomplish what they were told was their only mission in life. Aside from not having the luxury of an epidural, there was also a lack of decent hygiene due to ignorance, so that many women who did actually survive the birth of their children ended up dying from infection and fever – as was the case with Jane Seymour.
Topics: Tudor Era |
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