Women in the Middle Ages: Illuminating the World of Peasants, Nuns, and Queens

How society views women and their roles in the Middle Ages is fraught with complexity. On the one hand, there is the perception that women of all social classes—from the nobility to peasants—were merely pawns whose sole value derived from their role as marriage pieces used to cement political and social ties, bear children, and oversee domestic duties. As historian Hollman (The Queen and the Mistress) makes clear, however, women often possessed a great deal more agency than some suspected. Her book shows that written records often obscure or omit women’s positions in society, but if one looks at art, one can glimpse women working as craftspeople, farm workhands, textile merchants, and more. In tapestries, paintings, and marginalia images created by legions of scribes, there are also women depicted in various, perhaps unexpected, occupations. These appearances, though often fleeting, provide readers with a window into their everyday world.