© Rafał Borysławski
1
Anglo-Saxon women. A background to “Wulf and Eadwacer” and “Wife’s
Lament”.
1.
Tacitus on Germanic women (from De Origine et situ Germanorum):
a.
they accompanied their men in battles and thus spurned them into action;
b.
men would bring dowry to their wives;
c.
very strict marriage laws;
d.
the relation between the man and the children of his sister sometimes preferred (in
hostage taking).
2. But… a Christian misogynist and antifeminist perspective:
St. Augustine on the necessity to subjugate women resulting from the fear that the female
body might escape the control of male reason:
“The subjugation of woman is in the order of things; she must be dominated and governed by man just
as the soul should regulate the body and virile reason should dominate the animal part of the being. If a
woman dominates man, and the animal part dominates reason, the house is turned upside down.”
St. Augustine, On Genesis. Against Manicheans
3. Debatable legal status of Anglo-Saxon women – evidence from early laws (often cryptic
& difficult to interpret: the same taken to indicate direct male control over women as well as
some equal legal standing).
a.
wills and charters – evidence that women were able to acquire and dispose of
property.
b.
evidence of law-suits brought and defended by women.
4. The legal and economic status of Anglo-Saxon women:
a.
personally accountable before the law (no male supremacy here);
b.
sexual assaults against women (both free and slave) heavily penalized (acc. to King
Alfred’s law code the compensation was payable directly to the woman);
c.
women were considered oath-worthy (oaths made by women were equal in importance
to those made by men). Recorded cases when women defended their property on oaths
against false accusations.
d.
In the absence of primogeniture, daughters could inherit equally with sons –
apparently no marked preference for male as opposed to female heirs.
e.
women most likely responsible for the management of their own households (cf. the
Keyhole Riddle and some major land-holders recorded in the Norman Domesday Book
were women)
5. However the fate of women in the past largely determined by their physicality:
a.
if not nuns, they were first prepared for their roles as mothers, then they were either
pregnant or soon after pregnancy.
b.
Anglo-Saxon women and the slavery in the times of the Viking invasions.
6. Anglo-Saxon women in literature. The 1990s and early 2000s: a growing number of
gyno-criticist works (historical study of women writers done by women) and feminist
criticism in general connected with Anglo-Saxon studies.
a.
Etymological equality of the sexes? The O.E. “lord” and “lady”: hlæford (hlæf
‘bread’+weard ‘protector’) and hlæfdige (hlæf ‘bread’+digene ‘kneading’).
b.
Some critics argue for a kind of A-S sexual equality (evident from the Old English
riddles) (?);
