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WOMEN IN ENGLISH LIFE.

[Illustration: _C. Cook, sculp._


ANN,

_Lady Fanshawe_.


London Richard Bentley & Son 1896]




  WOMEN
  IN ENGLISH LIFE

  from Mediæval to Modern Times.

  BY
  GEORGIANA HILL,
  AUTHOR OF “A HISTORY OF ENGLISH DRESS.”

  _IN TWO VOLUMES._

  VOL. I.

  [Illustration]

  LONDON:
  RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
  Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
  MDCCCXCVI.




INTRODUCTION.


The object aimed at in the following pages is to show the place that
women have held in our national life, from the days when what we call
the Saxon race was dominant in England, down to the present time. For
this purpose those phases of our social history have been dwelt upon
which display most clearly the changes that have taken place in the
position of women, and the influence of great forces like the Church
and Feudalism. Names have been used as illustrations, and not with any
intention of adding to biographical literature. Instances that are
the most striking individually do not always serve best as examples.
For this reason many familiar historical scenes and figures have
been omitted. The continuity of a general record would be broken by
divergence into episodes interesting on account of their exceptional
character. Prominence has been given to domestic life, as that
concerns the larger number, and to those aspects of the case which have
not been summed up in the numerous accounts of noteworthy women.

In literature and art, which have their own special histories, where
the part that women have played is recounted at length, only a few
general points have been noted in order to show how women have stood
in relation to letters and art in successive periods. The subjects
themselves are treated as stages marking social advance, not discussed
in the light of their intrinsic interest and attractiveness.

A consideration of the position of women in England leads, naturally,
to the subject of their position in Europe generally, for the main
influences which have affected women in this country are the same
as those that have operated on the Continent, although the result
has taken different forms in accordance with the idiosyncracies of
each nation. It is unnecessary to discuss the condition of women
in the Eastern parts, for while Western Europe has been changing
and progressing with ever-increasing rapidity during the last ten
centuries, Eastern Europe--as far as social life is concerned--remained
for a long period in an almost stationary state. In character it was
Asiatic, though during the last three hundred years it has succumbed
more to the influences of its geographical position.

In the Middle Ages the conditions of life in Western Europe were pretty
uniform. There was hardly any education in the sense of book-learning,
except among religious communities. Locomotion was difficult and
dangerous, so that there was but scanty intercourse between the
inhabitants of different parts of the same country. Fighting was the
chief business of men, and manual work, skilled and unskilled, occupied
women of all ranks.

In an age when war was so frequent, the civil duties of life were left
to women, who fulfilled obligations that in more peaceful times fell
to the lot of men. They not only had entire charge of the household,
but shared largely in the operations of the field and the farm; they
were the spinners, the weavers, the brewsters, and the bakers. They
frequently controlled the management of estates, and occasionally
held public offices of trust and importance. There were no laws to
prevent women from filling such positions, and the fittest came to the
front unhampered by conventionality or arbitrary restrictions. But
although women appear to have had a wider field of activity than they
afterwards enjoyed, when social life became more complex, there was a
counteracting influence which told against the development and free
exercise of their energies. This was the influence of the Church.

It was the policy of the Church to keep women in a subordinate
position. As long as they remained thoroughly convinced of their
natural inferiority, and of the duty of subservience, they could be
reckoned upon as valuable aids to the building up of the ecclesiastical
power. The immense force of the religious and devotional spirit in
woman was at the absolute disposal of her spiritual directors. At a
time when there was no science, no art, and, for the majority, no
literature, the power of the Church was incomparably greater than
anything we can conceive of now.

The Church did not find it difficult to persuade women to accept the
limits marked out for them. There was no public sentiment to set off
against the power of the priest. Society was ruled by physical force;
the law was weak, and the Church was women’s shelter from the rudeness
of an age when those who should have protected the defenceless were
themselves the greatest offenders.

In order to enforce the doctrine of inferiority, the Church went
further, and proclaimed that there was in woman a wickedness additional
to the sin common to humanity. The “eternal feminine” was held before
men’s eyes as a temptation to be warred against. To fly from the
presence of woman was to resist evil. Celibacy was a saintly virtue,
and family life a thing to be tolerated rather than approved.
In the words of St. Chrysostom, woman was “a necessary evil, a
natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly
fascination, and a painted ill.” The influence of the Fathers was not
confined to their own age; their writings continued to affect the whole
teaching of the Church, Anglican as well as Roman, which has always
been in favour of the subordination of woman. She has been assigned
a lower place in religious exercises, and has been excluded from the
priestly office.

In successive periods of history the Church was largely responsible
for the terrible persecutions inflicted upon women--and chiefly upon
the poorest and most helpless--on the ground of witchcraft. Once
having disseminated the theory of woman’s inherent vice, it was only
a natural corollary to impute to her both the desire and the power of
working extraordinary mischief. The doctrine suited ages which believed
not only in an embodied and