Medieval Women

Examine the books that you have read for this course for the views of women that each illustrates. If all you had to examine was the books to determine the mentalité of the period and where women fit into their world–what would the individual books tell you about the role and position of women during the Middle Ages? What kind of image of women is portrayed in each book? What does EACH representation of women tell you about the context of the time in which the book was written? Do we see an evolution of women’s roles in the books? Based upon this information does the position of women in society differ in the beginning of the course to what you see at the end of the course? How much of a role did external events–think war, plague, and societal upheavals–play in the determination of what women’s roles were?