Which would you rather Feminist edition

Hello. Today is celebrate your ladyparts day International Women's Day. This is exciting, non? I think so. There is a lot of stuff out there about celebrating the achievements of various women and, alternatively, criticizing countries and regimes which subjugate women. Having read some of this over the past few days, I started to be very glad that I am living where I am, but also when I am. I'm fortunate, I thought, that I live in the 21st century, where, at least in the UK, I am treated as a human being with human rights. So much better, I thought, than in Ye Olden Days.

Until I started reading this book. It's very interesting, as well as that rare sort of History book which is highly informative and well researched, but also fascinating for someone who only has a small interest in History. Written as a travel guide, it's literally like reading about visiting Spain, or China, or Mars for that matter. Anyway, in this book (which I'm not getting paid for the advertising of, honestly), the author talks about the rights of women in fourteenth century England.

In some ways, as people - myself included - it is very much a misogynistic society, with women controlled by men and no one wanting to change this as it is clearly God's will, as punishment for Eve's sins. Lack of understanding about general medicine meant that a lot of women died in childbirth, and as the general life expectancy was lower, women were often married at around the age of 14, quite shocking to us today. Furthermore, though rape was an extremely serious offense, it was extremely rare that a man was convicted, as it was taught that women could only conceive a child if she orgasmed during sex. If a child was conceived, she had clearly orgasmed, thus "enjoyed" the rape, and so it wasn't rape. Alternatively, if no child was conceived, there was no proof that the rape had taken place other than the woman's word, which, especially against a man in a position of power over her, was not likely to be believed.

Though forced marriages were fairly rare, they did still occur and must have been awful for the women who suffered through them. Women were also not considered free as such - even a high society woman 'belonged' to her father before she was married, then to her husband afterward.

Phew, you think, I'm glad I live now and not then.

Well, yes and no. Obviously there were huge inequalities in society, but there were some ways in which women did manage to have fairly equal opportunities. For example, women were allowed to report abusive husbands in their local church, and the men were often punished severely for their actions. Men on the other hand, were not allowed to report any violence against them by women, as if they did so, they would be perceived as a cuckold and therefore ridiculed. A backhanded reason for celebration, perhaps.

Another way in which women were more equal than we might first think was that, in the event of their husbands' death, she could take over his job or trade and make money for herself this way. For most women, this just meant continuing to farm the same fields or sell meat in a butcher's shop, but for a few notable exceptions this could leave them very rich - such as one woman from Coventry who ended up with a cloth business that was exporting its wares as far afield as Spain and earning her in excess of £800 in Medieval terms. 

Though there were a lot of arranged marriages, often men and women worked together to try hard to make it work and most came to love each other after a little while. If not, especially in the upper classes, one or both partners could take partners whom they loved - or at least lusted after.Women had the advantage of not being allowed to go to fight, and as there were a lot of wars going on during the 14th century, it greatly reduced their chance of dying whilst still young. Men who lived to an old age were looked down upon, unable to fight, they were considered no longer masculine. An old woman, on the other hand, was considered at the height of her power, full of the wisdom of the ages. 

Clearly, there was inequality in the Medieval society, and probably more so than there is in today's society in the UK. But conditions were perhaps not as harsh as one might first think, and though I still wouldn't want to live in their society, this is starting to have more to do with the large amounts of germs flying about with the Black Death and whatnot, rather than their treatment of women.  

Now you're just being daft

Here's another example of utter ridiculousness. I'm beginning to think that that's all this subject is. (Then I remember that my friends are doing things like Maths and Physics at university and I sort of feel a bit better. Ish).

But honestly, this is completely ridiculous. 

Today, according to wikipedia you might know, is St. Scholastica's Day (she's the patron saint of nuns, convulsive children and is invoked against storms and rain, apparently) and so, in 1335, when a riot occurred in Oxford on this day, they imaginatively called it the St. Scholastica's Day Riot. At least they thought to capitalize it...

The cause of the riot is depressingly mundane. Two young students of the university were drinking in the Swindlestock Tavern, when they decided that the ale they were drinking was not of the highest quality. Deciding, after several pints of said poor quality ale (I guess they had to check if it was all bad?), that this just would not do, they complained to the taverner. As so often happens, though, their complaints perhaps did not come across as they initially intended; words were had and things ended up with the taverner being beaten up by the two students.

Naturally, this was not an experience he enjoyed, and he decided that the only way to make up for it would be to organise a gang of locals to take on the students, which he swiftly did. He first approached the Mayor of Oxford for help, who asked the University's Chancellor to arrest the two students who had attacked the taverner. When it was made clear that this was not going to happen, a riot took place that lasted for two days and left around 30 locals and 63 students dead. This was probably going a bit far over a few drinks...

Eventually, the dispute was settled, after the King got wind of the Mayor of Oxford, John Barford riding into the countryside and calling for men to slay and smite the students, and ordered an investigation. A charter was drawn up, which stated that the Mayor and town councilors had to 'march bareheaded through the streets every year on St. Scholastica's Day and pay a penny for every scholar who was killed'. They were often pelted with makeshift weapons and jeered by the students whilst doing this, so naturally by 1825 the Mayor had gotten a bit of sick of the practice and refused to participate. After 470, no one from the university really bothered to complain, and the whole thing was dropped.

However, 600 years later, it was decided that the hatchet should finally be buried, and on 10 February 1955, the Mayor of Oxford was awarded an honorary degree by the University, and the University Chancellor was made an honorary freeman of the city.

This, naturally, made up for everything. Yes...     

The She-King

So today I was going to write about this being the day that Marie Antoinette was guillotined on, in 1793 as part of the French Revolution. But then something else caught my eye and I decided to write about that, instead. I should like to pretend that this is due to my inner republican not wanting to give the royals anymore time that I absolutely have to (even when they're being beheaded...) or maybe wanting to throw some light on a 'lesser' historical event which has become overshadowed by the French Queen's beheading. That would be a very intellectual stance. I wouldn't want you to think that I was picking what I was going to write about today because I spotted the word 'Hedwig' in it, and it excited my inner Harry Potter nerd. Because that, of course, would be totally false...

On 16 October, 1384, Jadwiga of Poland was crowned King of...er...Poland, which is more intriguing than it first seems because Jadwiga was actually a she and it wasn't like they had the skills for sex-change operations in the fourteenth century (the castrate don't count, as they still had their original sex-organs, just not fully functioning ones...). So Jadwiga managed to retain her femaleness, we can assume, whilst still being a King. Why, you may ask? Because of our shitty patriarchal society. Because, until this point, as in most of Europe, a Queen had not yet ruled the country on her own - preceding Queens had been Queen regnants, meaning they only held that position because they married the King at the time. Jadwiga was crowned King to show that she was a sovereign in her own right, which I guess is early feminism, maybe.

(The first English Queen, for comparison, was "Bloody" Mary I, who ruled from 1553-1558. Some people believe that Matilda [also sometimes called Maud] was the first Queen of England, but this is technically incorrect - though she was the previous King's daughter and her son was crowned King, she herself never had a coronation; was only 'on the throne' for a few months in 1141; didn't have the support of at least half of the country's nobles [due to the Civil War over whether she or her cousin Stephen should be ruling] and wasn't exactly in it to further the feminist cause, more to further the amount of land and money she owned.)  

But back to Jadwiga the sort-of feminist. She was born sometime between 3 October 1374 and 18 February 1374. I have been unable to establish the exact reason for the discrepancy in recording her birth date, but I think we can safely say it has more to do with poor clerical administration than her mother going through the longest labour ever. She spent some time growing up in the Viennese Court and became betrothed, at the age of four to William of Hapsburg, though this was later called off at the behest of Polish nobles, and she instead became engaged and then married to Jagiello, Grand Duke of Lithuania when she was the ripe old age of 12 and he 26. When they married, in 1386, Jagiello changed his name to Ladislaus and was also crowned King of Poland, which must have been quite confusing to explain to the neighbours.

Jadwiga, King of Poland - 1373/4-1399

By all accounts, Jadwiga was a great beauty with long blonde hair and blue eyes (though I'm not sure how popular you would have been in the court if you had written that she was as ugly as sin), and surprisingly tall for a medieval lady - an excavation of her remains in the 1970s put her at an impressive 1.8m. She was also very clever, speaking Polish, Bosnian, German, Hungarian, Serbian and Latin as well as having an interest in the arts, music and science. She was incredibly pious and devout, and apparently had enough miracles attached to her for Pope John Paul II to canonize her in 1997. These days, you can refer to her as Saint Jadwiga, or, in English, Saint Hedwig, which pleases my inner nerd probably more than it should.

Sadly, Jadwiga died one month after giving birth, along with her baby daughter at the age of only 26, though her husband continued to rule Poland for another 35 years. She had left her jewels to Krakow Academy to finance its renovation. Krakow Academy is today known as Jagiellonian University and is still going to this day.