San Antonio College Library

"A mere chattel, inferior to men, or their social equal -- what was the role of the Anglo-Saxon woman? In this stimulating book, Christine Fell shows how for many women Anglo-Saxon England was a golden age of power and wealth, culture and education. From her analysis of the primary sources -- wills, charters, letters and chronicles -- and drawing on the evidence of place-names and poetry, Professor Fell argues that, in court, convent, or manor house,...

Chaucer was a keen observer of the lives of women with a remarkable ability to see beyond his culture's preconceptions concerning their proper roles. The lives of medieval women were divided into three estates -- virginity, wifehood, and widowhood -- each with complex rules extending to particulars of speech and dress, but all directed toward the single purpose of preserving female chastity, for which a woman was to be prepared to suffer or even die....