Little is known about the life of women in the Middle Ages, but without
doubt it was hard. The Church taught that women should obey their husbands. It
also spread two very different ideas about women: that they should be pure and
holy like the Virgin Mary; and that, like Eve, they could not be trusted and
were a moral danger to men. Such religious teaching led men both to worship and also to look down on women, and led women to give in to men's authority.
Marriage was usually the single most important event in the lives of men
and women. But the decision itself was made by the family, not the couple
themselves. This was because by marriage a family could improve its wealth and
social position. Everyone, both rich and poor, married for mainly financial
reasons. Once married, a woman had to accept her husband as her master. A
disobedient wife was usually beaten. It is unlikely that love played much of a
part in most marriages.
The first duty of every wife was to give her husband children,
preferably sons. Because so many children died as babies, and because there was
little that could be done if a birth went wrong, producing children was
dangerous and exhausting. Yet this was the future for every wife from twenty or
younger until she was forty.
