Hettinger, Madonna J., So Strategize: The Demands in the Day of the Peasant Woman in Medieval Europe. Women in Medieval Western European Culture, Garland Publishing Inc.
New York, 1999 – Article. pp. 48-64
Medieval peasant women are unfortunate enough to have fallen into two groups that often slip through the cracks of history: the lower class and the least powerful gender. Still worse, one of our best records of the lives of peasant women in the Middle Ages is The Boke of Husbandry, written by upper class brothers Anthony and John Fitzherbert, who are “twice removed” from female peasant life (48). In her article, “So Strategize: The Demands in the Day of the Peasant Woman in Medieval Europe,” Madonna J. Hettinger asserts that we can obtain the clearest picture of the medieval peasant woman by dissecting her labors, her relationships, and the audience of the Fitzherberts’ book.
While The Boke of Husbandry is not a how-to manual, it still describes a laundry list of tasks that peasant women were expected to do daily. In fact, much of the most important work to maintaining a peasant household was regarded as women’s work. The book lists “sweeping, tending suckling calves, straining milk, dressing children, and preparing the husband’s meals” as the women’s chief early morning duties, but neglects to include that there are even more than this, such as building the fire and fetching water, that must be done before the day can even begin (55). Since all this work was done indoors, “her home was no refuge from [the workplace], rather it was a workplace” (54). Women also worked outdoors, gathering products from the field that made their way into the kitchen or the house, such as wheat before it became bread, and flax before it became spun thread. Aside from domestic tasks inside and outside of the house, women were also responsible for creating a very important sellable product: ale. Brewing ale was a difficult and dangerous task, but since the product spoiled quickly, it had to be made regularly, and “women were repeatedly active as producers and sellers of ale” (56). Another important product that peasant women were responsible for producing was labor, in the form of children. Unlike their other tasks, “childbearing was a constant activity” and could not be put aside (59). In this way, even the woman’s sexual functions were a form of work in her life. By witnessing this endless list of daily chores, we can speculate on what type of person the peasant woman must have been: the strong, essential backbone of the peasant homestead.
We can also attempt to obtain an idea of the medieval peasant woman’s life through the relationships she was a part of. Predictably, she had a strong relationship with her children. In fact, she alone was responsible for “nurturing, protecting, and training her children, the family’s future labor force” (59). Just like her mother must have taught her, she would have gradually “introduced [them] to increasingly difficult chores related to house, yard, and fields as their physical development permitted” (59). Secondly, it is apparent that the peasant woman had a relationship with her husband. Most peasant women married quickly “because of the necessity of complimentary male and female skills in the household economy of the Middle Ages” (59). Marriage was also a sure way for peasant women to ensure economic security for themselves. Still, women were bound tightly to their husbands for more than that, because while “the woman gained a certain amount of security… she lost her legal identity to a significant degree” (60). Therefore, marriage was a symbiotic relationship: men needed women for their labor and ability to produce children, and women needed men for economic security as well as to represent their legal interests. Third, a peasant woman also had to consider her relationship to her landlord on a daily basis. Her economic activities were important to her landlord because “her sales of bread and ale were taxed by the manorial court” (57). Most landlords had regular dues for peasant women to pay, even single women and widows. Since medieval peasant women had to consider her relationship to her children, her husband, and her landlord every day, witnessing accounts of each helps us to gain a better picture of her daily life.
Considering the audience of the The Boke of Husbandry is a third way that we can obtain a picture of the medieval peasant woman’s life. This task may be the most important, since it allows us to sieve out which sections of the book were not meant to inform us but to entertain others. Hettinger suggests that the book is meant to describe the “art of husbandry” for the upper classes to marvel at, since it lists tasks instead of explaining how to do them (50). However, the authors Fitzherbert address the book to “a young gentleman so that he may… read to his servants what chapter he wilt” (50). In this way, the book is at best indirectly written for peasant women to read. There is an upside to the authors intending the book for the upper class: it helped to dispel both the romantic and stereotypical images people had about peasant women. Christine de Pizan, an affluent noblewoman of the period, wrote: “Although they are commonly raised on black bread… and they work very hard, their lives are more secure and abundant in the essentials than the lives of some who are placed very high” (60) de Pizan could have learned from this book to attain a better picture of the real life peasant woman. On the other side of the spectrum, the brothers Fitzherbert also deny typical stereotypes about the “oppressed, unthinking” peasant woman (62). Their portrayal of the many tasks she is capable of in any given day helped inform their noble audience about what their serfs and servants are truly like. By recognizing the book’s audience and the intent of the Fitzherberts, we can better recognize the reality of the peasant woman’s life.
Madonna J. Hettinger’s essay, “So Strategize: The Demands in the Day of the Peasant Woman in Medieval Europe” leaves us with a question: is The Boke of Husbandry a reliable source for historians? After reading the article, I believe that it indeed must be considered by historians, as it is one of the only firsthand accounts of medieval peasant life. Compared with legal documents that survived from the middle ages, it appears that the accounts of the peasant woman’s labors and relations are accurate. However, I believe it is also important that one recognizes the audience and purpose of the book. If we assumed that the book was designed for peasant women or as a historical account of their lives, then it would be far less accurate. My solution is that we use legal documents parallel to the book, just as Hettinger herself did, explaining that she, and other scholars of the middle ages, knew to obtain information “through careful examination of manorial accounts and court rolls, wills, records of accidental death, tax records, and literary sources” (53). In conclusion, we can learn the most about medieval peasant women by neither ignoring nor neglecting The Boke of Husbandry.
Lauren Orsini, University of Mary Washington
