Kelsey Sheridan

10/APR/2011

Essay

The Depiction of Gender Roles from Marginalia in the French Book of Hours in

the Loras College Library Special Collections

The interactions between men and women in the past had a significant impact on the

development of today’s gender roles, creating expectations and limitations that influence

the relationship between the two sexes. It is important to understand gender roles and how

they developed over time so that we can better comprehend how our society functions

today. In order to discern how the relationships between men and women were during the

Middle Ages we will look at the French Book of Hours. The marginalia located in the book

depicts the how people of the time viewed women in society and in relation to men, the

images expressing cultural attitudes and assumptions common during the time of

production.

There were two different views of women at this time, both of them having positive

and negative aspects, and therefore carrying mixed messages about the female sex. One

view was that of courtly love, where women were esteemed for their beauty, grace and other

feminine qualities, on the other hand there was that of the Church, which valued women for

qualities like spirituality, virginity, and intelligence. In the Middle Ages the ideas of courtly

love and chivalry took hold and greatly influenced the traditional gender roles of women; the

poems of the troubadours of this time venerate and adore women, sometimes presenting

select women as strong and powerful, but at the same time continuing to maintain the

feminine ideals of the time such as beauty, elegance, generosity, etc. While courtly love

elevated women to a high social position and valued them, the idealization of the female sex

actually led them to be placed on a restrictive pedestal, confined to the courtly expectations

of the time. During the same time that the culture and ideas of courtly love were sweeping

across Europe, the Church was espousing its own ideas about women. The Church also

relayed some positive images, despite the notorious misogyny of clerics such as Jean de

Meun, the author of the Romance of the Rose. The Church and religious writers celebrated

women for characteristics such as charity, chastity, religious spirituality, and intelligence:

Jacques de Vitry, for example, wrote a hagiographical account of Marie d’Oignies, one of the

first beguins, and maintained a devotion to her throughout his life. In courtly love women

were restricted to specific ideals (how to act, what they should look like, etc.) but with the

Church and religious writers women were venerated for qualities that they exhibited that

made them set them apart from all others and that made them special. That specialness

had the dual effect of reverencing specific women, often for challenging social conventions,

while at the same time marginalizing them as unusual specimens and hence reinforcing

cultural attitudes about gender.

The French Book of Hours in the Loras College collection reflects some of the cultural

assumptions about gender roles in the late Middle Ages. Looking at the first image we see a

man and a women in front of a trellis of flowers, seemingly about to embrace. If we take a

closer look at the picture, however, we can see many different intricacies that shed some

light on the image. Based on the dress of the woman she is obviously not a peasant or poor

woman. She is wearing shoes and a veil, and her dress is nice and seems well made. Based

on these observations this would mean she is most likely of the aristocracy or upper middle

class, but clearly not royal. When we look at the woman in correlation to the man we can see

that she is portrayed differently than he is. Physically she is smaller and thinner than he,

reflecting both physical and political weakness. Also, not only is she more diminuitive, but

she is also looking up to the man in the image, giving him the power in the relationship and

relegating her to a subordinate role. In contrast the man obviously appears as robust and

taller, making him seem strong and a giving him the illusion of power. Now while the man is

portrayed in a superior manner, it can be ascertained that even though the man and woman

are not equals, they have a similar social standing. We can see this because there is no

blatant depiction of a superior social status than the difference between the sexes; there is

no phallic symbols or signs of women’s inferiority to man displayed in the marginalia.

Hence, we can see that in a devotional text, images were used to reflect traditional roles in

the context of religious practice.

In the second image from the French Book of Hours we have an illustration of a man

and a woman riding on a horse with a castle in the background and a man, presumably a

servant or worker of some kind following behind the man and the woman. Looking at the

woman’s clothing we can see that she is a woman of high social standing, one of the upper

class, and this is based on dress, and especially her headdress which was worn by high

class ladies of the time. The man riding the horse with her is someone of some wealth,

looking at his clothes and the horse that he is riding on. There is no indication of what type

of relationship the woman has with the man on the horse, but we can see that the man

following behind them on the horse is of a lower social standing than the two because he is

walking behind them, and does not have a horse of his own. The woman is riding sidesaddle

behind the man riding the horse, which was very common for women of that time to do; the

dresses and various other garments did not allow women to ride astride, also it would have

been immodest for a woman to ride astride, because that is how men rode. In the image the

man is literally taking the reins and controlling where the horse will go, giving him superiority

over her as a man, and maintaining the traditional gender role of women as subordinate to

men.

The third image from the Book of Hours is of a woman holding a book. During the

Middle Ages it started to become more popular for wealthy or upper class families to

educate their daughters, and not just their sons, allowing them to learn at least the basics of

reading and writing and gaining a rudimentary education. We can tell that the woman in the

image is either wealthy or upper class because of her clothes and her surroundings, which

seem to be a castle or manor house. In the medieval time period there were a few women

who became famous for their learning and writing, breaking into a field that was almost

entirely dominated by men; Christine de Pisan is one example of a woman who became well

known throughout Europe for her education and her writing. While women were still

continuously viewed as subordinate to men this image shows us that gender roles were

adapting and changing during this time and it was becoming acceptable for women to

become educated.

The Middle Ages were a period where gender roles were strongly rigid and limiting to

women, and even though during this time period women were venerated, adored and held in

high esteem the social assumptions about proper relations between men and women

always placed men in a dominant position. While there were some women who were able to

rise above the limitations placed on them by society, they were still subordinate to man. .

The illustrations in Books of Hours such as those at the Loras College library reflect social

attitudes and can help illuminate the ways those attitudes were dramatized in material

culture.