Writing off medieval women as “arrogant” and"infatuated"
Did anyone here watch the first episode of Helen Castor’s BBC series ‘She-Wolves’, about English medieval queens, last Wednesday?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01bgpm7/SheWolves_Englands_Early_Queens_Matilda_and_Eleanor
I found it interesting to see an avowedly feminist take on Matilda, and the problem she faced in trying to create the role of queen regnant, previously unheard-of in England. It is an indictment of male medieval historians in general that so many of them, right up to the present day, have taken 12th-century chroniclers’ accounts of her ‘arrogance’ at face value. As Castor said, if Matilda hadn’t abandoned the ‘modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex’, she wouldn’t have got far as a ruler.
A parallel case, to my mind, is the way historians have dumbly repeated the chroniclers’ assessment of Constance of Antioch’s choice of Reynaud de Chatillon as a second husband in 1153. Naturally, for a 12th century male writer, it was axiomatic that any woman who refused her male relative and overlord’s choice of husband for her by could only be acting out of sensuality and infatuation; but considering what a high opinion her kinsmen Aimery I, Baldwin IV and Raymond of Tripoli all had of his military talents, you’d think a modern historian might at least consider the possibility that she valued the same qualities in him that they did?
Cross-posted to Oltramar
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01bgpm7/SheWolves_Englands_Early_Queens_Matilda_and_Eleanor
I found it interesting to see an avowedly feminist take on Matilda, and the problem she faced in trying to create the role of queen regnant, previously unheard-of in England. It is an indictment of male medieval historians in general that so many of them, right up to the present day, have taken 12th-century chroniclers’ accounts of her ‘arrogance’ at face value. As Castor said, if Matilda hadn’t abandoned the ‘modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex’, she wouldn’t have got far as a ruler.
A parallel case, to my mind, is the way historians have dumbly repeated the chroniclers’ assessment of Constance of Antioch’s choice of Reynaud de Chatillon as a second husband in 1153. Naturally, for a 12th century male writer, it was axiomatic that any woman who refused her male relative and overlord’s choice of husband for her by could only be acting out of sensuality and infatuation; but considering what a high opinion her kinsmen Aimery I, Baldwin IV and Raymond of Tripoli all had of his military talents, you’d think a modern historian might at least consider the possibility that she valued the same qualities in him that they did?
Cross-posted to Oltramar