Burgermeister's Daughter
What was the predominant image of women and women’s place in medieval society? Actual historical events, such as the scandal and subsequent litigation revolving around Anna Buschler which Steven Ozment detail’s in the Burgermeisters Daughter, suggests something off a compromise between these two literary extremes. It is easy to say that life in the sixteenth century was surely no utopia for women but at least they had some rights.
Anna was the daughter of Hermann Buschler, a prominent citizen who had even been the burgermeister of the German town of Schwabisch Hall, within the Holy Roman Empire. When she was young, Anna had simultaneous affairs with a young local nobleman, Erasmus Schenk of Limpurg, and a cavalryman named Daniel Treutwein. Anna’s father was so upset when he discovered these affairs; he deprived her of mostly all her inheritance. Anna a scandalized woman, fought in the Hall legal system for decades, and she eventually won back some of her inheritance.
Anna’s story suggests a rather empowered woman, largely thanks to a Germanic legal tradition, which made women’s basic rights, and kept men from treating them like they were their own property. Anna had faced many difficulties, particularly the fact that as an unprofessional single woman, she needed a male to represent her in court (Burgermeisters Daughter, 111). Had she been a professional woman with marketable skills, Anna would have received “proper legal status”, evidence of some amount of equal rights between male and female.
Furthermore, the story of Anna’s battle for her inheritance shows a great deal about popular opinion. Anna, known for the affairs that she had, initially lost her case. Instead of calmly accepting t...
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... lost she might as well just take what she was being given. This was definitely not the way sixteenth century families were run, and because of this she fought her father, her siblings and the council of Hall for her inheritance, and in the end she had come out satisfied.
Anna Buschler led a very challenging life, and a very dramatic one at that. Anna was a dishonorable woman that was an embarrassment not only to her family but also of her home city, Hall. She fought her way through long, drawn out lawsuits and through the abandonment of her family, but she made the citizens of Hall believe in her, and that’s all it took. Women’s life in the sixteenth century was built around men and didn’t have the majority of rights in Germany, but Anna Buschler showed the cities around her and Germany that it could be done, that you can show the world the power of a woman.
During this time period women were not respected at all and were belittled by all med in their lives. Even though men don’t appreciate what women they still did as they were told. In particular, “Women have an astoundingly long list of responsibilities and duties – th...
The story of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, has been elusive to historians since her death in 1536 at the hands of her husband. This, in part, can be attributed to the destruction of almost everything she touched soon after her execution. On orders of the king, the castles that were once her home had all memory stripped of her. Portraits were destroyed, letters disappeared, their symbol of the H and A intertwined had the A ripped away. The remnants of her time on the throne are pieces of history that were overlooked in the workers haste to strip the castles in preparation for Jane Seymour to become queen. There are few hints left of what really happened during Anne’s life and how important she was during her reign which has created the widespread infatuation with Anne and who she really was. Why is Anne’s life of such interest to us then? The reasons are many and include the desire to know her role in the English reformation, being the first queen of England to ever be executed, and the impact it had on her daughter and the later Queen Elizabeth I.
The Feminist Legal Theory closely looks at women and their position as legal subjects throughout history, and how these aspects have changed in regards to women as legal persons and the coorelating laws on gender themselves. The p...
Since the dawn of man and women, the issue of gender role has existed. Throughout history the norms of each gender have shifted. The two texts of Beowulf and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, both support a single sex, but are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Beowulf, written in around 800 AD represents the time of men superiority over women, who were the dominant figures in society and their families. On the other hand, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, depicts the contrary, the time of the 1960’s where women’s power grew stronger in contrast to men. In each test the power of each gender is perceived as threatening to the opposite sex, to keep in place, the supremacy of their own gender.
...faced during her time. When she took her father to court, there were regulations on Anna’s part. Because Anna was unmarried and without means were she remained dependent on her father, looking for support, legally, she was not allowed to take her father to court without prior court consent and for a child to take their parents to court was very rare and hard to get the consent. Also, according to the law Anna was an unprofessional single woman that did not allow her to proceed without an accompanying male counsel or representative who normally is a women’s father or nearest male relative (Ozment, 111). Through the changes that were happening, especially with the Protestant reformation, Anna faced many problems when she was fighting her father in court. Based on Anna’s action it did not seem like the agreed with the Protestants and their views on sex and marriage.
U Mcllvenna, Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici, University of Sydney
... a richer man and save her dying mother and siblings from living a life of poverty and hunger. As a last example is the nanny, Anne, when she said that she too had to abandon her children, because she did not have the money to raise them and she found the job as a nursemaid.
and was seen as the perfect role model to all German women many of the
In the 18th century, Sarah Grosvenor’s death was under a spotlight operated by the court system in Connecticut (Women in America, 117). The reasoning behind this focus on her death was very unusual for her time, the abortion that eventually led to her death. Grosvenor was involved with much older Amasa Session...
...aced with tremendous abuse and violence in various forms. However as she matured, her awareness of the specific racial violence, rampant throughout the region, grew as did her method of combating and resisting it. In the end, no matter which method she used to resist this violence, whether it be through ignoring it or actively fighting against it, it always found a way to impact her. Although, similar to the sources used for our second paper, Anne’s account of events in her life has never been fully verified and the fact that she can clearly remember events and dialog from such a young age can breed a lot of skepticism. This could also be seen as a sign of just how effected she was by the various forms of violence throughout her life, long after any physical scars had healed.
Traditional female characteristics and female unrest are underscored in literary works of the Middle Ages. Although patriarchal views were firmly established back then, traces of female contempt for such beliefs could be found in several popular literary works. Female characters’ opposition to societal norms serves to create humor and wish- fulfillment for female and male audiences to enjoy. “Lanval” by Marie De France and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer both show subversion of patriarchal attitudes by displaying the women in the text as superior or equal to the men. However, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” also incorporates conventional societal ideas by including degradation of women and mistreatment of a wife by her husband.
... of the German Classic period, but a challenge to the idea of the limiting nature of femininity.
One of the main issues in “Anna and the King” is the differences between men and women. What is less obvious is that those differences are of two types: the existing inequality of the social status of men and women, and the ways in which men and women try to deal with (end or prolong) this inequality.
The prejudice the women tolerate is evidenced by their tendency to dress in men’s clothing in order to be heard or considered (Olson). As women, their voices are inhibited or disregarded; they are overshadowed and overlooked by society. Portia, for example, has little choice but to consent to being the prize in her “loving” late father’s lottery. All decisions are made in regard to her future and life is influenced by men. The fact that the father is deceased does not diminish his power. In fact, his status a...