Medieval Women In Beowulf Research Paper

In medieval society the average women lifestyle was “ caring for children, preparing food, and tending livestock” and that's all they knew but it becomes quite apparent how women a portrayed in medieval literature by just looking at Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Wife of Bath's Tale (Bovey, “Women on Medieval Society”) . At the beginning of the medieval period women took care of home, and that was it, anything outside of their home lives was a blur. But as the period went on the began to get more vocal about expressing their opinions and having a greater and more equal role in society. They became less restricted in many aspects of their lives and as a result are represented much more than they ever had before. The problem

with the women of the medieval ages is they “never got the recognition the deserved” for anything that they did (Blamires 6)
Women who remained in their narrow roles of wives, mothers, and peacemakers generally appear to have limitations, while the women in medieval literature were completely different. To earlier poems, Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, offered two simple categories of women, those who are limited and not limited by their roles of society. When putting both of these poems side by
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side you can see certain concepts about the role of the medieval woman and what their relationships with men should be. Also with, The Wife of Bath's Tale you can also see a different point of view than either of the other two poem. The role of the women is flipped and she is in power and has complete control over a man life. Each poem presents an example of a woman’s limitations and well as the complete opposite, which gives you the sense that if a woman doesn’t have limits that evil can occur.
The women in Beowulf, at first glance are sexual objects, but their role is far more complicated than what is said.

In one line of the poem it states, “A queen should weave peace, not punish the innocent” it becomes easier to see the importance of the role of the limited woman. In Beowulf, the woman plays the role of a mediator, someone who is well kept and is useless in the eyes of the male society. The figure of Grendel’s mother doesn’t act as peaceful women but rather follows the male-based perspective of revenge and war, which fall back in the category of if women are not peacemakers than bad things will happen.

A dual representation of the women of the medieval times was shown the in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The person reading the story is first presented with Guinevere, a woman who is serving her role as peace weaver and object for the male attention. When the author describes Guinevere he describes her to the reader as being much like describe Wealhtheow of Beowulf. The author referenced to Guinevere as being “Glorious Guinevere, gay in the midst/ splendid silk at the sides/

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brilliantly embroidered with the best gems.

” While there could be many other representations of Guinevere she is portrayed as the perfect medieval woman; modest, beautiful, diffident, and respectful.

In both of the two poem I’ve discussed you can see different ways that women are represented but, Wife of Bath takes a twist on its representation of women. Although the poem starts of with a knight’s sexual assault of a women the rest imagines a world where women are in power over men. The “old women” of the poem had the knight’s life in the palm of her hand. The whole poem is wanting to how a woman's desire is to have complete control over a her husband or lover. The women of the poem seems to loyal, respectful, and powerful, but also used manipulation to get what she

wants.
Overall the women of the medieval period have a “lack of flexibility” when it comes to literature (Campbell 48). They are confined to being one traditional way and that’s is that way throughout many medieval writings. Women in medieval society and and literature or complete different and might never be the same