Handout for Friday's class (goes with Paper #1--see below)

THE DAUGHTERS OF EVE: Three Medieval Texts on Women & Marriage

“I’m a realist and when you’re a realist, you’re sexist. There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist” (Andrew Tate, c. 2020’s).

Anonymous, Against Marrying (c.1222-50)

A married man’s a slave for sure,

His flesh and spirit pain endure—

Like ox from market homeward led

To work the plough until he’s dead.

Who take a wife accepts a yoke:

Not knowing pain, with pain he’ll choke.

Who takes a wife, himself is caught

And to eternal serfdom bought...

A woman will receive all males:

No prick against her lust prevails.

For who could fill his spouse’s spout?

Alone she wears the district out.

 Her lustful loins are never stilled:

By just one man she’s unfulfilled.

She’ll spread her legs to all the men

But, ever hungry, won’t say “When.”

 

Jehan Le Fèvre, The Lamentations of Mathelous (c. 1371-2)

“Many a war is begun by women and many a murder committed throughout the world; castles are burned and ransacked and the poor made destitute. As every man and woman knows, there isn’t one war in a thousand that isn’t started by a woman and her sowing of discord. She is the mother of all calamities; all evil and all madness stem from her. Her sting is more venomous than a snake’s; there isn’t anyone who has anything to do with her that doesn’t live to regret it...

Now you can see how foolhardy it is to take a wife...What is the point of your studying the matter? Don’t get married, have mistresses. If you are weak by nature, it will be safer for you to have a hundred of them rather than devote yourself to one; treat them as if they were no more important than a straw...Woman is a monstrous hermaphrodite, proving to be a chimera with horns and a tail bigger than a peacock or a pheasant’s. Thus she bears the marks of a monster, as this treatise informs you...their sex in no way prepares them to be virtuous or to do good, indeed they are predisposed to do the very opposite.”

Christine de Pizan, from The Letter of the God of Love, (1399)

And if anyone says that we ought to believe books written by reputable men of sound judgement, who never debased themselves by lying, yet demonstrated the wickedness of women, my response is that those men who wrote such things in their books, I have discovered, never sought to do anything but deceive women in their private lives; nor could they get enough of them; they wanted a different woman every day and couldn’t be faithful even to the most beautiful. How many did David have, or King Solomon?...

Now if such men had ladies or wives who refused to pander to their every whim or who concentrated their efforts on cheating them, what is so surprising about that? For there can be no doubt that, when a man plunges into such filth, he certainly does not seek out worthy ladies or virtuous modest women of good character; these women he neither knows nor has anything to do with. He wants only those who suit his purpose, and has a constant supply of tarts and whores on his arms…and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering them with complex arguments once he has grown old and is past it.

And if anyone tells me that books are full of women like these, my response is that women did not write these books nor include the material which attacks them and their morals. Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart’s content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defense. But if women had written these books, I know full well the subject would have been handled differently. They know that they stand wrongfully accused, and that the cake has not been divided up equally, for the strongest take the lion’s share, and the one who does the sharing out keeps the biggest portion for himself.

God created woman in His noble image, and bestowed upon her wisdom and insight necessary to achieve salvation, and the gift of understanding…but as far as the deception is concerned, for which our mother Eve is blamed and which resulted in God’s harsh sentence, I can assure you that she never did deceive Adam, but innocently swallowed and believed the words of the devil, which she thought were sincere and true, and with this conviction she went on to tell her husband. There was therefore neither trickery nor deceit in this, for innocence devoid of all hidden malice should not be called deception.