Essay On Gender Roles In The Middle Ages

Medieval Europe is very similar to the West today, in that it was, and still is, a patriarchal society. While women have made great gains in the amount of power they have and their social standing, our society is still male dominated. This also manifests itself in the lines drawn between the masculine and the effeminate, which are the socially preferred way for a men and women, respectively, to behave. This is a remnant of our misogynistic past. It is also a testament to the effectiveness of the beliefs, social norms, and religious and legal institutions that were devised in the Middle Ages to maintain gender roles. One of the common beliefs in the Middle Ages was that, while both men and women’s bodies were “associated with dirt, waste and rot,” in the hierarchy, women were even more polluted. One such example is each sex’s contribution to the formation of a child. It was believed that the matter of the child was contributed by the mother’s blood, and that the spirit of the child, the more ascendant part, came from men’s semen. This idea of women being a baser creature than men can be seen throughout Christendom. Women were believed to be the more volatile gender, were considered more

Witches at the time were defined as “people, mostly female, who denounced the Catholic faith, devoted themselves body and soul to evil, and indulged in such diabolical activities as causing storms, rendering men impotent, and copulating with devils.” Referring to these women as evil heretics, who in effect immaculate men is the very soul of how women are thought of at the time. The only way that people can consider women as powerful is to ascribe that power to a pact with satan, and to liken it to women’s perceived lascivious nature. One prominent demonologist treatise, the Malleus Malificarum, goes so far as to claim that “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is