Foissart Vs Tuchman

I found the source through the High Middle Ages class offered by University of Memphis. Tuchman’s text has received many critic accolades. Her technique of using one character to tell a larger story works well and makes the text readable for all audiences. She utilizes lots of primary and secondary works, but uses the work of medieval writer Froissart, the most. Froissart was a beneficiary of the protagonist, and therefore his works can be biased, but Tuchman does make it a point to discuss the issue, rather than try and conceal. Because Tuchman is so open about the issues with medieval sources, this makes her work more trustworthy. This chapter in the Tuchman discusses the marriage between the protagonist and his newly acquired bride, Isabella.

Marriages were not about love, but rather about political or monetary gain. According to Tuchman it was the wife’s job to “earn her husband’s love (215).” Women were plagued with the tasks of not only earning their husband’s love, but keeping it, and dealing with the stereotype that women were the “devil’s decoy” and “obstacle to holiness (211).” Women were expected to remain pure, and therefore, while the virginal state of life was what a woman was expected maintain, every unmarried woman, was now a temptress. Tuchman makes an interesting point when she says “nastiness of women as generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case was fading (212).” Typically it was the men of the church, who on paper were sworn to celibacy, that spread the negative ideas about women, but men tended to listen when it came to their immortal souls. Men were not the only ones concerned about their souls, women were as well, and marriage seemed to complicate things when it came to getting to spend eternity in Heaven or Hell. Tuchman discusses how even sex within marriage could be a sin if done for the wrong