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Women In The Anglo-Saxon Period

406 Words2 Pages

The women in the Anglo-Saxon period surprisingly enjoyed more rights than our great-great grandparents. Women in the 21 st century enjoy equal rights to men, the same goes for the Anglo-Saxon period. Women’s legal rights, during
King Alfred’s reign for example’s sake, were higher than the times or eras to follow. Why? King Alfred had many laws just on women’s rights, protecting their
“sides”. One is “No woman or maiden shall ever be forced to marry one whom she dislikes…” That along protects one side of women, the side of marriage and love life. Another law, which protected their “side” of free will, was a rule that is connected to the previous rule, “…nor be sold for money.” That line protects them from slavery, give them free will and protect …show more content…

Those divorce laws granted the wife half the household goods, including any goods she had brought into the union, further protecting them from any form of abuse and slavery. The literature of the two are somewhat different, the most evident would be that the Anglo-Saxon literature was in Old English. There were many Old English manuscripts, about 400 surviving, and they are all highly prized. English nowadays is very complex having, according to the Oxford dictionary, 171,476

words, and 47,156 obsolete words. However, other websites say that it has up to
335 million words. Either way, with today’s English there are so many ways to explain or reason out your opinion, express your emotions, and make speeches.
However, Old English is still treasured because it is the foundation of modern day
English, Old English was the bridge to translating the Latin Bible into English today. The Anglo-Saxon period and the 21 st century have their similarities and differences. The women’s rights like the 21 st century, and the difference in their literature. However, I would say the Anglo-Saxon period was one of the most uplifted and somewhat close to the 21 st century in terms of women’s rights

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