Letters and embroidery allowed medieval women to express their ‘forbidden’ emotions
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Thursday, February 15, 2024
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Women were not allowed to engage widely in holy intellectual pursuits such as writing and interpreting religious texts, so they could only channel their religious fervour and closeness to God through their bodies.
Key Points:
- Women were not allowed to engage widely in holy intellectual pursuits such as writing and interpreting religious texts, so they could only channel their religious fervour and closeness to God through their bodies.
- In the medieval period, prescriptive literature warned women of the dangers of anger – one of seven deadly sins.
- But while they were discouraged from expressing their feelings in daily life, letters written by elite women of the medieval period are a rich source of information about their emotions.
Surviving letters
- Not many of these letters have survived.
- One that has was sent by Aline le Despenser, Countess of Norfolk, to the chancellor of England in around 1273.
- In Renaissance Italy, the feeling of being powerless was palpable in many of the letters that women wrote.
- A Corresponding Renaissance: Letters Written by Italian Women, 1375–1650 (2016), by historian Lisa Kaborycha, includes 55 letters written by women of different social status.
- In one of her letters, she says: “Don’t be born a woman if you want your own way.” The letters by another Florentine women from the same period, Alessandra Strozzi are considered some of the most important insights into political and social life at the time.
- In one of her letters she says: “Not seeing any of your children makes me wonder who are they doing all this work for.
Embroidered messages
- These women used their needles as pens, subverting the traditional notion of female docility by incorporating symbols and messages into their designs.
- During this period, embroidery was not just undertaken for practical purposes but
was expected from virtuous upper-class women, part of expressing their “true” nature as dutiful and obedient wives and daughters.
- Her designs were a symbol of her pride and resistance, especially as her letters were under constant surveillance.
- While these letters and embroidered messages are a fascinating insight into the emotions of medieval women, most of them are from women of high social standing who had wealth and privilege.
- And clever enough to find their own tools for claiming power, in a culture determined to silence them.
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Pragya Agarwal received funding from Society of Authors for this research and writing of Hysterical.