The European middle ages lasted over 500 years and covered a continent. The status of women varied according to the time and place in question, as well as the personalities of individual women. In general, it is possible to say that medieval women that did family work at home and had less social and financial power, a lower legal status, and less freedom than do modern women, although they had more of each than did most Victorian woman. Medieval women’s lives were defined by class and work as well as by gender.

The feudal system defined a role for every member of society, male or female, depending on their individual rank. In some ways, highborn women were more restricted than lower-class women, since their personal choices were likely to have political implications. This was especially true if the woman held land in her own right. Marriage by force was not unknown, and it was a rare woman who dared to refuse a marriage arranged by her family or her overlord. Widows had the most freedom, but even they could not remarry without an overlord’s consent. Still, highborn women with forceful characters managed to act freely. Eleanor of Aquitaine, for example, forced her first husband to take her on a Crusade while she was Queen of France. She later remarried and became Queen of England without her overlord’s consent.

As the middle class developed in the late middle ages, middle-class women also improved in status. These women could run their own businesses separately from their husbands, and keep the money they earned. They could inherit from their families without being obligated to turn the property over to their husbands. Some were even apprenticed to trades and became high-ranking members of their local guilds.

The ideal of courtly love, coupled with the cult of the Virgin Mary, might have been expected to improve the position of women. In fact, neither did much to change the perimeters of real women’s lives.

For women, as for men, a religious life was a way of escaping many social demands, although different rules and hierarchies still defined appropriate action. A nun could never function as a priest, let alone ascend the hierarchy to become a bishop, a cardinal, or the Pope. Still an abbess often wielded considerable power locally, both because of the prestige of the Church and because of the financial impact of the convent. A highly regarded abbess like Hildegard von Bingen could become an advisor to kings. Other religious women were recluses like Julian of Norwich, whose reputation for mysticism brought many supplicants to her cell. Secular women could live strongly religious lives, too, and doing so often freed them from social conventions. Margery Kempe traveled to Jerusalem and back, and Joan of Arc raised and commanded armies.

Both middle class and free peasant women were protected financially by the law, at least by the late middle ages. Dower rights limited a man’s ability to sell property his wife brought to the marriage and ensured that she would inherit a portion of his property when he died.  

At most times in the European middle ages, women were better protected by law and by custom than they were in the Victorian era. They also had more opportunities available to them, depending on their class. Then, as always, a woman’s personality was key to her success.