As the boats creaked under the weight of William’s forces and the men mentally prepared themselves, none present could have known that their actions would link two kingdoms and their allied city-states in nearly perpetual conflict for nigh half a millennium. The lord who held dominion over these men, duke William of Normandy, had been forced to acquiesce to Mother Nature—delayed due to a strong northerly wind coming off England. But by the end of September, 1066, the winds had shifted and William and his men set sail with their sights locked onto the English coast.1
A year enshrined in the history books: 1066.
When William’s forces collided with Harold Godwinson’s on that fateful day in the middle of October, the coastal Dukedom of Normandy became inextricably linked to the English monarchy. This continental link would only be furthered under the Angevin kings of England when Geoffrey of Anjou married Empress Matilda, and Stephen of Blois signed over his snatched English succession to their son Henry who would go on to become the first of the Plantagenet kings.
This land expansion was once again furthered when Eleanor of Aquitaine fled her unsuccessful marriage with the French king Louis VII in 1152 and galloped straight into the arms of the aforementioned Henry, adding even more continental lands into the possession of the English crown. The joining of the two fused together a massive expanse of the medieval French landscape, combining Eleanor’s duchy of Aquitaine with Henry’s Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine.2 Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on which side you found yourself on—under the later rule of Eleanor and Henry’s youngest and historically unfavored son, John, much of these continental lands would be lost. A loss many English monarchs would attempt to rectify over the following centuries.
But lets bring it back to 1066.
Nearly four centuries before the printing press, chronicles of the time often leave us wanting. Wanting for more (or any!) information; wanting for an honest admittance of biases; wanting for an acknowledgment of more than just a handful of exalted men and an exaggeration of their actions; wanting for so much more than has been preserved, including the voices of the missing marginalized, those ‘of non acompte.’3
We know of William’s conquests through a few contemporary chronicle(s) written shortly after the Battle of Hastings, but we are intimate with the events leading up to William’s travels north through an extensively detailed, astonishingly preserved piece of embroidery called the Bayeux Tapestry. More than just a decorative piece of cloth meant to hold in heat within drafty medieval chambers, the Bayeux Tapestry is 224 feet long and vividly depicts the events leading up to, and soon after, the Battle of Hastings on October 14th, 1066.4
Of the 626 individuals depicted on the tapestry, the main narrative boasts just three women. Of the fifteen named individuals, only one is a woman—and a woman lost to history, at that. One woman is fleeing a burning building pulling a young child along with her while another is being encroached upon by a man and an unwanted touch. Patriarchy and the harm it perpetuates so perfectly depicted: nameless men’s bodies scattered across the entire swath; men finding meaning in the defiling and destruction of others; hierarchical social structures propagandized as a means of ‘law & order’ and divine right; a particular attention to phallus sizes; and most importantly, women almost entirely missing from the narrative while those present are totally eclipsed by male dominance.
Two hundred and twenty four feet of exquisitely detailed embroidery. A project which required a community of same-sex artists to work together in close quarters over (potentially) several years to complete—all to celebrate and preserve the conquests of men.
Heartbreakingly similar to the lived realities of modern women, women’s labor in the 11th century is largely ignored and nearly invisible in the historiography.
The women stitched into the Bayeux tapestry are there to remind us of the harm that befalls the vulnerable in time of war: naked, running, assaulted, afraid. Yet these 600-some-odd men didn’t live within a vacuum. Their estates, their lands, their businesses, their livelihoods continued to produce in their absence (usually) through the labor and oversight of the women left at home. As economic historians Jane Whittle and Mark Hailwood state within their research: “women [of the Middle Ages] were involved in every part of the economy, not only agricultural and household labour, but manufacturing, buying and selling.”5
The imagery of the Bayeux Tapestry depicts ‘men’s work’: the chopping of trees, building of boats, preparing for battle, molestation of women, politicking, and deft destruction. But that is the irony of the Bayeux tapestry. All of that men’s work would be lost to us if not for women. For it was women who stitched this remarkable piece of history into what still exists—for the most part—today, 950 years later. It was women’s hands that stitched every scene, touched every thread, achingly bent over the fragile material utilizing every bit of sunlight available working their craft to create incomparable art.
But once again, the pervasive power of the patriarchal single story has failed us.6
Endless papers and bound books exist dissecting who commissioned the tapestry, where and why it was commissioned, the time spent, the men depicted, the stories it tells, but the same can not be said in regards to the women who stitched it. They are nearly lost to us. Though more recent studies reveal perhaps a more precise location for the production of such an invaluable work of art, the names of the women whose hands brought such brilliance to life are unrecorded.7 We can see so much of their minds through their work in the way they navigated challenges reworking their stitching system to be more efficient, yet we know nothing of who they were as humans. It is a work of art that shows women working brilliantly and beautifully together.
When credit is given, more often it is given to the man who commissioned it and the men who are honored within it. As Dr. Janina Ramirez rightly points out within her book Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, “no one would think of discussing Starry Night without mentioning the artist Van Gogh, or the Mona Lisa without extensive investigation in the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci,”8 and much like the women in the tapestry itself, the unrecorded names are a testament of the forced nature of women’s secondary status within a patriarchal culture.
Glory is reserved for those with penises, and though the women stitched a-many onto that expansive fabric canvas, they themselves did not poses such an appendage. Glory, thus, is extended to the nearest man and affixed firmly there within patriarchal histories. These histories are then utilized as evidentiary support to the naturality of patriarchal gender roles and hierarchical grouping—however, that is not why we are here.
The women that stitched the Bayeux Tapestry may be lost to us but female erasure is as familiar to the modern woman as it would have been to our medieval counterparts. As Dr. Eleanor Janega unpacks in her book The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society: “To be a medieval woman was to be a worker, even if that work was not necessarily valued in the same way that men’s labor was.”9
As it stands, in the United States 57% of women are active within the workforce, with half of those that are not citing care work as the reason they can not participate.10 Yet those statistics can be misleading because even women that work; even women that out-earn their husbands, provide more unpaid labor a day than their partner if they find themselves in a heterosexual relationship—this dichotomy intensified if children or elderly family factor into the equation. Nationally, women spend roughly 4.5 hours a day of unpaid labor compared to men’s 2.75. Annually, that rounds out to about 10.8 trillion dollars of unpaid labor in the form of care provided by women—and that is just in modern times!11
Economists—who, as Dr. Jenni Nuttall notes, have ironically inherited a name that finds its origins in Greek relating to the science of household management—have relegated a majority of care work into the unpaid labor category while patriarchal gender roles have ensured women felt required to continually provide that care, thrusting them into identity stripping roles.12 As Dr. Nuttall reflects within her book Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words, “it’s a tragic paradox that what we value and what each of us needs—care, love, attachment, altruism—are some of the very obstacles used to barricade women into pokey housebound corners.”13
To require care is foundational to the human experience, yet women have been disproportionately burdened by the labor of that care since the installation of patriarchy. This labor, though necessary to keep society functioning, was deemed menial enough not to warrant documentation within the histories. Yet this care work dominated medieval women’s schedules, and we know it was so much more than just rearing children and tending house—as any modern woman carrying the mental load of a household can attest to. We know women of the Middle Ages held jobs that we typically associate with men because words exist to explain such actions.14 However, similarly to today, women’s labor was often deemed cheaper and this is because within patriarchal gender roles, multitasking was seen as inherent to femininity. To pay them less was only “natural,” as one 11th century guide points out.15
Women’s labor under patriarchy is valued less because it is expected. It is a patriarchal fallacy to believe that women have only recently juggled work alongside gendered care work or that women are naturally more inclined to provide care work, and these fallacies allow the continuation of the othering and exploitation of those society deems feminine.
Women’s labor has been present and relied upon during every historical event we consider consequential, yet it has only been within the last 70 years or so that historians have made an effort to document women’s presence within these historical moments. Hard work considering patriarchy did its best to erase their contributions in favor of the masculine presence—much like we saw with the Bayeux tapestry.
271 years after William crossed the channel in hopes of conquest, a descendant of his embarked on the reverse journey, yet this time he was hoping for the French crown and standing against the erasure of women.
When Charles IV of France died in 1328, Edward III of England was his closest male relative, but this was through his mother, Isabella. Not wanting an English king nor the loss of independent identity, Valois lawyers cited old Salic laws which deemed inheriting the French throne through the female line as impossible, unlawful, unconscionable, and anything else they could get to stick in a caste society built on the oppression of women. Upholding the erasure of women won out, and a cousin, Phillipe, was crowned king of France. In addition to the minimization of his mother, a princess of France, Edward’s rage was furthered when his Aquitaine lands—remember, these too were inherited from a woman—became threatened.
But don’t let my framing fool you. Edward III of England was no proto-feminist championing for the increased visibility of women. He was a patriarch, utilizing benevolence to grasp at his desires. The loss of Gascony and his overlord status was too much, and Edward retaliated in the way that every patriarchal history book has declared absolutely, totally normal: he started a war. The Hundred Years War, to be exact. Though… it wasn’t exactly 100 years, but The Hundred and Sixteen Year War doesn’t have quite the same ring to it…
Over the next seven episodes we are going to explore the lives and impact of women whose influence was essential during the time of The Hundred Years War between France and England. If you’ve received a Euro-centric education—like much of the world has been forced to do—you’ve likely (at one time or another) heard of the Battles of Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt, the sacking and sieging of Normandy, Paris, Calais. Men such as Henry V, The Black Prince, John Duke of Bedford, the Mad King Charles, the Armagnacs and Burgundians, the Dauphin—or maybe you only remember Robert Pattinson’s terrible French accent as the disinherited Prince, and that would be totally understandable too. It’s hard to shake. There are endless histories devoted to these men, these battles, and the necessity of death and destruction under patriarchy, but can you name any women that contributed to the tumultuous times of The Hundred Years War?
If Joan of Arc came to mind, please know I am mentally hugging you. But did you know that it was a woman who ensured Joan was received by the Dauphin? Did you know it was a woman who orchestrated a historically and culturally significant event to ensure the men influenced by patriarchal histories and promised glory would find legitimacy in the maid’s visions? It was a woman—who was also a collector of manuscripts, boasting a library which obviously informed her actions—that influenced a young king.
We’ll explore women such as Yolande of Aragon, who had a deep understanding of France’s history, including the mythological, which allowed France to achieve ultimate victory.
We’ll get to know Isabelle of Portugal, and look into the mediator role she held at official meetings between warring representatives. We’ll look at how her influence later allowed the house of York to become tied to the duchy of Burgundy, allowing both to become stronger units. A woman who was educated alongside her brothers and was audacious enough to petition for the English throne when succession was unsure.
We’ll meet the Lioness of Brittany, a noblewoman turned privateer who retaliated against the French king for wrongfully beheading her husband—affirming neither feminine rage nor feminine authority were born of modernity.
We will witness countless women who took up arms to defend their own livelihoods, defying our inherited knowledge of lordship residing in but one individual, and somehow never a woman.
We’ll read the words of Christine de Pizan, who many call the first feminist writer, whose entire life was impacted by England’s claim upon French lands. Whose work was so influential that it would find itself in the library of the enemy.
Please join me, Kate Wagner - the 15th Century Feminist, on season 1 of the Women Written Out: The Women of The Hundred Years War. Over the next seven episodes we will meet formidable women who deserve to be known. Whose presence mattered. Whose voices shaped narratives yet were never given the credit for their deft craftiness. Be sure to subscribe to stay up to date and to be notified of all new episodes, which will always be available in the format of long-posts via Substack if your brain requires words on a page.
I Invite you to join me, the 15th century feminist, on a historical journey putting women where they belong: everywhere.
Howarth, David. 1066: The Year of the Conquest. Penguin Books. New York, 1978.
Castor, Helen. She-wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth. Harper Collins, 2011. — Helen Castor is here on substack. Please do go give her a read, she is incredible!
J. Gower. Cofessio Amantis (Fairfax MS.) ii. l. 1715
https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/collections/britains-bayeux-tapestry/people-bayeux-tapestry
Goldberg, P.J.P. Women, Work, and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c.1300-1520. Oxford, 1992.
The ‘single story’ is language coined by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
https://alexandramakin.com/publications/
Ramirez, Janina. Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It. Hanover Square Press, 2023
Janega, Eleanor. The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society. W. W. Norton & Company, 2023.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb
https://thegepi.org/the-free-time-gender-gap/
Nuttall, Jenni. Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words. First United States edition. Viking, 2023.
Ibid.
Ibid.
https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780429893094_A36426356/preview-9780429893094_A36426356.pdf
