Gender Roles vs Power

The expected roles of women in Europe during the Middle Ages seems to be far from what gender roles are perceived on today, but still resonate on patriarchal references. During the Middle Ages, your social position was based on a feudalist structure that depicted one's assets of land could be exchanged for service or labor. In order to be of upper class, you had to be born into owning land. Not only was society based on this structure, but the Roman Church played a huge role as an influence in social mobility. Expected roles for women in Europe during the Middle Ages included those of domestic obligations in which restricted many women from education. In fact, the only women who were exposed to education and freedom were Nuns. The covenants were a space where women could have power, be educated and support other women. Although they were still disclosed to refrain from paintings and other labor-like activities that were only for men, there were women like Herrad of Landsberg who felt it was her mission to credit her and all the women who worked with her. “Herrad intended the Hortus Deliciarum as a compendium of desirable knowledge in religious and secular subjects for the education of the young girls in the convent,” her inclusion of all of these women in educational teaching roles, shows us the learning between women (Chadwick 57). Again we see examples of women supporting other women through education and a mobility of power.

Herrad of Landsberg Hortus Deliciarum fol.323r, after 1170

The transition of the Renaissance period introduced the Gutenberg printing press in 1440 where mercantilism was born and offered the benefits of profitable trading. By the middle of the 14th century, education became so secular to the point where there were guilds or associations of merchants that could help teach literacy. Everyone got educated and there were even certain guilds that were closed off to women. Thanks to the birth of mercantilism, along came secular patrons who because of money and power wanted painted portraits to portray their property and possessions. Of course, those who painted were educated and education became a status symbol. Unfortunately women were still limited to having the privilege of entering this social class within the art world if and only they had a male figure painter who allowed women to study under them.

Women like Elisabetta Sirani, Diana Mantuana, and Artemisia Gentileschi had received public visibility in which their achievements advocated of what a woman could do. Their depictions of females as powerful focused on women empowerment even though at the time “male writers often followed Boccaccio’s example and asserted that famous women were miraculously endowed with the qualities that enabled them to succeed and thus could not serve as models for ordinary women” (Chadwick 87). Elisabetta Sirani shared the seventeenth century’s interest in female heroines and challenged the idea of changing the narrative of the woman as object to subject. When Sirani painted the depiction of Portia wounding her thigh, she successfully illustrated the ambition of Portia and how proving her strength would potentially lead her to power. In cases like these, we start to acknowledge the push-back on gender roles in society and bring to light those who can relate to Portia’s need for validation and admission to gender equality when it comes to power and social class.

Elisabetta Sirani Portia Wounding her thigh 1664

If there’s anyone who changed the game we should look at women like Rosa Bonheur, Mary Cassatt and Edmonia Lewis who had to constantly fight to be taken seriously. Rosa Bonheur was one of the few who were born into a family of political idealists. “Her father was an artist and a member of a utopian group that believed in gender equality,” but in other cases Rosa helped out and learned to paint (Guerilla Girls 47). She was the first cross-dresser painter with a female lover who both took vacations together as drag so they would be able to travel without a male figure. Being the underdog, Rosa Bonheur used her love for animals to depict the strength in the oppressed.

Rosa Bonheur The Horse Fair 1887

The animals became symbols for other beings (women) who were also oppressed by the white male. She caught the eye of Buffalo Bill and ended up making a fortune selling her paintings. “She made a life of her own, one far more unconventional than those of her contemporaries, the aesthetically-radical-but-socially-bourgeois Impressionists” (Guerilla Girls 48). During the 19th Century women were able to move up the social ladder in comparison to the Middle Ages, but not much was changed in the expectations of gender roles. Some even still praised the male artist to the point where many female artist’s names are forgotten in art history.

Work Citied 
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Thames & Hudson, 2012.
Girls, Guerrilla. The Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Penguin Books, 2006.