Post 2

Posted 2-19-2020
edited: 2-29-2020, 3-3-2020

In the Middle Ages, we see women being more prominent figures in the workforce. Chadwick includes a painting of a woman milking a cow right in the beginning of their discussion of women in the middle ages. This image indicates that women are now a part of the labor force and that they are doing work outside of the home. Chadwick goes further to explain “there is evidence that they [women] participated in all forms of cultural production from masonry and building to manuscript illuminating and embroidery” (Chadwick 44). What Chadwick is discussing is a cultural shift. Women, although they still do not have many options, have options. They no longer are confined to the home. Women are now being seen—if even only in the slightest—as worth more than their “sexual capacities” (Chadwick 44).

Illustration in a Bodleian Library manuscript, Ms 764, f. 41 v.

Many double standards existed between male and female roles, women were to stay quiet, while men could do as they please even if that meant disrespecting their wives. In Guerrilla Girls, it clearly states “A women had to obey her husband, and he could beat her if she didn’t” (Guerrilla Girls 22). Women struggled in many different ways, unable to have their own say in matters or speak their minds. For this reason, many women fled to join the convent, which engaged them with other women who were escaping the ordinary lifestyle of fulfilling maternal and wife- like duties. “Families sent girls as young as five or six years old to nunneries. For some it was to live a religious life, for others it was because their parents had blown the family fortunes on their sisters’ dowries. Adult women with pasts to be forgotten joined religious orders too, as did reformed prostitutes. There they lived a life by, for, and about God… and women” (Guerrilla Girls 21). In the Middle Ages, women felt it was easier to live by the words of God and in a place where other women around them were able to relate to their hardships, hoping one day to make a difference and follow beliefs in which they agreed to.

Women had access to education for the first time. This was through convents. Women who would become nuns, would be educated and thus hold higher social status. This was an outlet for women who did not want to take the traditional route of marriage and family. They had the option to join a convent, be educated, and even participate in some artwork. As a matter of fact, the only women who had access to learning would be nuns or as mentioned in Chadwick, women of the Nobel class: “Access to education and the convent, the center of women's intellectual and artistic life from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries, was often determined by noble birth" (Chadwick 44). Chadwick explains that a women of Nobel uprise had access to education and had better access than some to a convent. One of the famous pieces made by these women is an embroidered banner over 200 feet long named The Bayeux Tapestry; a segment is shown below.

THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

By the Renaissance Era, convents were no longer considered a safe haven for women to turn to for their artistic desires because of the church's increasingly strict rules controlling the freedom women have in terms of art. Rather, women were found in guilds, where their level of art was restricted to cloth making, which was in high demand at that time. As math and science was gradually becoming attached to the development of painting, paintings were becoming three-dimensional and realistic. During this time, female artists were painting moving images which showcased the controversy regarding the sexual differences which make a woman untrustworthy. Artist Elisabetta Sirani paints Portia Wounding Her Thigh, which portrays Portia as she is about to wound herself to gain the trust of Brutus. By hurting herself, "Portia has to prove herself virtuous and worthy of political trust by separating herself from the rest of her sex" (Chadwick 101).

The Impressionist Era began in the late 19th century, and for the most part, the club of painters were all men. Although women had a bit more opportunity and leeway to become a painter, it was not surprising that many women still remained at home during this time. The art world was dominated by "the conflicts still facing the woman artist caught within an ideology of sexual difference which gave the privilege to male expression and often forced women to choose between marriage and a career" (Chadwick 230). Domesticity was the only thing women knew of, and their contribution to society was mainly to get married and bear children. The few impressionist female artists painted about the association of femininity and domesticity, and their paintings attacked the image of women appearing for the males to look at. Among these artists was Mary Cassatt, who painted Woman in Black at the Opera, which depicted a woman simply trying to watch the opera. She is wearing black to make herself invisible, and her attention is captured by the show before her. However, in the back of the scene, there is a man who is not looking at the opera, but at her. This displays the female struggle of the time, which was that women were not able to go anywhere without being objectified by a male spectator, and this was acceptable behavior of the time. Cassatt's painting displayed her anger at society for allowing men to look at women freely. The female artists of the time, though few, were beginning to challenge society's depictions of women and gender roles placed on them.

Mary Cassatt, Woman in Black at the Opera, 1879

This video talks about American women gaining a voice and taking a stand on social issues.

Works Cited
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson,
1990. Print.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York:
Penguin, 1998. Print.