Lost Professions
Our image of history, such as regularly represented through
Visual Media, omits everything that has been forgotten. We only see what we know for sure existed,
and yet when we do the research we find that the popular image is quite wrong.
For example, the period of History that used to be called ‘the
Dark Ages’ is usually portrayed as grey and sombre. Churches in particular tend to be as grey as
they are today, but a bit newer, and castles are invariably shown to have huge,
stone walls inside all the rooms, with occasional, massive pieces of
furniture. However, the Late Middle Ages,
approximately from 1070 to 1470 (1), was a very colourful period. Churches had huge wooden screens that
entirely filled the area from floor to ceiling and wall to wall between the
Nave and the Transept, and it was all intricately carved and brightly
painted. Just as the Parthenon was
brightly and by our standards garishly painted to the horror of the Romantic
tourists who adore the weathered white.
Castles, did not have bare walls in the areas where the Upper Class
lived, because they were always covered by tapestries or other wall
hangings. In Hamlet, hiding behind the
arras is an important plot development.
The Churches were all stripped during the Reformation. Anyhow, our popular idea is wrong on this,
but it is not what I intended to write about.
Scriveners are a forgotten Profession that we rarely see in
the background of scenes, because all Big Houses must have employed a team of
people from the Estate to copy documents and write letters. One could read and write oneself, but one
would have staff who could read and copy accurately. It must have been a common occupation. We see women at spinning wheels or looms, or embroidering,
but many must have sat at a table with a quill and ink. Writing must have always been part of ‘women’s
work’, but believed to be ignorant by men, they mostly were happy to let men
think they were illiterate. This is sure
to have been the case when the men were themselves illiterate. (2)
I was going to write about various women’s activities
especially in the largely women-only worlds of most villages and Big Houses,
the two Social Structures of the Middle Ages.
Most men were away at Crusades or other military activities, or they
were in Holy Orders. Young aristocratic
women must have enjoyed partying, as would women in the village, probably separately. Women had what is called ‘cottage industry’
where they spun, wove and sewed in their own homes to provide the endless
demand for new, pretty clothes for their ‘mistresses’. Wagner’s Spinning Song is a good portrayal,
but rarely on television or on the big screen have I seen much of this work
happening.
History was written by men and it is the men’s stories of
kings and heroes and the big politics of States and estates, but life ‘at home’
went on in a traditional way for centuries, often oblivious to the goings on
that eventually formed our historical knowledge and image of the periods. Sometimes they collided, such as when an army
marched through an area, say, down a valley, going from village to village,
pillaging supplies and satisfying the soldiers’ carnal desires. If people were really un-lucky, a battle
would happen in their local fields.
Sometimes, someone’s son, brother or betrothed would be in one of the fighting
armies. But History isn’t usually
written about ordinary people, except in the Fairy Stories. Of course, the Big Houses were something else
again. A Big House was an entire community
of people, not just the Aristocrats who ‘owned’ it. Often they were associated with a village,
though not all villages were connected to a Big House. Most women would have been left pregnant,
when their husbands went to war. There
must have been village commerce amongst these cottages of women, though all
would have supported her own kitchen garden and been largely self-sufficient,
with the help of her un-married daughters and her daughters-in-law.
It may be stretching it too far to suggest that these lonely,
Aristocratic, young women would not have wanted to nurse their own
infants. We know wet nurses existed, but
they might have been something of a Profession, with village mothers that have
weaned their own babies continuing to nurse ‘well bred’ babies of the Upper
Class, to free their mothers for whatever frivolous activities such girls would
have indulged in.
Footnote: (1) It would appear that in most centuries, it was
around the year seventy of that decade when things changed. Think of after the English Revolution and
after the American Revolution. British Australia
was founded in the seventeen-seventies. The
Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in the year Seventy. It wasn’t till much later in the Eleventh
Century that the first Crusade got going, changing Europe for ever, though the
initial Call was a result of the Millenium itself, by some accounts.
(2) In Australian Mensa Inc, members whose wife is not a
member have no problem both attending, but when the member’s husband is not a
member, there is a tension that is often palpable, and such couples rarely
return for more functions, though membership becomes more important after that
as it is for most Mensans who never go to functions with other Mensans.
