Savvina’s Reviews > Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270-1540 > Status Update

Spatial autonomy: Female servants... would have dressed her and bathed her"... provide an impressive and decorative retinue... and to provide companionship to the lady. the exclusion of men from the room until after the birth. Men and women mingled during dinner and dancing. If they were to draw in men, they had to associate with them, not totally isolate themselves. girls' had other sides of identity beyond chastity

It is indisputable that separate rooms or apartments for female heads of households, existed within very high status households at least. Segregation of male and female sleeping quarters among the children of the household perhaps took place when one at least of the children reached puberty.

Whether they were living at home or in another household, noble maidens were subject to considerable degrees of control. Their conduct during maidenhood was regulated for the honour of the house in which they were living. Canon law dictated that families could not override the consensual marriages of their children but they could certainly make life unpleasant for children who married without their blessing,

The household book of Dame Alice de Bryene records numerous instances of "daughters" accompanying their father or mother, or sometimes going alone, on visits to Dame Alice's household for meals, suggesting a genteel world of social networks and sociable interchange of which daughters were very much a part". The daughters who visited on their own are likely to have been at least of teenage years

Maidenhood" did not have precisely the same meanings across the social spectrum, but rather took on different identities according to the social position and outlook of the family or household of which the young woman was part.

Perfect ages at marriage, therefore, were eighteen for women and twenty-one for men, said Giles, considerably lowering Aristotle's perfect age for men from thirty-six but retaining the perfect age for women.

We are more likely to know about the marriages of heiresses than other girls, and heiresses are more likely than other girls to have been married off very young. Moreover, we are more likely to know about marriages that come into dispute than marriages which do not, and under age marriage is one of the concerns which could result in such disputes.

urban girls tended to marry in their early to mid twenties, while rural girls married in their late teens to early twenties, and both married men close to them in age

girls in their late teens marrying men around ten years older than themselves, should be seen as Mediterranean rather than medieval, and in
making this claim initiated the trend in medieval family history which notes strong differences between north-western and southern European practices.