About the middle of the fifth century there began those invasions of Anglo-Saxons which led to a partial blending of the two races. The newcomers also reverenced their women; history even records the names of some "Queens regnant" among them, and ladies of birth and quality sat in their Witenagemot. The church boasted among its abbesses some fine specimens of intellectual womanhood (St. Hilda, St. Modivenna), and in general the position of women among the Anglo-Saxons points to a spirit of generous chivalry.
William the Conqueror and his men, who overran and subjected the country in the eleventh century, came from a land where the principles of the Salic law were recognised. Seen from a feminist point of view, this invasion was a most fatal occurrence. Under Norman influence a rapid decline set in.
But if the Normans Latinised the manners and customs of the nations subjected to their rule, the latter influenced their conquerors in a more subtle way through their literature. It was especially the literature of Celtic England that hit the taste of mediaeval France. The Arthurian Cycle found its way to the Continent. It breathes a spirit of chivalry, and depicts a blending of the sexes on terms of homage to the fair and weaker which came like a revelation. And although the chivalrous element soon degenerated—Mr. Mc. Cabe deliberately leaves early romanticism out of account, calling it "a cult of pretty faces and rounded limbs, leading to a general laxity in morals"—yet it opened the eyes of the stronger sex to the possibility of women playing some slight part in society. In this connection it is rather amusing—and also enlightening as illustrating the general estimate of women—to read about a proposal made by one Pierre du Bois to king Edward the First to make Christian women marry Saracen husbands, that they might have a chance of converting them. The first social mission of women, if du Bois had been given his way, would thus have been that of utilising their charms to make religious converts. At the same time, he deemed it advisable to fit them for this task by giving them a rather liberal education and instruction.
There was, however, one important result of the new tendencies. The education of girls in the early Middle Ages,—such as it was—was a monastic one, practised within the walls of a convent. But in feudal society it became more and more customary to have the daughters of aristocratic families brought up at home, either by a tutor, or by some member of the family whose parts fitted him for the task. This first secularisation of female education among the higher classes was mainly responsible for the awakening interest of some women in literature of a secular kind. The traditions of the Church had demanded the teaching of Latin long after it had fallen into disuse in the outside world. The secular education, which comprised little actual instruction, next to music and dancing, came to include a good deal of physical exercise. Religion was not neglected, but relegated to a less commanding position, and secular literature in the vernacular became a favourite pastime, so much so, that (about 1400) Gerson thought it necessary to protest against the reading of the Roman de la Rose by young ladies, from motives of delicacy.
In spite of many backslidings, the position of women was now very slowly beginning to improve, and in the argument between the partisans and the opponents of female instruction the latter were beginning to have the worst of it. In the fifteenth century one or two forerunners of the renaissance-women swelled the ranks of the advocates of the cause.
There was in France Christine de Pisan, who in her "Cité des Dames" protested against the conventional statement, that the spreading of learning among women had had a disastrous influence upon their morals. In illustration of her plea she quoted the example of Jehan Andry, "solennel canoniste à Boulogne", who, when prevented by circumstances from giving his lessons of divine wisdom, sent his daughter Novelle in his place. In order that the beauty of her appearance might not awaken illicit thoughts among her male scholars "elle avait une petite courtine devant son visage." Christine de Pisan was one of the first women who made a living by their pen, and is said to have lived a life of irreproachable virtue, besides being possessed of great erudition.
The country where the most considerable gain was recorded was Italy. Not only did many Italian women share in the enthusiasm aroused by the Renaissance, but their doings were no longer regarded as unworthy of interest. In Boccaccio's writings, for instance, women occupy a very prominent place, and Chaucer was among those who followed his example. Although a great many writers of the period make the failings of women the object of their satirical remarks, yet there is in their very criticism the wish for something better and nobler, and better still, the conviction that women are capable of improvement.
The Renaissance, with its revival of ancient culture, contained a strong educational element, which, although like the earlier revivals it busied itself only very indirectly with the female half of society, was not without importance to the movement of female emancipation. For in the first place man was the usurper of all authority, and it was only by educating him and widening his horizon that he could be made to recognise the absurdity of the relations between the sexes; and in the second place it was the philosophical spirit of the Renaissance that built its educational speculations upon a solid foundation of thought and method. The educationalists of the Renaissance were not churchmen, but philosophers. The tendency among them—when at all interested in women—is to condemn both the monastic education, which forms devotees instead of mothers, and that secular education which creates literary ladies instead of housewives, and to return to the ancient ideal of womanhood in making them essentially wives and mothers, assuming without discussion the female inferiority.
The most striking exception to this rule was the German Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, who was the first to state the cause and pronounce upon it in a sense so favourable to female instruction that it entitles him to the name of "father of feminism". His treatise "De nobilitate et praecellentia feminini sexus" (first published in 1505), though naturally crude and immature, and hesitatingly put forward, has that enthusiasm of firm convictions which touches the reader's heart. The rudiments of later contentions are to be found in his plea. The tyranny of men, he says, has deprived woman of her birthright of liberty. Iniquitous laws have prevented her from enjoying it, usage and custom have neglected it, and finally an exclusively sexual education has quite extinguished it. In her youth she is kept a close prisoner at home, as though she were utterly incapable of any more dignified occupation than the performance of domestic duties like a kind of superior servant, and using the needle. Thus she is prepared for the matrimonial yoke which is laid upon her the moment she has attained maturity, that she may quickly serve her chief purpose of propagating the species. She is then delivered up to the oppression of a husband whose inordinate jealousy and fits of temper reduce her to a deplorable condition. Or she is kept all her life in the even more rigorous confinement of a convent, a retreat of so-called virgins and vestals, where she is left to a thousand agonies, the worst among which is a gnawing regret for lost happiness which finishes her.
In a supplementary treatise Agrippa exhorts the husband to regard and to treat his wife as a companion, and not as a servant. He seems almost afraid of the consequences of his audacity when he tries to weaken its effects by acknowledging the natural dominion of the male sex. "However", he adds, "let their rule be all grace and reverence. Although woman be inferior, let her be given a place by the husband's side, that she may be his faithful helpmate and counsellor. Not a slave, but the mistress of the house; not the first among the servants, but the mother of the fine children who are to inherit her husband's property, succeed to his business, and transmit his name to posterity."