OF SIX MEDIEVAL WOMEN 



accepted facts of everyday life then, would strike 

 us as strangely rude and repellent now. Take,' 

 for instance, the attitude towards his queen of a 

 king we have all been taught to revere Arthur, 

 the semi - saint, and the so - called pattern of 

 courtesy. When Guinevere deserts him, and 

 some of his knights are slain, his remark not 

 whispered into the ear of a confidant, but uttered 

 aloud in the presence of all around him is, ".I 

 am sorrier for my good knights' loss than for the 

 loss of my fair Queen, for queens I might have 

 enow." Such a sentiment, expressed in public, 

 does not seem quite up to our modern standard 

 of courteous, or even civilised, conduct, and yet 

 here we have the sentiments of the Prince of 

 Chivalry, as conceived by the poets of the 

 thirteenth century. So it is obvious that before 

 passing judgment upon the standard of life of 

 the mediaeval woman, we must endeavour to 

 arrive at the truth by thinking and living in 

 imagination on the same plane, as near as may 

 be, as she did. 



I Then again, it is largely owing to certain 

 stories in the Middle Ages that the women of 

 those times have been defamed. If we consider 

 the sources and the transcribers of these stories, 

 we shall perhaps find a reason for their distorted 

 outlines, filled in with so much imperfectly 

 understood detail. Many of these tales originated 



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