Women of the Romance Countries | Page 3

the misuse of
divorce, and both men and women were allowed to profit by the laxity
of the laws on this subject. Seneca said, in one instance: "That Roman
woman counts her years, not by the number of consuls, but by the
number of her husbands." Juvenal reports a Roman freedman as saying
to his wife: "Leave the house at once and forever! You blow your nose
too frequently. I desire a wife with a dry nose." When Christianity
appeared, then, the marriage tie was held in slight consideration, and it
was only after many centuries and by slow degrees that its sanctity was
recognized, and its rights respected. While, under the Roman law, both
men and women had been able to get a divorce with the same ease, the
feudal idea, which gave all power into the hands of the men, made
divorce an easy thing for the men alone, but this was hardly an
improvement, as the marriage relation still lacked stability.
It must not be supposed that all the mediæval ideas respecting marriage
and divorce and the condition of women in general, which have just
been explained, had to do with any except those who belonged in some
way to the privileged classes, for such was not the case. At that time,
the great mass of the people in Europe--men and women--were
ignorant to the last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or
refinement, and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in
miserable hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and

were little better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do
their master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite
largely upon physical strength, and women were generally misused. To
the lord of the manor it was a matter of little importance whether or not
the serfs upon his domain were married in due form or not; marriage as
a sacrament had little to do with these hewers of wood and drawers of
water, and they were allowed to follow their own impulses quite
generally, so far as their relations with each other were concerned. The
loose moral practices of the time among the more enlightened could be
but a bad example for the benighted people of the soil; consequently,
throughout all classes of society there was a degree of corruption and
immorality which is hardly conceivable to-day.
So far as education was concerned, there were but a few who could
enjoy its blessings, and these were, for the most part, men. Women, in
their inferior and unimportant position, rarely desired an education, and
more rarely received one. Of course, there were conspicuous exceptions
to this rule; here and there, a woman working under unusually
favorable circumstances was really able to become a learned person.
Such cases were extremely rare, however, for the true position of
woman in society was far from being understood. Schools for women
were unknown; indeed, there were few schools of any kind, and it was
only in the monasteries that men were supposed to know how to read
and write. Even kings and queens were often without these polite
accomplishments, and the right of the sword had not yet been
questioned. Then, it must be taken into consideration that current ideas
regarding education in Italy in this early time were quite different from
what they are to-day. As there were no books, book learning was
impossible, and the old and yellowed parchments stored away in the
libraries of the monasteries were certainly not calculated to arouse
much public enthusiasm. Education at this time was merely some sort
of preparation for the general duties of life, and the nature of this
preparation depended upon a number of circumstances.
To make the broadest and most general classification possible, the
women of that time might be divided into ladies of high degree and
women of the people. The former were naturally fitted by their training

to take their part in the spectacle of feudal life with proper dignity;
more than that, they were often skilled in all the arts of the housewife,
and many times they showed themselves the careful stewards of their
husbands' fortunes. The women of the people, on the other hand, were
not shown any special consideration on account of their sex, and were
quite generally expected to work in the fields with the men. Their
homes were so unworthy of the name that they required little care or
thought, and their food was so coarse that little time was given to its
preparation. Simple-minded, credulous, superstitious in the extreme,
with absolutely no intellectual uplift of any kind, and nothing but the
sordid drudgery of life with which to fill the slow-passing hours, it is
no wonder that the great mass of both