Women writers and the medieval

This chapter explores the ways in which medievalism gave intellectual and politically astute women the imaginative means to discuss contemporary social issues and problems without facing the censure that more open social comment might induce. Using medieval linguistic translations, themes, motifs, and settings for diverse artistic, religious, and socio-political purposes, many women writers expressed subversive and challenging opinions: while others, like Charlotte Mary Yonge, offered tales of gentlemanly chivalry and iconic femininity that upheld conservative ideas about society and gender. Women writers’ paradoxical uses of medievalism were seen most clearly in the literature of the Crimean War, and embodied in the role of the reigning monarch, who was both passive chivalric icon and modern ruler. From Anglo-Saxon scholarship to courtly fifteenth-century images, invocations of the Middle Ages provided women with a rich source of allegory and comparison. Many writers perceived the Middle Ages as a time of greater social freedom than their own nineteenth-century experience: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Augusta Webster explored imaginatively the position of women in Victorian society through medieval settings. Many writers used medieval figures to illustrate contemporary issues: Joan of Arc became an emblem of social equality and an icon for the suffragists, and the legendary Guinevere was used to highlight the confines and injustices of contemporary marriage legislation. By focusing on the work of women writers, this chapter highlights their often overlooked contribution to the development of the medievalist discourse in the nineteenth century