gender inequality

• undemocratic pre-industrial society demonstrates traditional inequalities in gender relationships

  -men don’t have political power in wider society but have authority over women
• ‘they surveyed her, hoof, horn and tail’


  ch2, p.g.29- looking over mistress beldam as if she’s an animal to acquire, mens authority or sense of it made clear from their reactions to her
• ‘the local women were like land- fenced in, assigned, spoked for, the freehold of their fathers, then their husbands, then their sons’


  ch2, p.g. 29- reinforcing idea that, in patriarchal society, women were property of male counterparts, lacking freedom or any power
• ‘fair game’

  ch2, p.g.29- thirsk is told that since the villagers have interpreted MB’s male counterparts as a brother and father that she is free to the men of the village, like a piece of meat
• ‘many of the wives appeared the next working nursing their twisted wrists or showing bruises on their faces’


  ch16, p.g.257- normalisation and acceptance of husbands abusing their wives, treating them violently, obvious yet no one does anything about it
• ‘those men are picking only on the innocent, on local women and a girl’

  ch9, p.g.139- jordan feels within his rights as landowner to have men interrogate village women, villagers complain of injustice yet likely treat their wives in a similar way at home with only reason being to satiate their anger
• ‘i’m sure he’ll switch the women’s flanks as well’


  ch13, p.g.201- ‘switch’= slender flexible rods used on horses, see sidemen using it and infer they likely used it on the tortured women too, misuse of power and the suffering of those powerless to stop it
• ‘he does not count it proper that a woman, any woman… should spend a night alone and unprotected from its dangers’


  ch3, p.g.47- women not expected to live or act independently, MB appears at harvest feast making kent feel she needs to be found and sheltered showing care for her wellbeing despite earlier punishments
• ‘let her peck about the forest like a goose… a woman cannot do you any harm’

  ch6, p.g.99- jordan shows lack of concern at MB’s fate and general contempt for women, view=ironically inaccurate as she’s the one to destroy his manor house + village also allegedly killed willowjack