Female Figures in the English Middle Ages

The vision of women that the Church and the aristocracy imposed, together with the lack of available information on the living habits of the lower classes, which were undoubtedly equally important in every social process of the time, certainly inhibit a thorough reconstruction of the role of women in the Middle Ages. This paper focuses on women as they are presented in the Anglo-Saxon sources produced in England after Christianization. In fact, enormous cultural changes were brought about by Christian doctrines, not only due to the introduction of writing itself, but also via Latin texts, both religious and profane, which started to propagate new notions and new ideas on various features related to human beings, in general, and to women, more specifically.