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For centuries, women have been demanding their rights and equality to men regardless of their age, religion, or ethnicity. Even today, some close-minded individuals and groups believe that women are inferior to men in one way or another. Granted, women are generally more gentile than men, this gender is as equally hard working. Anglo-Saxon women did not play important roles in the epic poem Beowulf, but their roles were far from non-existent in the world of the Anglo-Saxon peoples.
Anglo-Saxon women living around the mid-5th century had more rights in the process of choosing a husband than one might assume. Though the decision was not ultimately up to them whom they would marry, they were allowed to choose a suitor they saw fit. Although, their families advised them as far as which men were financially stable. In contrast to traditional Indian marriages, Anglo-Saxon grooms had to pay a large sum of money or give a plot of land to the bride, who chose what to do with the gift herself. This gift was called morgengifu, which means ‘morning gift’. A couple’s money belonged to both the wife and the husband. Marriage during the Anglo-Saxon time had the potential to be very rewarding because of their right to choose their own spouses.
In the epic poem Beowulf, women (excluding female supernatural creatures [Grendel’s mother]) are portrayed as needy beings with little rights, existing only to carry the next generation in their wombs and beg for the keeping of the peace. However, the real Anglo-Saxon women were considered to be human beings deserving of rights, freedoms, and some equality to men. There were many laws to protect wives in marriages. For example, a wife had lawful protection from being charged if her husband was found guilty of a crime. A wife also had a right to her inheritance if her husband died. While there were exceptions to these rules for different circumstances, most women could rest easy knowing that they would not be wrongfully charged or punished unjustly (or as far as what was considered ‘just’ in those days). In fact, these women had even more rights than the women who lived generations ahead of the Anglo-Saxons (Norman Conquest).
The way an Anglo-Saxon woman was treated or respected had a lot to do with her social status, and the higher the status, the better a woman’s life. While all women did have rights, they were different for slaves than for women of high birth. Women were classified into four groups: freewomen, slaves, married, widows, and virgins. If a freewoman were raped, the fine would be higher than if the victim was a slave, but this is not to say that crimes committed against slaves went unpunished. Even they were protected by the law. Widows were not forced to become nuns, and they were also allowed to keep their inheritance. However, they could not remarry until twelve months after the death of their first husband. Furthermore, women of the higher class were powerful and considered to be very intelligent. They could handle their own estates, write their own wills, and give valuable gifts like estates and rings without anyone else’s consent. Whether the woman was a slave or a high-class woman, they all had value in their society.
Slave or of high birth, widow, married, or virgin, all woman were important in the eyes of the Anglo-Saxons; contrary to what their literary works like Beowulf might suggest. The world will not exist without women, nor would it have in the mid-5th century AD. This fact will always remain the same despite the little importance of their roles in that great epic. While Beowulf does portray the few women characters as inferior to men and peace beggars, one might make the conjecture that this is due to the fact that the people responsible for recording these works of literature were male monks. Epics and other stories were handed down generation after generation orally during the preliterate times, so when the monks wrote them on paper, they may have decided to eliminate roles with women. After all, we women still live in a male-dominated world, even in the year two thousand and six.
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