Abstract

This thesis investigates the correlation between women’s economic independence and marital freedom in the late medieval period and its impact on marriage patterns. The analysis shows that that during the golden age of employment after the Black Death (1350-1450), marriage freedom of working women increased along with economic freedom, though the extent to which kind of freedom expanded for women in these years is a matter of scholarly debate. The thesis asks: is the relationship between women’s economic independence and marriage common and consistent? Does women’s freedom of marriage contribute to the pattern of fewer and later marriages? Comparative studies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have found that throughout the late Middle Ages women’s land inheritance rights remained lower than those of men. As substitutes for the adult male workforce, women were often paid less than men and were disadvantaged occupationally and in terms of status. In the fifteenth century, economic stagnation and economic restructuring caused women more often to be unemployed. Social culture also strengthened the control of women, and their marriages were subject to greater outside interference. Therefore, the consistent social culture, that is, patriarchy, had a greater impact on women’s freedom of marriage than changing economic conditions. In addition, the pattern of fewer and later marriages also emerged during the economic stagnation of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries; the thesis concludes that the main reason for women’s later and fewer marriages is largely poverty, not women’s economic independence.