Middle Age Crazy

Who would I have been had I been born in the Middle Ages, say, the 12th or 13th century?

First off, had I survived childbirth, I’d be dead by now. Yup, there's your buzzkill right there.

Average life expectancy for that era was mid 30s. Mind you, if I’d been highborn (NO, not that kind of high!), a royal, I could have expected to live into my early to mid 60s or possibly even longer (assuming I'd be full of healthy goodness then and not all Nf2-y like I am now).

Me? I can’t imagine being anything other than a peasant. It’s fun to imagine being part of the royal courts, being nobility but, c’mon, that’s totes unlikely. Sure, I can magic up a a fairy story about my life then -- that might be fun. I’d like to know, realistically, what my life would have been like though.

An eleventh-century bishop of Laon referred to peasants as a class which:

"owns nothing that it does not get by its own labor and provided the rest of the population with money, clothing, and food...Not one free man could live without them"

Still true!

As with peasant men, the life of peasant women was difficult. Women at this level of society had considerable gender equality, but this often simply meant shared poverty. Until nutrition improved, their life expectancy at birth was significantly less than that of male peasants: perhaps 25 years. As a result, in some places there were 4 men for every 3 women.

If I was very lucky, I would have escaped the back breaking field work of farming.

I might’ve been a servant.

According to Frances and Joseph Gies, many peasant women did not marry. Some of these women became servants. Some servants helped with crafts in homes and/or nursed the children of their master. Their main jobs were to clean, cook, and do all of the other domestic work

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Bored now.

Perhaps I could have been a spinner. Or a brewer!

Until circa 1600 the majority of brewers in England were women.  Brewing was low status, low paid work largely performed primarily by women in the home as part of their household duties. At the time Ale was a staple of the diet providing valuable nutrition, a safe source of drinking water, and fun! Surplus ale was sold by middle-women called ale-wives, hucksters, or tipplers.

If anybody’d had noticed that I was smarter than a box of rocks, I might have been sent off to a convent. From okul.selyam.net:

From the 5th century onward, Christian convents provided opportunities for some women to escape the path of marriage and child-rearing, acquire literacy and learning, and play a more active religious role.

I could have become a midwife. OK, could have and would have are completely different things. I just can’t see me doing that. Ick.

While it’s interesting to imagine, I think I’ll stay right here in the 21st century with my indoor plumbing, medical wizards (AKA the Maderer Nf2 Pit Crew) versus leeches (ewwwww!), relative (if not complete) equality to men, freedom to paint and paint what I want and, oh yeah, still being alive at 55.