mediaeval socialising/childcare

[Dragonlady]

I had no idea what to call this really. Do you hit upon really random things you'd like to research, but it's really random and just not the sort of thing you find history articles on? My main character is the daughter of a wealthy merchant, wealthy enough to have servants. Family has two parents, older brother, perhaps 19 or 20, protagonist a couple of years younger, two smaller tweenage sisters. As there's a romance element there's a certain amount of socialising going on and i'm trying to get my head around who would be going. Would they leave the youngest two at home with servants or would mum stay too? Would they bring them? (this would often be inconvenient, though they're mostly there to give the protagonist an excuse for a bit of independence). They're new in town, so the first visit i'm writing will partly be contact making/networking as well as having a courtship element, which means it may make sense for her parents and brother to be there, whereas if it was further along or without the trade/networking implications it could just be her and her mother as a chaperone perhaps. If I wanted her brother or father out of the way, I could easily arrange for them to be elsewhere on business.

Any ideas on things to read to learn about how mediaeval courtship may have worked in reality? (I'm aiming at mid 15th century). I'm sure often the actual couple weren't invovled much at all for wealthy famiilies, but with this being a modern young adult novel, the main protagonist needs to at least be involved, even if her father doesn't rate/take into account her feelings.

 

[sknox]

There was more nuance to socializing and marriage negotiations than most modern portrayals allow, so you really have a fair amount of elbow room here.

First things first. They're wealthy and they are not noble. That helps scope the question quite a bit. Being non-noble, there's probably no real property involved and no titles, so that simplifies things quite a bit. Who is the boy? That's important. He could very well be a noble, son of a family that is in chronic debt or other financial trouble. Given the time period, that's quite reasonable. The rich merchant is looking to see his grandchildren have property and title, while the struggling noble is looking not to lose his ancestral lands. Both sets of parents will, of course, seek not to highlight those weaknesses and try to negotiate from positions of strength.

Or, the boy is the son of another merchant family. You said the daughter's family is new in town. That's problematic but not impossible. People didn't usually pick up and move cities except under duress. A family looking to establish itself in a new city would typically open an office there and send a son to oversee the business for a while. I'm trying to think of reasons why the whole family would move. Do you have a reason there? It's not out of the question; the reason for the move could provide an interesting spin.

In any case, there's a courtship. Don't overlook the role of the mothers. They are the ones who know people. They are the ones who often suggest a list of prospectives, will reject certain candidates, who know about the scandals, and so on. Also, the mother talks to the daughter, so she knows who the girl likes and dislikes. Mothers will do much preliminary work, using the venue of dinners or other social gatherings to hold informal talks and gather information, which they take back to the fathers (and to the daughter or son).

Fathers not infrequently came in toward the end of the process. They know the boy's (in this case) father and his business. He knows whether the father has a good reputation, if his business is solid or mostly just show, what prospects the boy's father has for his son, that sort of thing. As far as possible, the family wants the daughter to like the boy, and the parents want to be in agreement on the match. The same is true on both sides.

Now, the stereotype is that the father has absolute sway, that the girl has no voice, blah blah blah. *If* the father were the sort of man to ignore his daughter's wishes, and *if* he were the sort to ignore also his wife's wishes (and wrath), *then* yes, he had the legal authority and social standing to override everyone and get what he alone wanted. This would extremely foolish to do. If the daughter were unhappy, that might lead to marital strife, and such conflict would reflect back on the family as a whole. It could get much, much worse than that of course. Moreover, the other family would know the daughter was balking and would take that into consideration as well. Such things happened, most certainly, but not so regularly as the modern stereotype would have it.

To go to the other extreme, fathers then as now might dote on a daughter. Might give her anything her little heart desired. Not a few bad matches were made simply because the father did *not* insist.

But the reality of most marriage transaction was that it was a matter of compromise and hopeful guessing. No person, certainly no family, was without its cons as well as its pros. Discussions beforehand must have been like many decisions--listing benefits and detriments, guessing about possible pitfalls, and finally just rolling the dice.

And finally, courtship. There's a whole literature on this, but I'll give you just a couple of key items. One, most initial contacts would be in socially structured events such as a dance, a dinner, a festival. Two, the girl will have a duenna--a female chaperone, someone trusted by the mother. She knows how to let the two youngsters flirt without letting it get too far.

Hope that helps!

 

[Mad Alice]

Whole generations of families would live together. So if there were grandparents then a lot of times a tween daughter would be assigned to their care until such time they were married. Nineteen would be a married age for young men.
If the family were fleeing some sort of pogram or war or plague or famine or drought or religious persecution that would give a reason for the whole family to reestablish itself in a new area as well as a reason that the older son and daughter hasn't been married off yet. Also there were a few professions that were so unpleasant in their activities, for example a dyer or fuller requiring extensive amounts of odiferous stale urine to act as mordant for the dye or as a tanning agent for leather maybe, that as soon as the family were properous enough to be able to afford change, the whole lot of them would decamp. Or an artist or a scholar would travel to a bigger cultural center.

 

[Dragonlady]

Really useful and thought provoking @sknox , thank you! I was just going to explain my reasons for them having moved but i'm not sure theyr'e strong enough. The most likely scenario will be as in merchant of prato where he dumps his wife in prato and goes off and trades in Florence (wonder why he didn't have any children). I hadn't thought of the suitor being a noble/landowner, but it would really fit the aspirations and personalities of her parents (and her at the beginning). It also makes it easier perhaps for them to reject the actual love interest.

The women being the instigators of matchmaking makes sense, I rememer now a bit in the paston letters i'm part way through where the women are repeatedly writing to the head of the family to ask if he's arranged a particular match yet, though it's not clear whether that was because mother and daughter liked him, or daugher was getting older and towards unmarriagable and they thought him a likely prospect. In general does this mean the informal socialisation was women meeting up with other women to catch up on the gossip ( and men perhaps doing the same but m ore out of the house?)

The story's starting with a feast just as you describe. So would the duenna be a friend or family member then - an older woman in the community, her grandma, an elderly aunt etc? That's helpful for understanding how propriety would be maintained. I now have to decide whether I give her a duenna who is sympathetic to her unsanctioned love interest.

@Mad Alice Grandma is already a character i've thought about introducing and I've done some consideration of her background and motivations. As protagonist's dad is wealthy and successful it should have been really obvious that grandma should live with them. All the easier for her to meddle...

 

[Dragonlady]

I'm so glad I started this thread, there's so much I hadn't thought of that has come up in answers so far.

 

[Mad Alice]

There was also a practice of "wife-selling" at the time. It was a poor man's divorce, where the monies from the new offer were divided between the parties if not given to the woman outright.
(Just thought of this when I overheard in one of the upstairs flat's endless covid arguments, "WELL I HOPE WE ARE GETTING THE MONEY, THE ONLY THING I HAVE LEFT OF VALUE NOW TO SELL IS YOU." Nearly snorted my cocoa. The joys of close living.)
And of course another wife switching could come from one or the other spouse simply being separated for what was then determined to be an insurmountable distance to travel. For instance many "widows" of Henry's wars were simply married to men called into the army by conscription or fealty obligations, shipped out overseas to whatever country then after the battle were simply abandoned in foreign territory by their kings or generals.
There is a whole company worth of Scottish soldier's decendants living in Russia to this day from such abuses of power.
In fact it wasn't until the First World War ended with its massive amounts of men tranfered that governments made a habit of collecting up their soldiers again and repatriating them.
So if your husband were set adrift in a strange country from such practices with no reasonable hope of making it back to his family in his lifetime, he would try to make a living in the most congenial area he could get to.
And in the same spirit were he to actually become successful at his new trade or occupation the locals that knew of his origins as an enemy soldier would be aggrieved, znd that would serve as an impetus for him to relocate his new family (because if he cannot return to his previous family he would usually restart his life which would include getting a new wife) to a location where his background was unknown.
Grandma (from the wife's side) would then be the only possible hostile witness left to tell tales. The husband could possibly even be taking over a marriage from a friend or enemy that had been killed, as a personal obligation.
Also that was aproximately the time of the reformation and those mercenary wars that interrupted the spice trade routes and caused Columbus among others to go looking for a searoute to the Spice Islands to avoid Ottoman Turks fighting it out over the last of the Venetian trade routes.

 

[The Judge]

Since you're looking at an equivalent of Renaissance Italy, don't forget the importance of the church, especially if these people all live in the same parish. The priest will know everyone, and no doubt will have his own opinions on good matches, so might intervene to advise one or other of the parties, or perhaps, like Friar Laurence, act as a go-between in some way. (As to which, Romeo and Juliet show formal courtship with her father being approached, and Paris is invited to a ball to meet her, while her mother and nurse try to persuade her to the arrangement.)

If this is a fantasy you're writing, you can also steal from other cultures to a certain extent. There's a strong tradition in Jewish culture of the matchmaker -- both doing it for remuneration and just being a busybody -- and I can't believe it's the only one. Reading the tarot, or taking divination in some way to assess whether a marriage would be a success, might be how a fantasy society deals with the problem.

 

[Mad Alice]

Don't forget the community matchmaker. Often she was the community midwife as well. Had to drum up business some way I suppose.
And there was the astrologer who would "scientifically" predict the couples future from their stars. Court Astrologers were a big thing back then so of course the common people had to have them as well.
If the man had aspirations of societal up shifting he might have been tempTed to act as the stand in husband for a cardinal or bishop of the church. Chastity within clergy was a bitterly disputed topic, and hadn't even been required until Augustines treatises. A village priest often had a wife and family but would find a stand in husband upon getting promoted to high office in the church. Princes and other royalty often had a second family that was cared for by a willing well paid member of the lower court.
Then if their political spouse became de trop due to a changing political climate, the great man could rescue his wife and family and set them up openly, while the standings walks off much the richer.
The fortune tellers were generally thought to be witches, strega. But these witches had church religious rituals to carry their spells, not satanic ones. They often comprised the tribe of constantly praying churchgoers walking the maze floors trying to invoke the magic of the saints and godhead.

 

[Dragonlady]

@The Judge it is a fantasy, and is polytheistic, and doesn't at present have an equivalent to a parish priest, but it does have a range of communities. Just reading matchmakers were quite popular in Florence. I have a magical role that would know everyone in the community, and could well be involved in matchmaking - think of them like withces but guild regulated and more urban And magical fortune telling/augur is a fantastic idea. With this being a romance, it's the unauthorised match that ends up being the good one so that could be quite fun to play with.

I actually have a copy of romeo and juliet, I should read it. I feel I need to take a reading break from my writing for a bit...

 

[Dragonlady]

@Mad Alice @Mad Alice I see a nice potential source of conflict between the experienced midwife type and the scholarly stargazer, a variant of the witch/wizard dichotomy

 

[Mad Alice]

Yes the Doula would spit three times at the trumped up starmongerer
I can just see her chastising him, telling him his head had been turned by his appointment to the mayors house, and he should go back to his stall beside the fishmonger, who at least was honest enough to know his wares weren't good for more then three days before they started to stink and should be be used to decorate the midden.
If she had a cane to Crack at his shins as if he were a dunce sleeping through his lessons at school, even better.

 

[Tirellan]

Community matchmakers also feature in Irish rural culture

 

[sknox]

Having the family be recent to the town really does spin matters. I can see them turning to a matchmaker, but that's a bit like looking for a car mechanic when you're new to a city. The new arrivals would have no idea whom to trust. How new is new in this story? Have they been here a month? A year? How did the father even establish a business, out of the blue? And it's a bit pushy to just move into town and the first thing you do is start shopping husbands.

OTOH, if the family had been here several years, then they would have had time to make connections. In that case, they'd know the reputation of several matchmakers and could choose one that fit their social station (both current and hoped-for). If a noble family is involved, though, I rather doubt a matchmaker would be employed. I just don't know enough about that particular topic.

As for the duenna, assume an older aunt or trusted family servant (also older and female). Being a duenna to a marriageable girl was a delicate task, calling for a good deal of trust on the part of the parents.

 

[Mad Alice]

Remember there were a great many persons going about with masks on at the time.
Some of them were stuffed in pockets with fragrant herbs that were meant to perfume the air to mitigate the lack of deodorant for the general masses and also to protect against fumes that were believed to cause plague and other contagions. There were ones that covered your face on a stick so commoners couldn't look at you. Hoods where either metal or soft fabric masks were attached, half masks, veils, and other cloaks to identity that would be in your protagonists favour.
Also masks have a spiritual world connection. They were thought to be able to embue their wearers with the qualities and abilities of the animal or spirit formed by the mask.
For example a water spirit mask would supposedly magically make you more fluid like water for dancing perhaps. Wind or air would allow you to be light on your feet and jump longer ir higher, perhaps. A wolf mask would make a bold and successful hunter. A flower mask would bestow beauty.
Similar to the use of masks by indigenous persons in their culture.
Later knights armor often was made to incorporate the traits of a chosen personal totem.
Thus you see armour with a stags antlers on the helmet, or a horse helmet for a calvary soldier.
Basically what someone in our own culture would see as fit to tattoo upon themselves as their own totem.
So there would be a nice opportunity for hiding in plain sight and slipping out under a mask.

 

[Dragonlady]

@Mad Alice I'm not sure she needs a mask, she has enough grief already over the fact that she can turn into a big cat... Thanks @sknox, i'll have the only movement be socioeconomic (that was a possible change with a rewrite anyway). Now to craft a duenna, and work out if she is sympathetic to my protagonist or toeing the parental line

 

[sknox]

She can also be conflicted, wanting happiness for her charge, unsure of her own judgment about the boy, and trying to fulfill the mother's wishes, which may or may not be entirely reasonable (or consistent). Lots of room there.

And what about the boy? Does he love her? Is he old enough to know what love means? Is he older and jaded? Plenty of room there, too, for nuance.

 

[Dragonlady]

@sknox it's a bit political too - she has a magical trait that is discriminated against (Zoa), her love interest shares this. She's trying to keep it a secret from her parents. At the moment, I have her maid being Zoa and introducing her to her magical mentor. The duenna could be in that role, could be conflicted, could be like her grandma and want nothing to do with the Zoa. Even if she is pro Zoa, financially speaking the love interest is a bad idea, and as you say people don't have to be reasonable. Could be she just wants to see her charge have some fun and stuff what the parents want

 

[.matthew.]

That Zoa may come into play as well then. Is it hereditary? will one parent give birth to one all the time/ or half the time? If both parents being Zoa guarantees a Zoa child that might be something people might be culturally against or illegal altogether?

 

[Dragonlady]

@.matthew. it's recessive, so neither of her parents are, and they don't know they had family that were. Used to be illegal, now magic is allowed and it's all fine and dandy officially but we know what people are like. Zoa have little official discrimination, but they were the one that did it if there is a crime, unlikely to be given jobs by many in the population etc.

 

[Dragonlady]

When I say recessive a zoa family could have a non zoa child