Kris Kennedy’s medieval historical novel made quite a splash on Twitter, particularly as it was hella-bargain at Books on Board. Jane and others had good things to say about it, and let’s face it – the medieval is not as frequently seen as it used to be.
While emailing with Kennedy last week, I asked her about the historical details that few really want to experience in the course of a narrative, and she was kind enough to write up a list of historical details we rarely see in medieval romances. Bring on the hilarity, and thank you to Kris Kennedy for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at historical research and details we might be better off not seeing in your nearest medieval romance.
There are just some things we don’t see much in historical romances. Not that we don’t need to know those things. We just, generally, don’t want to be thinking about them.
As an author, you’re constantly deciding what to leave out and what to put in. Historically accurate details often get left out for reasons other than ‘yuck’ factor. Storytelling takes precedence. You want to build the world, engage the reader, and propel the story forward. And not make the reader gag. Not gagging is good.
In my debut release last month, The Conqueror, a medieval romance, I was constantly making these decisions. I probably made mistakes , in part because every reader is different in this regard, the degree of realism she prefers. But here are a few of the things we rarely see in a medieval romance, and maybe some of the reasons why.
The Whole ‘Washing’ Issue, or; The Heroine Smells Like Lavender / Orange Blossom / You Pick The Scent
In the middle ages, they did not wash as much as we do. It’s a lot of work to haul water and, in the winter, heat it up. So the hero might have a hard time detecting the heroine’s pretty floral ‘perfume’ amid the general body aromas of the time. A faint, lingering scene of lavender might not measure up to hard-working B.O.
Then again, there were no processed foods, no pesticides/herbicides/antibiotics/etc being ingested by plant or beast, so I suspect the odors were much less . . . well, odoriferous. And those hard-working field hands were not eating much meat which would also make them stink less.
And the medieval person did wash, more than we might assume. You can find pictures in illustrated manuscripts of people bathing, even with little canopies over them. A man and a woman might bathe together, each in his/her own tub, toasting their good fortune in having servants to carry the heated water up the stairs. There were also public baths, a left-over custom from the days when those communal-bathing Romans played with their weapons in the cold, dark north. (Ques: Why *don’t* we see more public bath scenes in medieval romances? :hmmm….plotting ahead…: ) It could become a whole event.
But in the end, after six months, one month, or even a week of hard work and sweat, yeah, someone’s going to smell like . . . themselves. Unique and noticeable. Maybe pungent.
But the hero might not care too much. His heroine would be judged by the times, and everyone else around would have their own odors. He might not be thinking, “Jeez, she’s funny and smart and hot and all, but whoa, does she stink!”
I think we can expand this to almost all hygiene issues: people are judged by the customs of the times. But the contemporary romance reader doesn’t always want to be making those mental value adjustments as she reads. Such as . . . toothbrushing.
We probably won’t often see the heroine picking food out of her teeth with a twig. The villain? Sure. Give him an old stocking. The hero? Hmm…does it move the story forward? No? Ye-a-ah, I think I’ll leave it out. In The Conqueror, there are no toothbrushing scenes. Not a single reference.
‘Course, there isn’t an abundance of toothbrushing scenes in contemps either. But it’s an interesting factoid that I might want to include, but it tends to burn the bridges of identification enough that I leave it out. Don’t want the reader thinking, ‘There’s no WAY I’d let him kiss me.” Kind-of destroys the ‘romance’ piece of a romance.
Dig Your Privacy?
Too bad. In a romance, the hero and heroine usually get a lot of alone time. Their bedchamber is a place of privacy. But that was not always the case. Early on, privacy was considered rude, and even without the social strictures, these were usually cramped quarters, even in castles. Rooms were small—easier to heat—and people got together for almost everything. Often, even nobles had big old beds so that hero, heroine, their children could sleep together.
Hey, you’re thinking, some of us do that now. How true. But how about servants? A few key knights? In the dead of a freezing (literally) winter, that wasn’t uncommon. It could mean the difference between life and death.
Think of the possibilities. Yet I’ve never read a romance with four or five of them in bed together. (:begins more mental plotting:)
And in villages, huts were often shared with the farm animals. More fun. In The Conqueror, for example, there is such a scene, cows and people sharing a home, but it’s definitely not the hero’s house.
Dig meat?
Unless you were rich, too bad. Not much of that. The good news is, that’s a good beginning to a heart-healthy diet, all those grains and vegetables. But not raw. Raw vegetables were thought to be bad for the digestive system.
Dig your dog?
Let him sleep with you? Feed him off the table? Sure, why not? Well, then why make him go outside to relieve himself?
They didn’t back then. Thus, those rushes on the floor (and in winter, straw), scattered through with herbs and flowers to alleviate the stench.
And while we’re at it, bring in the horses, and your prized hawk too. Because the lord of the castle was a bird-loving man. (Stop.) I mean a hawk-loving man. And he had a relationship with his hawk. (Stop that.) It was very common to have Hawk with him all the time. On a perch behind his seat (or on his shoulder) at meals. In the bedroom. Wherever. And birds definitely do not get potty-trained.
(Oh, and much as they loved and needed their animals, the average medieval person may not have been able to wrap his mind about the concept of animal shelters, but we sure can. Check out the charity fundraiser hosted by SB and Dear Author in Edith Layton’s memory, to support animal rescue efforts. Now, back to the regularly scheduled history tour.)
If You Were Cold…
Too bad. If you were in Northern Europe/England, we’re talking like, really cold. There was a what’s known as the Little Ice Age smack in the middle of the Middle Ages, but even without that, castle and village life was pretty cold.
Of course, they had really warm blankets. Furs. And rooms were small, to conserve heat. Rugs or tapestries covered the walls and helped a little. And, of course, there would be a lot of people there with you to help spread the heat. But still, it’d be cold. Really cold. Yet we rarely see the heroine performing her morning toiletry by plunging her hands through the layer of ice that’s formed in the water bucket overnight.
If You Were Sick…
Bring on the leeches.
I have never, ever seen a hero in a romance get ‘hung with leeches.’ (That’s what what they called it. Is that not bad enough?) I’ve never seen a romance heroine hung with leeches. It’s probably not going to happen much, at least not on-screen. (SB Sarah: And thank God for that. I’d start thinking about that scene in Stand By Me.)
Body Parts Strewn
Seriously. People would have a lot of missing body parts. Teeth, arms, ears. Malnutrition, battle, tournaments (especially the early ones) and a multitude of bad accidents with various implements of destruction/farming/milling, populated the medieval town or castle with a motley-looking crew. Still, we rarely see our heroes missing arms or eyes. Unless they’re a pirate, of course, with the patch and all.
The Frequent and Varied Uses of Urine
Urine was a very useful agent in the middle ages. It was used for everything from working wool to building plaster. They used it as a cleaning agent and to diagnose illnesses. And it keeps the hands nice and soft! Mmmm.
The ‘Facilities’
Not a pretty thing. When privy chambers were inside a castle, there was simply a chute that ran to the outside, and straight down the wall. Some of the refuse might make it into the moat or other defensive ditch surrounding the castle. Some would stick along the way. Even today, centuries later, many castle walls are still stained.
Only villains have these sort of walls.
And then there’s the accoutrements. We have toilet paper. They had . . . straw. Or moss. Or soft leaves. Sometimes in richer homes, there’s been a linen cloth. Or . . . your hand.
Okay, that is so not in my book.
Food was highly colorful and wildly spiced…
Often to disguise the fact that the meat was rancid. Fortunately, if you were a peasant, you wouldn’t be getting much meat.
The Good News:
Drinking ale was good for you.
The medieval person didn’t get a lot of vitamins, particularly A, C, and D, and in general, especially amid the lower classes, they didn’t get a whole lot of calories either. No, this isn’t the good news. The good news is that, as a result, drinking ale fortified you, especially with calories.
Yay, ale! Yay beer! (Fun note: it was called beer after they discovered it was much much better to add hops instead of bark or leaves, about mid-16th century). And this, we do see in romances. A lot of drinking. (Not water, for reasons related to the above, see: The ‘Facilities’.)
And I suppose, in the end, treated water or no, our relationship with wine and beer is something that hasn’t changed very much after all these centuries.
So, what about you? What sort of ‘history’ do you see/want to see/not want to see in your historical romances? Any other interesting historical realities we just don’t see much in a romance?
SB Sarah says: I happen to LOVE the fact that just about every heroine in historical times, whether in the description in the text or portrayed on the cover, has hairless legs. My theory: all the time-travel heroines secretly brought cases of Nair for the historical heroines.
Thanks to Kris for Fun with Rather Revolting History! What are your favorite historical facts that would never make it into romance?
Deb Kinnard~
btw, when is your time-travel medieval romance due ou— oh, wait, next spring? Cool. I’ll be all over it. 🙂 Title?
LOL on his sword. Yes, it is interesting choice the Art Dept made, isn’t it? And a bit dangerous. Promise, there’s not one scene in the story where he holds his sword like that. (snort)
I’m going to guess that it depends on the era and the armor. My experience is mostly with 16th century plate, and if it withstood a bullet fired from fairly close range, it would have withstood an arrow as well. The main danger was an arrow finding an unarmored spot on the man (or busting through a link in his mail).
Can I pass along a few thoughts about bathing and human smells?
You got yer three sources of human smells … the body, the clothing and the latrines.
When you are walking into an LDC village in the heat, the ‘smell of humanity’ you notice at the outskirts is the gentle rotting of human excrement in latrine pits. For good evolutionary reasons, humans are programmed to particularly notice the smell of human scat.
But villages in the Third World today know how to deal with human wastes. There’s no reason to believe 1500s folks wouldn’t know how to use and maintain latrines and wouldn’t be sensitive to a badly kept outhouse.
ISTM, in 1550, outside the cities, you’d get
—the stink of urine in odd corners. (Not unknown today.)
—In the summer, in a village or castle, you’d get a strong whiff in particular spots when the wind blew wrong.
—Using the outhouse, you’d hold your breath.
But ‘odeur d’outhouse’ would not be a constant companion at the dinner table any more than it is today in African villages without public sewerage.
The whole ‘washing the human body’ thing . . .
A sizable portion of the human race —a third?—does not have water in a tap inside a whole room devoted to bathing. They do not tote twenty buckets inside to fill up a tub and then haul it out to empty it.
They wash, perfectly well, from a clay pot dipped out of the river or a jerrycan filled at the pump. They don’t smell.
Full body immersion is only tangentially related to cleanliness.
Clothing, though, is the real kicker. And here, in 1550, I think we got a class thingum.
Linen undergarments would be intrinsically expensive. They’d take time and effort to wash. Folks who couldn’t afford to change into a clean shift or a clean shirt every day or so would smell like stale sweat until they did.
OTOH, rich folks could afford all that washing and changing of linens. They would smell of lavender and clean linen and a body that had been sluiced down that morning from a basin of scented water. Why would they stink?
The fine silks and velvets they wore on top were protected from body dirt by those linen undergarments. They’d be sponged down and hung to air out. It seems to me they’d smell to roughly the same extent your good cashmere cardigans do when you’ve worn them a lot.
One indication that folks in 1550 did not routinely smell bad is that the distinct minority of people who avoided bathing for religious reasons are remarkable in contemporary terms in that they did smell.
At least he’s not wearing jeans and a button down shirt like poor Kathrynn Dennis’s hero. 🙁
The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, by Katherine Ashenburg is a pretty readable and entertaining survey of European attitudes on bathing in medieval times (also covers some Greek & Roman precedents, and the invention of showers, and all kinds of British weirdness on cold baths).
One thing I remembered reading about this whole washing thing, and maybe someone can chime in…
I read somewhere that Romans (and maybe Greeks?) didn’t use water for cleansing. That they, instead, oiled themselves up and then… oh what’s the word?…took like a flat edged object and…holy hell I’m screwing this up…squeegeed..OK NOT the right term, but hopefully you’ll get the visual…themselves.
Does that make sense, at all? LOL.
Joanna Bourne~
And in re: to clothing and odors…the natural fibers used in the medieval era would have helped to reduce body odors as well.
Randi…
“I read somewhere that Romans (and maybe Greeks?) didn’t use water for cleansing. That they, instead, oiled themselves up and then… oh what’s the word?…took like a flat edged object and…holy hell I’m screwing this up…squeegeed..OK NOT the right term, but hopefully you’ll get the visual…themselves.”
Scraped is the term you want; the instrument was a strigil. The Romans did bathe in water along with this process; they didn’t use soap, though. In fact, the Romans were among the most enthusiastic bathers in history. 🙂
SCRAPED!!! ROFLMAO. Right. Clearly, I am losing my mind.
Thanks for confirming, Jenne.
Well, I don’t know about people not smelling in medieval times or otherwise. I live one county over from one of the poorest in the nation where conditions range from outdoor plumbing and no flowing water to fully functional bathrooms, and some of the folks one encounters in the grocery store can be smelled from pretty far away and it’s not their clothing alone that smells, it’s their persons. In a society in which the idea that bathing and washing is pernicious is prevalent I’d imagine that this situation would be exacerbated quite significantly when you see smell issues in our current society that puts tremendous emphasis on hygiene and daily showers.
RE: Smells
Personally, I know that when I smell my boy, I recognize the scent as distinctly HIM. I often try to define it in words in my head, but I can never get the description right – however, it would be a blend of various scents. To me, his smell is one of the things I strongly identify with him. So I can see the importance.
It does bother me in medievals when she smells clean – unless she’d recently bathed, of course. I much prefer moments where she smells like hay, or food, or something that connects to her everyday life – if she had just been gardening, I might expect her to smell like freshly tilled earth.. or something. 😛
RE: Hair
I try to ignore it, but every so often I get that niggling thought that they DIDN’T shave or wax then. Instead of talking about her smooth legs, how about her smooth shoulders? Shoulders are sexier anyway. 😉
A few comments:
1 – Use of spices. I have to thoroughly disagree with Deb Kinnard. Unless there was a great feast, a beast was rarely slaughtered and consumed in its entirety. The “leftovers” which were the provisions for the castle inhabitants, needed to be preserved. Some meats were salted, some were pickled, and others were left to age. The term “gamey” – that funky, three-day-old gymsock smell we all know and loathe – was coined about meat (usually game birds, boar and venison) that was left to hang and age, i.e., to soften up and basically ROT. This was a common practice well into the late 19th century, before the invention of refrigeration. In fact, this is still done today – albeit under better conditions. Top tier steak houses serve dry aged beef – 21 to 45 days, and the longer its aged, the more expensive it is.
2 – Bathing. This one’s all over the map. In rural England in the late Middle Ages (1200 – 1450 CE), peasants bathed twice a year, in June and December. They were actually sewn into their clothes. This is backed up by castle records – the lord provided two sets of clothing for his tenants and dependants – one in June and one in December. Nobles didn’t bath frequently either, and knights rarely. However, many knights would shave their heads – not because of lice, but to keep from pulling it out when removing chain mail.
One accounting I read, years ago when working on a Master’s degree in Medieval and Early Modern Social History, was of knights who were permanently stained with rust marks from their armor. No stainless back then! Steel and iron rusted, and chainmail particularly in the warm months. Although there were layers of wool padding between the skin and the mail, body sweat would wick through the wool into the mail. Rust would become embedded into the wool and eventually begin to soak into the skin.
Armor is actually my biggest pet peeve about most medieval romances. Until the late 14th century, knights didn’t wear full suits of plate armor, which is featured in so many badly researched books – the stuff is all from the late Medieval and Early Renaissance era. Plate armor was made popular in response to the advancements in long range weapons – first the crossbow (arbelast and ballista) and then the English longbow.
I think we all can agree that life in the Middle Ages was, to quote Thomas Hobbes, was nasty, brutish and short. It was, compared to today, smelly, gross and disgusting, hygiene was as non-existent as privacy. But who wants to read a romance about two smelly, hairy people with bad teeth who have to sleep in a cold, stinking room with their servants and livestock?
Not to mention, there was NO CHOCOLATE in the Middle Ages.
(Spam word – “Efforts 32” The heroine died at the ripe old age of 32, despite the best efforts of the local barber).
Lita
There was a book in the last couple of years that talked about the physical toll that the Knight’s Templar’s lifestyle and clothing took on their bodies and how they would have been easy to spot, even in “disguise” by the knights who were hunting them down . . . I wish I could remember the name of the book. It’s not my era, so I sort of let it drift away. It was fascinating though.
From Wikipedia (with footnotes for verification):
This tallies with what I’ve always understood about the effectiveness of the longbow and its gradual decline in effectiveness and use.
On Lita’s comment about the spices and ‘rotting meat’—this is the information given in William Edward Mead’s _The English Medieval Feast_, originally published in 1931—including the ‘gameyness’ thing. Later research and more information in inventories and household rules have come up with a more complex idea, involving the distribution of different cuts of meat to different servants and inhabitants and the size of the catering; there’s also a certain amount of information out there about preservation techniques in the middle ages and before 1900. Check out books by Peter Brears and Ken Albala on this subject. Most scholarly texts no longer support the rotted meat theory.
Also, the fact that lords only gave their servants (of all classes) one or two suits of clothing a year doesn’t prove that they only bathed once a year—you seem to be assuming that each outfit only lasted the 6 months and then was discarded. Which seems… unlikely. (17th century noblewomen were sometimes sewn into their clothes for the evening as well as pinned into them; and today’s fashion models are also sometimes basted into their outfits for a shoot. Again, not proof that the clothing was never taken off.)
Books to check out on cleanliness include Douglas Biow’s The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy… there’s also, somewhere, an article about how bathing humor features in German medieval romances.
Re: Hair removal
I will happily sign the petition for letting leg hair grow (true story: from the ages 11-14 I wore leggings under my school uniform skirt every single day because I didn’t want to shave – and this was in Houston 95-degrees-and-99%-humidity, Texas. Woo! And don’t get me started on the Epilady.
Re: Historical (snigger) periods
What about biblical allusions? Oh yes, when Rachel steals her father’s idols, she hides them under her cushion, and she doesn’t rise because all assume she’s sitting on her menstrual cushion. Something like that (oh, some previous bible teacher of mine is undoubtedly weeping at how wrong I’m getting this). I dimly remember us asking in class about what women did then, and we were told they kinda sat on a sheep.
Pause.
Maybe they meant a sheepskin?
Here’s a problem re the stuffed rag idea: if virginity was such a hot commodity, wouldn’t women stay away from a tampon-like set up; assuming that it would break the hyman (even though it doesn’t) and render the woman as a useless commodity?
God. I soooo want to know! aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh!
Some years ago I read a great YA novel called Journey To Matacumbe (sic?) by Robert Lewis Taylor, set in the years following the American Civil War. At one point in the story a female character gets her period and can’t do anything about it, since everyone is camping out in the wild, on the run from the KKK. One of the men in the party hands her a plug of chewing tobacco, and she stalks off into the woods and does something mysterious with it (since the narrator is an adolescent boy, he’s clueless about what’s going on, and we don’t get anything like a detailed description.) I’ve often wondered what she did with that chewing tobacco—did she use it as a tampon? Or did eating it somehow dry up her menses? And what was the author’s source for this?
Anony Miss~
ROFLOL. Bible School Teachers Gone Wild: telling little kids women used to SIT ON SHEEP to deal with menstrual flow. Bahahahahahaha.
I agree that the “two suits of clothing a year” doesn’t support or prove that people only bathed twice a year (esp as this was somewhat standard well up into the 19th century).
It is interesting to see the differences between countries and cultures (and because of these differences we can’t construe anything about one people based on the habits of another). I’m really not that familiar with the bathing habits of Medieval/Renaissance Englishmen. I know that the Germans and the Italians bathed frequently though.
I’d guess that using it as a tampon is about all she could have done (I’ve read Victorian sources that claim women who lived in coastal towns used seaweed much the same way) and I have no idea what the author’s source might be.
As I’m not fluent in Herbrew or Aramaic I have no real idea what “biblical allusion” actually says.
Have to take issue with this, sorry. I live in a seventeenth-century farmhouse and we heat almost exclusively with wood in the winter (Connecticut, not the coldest place ever, but we’ve had some bloody frigid winters in recent years.) Lemme tell ya, you get a decent, properly built fire going in the main fireplace or wood stove, and it will drive you RIGHT THE HELL OUT. My signifigant other and his son routinely wander around the house in their underwear. Granted, we’re probably a lot better insulated than most medieval castles or wattle-and-daub hovels, but we certainly don’t freeze unless somebody is careless and allows the fire to go out.
Apropos Roman baths, oiling and use of strigils: of course soap is itself an oil-based substance, traditionally based on tallow. And yes, the Roman bathing ritual involved exercise, sweating in a steam room, oiling, scraping and water— finishing off with a cold plunge bath to close the pores. By the way, there are one or two Roman references to tooth-cleaning powder.
Pre-modern methods of dealing with menstruation: I know I have come across an archaeological record of blood-soaked rags excavated in an early-Medieval (possibly Viking) cesspit, but unfortunately I don’t have the reference (my period, excuse the pun, is Classical, not medieval, so I don’t keep detailed records of sources dealing with later eras). Normally menstrual rags would be washed and re-used, as they were well into the 20th century, and as textiles tend not to survive well archaeologically, evidence is usually restricted to written sources, which are unlikely to go into detail on this kind of subject.
Meat and spices again. Most meat has to be ‘hung’ for a while after slaughter to be palatable. When absolutely freshly killed, it is impossibly tough. Game, in particular, was often deliberately hung to within a hairsbreadth of spoiling, and the resultant pungent flavour was prized. It is simply staggeringly unlikely that imported spices would be used to ‘disguise’ any unwanted flavour, because anyone rich enough to have the spices was also rich enough to reject bad food. This is a matter of plain logic. Also, Medieval cooks knew what they were doing. Classical cooks knew what they were doing. Preservation of meat by smoking and/or salting was a very ancient technique.
And just as a final comment: I have used earth closets, lived in houses without electricity, let alone central heating, and have often had to wash down using quite small quantities of water because I had no access to a bath or shower. It is not difficult to keep clean in those circumstances— it’s just a bit more effort than most of us have to expend these days.
It’s been forever since I read it, but I do recall that Jude Deveraux mentioned some medieval nastiness in “A Knight in Shining Armor.” Specifically I recall baby swaddling where they didn’t take the baby out of the clothes but just let them live in their own excrement. Don’t know how accurate she was, but yeah, I have wondered what people did before Huggies or even plastic diaper covers and washing machines, LOL.
As to periods, if you figure that girls were getting married young and knocked up quickly due to lack of contraception, then being either pregnant or breastfeeding on a regular basis, dying young, and also being subject to the effects of malnutrition and famine – I wonder how many periods did a woman have in her lifetime?
Hmm…this is interesting…
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2252/who-invented-tampons
OK, I’m totally cracking up here. This woman seems to think that women just went around and bled all over the place! LOL.
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=what+did+women+use+for+their+menses?&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=0&u=http://www.mum.org/pastgerm.htm
Elizabeth~
We have a woodstove too, and we have to open our windows in the middle of winter. You’re right, it does get toasty hot.
But…woodstoves are dramatically more efficient than fireplaces (although you did mention a fireplace too) But even our modern fireplaces are better than the huge, inefficient ones they had, especially early on. And until about the mid-12th c, they didn’t even technically have fireplaces, often just a center trough or grate, with openings in the roof above, with ‘vents’ to keep out rain, etc.
Also burning in a fireplace, esp their huge ones, takes a lot of fuel. Wood, peat, manure, whatever. You’re feeding cook fires and hearth fires, and you’re burning a lot of fuel. A lot of money/work. So, I don’t know that they spend a lot of time building a roaring fire for heat alone, once the meal was eaten. And then, even thought it might be hot nearby, as soon as the fire burned down lower, the heat would quickly dissipate.
And as you say, there’s the insulation issue in a castle. Which is a huge issue. Stone walls aren’t conducive to warmth. I do wonder about the small peasant wattle-and-daub huts tho. Being earthen, I suspect they’d hold in heat rather well . . . Anyone know?
Re: biblical rags, I just spoke to a rabbi.
Rachel apparently claimed she couldn’t get up not because the cushion was absorbing, but because she was too weak as a result of her period to rise. Interesting.
Apparently, the Talmud mentions what women used then (this is around 200 CE) was a type of cloth that was both external and internal. We didn’t go into more detail than that, but interesting.
He did not back up my claims of sheep. 🙂
(sings)Ba ba black sheep, could you hold still for 4-6 days…
I’d want to see her book and review her documentation. Most of the early usage of supposed tampons are in fact pessiaries for delivering medication, NOT feminine hygiene products (I’ve not found any documentation for tampons before the 20th century, just folktale type stories from the Victorian era).
Which would lead one to think that you’d find stained shifts in abundance, when in fact you don’t . . .
Not true! “Here Be Dragons” has a HEA for the main couple, and that was surprisingly taken from real life. 😉 I think that might be her only HEA, though, dealing with her real historical characters.
Also, here’s a quick medieval tidbit (circa 1370s) that I picked up from reading Allison Weir’s “Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford” (a.k.a. about Anya Seton’s “Katherine”). A man who publicly held a woman’s bridle (for riding) was making a very bold proclamation of ownership over that woman; the idea was that the rider being led was a captive, already having surrendered her body to the man holding her bridle. Such a gesture, between an unmarried couple, was seen as scandalous.
Don’t forget the dying. For obvious reasons, I suppose, there’s never all that much dying of young(ish) women in romance novels. But something like 25% of women died from pregnancy or birth-related causes, and you only have to wander through an old church in England, for example, to see how many women died at 21, or 27, or 32. So, bit of a downer, or course, but there were lots of painful, messy, and un-narratively satisfying deaths.
And one more fun fact about periods: at least in the 17th and 18th centuries, most women didn’t pass menarche until around 15, and the average age for marriage was the mid-20s (that’s for England, according the the Cambridge population study something or the other). And with all the hard manual labor and varying diet, it’s pretty unlikely that most women menstruated regularly (one of the reasons it was so hard to tell if you were pregnant in the 17th and 18th centuries—you couldn’t be really sure until the quickening, more than a few months into the pregnancy). The late age to marry of most women (and men were mostly in their late 20s) is in contrast to the nobles and gentry, who were much more likely to marry young (14 year old bride, anyone?). You didn’t marry till you could afford it, which meant sometime in your twenties.
And on a totally unrelated note: there were no confessionals in the middles ages. Confessionals are a counter-reformation development. Before that, confession was supposed to be a somewhat public affair. Private confession certainly happened, but that was more like you and the priest in a room alone, and it was discouraged, since it opened the possibility of the priest soliciting sex (for ex) from the parishioner. Better was to confess in plain sight, a little out of hearing from others in the church. So no more confessionals in medievals (and no pews either, for most of the medieval period, churches were empty and you stood around for mass. Since you probably only heard sermons a few times a year, you didn’t need to sit for hours most Sundays, or whenever you went to church).
Nadia~
Good point, about not so many menstrual cycles when you’re pregnant (and maybe nursing) a lot! I suppose it’s our virginal heroine’s we’re so worried about. 😉
And no, medieval mothers did not let their children live in their own excrement when swaddled. I will let others who may know more speak to this, but I’d suggest they did what people do now, generally: linen or other material, & wash ‘em. And I’d expect people to let their kids go without a lot, too. When they’re the right age, often, that’s the best potty training method around. 🙂
Evidently there is a book out there called Medieval Woman’s Guide to Health which says that menstruation was considered unclean…so nothing could touch the blood. Here is a recipe for a homemade tampon from that book…It must go in the “privy part”.
Take half a drachma of triacle diatesseron, the same amounts of cockle flour and myrrh, and grind them together with bull’s gall in which savin or rue has been rotted. Then cover the mixture with cotton and thereof make a suppository as large as your little finger and put it in your privy member, but first annoint it with clean honey and oil together, sprinkle powder of scammony on it, and put it in the privy member; one can do the same with lupin root, and that is much better.
Sounds lovely.
Yes: including contraceptive mixtures, at least in the Roman period. A wool tampon soaked in various mixtures of oils and acids (think salad dressing) would have been quite effective both as a physical barrier and as a spermicide.
I must reiterate that ‘rags’ were still being used for sanitary protection in many areas well into the 20th century. My mother used cloth pads, which were washed and re-used, in her adolescence: she was born in 1915, so we are speaking of the early 1930s, when disposable sanitary towels and tampons were readily commercially available.
You make good point AgTigress. Of course, there’s no reason to assume the spices and herbs used to season a dish need to be exotic, tho, in order to ‘disguise’ an unwanted flavor, be it meat or other. I’m not sure anyone has suggested only imported spices would be useful. Common, more easily accessible, locally grown seasonings were available, effective, and used all the time in cooking.
I’m not sure I’m 100% sold on the argument that just because someone had money, and a food was a a little ‘gone,’ they’d reject it. We’re not talking limitless wealth, and meat is a pretty valuable resource.
Great conversations!
@AgTigress: My mother was born in 1917, my father in 1907, his sister in 1905. I well remember both my mother and aunt talking about washing and reusing their rags.
Speaking to the totally unrelated note about how churches housed nothing really, and everyone stood around; though many people hated the movie, Ladyhawk (which I love!) did the best representation of the interior of churches for many centuries. Even the bishop held the bible/scroll/whateverhewasreadingfrom rather than have some type of podium to set it on.
Whimper.
My scalp hurts …
There is an excellent history of women’s knowledge of contraception by John M. Riddle—two volumes, one titled “Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West,” and “Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance.” They are well-researched and fascinating.
Also, re: the plug of tobacco, nicotine is a nerve poison. I imagine you would get very sick (if not die) if you chewed and swallowed an entire plug of tobacco.
Cyranetta: Dog poop was used in tanning leather. (Don’t ask why only dog, because I don’t know). Urine was used for bleaching (when boiled it becomes a mild form of lye), for cloth fulling ( to remove the grease from the wool) and as a fixative when dying cloth. I read somewhere that the Romans cleaned their teeth with urine. which gives a whole new perspective on those perfect white teeth the hero and heroine usually have in medievals.
@ Randi
[OK, I’m totally cracking up here. This woman seems to think that women just went around and bled all over the place! LOL]
Right. You cut flax out in the marsh for a whole long, hot day. You’ve beaten it out and soaked it and stripped out the fiber. You spent a week twistng thread and weaving. You bleached the cloth in the sun for a month. You cut your pattern and spent another two days sewing.
Now you have your linen shift.
All that work . . .
seems to me you’d be bright enough to come up with some way not to bleed on it.