What Was Life Really Like For Medieval Peasant Women? | History Hit 

Every time someone says "That job was too physically demanding for women in medieval times" and claims they couldn't have done it, I argue that they need to watch Ruth Goodman kneading huge mounds of dough, doing laundry, and then helping in the fields in all the Farm series of vids (Tudor Farm, Edwardian Farm, Victorian Farm). What she is doing is every bit as back-breaking as what the boys are doing.

I love this kind of topic. Real life. And especially women. The people usually erased from history.

I could appreciate that despite using some AI images, they did take the time and effort to put together a set, wear the clothes and do the actual manual tasks too. Its far from youtubers who just narrate auto generated research text over a completely AI art slideshow.

I loved seeing all these strong beautiful women telling the histories of our ancestor mothers and sisters. Thank you so much!

I think of the common people a lot. The unspoken heroes of humanity.

The fact that BABIES who are born of sex workers are considered “slightly sinful” is wild to me.

My daughter was in the Peace corps in Ethiopia. The way of life that she described in the village she was in was so interesting. A had life but she said they were Happy

My grandmother had a bread trough like that. My sister took it when the estate was being dispersed by my aunt.

Digesting all the research and scripting it into something somewhat comprehensible for the somewhat intelligent viewer must have involved Herculean effort by everyone involved with its presentation. I am awed and offer a hearty “thank you” for all your work.

I love these documentaries, and really do appreciate all the work that goes into them - that we can enjoy for free... But the frequent use of AI images was really, really jarring! I would have been happy with stock images of rural England or a snippet from a medieval manuscript...

Been there, done that! I grew up on two small farms and milked two cows all through high school, so I KNOW! :))

I’m 44 and I did all these jobs at my grandparent’s farm every summer. So am I a medieval woman in modern times??🤷🏽‍♀️

Such a fun and informative documentary; thank you!

I'm subscribed to this and the other affiliated HH channels as I've been excited by history since I can remember myself. And when I discovered YT, I felt so grateful for the access to information. However, now I am getting increasingly weary of these kind of 'new' YT videos with false click-bait titles consisting of discombobulated mash-up of existing videos.. And now they have added the AI images to make these videos even longer.. It's just sad and disappointing.

I have been waiting for something like this for ages! Thank you!!

Loved your book and love these History HIT videos with you. I’m here for whatever material you create. I appreciate your authentic and factual sharing of what life as a woman was and what is has meant to be female in different time periods and how it impacts what it means to be female now

The costuming really got my goat. “ I’ll pretend to be a peasant wearing my black work coif based on a literal rich woman’s headgear. And agitating cream with one’s hands? The wooden paddles are called butter hands because the warmth of one’s actual hands caused the butter to not be firm.

So very informative, thank you very much for this excellent quality history lesson!

Take notes people we may all need these skills very soon.

Wonderful! Thank you Dr. Janega!

Wonderful, educative documentary🙌

Very informative,,loved it

One reason I love Eleanor: 2:25 "Ooooh"

Really great new information!

Thank you for this. If anyone loves peasants' history I recommend the relative Schwerpunkt's playlist

I love all these videos

Beautiful architecture! I love it!!!

The Knights Templar were suppressed on Friday, 13 October, 1307 by king Philip (“the fair”). Your date of 1312 applies only to England, where they were never suppressed actually, but rather simply relocated to Scotland. In any case, the date of 1312 is inaccurate.

12:30 You could put the herb costmary into the brewing beer.

Wonderful presentation. I love this channel!

I love the fact that this is true history. Women in industry. Forgotten history! Finally someone speaks the truth with no spin or victim mentality

It’s crazy to think someone can just accuse people of worshipping the devil and take control of all of their riches.

Excellent documentary

What a wonderful video. I love hearing how capable women are.

Very interesting, thank you!

One of the best documentary I’ve ever seen.

Fascinating!!!

Caroline's my hero

Very good camera chemistry the both of you in the first bit 👍🏻

Great documentary

I love these videos but please for the love of god don’t use AI images, they are often inaccurate :(

I really need to know more about those hats.

nice one, well done and thumbs up 👍🙏💥

I like this kind of documentary because history was made of the lives of regular people, bakers and washerwoman, not just kings.

Bizarre how misogynistic the comments are? I love Dr. Janega! Defo agree that AI images are unnecessary but I guess everyone's doing it now...

Cheese mongering, a sure fire way to advance in the world.

Love this presenter. 😊

fascinating

Fire prevention was around since then, for a reason! Don't want to burn down the neighborhood! 😊

I was surprised to see AI images used in this video. AI image generators cannot depict historically accurate scenery - it most especially cannot depict historically accurate clothing and I personally feel like its inclusion dramatically devalues this content. Of course there is also the consideration that AI art generators are still trained on stolen artwork. I would love to see high quality, historically literate AI programs that made it easier for channels like this to flourish but the moral and quality considerations are too significant for that to be possible as yet.

Eleanor rocks

Sooo, how do I get Caroline's job?

Electric Light Orchestra wrote a song about medieval woman

27:10 So the poor people would be the ones who got overrrun if an attacking army got in since their neighborhoods were right against the walls and the rich would be more or less protected.

Thank you for this incredibly interesting historical revelation! ❤🙏 About the working women, and the courts, and the workers communities, and the knights, and the jews, and the sex workers. Educating and fascinating information and knowledge!

A very enjoyable & educational vid, made more interesting by being presented by Carol Burnett look & sound -alike Dr Eleanor. Gives a whole new perspective on Middle Ages womanhood.

4:07 did she had to keep saying coming when she was doing that 😂

MOST Medieval women worked IN their own homes, especially when they had kids. Yes...SOME medieval women worked a paid job outside of their homes, especially if they were an "old maid" , single or a widow with kids to feed. But that was the exception not the rule.

Once governments figured out that they can tax everyone and not just men the game was on.

Wow,these cathedrals would have been the only places peasants could experience real opulences in their surroundings.

I've been to villages in India where the women milk cows or buffalo each day and make bread from scratch. They are very proud of their work. The food is superior to what passes for food here in the USA. Also, oranges and bananas taste sweeter. Everything is fresh!

The amount of men in the comments section in a huff about woman getting a bit of recognition is appalling.

The guy she brought in for the crime and punishment didnt even answer her question about what age was someone concidered an adult and Im pretty sure the value of a pig would put people over the threshold of being hanged as alot of the time it was the value of the goods not the actual goods.

On oregon pioneer ancestor lost a child who fell into a laundry cauldron and died 3 days later😢

Most of the women during this period were experimental archeologists.

Life was miserable for nearly everyone during this time.

Of course a video like that wouldn't go nowadays without suggesting the entire time that men have always had it better, earned more, etc.

You could tell who’s so pampered. Guys back in the day. Everyone regardless of sex Worked to help your family unit. Kids too. Once they were old enough. If you didn’t work. You didn’t eat. They didn’t have a phone to order food and huff n puff in a RU-vid comments about historical documents

Women are strong 💪💪

If you worked closely associated with cows, you could get cowpox which would protect you from smallpox.

Recommended, Max Dashu's channel, on women's hidden history.

I wonder why the one woman had to put a tea cozy on top of her head?

Dairy maid had the highest death rate of all occupations throughout history. I looked it up, because my husband's grandmother was killed by a Holstein dairy cow in 1928.

I just realized that milk maids delivered milk and not THEIR milk.

is that billie eilish in the thumbnail😂😂😂 i knew she was an old soul!

A detail that shouldn't go overlooked is that many of those women showcased took over the role from their husbands or fathers. While I'm sure that wasn't always the case, it does suggest women's work" was still supportive rather than leading.. Which, regardless of how it sounds, is certainly as important as everything else. The work they did in the home undoubtedly was.

Gotta find myself a Dairy Maid

Unless you where there you won't be able to shatter anything

❤❤❤❤❤

10:46 Anyone with a large-scale brewery wasn't a peasant, by definition. An alewife wasn't a full-time brewer, either. The YT channel Modern History TV is actually all about medieval times and does excellent deep dives into life then, and into what words and terms meant to the people who used them.

I'm curious about the actual amount of work the resident archeologists do. Do they work a full day, of the same duration and effort, as the Mediaeval women did, even if it's just in the tourist season? I want to compare the work effort because the life of the dairy maid is presented very positively, moisturised hands and all. The pace seems to be very slow. What other work did the dairy maid do? If it was a small holding with just the one cow they must have had other duties; if it was a large, genuine cottage *industry* they'd be working much harder and to strict time constraints. The Dairy Maid would have to hurry, as all the butter pats and cottage cheese would need to be loaded for market by a certain time. Any delays and the farmer would lose income so he was probably pacing about yelling at the maids, and of course you cannot hurry butter! I was disappointed to see the AI "photos". It took something away from the authenticity of the set up. Also even the milk maid had to have smooth hands. If they had chilblains or callouses it could cause the cows to get mastitis. This meant their milk was probably not able to be used commercially. Or they just might be "stubborn milkers" Cows will have a favoured milker for whom they'll behave nicely and let their milk down. The unfortunate maid with chilblains might have to punch the cow's side or descend to yelling at them. And even then, if rhe cow seriously disliked the maid they'd bide their time then kick the milk bucket over! (Cows are people too)

Shout out to the South African potjie pot ❤️

Dan is handsome!!!

I don’t believe they had safety eye wear back then :)

I am dissapointed. 'Medival women' suggests that it's about, well, medival women. And it's mostly the history of London instead. And not even a word about women in any other medival country...

there was no wastage everything was fed to the pigs or the chickens

I love the modern aesthetics of AI generated art visualizing supermodels as medieval women

"The oldest profession." Gardening?

It was great until after 13min

Here in the USA, about the closest we can come to medieval life is the Amish and Mennonite communities. Such a simple, sometimes hard, but rewarding lifestyle, everyone looks out for each other and when times are tough, everyone bands together. Sadly this level of self-sufficiency is now under attack in Penn. with the Amish coming under fire for daring to refuse government overreach. The "old ways" are more important than ever these days, and as things continue to crumble, those humble folk who know the land, and can work with little will be the ones to survive.

Couvre-feu!! I never knew 🙂

Time line say different

Really disappointed in the heavy use of AI Images here, you want to show what "life was really like" and then use a bunch of unrealistic AI Images?

Did I miss something; wasn't this supposed to be about women's lives? Where the heck is about the marriage struggles, cleanliness, labour and midwifery, homemade menstrual pads, sex life etc.? Blimey

Only half this video is about women, right? I'm so confused

with the first story with the milking cows, i just know how the sexism must have been hard. I’m wondering if others get what i mean. Maybe it’s because i have woman experience but i just feel the creepy vibe to have this job.

Love your guys work but the AI images were so distracting and I felt like it ruined the integrity of the content. AI images just make things look cheap.

The biggest myth of the 20th century - that women “didn’t work”. Rural women were the main field laborers right up until the end of the 19th century in Europe, and still are in many parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas. (Boys were when possible apprenticed out, to get a skilled career.) Only when farming is mechanised does it become a male preserve. And women made up the majority of the newly industrialised workforce in (and also at home to supply) factories. Among my own ancestors - collier wife (ie sorting and carrying to customer 1 to 1.5 hundredweight loads of coal: 125-175lb) Steam-loom weaver (notoriously shortlived, my ancestor died at the grand old age of 45 because she started late in life) “bondager” - rural field worker “bonded” for a season, paid at the end. Stocking-maker (at 87 years old and almost blind, had a “stocking frame”.) Midwife and brewer, making the beer sold in the public house run by her husband. (This was 19th century. But beer was almost the sole liquid intake and, for many, a major source of nutrition, in medieval Europe: by law in many burghs, brewers were women.) And Viking women *literally* made money. The cloth they produced was strictly regulated by size and weight, was given a specific value in silver, and was actually used as currency. And of course slaves. Women made up the majority of slaves everywhere (and still do) and cloth production and field labor was what most of them spent most of their waking hours doing.

And think of what was happening in America during these times

Love the theme and material but the use of AI generated art is extremely disappointing from yall