How to Survive as a Medieval Single Woman

Being single in 2026 is a major disadvantage, so what was it like as a single woman in the Medieval period?! Joining Kate today is the always-fantastic Eleanor Janega, author and co-host of our sister podcast, Gone Medieval. How common was it to be single in this period? What kind of life could you hope to have? And why would both Kate and Eleanor have been looked at suspiciously in the medieval period? This podcast was edited by Nick Thomson and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters! It's me, Kate Lister. You are you, I am me, and this is Betwixt the Sheets. Welcome back. But I think you know what's coming by now, don't you? Don't you? I certainly do. But for any newbies that may have wandered in, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. We call that the fair do's warning. Right, you have been forewarned. Let's crack on.

• 1:08Kate Lister?

  You might be wondering, why is Kate out for a walk in the medieval city of York? Well, that is a good question, especially on a freezing January morning. Well, I'm out here doing some very important research on the lives of single women, so that you can stay all warm and snugly inside. You are welcome, betwixters. But if you were expecting Sex and the City: The Medieval Years, you might be a tad disappointed. But there are still some amazingly scandalous stories to explore nonetheless, especially at a time when to be visible as a single woman in society was a brave move which left you vulnerable to all sorts of wild accusations. Oh, I'm so glad that we don't do that anymore. But how did they do it?

• 1:51Kate Lister?

  Well, I am ready to find out if you are.

• 2:25Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Take it from someone who knows the single tax is all too flipping real. And that's me saying this in 2026. So spare a thought for the medieval women who chose the single life. Granted, the idea of choice is not the same then as it is now. I mean, some chose it, not always their choice, but someone chose it. Some had singleness thrust upon them. I mean, some may have been widowed. But what kind of a life could you expect if you decided that matrimony just wasn't for you in the medieval period? Well, joining me today to find out is the BFF of the show, Dr Eleanor Janiger,

• 3:07Kate Lister?

  author, medievalist and co-host of our sister podcast, Gone Medieval. And she is here to help us find out about the single lives of medieval women. So without further ado, let's crack on.

• 3:25Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Eleanor Janiger. How are you doing?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Kate, I am better every time I gaze upon your lovely visage.

• 3:38Kate Lister?

  Oh, thank you. The last time I saw you, we were in front of a live studio audience.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  That's right. And now we're just going to have to hoot and holler on our own.

• 3:46Kate Lister?

  Yes, we are. That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun, wasn't it? That was a right giggle. The result did not go the way I thought it would, but it was still.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  I'm glad that everyone came with me on my very specific journey.

• 3:56Kate Lister?

  They did. They did. You won that one, I think. But we're here to talk about single women. That's a cause very dear to my heart. Single women in the medieval period. Easy to be a single woman in the medieval period?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:13Kate Lister?

  No.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  No. Let's just put it that way. Let's just put it that way. I mean, the end of episode. Thanks for having me, Kate.

• 4:26Kate Lister?

  Done.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that the biggest issue that single women in the medieval period have is exactly the same thing as the biggest issue that single women have now, which is that socially, the expectation for women was that they would become wives and mothers.

• 4:42Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  In that order.

• 4:43Kate Lister?

  It's enforced today. Like, I'm a single Pringle and I feel the stigma of that every single day. It's like, it just follows you around. And we're in a much more enlightened time. We're more and more people are being single. But you get it, whether it's like, you know, you tell someone you're single, then you get the head cock that.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 5:01Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  I'm sure you'll find someone.

• 5:03Kate Lister?

  You'll find someone. It's like, no, I really don't want to. Or like, we exist in a world that's set up for couples. That's, that's the other thing, you know, is that, you know, if like, there's someone's having a wedding, are you gonna get a plus one? Are you not gonna get a plus one? A single person supplement when you go on holiday? These aren't things medieval people would have been particularly worrying about. It was like, oh, it's, it's just a single person supplement when I'm going to, when I'm going to Spain.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  That's true. You know, I guess we use the term now, couples' privilege, you know, because there, there's all sorts of stuff like, you know, rail cards, where you can get the two together rail card, or, you know, just how rent is cheaper if you've got somebody else.

• 5:42Kate Lister?

  It's hell of expensive to be single, because obviously you're paying for absolutely everything. Then there's tax breaks that you get if you're in a couple. Maybe that's just in America. Is that an American thing, tax breaks if you're married?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  I'm not sure. You know, you and I are two sides of a spectrum. One is like totally single, and the other one is like, I don't know.

• 5:59Kate Lister?

  Multiple relationships.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  There's just like a bunch of relationships stuck to me at all times, like birds.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 6:07Kate Lister?

  Oh, damn.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  That was just not like the medieval period, right?

• 6:11Kate Lister?

  No, both of us would have been in the stocks, quite frankly. We would have both have been regarded as figures of suspicion. Me for being on my own and you for being in a polyamorous situation. They'd have just thought both of those were incredibly bizarre.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 6:26Kate Lister?

  How common were single women in the medieval period?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Well, more common than you'd think, is the answer. So it isn't, you know, unknown. And I suppose that there are sort of two ways of approaching singleness. There is, you know, never getting married. Fantastic. Love it. Love that for them. And then there is also just kind of like sitting around waiting for your husband to die, which is... It's a modern tradition, you know.

• 6:51Kate Lister?

  That's funny that we don't call that single, we call that widow.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:55Kate Lister?

  And that, that does seem to be the thing to aim for. I've noticed that whoever we're talking to, whatever period we're in, if it's a patriarchal situation, the goal is get married, get married rich, make sure he's got some problems with his heart and then, you know, follow him around going boo.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  And then, exactly.

• 7:12Kate Lister?

  And then you get to be a rich widow. Hurrah.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  That's the best thing possible. But you know, there are a lot of people who, who simply don't make it that far. And I guess that we tend to know a little bit more about single women in urban environments than we do in the countryside. And it's difficult to know about single women because of coverture, right? So coverture is our technical term for when women don't really have their own names in legal documents. So for example, if you get married, you become Mrs. John Smith as opposed to having your own name. And there's a similar sort of phenomenon as someone's daughter, which is what you will kind of end up being if you don't marry, right?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  So you will just kind of stay at the level drilling.

• 8:03Kate Lister?

  She has handmen above her, making, making noises if that's what anyone can hear.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. Okay. So in, you know, the situation where you were just someone's daughter because you never get married. We do know that there's single women because we see them, for example, inherit land. People are often quite surprised by that. You know, they think that in a patriarch. Yeah. Right. Cause in a patriarchal system, you'd just be like, oh, well then, you know, lands would just be forfeit. If no one has a son or well, you'll just give it all to your son. And we see that that isn't true. We definitely see that land gets passed down to people's daughters. Often while people are still alive, they'll be like, yeah. Seems like she needs, she needs a little bit of land because girl's not doing it. Like she's just not getting married. And it's like, mm hmm.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  But I do think that these situations, one of the things that's interesting and how you can kind of compare and contrast that with modern singledom. Is because since we haven't like really invented the nuclear family yet, you know, this idea that families in big quotes are a married man and woman and their children.

• 9:03Kate Lister?

  Okay. That's interesting.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Live around their extended family, you know, they're still probably going to be living in the village that they're from. So like, you know, they're around their mom and dad until their mom and dad die. They'll have their siblings around. They'll have like grandparents. They'll have nieces. They'll have nephews. Like Auntie Joan didn't care for it. Those are her lands. And you probably still are going to kind of like live maybe with your family, or maybe you've got like a smaller cottage. But like oftentimes, you're still just kind of be around in the area with familial ties. And so that leads to us being unable to see very much about them. You know, they're going to need to show up in tax records. So we're going to have to see dad write down that he's giving land to you. Or you're going to have

• 9:45Speaker 01

  to break the law, which is a big way we find out about them. And that can be women who brew not very good ale. That's a big way women come to our attention. Is that like someone is just brewing like the most god awful ale. And everyone is like, Agnes, what did you do? And she's like, I don't know. You know, and then, you know, she'll get made to sit on the cucking stool. And everyone will be like, your beer sucks, Agnes.

• 10:09Kate Lister?

  Agnes, could you really get put on a ducking stool for beer being bad?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  It starts out being a cucking stool is what it's called initially. You know, not to be confused with a cuck chair. All right. It's not the same.

• 10:20Kate Lister?

  We're on a side quest already. Explain cooking, ducking, and cuckold stool, please.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so ducking stools initially start out as what we call a cucking stool. And it's literally just a chair that they are going to put somewhere public often in front of your house. And everyone will come by and yell at you for the thing that you did wrong. And it's like the chair of shame.

• 10:40Kate Lister?

  Right, okay.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  This then becomes more and more elaborate. Eventually, especially for example, in Edinburgh, they would attach the chair to kind of like a long pole and parade you through the city. And the pole kind of goes up and down like a fairground ride so that everyone can be like, Agnes brewed bad beer again. And then eventually, that then will end at the water. And then people will get ducked. And then by the early modern period, it's just ducking. So it's just water boarding, right? But in the medieval period, it's a chair you get yelled at in.

• 11:09Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  So it's not as serious as, for example, the stocks, where you're gonna have your feet through the holes and you can't move. It's more like you're gonna have to sit in the naughty chair for three hours and everyone is going to see that you did something bad.

• 11:22Kate Lister?

  Wow, they weren't fucking around, were they?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, shame is the major form of punishment slash torture in the medieval period. It's that they'll just shame you. So, you know, Agnes will get yelled at.

• 11:31Kate Lister?

  Very powerful, though. There's been like loads of research about how shame functions within social groups and social settings. And it's hugely influential in forcing behavior.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. It's no joke. And so like that, that really is a big punishment.

• 11:46Kate Lister?

  It is. I mean, for example, like if you were gonna go and do a talk somewhere and if that talk was like, you know, somewhere really shameful, like an authoritarian government or something like those comedians did with Saudi Arabia, that I wouldn't do that, would you?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  No, absolutely not.

• 11:59Kate Lister?

  I wouldn't do that. Shame.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah, I mean, and that's, and that's the thing. And quite rightly, if I like accepted money from an authoritarian state, all of the people that I write history for would be like, ooh, Eleanor's gone.

• 12:10Kate Lister?

  And they'd move away, right?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:12Kate Lister?

  I'd put you on a cooking stool. That's for damn sure.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 12:18Kate Lister?

  Moving on, we're back from the side quest. Single women, right? So, but they could be punished like that. That's quite brutal.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. And, you know, oftentimes you'll also be, for example, fined for that. But when we see these fines coming or we see people getting in trouble for these things, we tend to kind of understand that they're running a business.

• 12:37Kate Lister?

  So I learned that from your book, that it's sort of a myth that women just didn't work. They've been working the entire time.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, quite. And, and we get to know more about their businesses when they're single. You know, because it's not under your husband's name. It's under your name when you get in trouble. It's under your name when the taxes get paid. And we do tend to see, for example, single women, especially in village life. Uh, it's sometimes just like a bunch of sisters.

• 13:02Kate Lister?

  Oh, I like that.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, where they're kind of like, I don't know.

• 13:05Kate Lister?

  It's very Jane Austen.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, we've got enough money, we've got enough land, like, we just inherited it from dad. And it's the three of us and we're just kind of muddling by. So we will see a whole households of single women like that. It tends to change a bit when you get into cities.

• 13:21Kate Lister?

  Oh, okay.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  And this is where it becomes a little bit more complex. Because within the village life, within an agrarian sense, you know, there's a real understanding of where you fit in. Right? The village that you were born and raised in, everybody says, oh, that's Agnes. I don't know why we're going with Agnes, but we are.

• 13:38Kate Lister?

  I like Agnes.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  It's quite common, I guess, in the medieval period. So that's Agnes, she lives with her sisters, she is a weaver. And, you know, she's got her plot of land over there and that's just Agnes, right? Now, if you move to a city, things become a little bit more shaky. Because single women are often looked at very specifically with distrust.

• 14:01Kate Lister?

  Yeah, I'm used to that.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  And very specifically, single women are looked at with distrust because, stop me if you've heard this one before. They're worried you're a sex worker.

• 14:11Kate Lister?

  Constantly. It's a constant assumption about me, I'm afraid. Why would they make that assumption? Because there's lots of reasons why somebody can be single.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think that within an urban context, they're like, where's your money coming from?

• 14:24Kate Lister?

  I see, okay.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  And so especially if you moved in from the countryside. That's like a big question because it's like, well, you know, cities are expensive. Cities mean that you're going to have to have some form of livelihood to support yourself. And if you're fresh off the turnip truck, then baby.

• 14:39Kate Lister?

  What you doing?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  What you doing here? And to be honest, a lot of them are doing sex work. You know, like, I'm gonna be so real with you right now. A bunch of them do sex work because, you know, especially if you're younger, you know, if you're a pretty young thing from the countryside and you come in, that's instant work. You know, you move to London, you go find yourself a job in one of the brothels in the stews and like you're ready to rock. That is a way that you can make a lot of money.

• 15:03Kate Lister?

  A lot of money in a short space of time. How easy, this is one of those questions, it might not have the records to even answer it, but how easy would it have been as a single woman to go and get a job that could support you, but living by yourself in the city in like 14th or 15th century London? Because it's difficult now.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not the easiest because so there's basically several echelons of what you could go and do now. Say you are from a family that already makes things. You could attempt to go get a job in the workshops of people who are making that same thing. So if your father was a saddler and you know rather a lot about saddling, you might have a letter of introduction from him and be like, hey, what's up? Hello, the Saddlers Guild. I have been doing this all of my life and here I am. Do you want essentially the same worker for cheaper?

• 15:53Kate Lister?

  Sucks, but okay.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  It does suck, but it's still tons of cash, right? So that's right at the top of society. You have rather a lot of household workers because, you know, rich folks, they're not cooking their own food. They're not scrubbing their own floors. So you can present to households and say, yeah, I've been a scullery maid for Lady Muckety Muck out in the countryside. I want to move to the big city. Is there a job going? And that is something that you can rise through as well. You can make your way up from scrubbing the floors to running the kitchen, which is a very lucrative job. So that is something that you can absolutely do. Then there are kind of like the lower menial forms of work that are incredibly common. No one wants to do their own laundry.

• 16:35Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Laundry in the medieval period is incredibly difficult to do because you've got to either take the laundry to where there is water or the water to where there is laundry. And wet clothes are heavy. Laundry can take days upon days. So washerwomen are in constant demand.

• 16:51Kate Lister?

  That's interesting because I once heard someone from the English Collective of Prostitutes, which is like a union group today for sex workers, saying that the two jobs that are always available to women now are sex working and cleaning. I think that was interesting. Like the it's kind of touch on that. It's kind of the same thing.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it's a disseminized workforce. You know, here's the jobs that nobody wants, right? Because, you know, the minute anybody gets money, they farm out the cleaning to somebody else. And that's one of the arguments, for example, in order to acknowledge that housework is work. Stay at home moms aren't unemployed. They have a job. Because if you had money, you wouldn't do the Hoovering. So you will get someone in to do that for you immediately. And that's how you know it's a job. So that is kind of the range that you can find for single women. But single women also have a few barriers in the way of that. It's not just the job thing. The biggest thing that is going to be difficult for you as a single woman in an urban context is very specifically housing.

• 17:51Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  So it's like, one thing, if you are born the daughter of a guild member and you just don't want to get married and you're just going to be a gross here your whole life. Everyone's going to be like, oh, yeah, there she is. That's fine. But if you've moved in from the countryside, a lot of places have laws on the books that specifically say that you have a week to get attached to a household.

• 18:11Kate Lister?

  No.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:12Kate Lister?

  Why a week? Why?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Why? That's the law in Southampton. Unfortunately, the 15th century. You have one week and it's like, you need to be attached to a household. Now, it doesn't mean you need to go get married, but it means that someone has to vouch for you. There has to be somewhere that you're living where they can say, oh, yeah, she's with us.

• 18:28Kate Lister?

  I wonder if that's like to stop homelessness or something.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  It is to stop vagrancy.

• 18:32Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  They also don't want this to lead to street level sex work.

• 18:36Kate Lister?

  But is this specific to single women? Were single men allowed two weeks?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Come on it and what's come.

• 18:40Kate Lister?

  Oh, we don't care. Right.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  No, like you can come on it because there's going to be some laboring job for you. We don't care. It's specifically a law for women.

• 18:48Kate Lister?

  Look at that. So you've got one week to get your shit together, ladies.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  And it's quite prevalent, quite prevalent in English cities in particular. They don't want.

• 18:58Kate Lister?

  God, that's interesting.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Women moving around, right? So it's like, you need to explain what it is you're doing. So, you know, that can be being a maid, it can be getting a job, you know, and it could also be like joining a brothel. If you're like, yeah, I work over on Horse Nest. In Southwark, I didn't make it up. I'm attached there, then everyone will go out.

• 19:18Kate Lister?

  Fair enough. We thought you were up to something suspicious, but now we know it's all fine.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it would be suspicious if you, as a woman, can't really explain what your job is and where you live. And indeed, we see this come out, for example, in interesting places. So there's a document that is like my favorite thing of all time, that I'm always going on at everyone about, and it's called, "The Archdiacate Protocol of Prague was made in the 14th century, over a period of about 20 years. They get a new archdiocene in Prague, and he decides that he's going to be a real good guy. And he's going to go parish to parish in Prague, and he's going to say, "Hey, don't suppose you're having any theological issues around here."

• 19:57Kate Lister?

  That's nice of him.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good. And hilariously, like, half the theological issues are, like, sexual. It's just like priests shagging, sex workers, priests running brothels, like, all of these things. But we see a lot of complaints about women, and in particular, they will refer to women as what they call suspect women. So mulieris suspectus, that's the name of my progressive noise band, don't worry about it. And also what they call secret prostitutes, meritrices occulta.

• 20:26Kate Lister?

  A secret sex. What does that mean? Like, secret to who?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  So, well, this is the thing, right? There's an entire street in 14th century Prague, Krakow Wielice, it still exists, and ironically is one block away from, like, one of the big brothel streets now.

• 20:42Kate Lister?

  Nice.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  It's like, it's changed like one block in 600 years, which I really love. But it is home to a lot of women who are very specifically clandestine prostitutes, suspect women, secret prostitutes. And they just seem to be women who are not explaining what they are doing. There's just a bunch of single ladies over there.

• 21:02Kate Lister?

  So is that that they're keeping it a secret, or like, the authorities don't know about them? Is it like that they'd be having sex with someone, then they go, "Surprise!"

• 21:12Speaker 01

  What a move.

• 21:13Kate Lister?

  I'm a hooker.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Surprise. That'll be 1500 coin. Thank you.

• 21:18Kate Lister?

  That would be a surprise. Here is an invoice.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  So we've got the PO right there. So it's fine.

• 21:24Kate Lister?

  Who are they secret from?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  So basically, the idea here is this is quite common in the Holy Roman Empire, which is like, yeah, okay, so there are brothels, like, duh. Like, obviously, there's tons of brothels, but the brothels tend to be municipal and chartered.

• 21:39Kate Lister?

  Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Like, you go to the city and you say, hey, what's up? I want to start a brothel. And they go, right, you are. Here's your charter. But that means here that the sex work in question is legal, which is the thing we don't like, right? Because if you have legal sex work, then there's ways to have illegal sex work. These women might be selling sexual services, but they don't have the correct ticket that says, yeah, you can absolutely do that. Go for it.

• 22:05Kate Lister?

  I'm with you. Okay, okay. So they are not officially registered. I'm with you. Okay. God, that's fascinating, isn't it?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we don't even know because it might be true that they're selling sexual services, or it might just be that it's a bunch of single women, and so people are being dicks to them.

• 22:24Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break.

• 22:38Speaker 02

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• 22:50Speaker 02

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• 23:12Speaker 02

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• 23:36Kate Lister?

  Do you see this a lot, this suspicion around single women and what they're doing and what they are capable of? I was reading a book on gender and sexuality in early modern, not medieval, modern Germany. And they, I'm going to butcher this one now, but the term they used for single women was englerobrot. It sort of meant that women that could buy their own bread.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that is something that is regarded with suspicion. And indeed, it's something that we have often turned into a pejorative.

• 24:06Kate Lister?

  Like spinster.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Like spinster, where it's like, you know, oh, yeah, it's, oh, got your own money, do you? Well, you should be ashamed of that. Or even indeed, like using cat lady, it was like, oh, found companionship, have you?

• 24:19Kate Lister?

  I've always thought that's weird. It's like, that's like, when you listen to these, if you can be bothered to, these like, the fevered ravings of men's rights podcasters. And the only thing they can keep coming back to is like, yeah, but you're alone. It's like, I know, that was the point. That's like, that's, I don't know why, like, that's supposed to be this horrendous insult. That's the idea. But they can't get outside of it. Like, that's the worst thing that they can think of is, I don't want to have sex with you. Good. Well, I want to have sex with you either.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Well, this is the thing, right? And it's something that we tend to see historically with single women is that you need to employ shame around women who make their own money. Right? So, you know, here's a bunch of women who are just like hanging out, living together in Prague. And it's like.

• 25:01Kate Lister?

  Eigenbrotlerin, that was it. German speakers will email me, that just pops in there. Eigenbrotlerin, yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  You do it with spinster, you do it with cat lady. Because, you know, like every single study that's ever been done on this global northern society. Let's put it that way, you know, there might be some different going on in Madagascar. But it shows that a women who are single are happier and live longer.

• 25:23Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Because, you know, having children and dealing with men will kill you. So.

• 25:29Kate Lister?

  Marriage is good for men. The studies seem to show again and again is if a man gets married, he can expect to live longer. He will have a happier, better quality of life. He will have more money, more shared resources. And it doesn't hold true for women.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  So you have to insult them, right? Yes, you have to be mean to them. And you have to police them, right? So in the case of medieval Europe, what they're going to do is they're going to monitor you incredibly heavily and they are going to wonder about what it is you're doing. And we see this play out in Prague, you know, both with the kind of policing of lines in on Krakow Street and then what are these women doing here? And also just women who are kind of in public. So we see complaints about like, there's women in this beer hall. So we think that they might be sex workers. And it's like, why? Well, it's all the proof I need. Yeah, like they're drinking beer, so you know? Or there's a really interesting case that I think is pretty cool, where there's a woman and her name is Mara. There's only like five women who are named in the whole thing.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  There's a lot of talking about women, but they never have names, right? But this woman Mara, she gets in trouble because she isn't technically single. She's technically married to like one of the king's chancellors or somebody. But she's living in a house with five other women, some of whom are unmarried, and they're selling like blessed herbs. Is that, is that herbs in inverted commas or actual herbs? It's difficult to say. It's probably a bit, a little bit of both. Right. You know, like, listen, medieval people are not opposed to cannabis use. I love to say that. So they're selling medicines of some kind. When I say this, a lot of times people say, oh, oh, are they up on a witchcraft, you know, charge? And I'm like, no, it's medieval. That doesn't happen. Medieval. That's early modern, that. Leave the medieval people alone. But they're like, what are they doing?

• 27:13Speaker 01

  And there's just this absolute bafflement that you and your girlies would get a cute house. Like, it's very witchy. And Golden Girls it. Yeah, like they're Golden Girls again. Like, and that's just it. And yeah, they've got like a side hustle, you know, they sell herbs in order to make the rent and they're just hanging. And that is enough to draw the attention of people in the neighborhood and they're going to rat you out to the archdeacon about it. They're like, those women live together. And they're like, well, do you think it's brothel? And they're like, I don't know. It would make more sense to them if it was. If it was, if it was a brothel, that would make sense. And we see this sort of same pattern repeat even now. So like when I was in uni for

• 27:54Speaker 01

  For example, in the great state of Illinois in America, it was technically illegal for people to have sororities. It happened anyway because they count as brothels.

• 28:03Kate Lister?

  No.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  And you weren't allowed to have that many women, single women, living together like in bedrooms. The way that people in sororities do. I'm giving to understand. I did not go to a frat school.

• 28:14Kate Lister?

  I was gonna say, Eleanor, you.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Please do not write down that I went to a frat school because I did not. Okay? You will not find your girl anywhere.

• 28:22Kate Lister?

  That would, that really surprised me. That was, that was.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  No, it was not that kind of party, honey. No. But, you know, even if it had been, you know, in theory.

• 28:32Kate Lister?

  You'd have definitely been a hooker, though. That's what would have been happening at your frat school.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  There's no shame in that. Okay, but, but paying for friends?

• 28:41Kate Lister?

  Not happening. But I was gonna ask you about like, how did women, when they're getting older, deal with this? Because like, this is the thing is like, if you can sustain yourself, if you can manage to find a way to make money without a man, which is a lot harder, but it is doable. Like, you, you can find your way through it. It's very difficult. You might end up on the game, but you can find your way through it. But eventually you're gonna get old, hopefully, and then you're gonna retire. And then you're gonna like, you just, we just can't keep doing the same work. Like, what are the retirement communities? I was gonna ask you, do women end up living together?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do kind of. So that's probably what's going on with Mara at all. It seems to be that it's a women who are a little bit older and it just kind of seems to be that they're looking after each other. Now, you know, Mara's married to King of the Chamberlain, doesn't want to live with him. She's like, no, thanks.

• 29:28Kate Lister?

  Nice.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  See ya, Pug. So obviously, these are people who have a little bit more money in this case. But we do tend to see that women, especially in an urban context, continue to just kind of live together, right? So you, you'll just kind of club up. If you are on the game in later medieval Europe and you are tied to brothels, another option that you have sometimes is quote unquote, conversion. Their word, not mine.

• 29:53Kate Lister?

  Interesting.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  And you can be like, I'm a nun now.

• 29:56Kate Lister?

  Oh, I see. Get thee to a nunnery, right?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  And now that is going to go a couple of ways now. In the first place, there's a whole order that. Get set up called the Magdalen's and the Magdalen's. It's not a particularly fun order. They're really mean. There's like rather a lot of beating that goes on.

• 30:13Kate Lister?

  But that's not as much fun.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Which we don't really like. Eventually they'll just turn into a regular old order of nuns. There's a really great book written by Leola Lydia Otis, which is all on sex work in very specifically Southern France. And one of the big things that tends to happen there is whole brothels will just kind of retire together. And they'll be like, this is a retirement community now. And the community will be like, yeah, okay, great. They will pitch in and they'll be like, it's really cool, actually.

• 30:40Kate Lister?

  Is there a contemporary parallels with that? There's a community and I think it's Brazil or it's in one of the Southern American states where retired sex workers go and they look after one another. That's incredible that that

• 30:51Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 30:52Kate Lister?

  Had the continuity.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Well, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense because you know, if you've been working with the same women the whole time, you're likely friends, you're done. You're like, if you see another dick, I swear to God, right? You know, so you're just like, okay, we're all going to be done. And they often save up for it. And then oftentimes the community does pitch in because they're just like, yeah, okay. Well, fair enough, because you know, there is that uneasy tension with do we like brothels or do we not? And the answer is they do like it, but you're not allowed to say it. So, you know, maybe you pitch in because you're like, oh, I like those girls and we've had good times. Or maybe you pitch in because you're like, yeah, I want that brothel closed. Like, so this is why it's a really smart move on the part of the girls, right? Cause the girlies are like, listen, I've got a great deal for you, right?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Which is, we will stop right now. And you said you hate it, so you could just pony up, right?

• 31:40Kate Lister?

  Yeah. I love that.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  So that is like one big way that they'll do it. And then in the countryside context, oftentimes you're just more around family. You know, again, real Bronte sisters times, you are just gonna chill with your people. You know, again, there's a reason why we tend to say spinster aunt, right? Because it's like, yeah, your nieces and nephews will take care of you or whoever, right? You're not going to like die out in the cold. That's not what is really going to happen. So, you know, you might have money because a lot of these women, especially if you're Single, if you choose to stay single, a lot of the time it's because you have a means of doing that. Like, it's not hard to get married. You know, dick is plentiful and low

• 32:25Speaker 01

  value. So a lot of the time, when we do see people who are single, either, you know, they suffer from health problems, or they really just don't want to.

• 32:36Kate Lister?

  They just don't want to.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Lesbians. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, that's the other one.

• 32:43Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Eleanor after this short break.

• 32:54Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 33:37Kate Lister?

  Tell me about nuns, because they fascinate me. Because we often think about nunnery's and monasteries as places like where really serious people go and it's serious work and it's all very devout. It's easy to forget that it was often people going there to quote quote repent. It's often where they put the naughty people who'd had a past. I often wonder what they would have been like to live there. Because that's definitely hooking up with a squad to survive, isn't it?

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Oh, completely. And I mean, you could of course make the argument here that, well, nuns are married to our boy JC.

• 34:10Kate Lister?

  Oh, they are. I'd forgotten that bit. Yeah, the fine print. Good point.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Whether or not I'm going along with that.

• 34:17Kate Lister?

  It's a one-sided marriage.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Although some of these girlies, you know, they're making it work for them.

• 34:22Kate Lister?

  Yeah, they really went for it, didn't they? They my god, that was a full marriage that some of them were enjoying. But like, what was that like? Would that have been a retirement plan? Is that retirement community?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Now, the thing that is going to come into it with nunnery is it's not one of those situations where you can just rock up as any woman and be like, hey, what's up?

• 34:43Kate Lister?

  Damn, that's my plan.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I'd like to live here. Yeah, okay. Although now you might be able to.

• 34:48Kate Lister?

  Do you think, do you think it's that easy? Just knock on the door, go, hello?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  I mean, like, if you're really, if you're really wanting to do it, I think it's a little bit easier now because like then they would say, okay, yeah, you and what money?

• 34:58Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Right? Like especially in the case of women who are older, if you want to use it as a retirement community, you often have to come with some money. There is a kind of similar thing with when children are kind of donated as oblates, as we call them. Your family usually has to send you with some money or, you know, peasants who couldn't afford their sixth child would just be like dumping them at the door all the time, right? That's not how it goes down. Because the idea here is that there's going to have to be some money to pay for the fact that you're not going to be able to work at the same level that like your middle aged sisters will be able to, for example. So you're not going to be the one scrubbing the floor, right? Because you simply cannot. So there's got to be something that is coming along with that.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  So we do definitely see in the case, for example, of sex workers, this is like a really hot option. But if you've made enough money on your brewing business, if you've made enough money, say weaving, then that might be what you choose to do. And a lot of people do because this is seen as incredibly attractive. You know, queens retire to nunnery.

• 36:00Kate Lister?

  They do, don't they? You've told me that before. I thought that that was a very interesting thing for a queen to be doing.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Well, you know, let's be so real. If you're a member of the royalty or nobility, from a medieval standpoint, you've probably done a bunch of bad stuff.

• 36:15Kate Lister?

  Yeah, you probably have. Yeah. It's time to atone.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like you don't get to that position in society. Like, they're not good people, you know, they have that money essentially by violence. And medieval society will just say that to their faces. You know, now we like to get all Disney about it, right? Now we get to be like, oh, she was a birdie princess. No, sometimes she gave all was to the. And it's like, yeah, where should you get those, like, the money to give out in Alms?

• 36:37Kate Lister?

  Yeah, don't question the accounts too much.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, this is, this is all stuff that's like extracted from the actual hardworking peasants who are doing all the work around here, right? Medieval people are clear on that. Like, all you have to do is look at a Hell fresco and see who is painted in the jaws of hell, and it's a bunch of rich guys. It's like, you know, a bishop and a king and this, and usually a hot chick. A lot of the time, that's just because they want to draw a hot chick.

• 37:01Kate Lister?

  They like, they like drawing babies.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  But, you know, so queens kind of understand themselves as being involved in that, and they want to go atone, right? Same kind of for single women, but they're probably not necessarily atoning because of their position in society. But they are Christians, you know, like, it's difficult for us to get our head around in our society, which is increasingly secular. These people do believe this, right? It doesn't mean that they're always perfect. It doesn't mean that they're always able to live up to the moral standards of Christianity, but they'd like to not go to purgatory or hell. They would like to go to heaven. And if you've got enough money and you can get into the nunnery and you can then just kind of think about religion

• 37:48Speaker 01

  in your final years, then that's gonna get you really far.

• 37:51Kate Lister?

  I've been thinking about this for a while and like with the status of single women today, in fact, all throughout history, why they draw the attention of society and in the way that other groups don't. I think as well, it might be the ambiguity of their sexual status as well, because single doesn't mean celibate. It's not the same thing. And like, if you're a wife, that's you, that's, you're supposed to be having sex with that person, done. If you're a nun, no sex for you at all. You're married to Jesus. If you are a sex worker, sex with everybody. If you're a widow, I don't know, you've had sex and now you're not supposed to be having sex. But a single woman, you're in this weird ambiguous space of like, I could have sex. Like, I could have sex with lots of people if I wanted to.

• 38:33Kate Lister?

  And I wonder if that's part of the stigma and the suspicion around that status.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I think so, because they are seen not necessarily as people.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  But as potential problems, right? Like, they don't fit easily into the neat categories of what is expected of women, you know? Because it's like, if you are a nun, we know exactly what you're doing. We know exactly where you are. You're over, now, are a lot of those nuns shagging also? Yes. Yes, they are. I've been rereading the Decameron. And this morning, I was just reading Day Nine. The second story of Day Nine is all about like a nun shagging her lover, getting caught by the other nuns. And then they like bring the mother superior to yell at her for shagging her lover. But she was shagging her lover, who's a priest, and accidentally puts her underpants on her head instead of her wimple. And like, they all get found out. And then they just go, never mind, just try to keep it on the DL. And like, that's the story, right? So we know that that nuns are shagging too.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  And it's just kind of like understood. But you're supposed to hide it. It's kind of the only thing. Just because you're single doesn't mean you're not getting so. Right. Let's be so real. And that is, I suppose, part of the worry with single women, right? Is if it's a single woman in the city, I don't know, like, is your husband shagging her? Are you trying to shag her husband?

• 39:52Kate Lister?

  Steal husbands away? Can you? What are you doing?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Which is, you know, also, I think, a big thing that we're still doing to single women now. There's this kind of like, oh, well, you're a, you're a sexual free agent. So like, are you trying to steal my crust? Like, no one wants your crusty man, girl.

• 40:07Kate Lister?

  No, they don't. They don't, not often.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  No one is interested in stealing your husband, honey. Like, you can, it's fine, right? But there is that, that worry that if you haven't been locked down, so to speak, then...

• 40:20Kate Lister?

  You've not been locked down.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  And especially, yeah, like in a medieval context, where we consider that women are the horny ones. And women have this rapacious sexuality, then that is going to be bumped up even more. So, you know, yeah, you need single women, if you're rich, to scrub your floors. Or, you know, even if you're on the farm, you have dairy maids, and you have chamber maids, and you have all of these varying maids. And it's kind of quite similar to like worrying that you'd like, your husband's gonna shag the nanny.

• 40:51Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Now.

• 40:52Kate Lister?

  So as a final question, then, do you think the medieval period, which I'm well aware is a thousand years of history? By the way, it's not like, you know, sometimes we think of it of like, you know, a Tuesday in 1400 or something. It's a whole thousand years. But do you think it was a good time to be a single woman? Do you think it like, or was it a particularly bad time with our worst times?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I think it always kind of sucks to be a single woman because we live under the patriarchy. I suppose what I always tend to say about this is that I'd still rather be a single woman in a medieval context. I mean, I'm gonna be so real with you. I do not wish to become pregnant in the medieval period. No, thank you.

• 41:29Kate Lister?

  That's not good.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  And if you ask basically any medieval historian who's a woman, they will tell you, oh, I would like to be a nun, is the thing, because you get to read books and hang out with the girlies.

• 41:42Kate Lister?

  Potentially a widow, potentially.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Potentially with like, oh, if you could get married and he dies real quick before you get knocked off.

• 41:48Kate Lister?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a sweet spot. But you don't, you don't want to be a wife and mother. You're just gonna die in childbirth. It doesn't seem very good to me. Which is why, you know, we have these very strong narratives about how you're meant to understand your worth is as a woman is getting married and having children, because we have to tell those stories. Because if we didn't tie the worth of women in society to being a wife and mommy, then women wouldn't do it, because it fucking sucks. So you have to, you have to shame women into doing it. You have to tell them that you'll die unfulfilled. You'll die unfulfilled and rich and with your friends in a flat that's decorated exactly how you want it, without picking up after anyone, you know?

• 42:31Kate Lister?

  Eleanor, thank you so much. You have been marvelous to talk to. You always are. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, obviously, come on over to Gone Medieval, where I usually don't talk quite so much about cooking. You know, I'm on every Tuesday, talking about these sort of things. And if you want to keep up with my work, you can check out EleanorYanaga.com. But if you're interested in single women, I would definitely check out, of course, my book, which is called The Ones in Future Sex: A Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society.

• 43:00Kate Lister?

  Amazing. Thank you so much. You have been fab.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  And you're fab.

• 43:07Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Eleanor for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got episodes on how filthy were the Egyptians? And we have another on the rivalry between Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici. And if you would like us to explore a subject, or perhaps you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was produced by Stuart Beckwith. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.