Wives and widows in medieval Flanders

Widowhood has long been regarded as the most emancipated condition that women might enjoy, affording them a freedom, agency and access to the public sphere denied their single or married counterparts. A corollary of this assumption is that most women documented as active participants in public life should be identified as widows. Based on a large corpus of references to female activity in bailiffs' accounts and in town records and ordinances, however, this article argues that in pre-Burgundian Flanders widowhood in no way constituted a privileged status, either morally, socially, legally or economically. Flemish women were educated in order that they might achieve gainful employment; they married late and maintained control of property in marriage. Married women functioned as legal persons; they participated publicly, independently and routinely in Flemish urban life to such a degree that their subsequent activities as widows can only be understood as being in fundamental continuity with their prior behaviour as wives. This, in conjunction with the ambiguity and instability of terms for women whose spouses are deceased', destabilized the very concept of widow' itself.