Single women in the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages in Europe, lifelong spinsters came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, though elite women were less likely to be single than peasants or townswomen.
Great wealth, high social status, and immobility tended to lower the age of marriage and depress the number of single women.
However, "singleness was more common, marriage occurred relatively late, and husbands and wives tended to be of roughly similar ages".
For example, in Mediterranean communities, there was an emphasis on the "sexual purity of women as a reflection of family honor" that may have led to early and near-universal marriage.
[2] Towns and cities were particularly attractive to young women in the Middle Ages who hoped to discover greater financial opportunities or escape customs that gave preference to men.
Even still, marriage was not always guaranteed and non-natives tended to experience longer periods of poverty and singlehood than women born in urban areas.
[4] The dowry practice in the Middle Ages, which involved the exchange of wealth and gifts among families at the time of marriage, was incredibly important to the economic success of the new couple.
[4] Medieval families understood that such resources were necessary for the couple, namely the husband, to establish a home and pursue a career, trade or business opportunity.
[5] Even among elites, large families who had to provide multiple dowries may have also chosen to send a daughter to a convent as a way to lessen the financial burden.
[4] Though singlehood was a part of being a nun, their experiences are not representative of the majority of unmarried women living in the Middle Ages.
Unlike men, single women risked ruining their family's reputation if they wanted to engage in sexual activity outside the contexts of marriage.
As such, the Middle Ages marked a change in the way the church viewed and punished female same-sex relationships.
Single women who couldn't make ends meet would often resort to prostitution if they could not find other means of work.
But it is hard to distinguish how prostitution was defined in medieval Europe, namely because it can be found referenced in regard to both commercial and casual sex.
"That canon lawyers and theological writers found no difference between a prostitute and a sexually active woman morally does not mean that they did not recognize that the sex trade was a business.
The twelfth-century Parisian scholar Peter the Chanter and his associates Stephen Langton, Robert Courson, and Thomas of Chobham said that a prostitute did not have to make restitution of her ill-gotten gains.
[7] By the late medieval period, prostitution became regulated in ways it had never been before, relegating working women to particular districts and manners of dress.
Moral fashions notwithstanding, the major impetus for dramatic increases in prostitution at certain periods in particular countries may have depended upon economic competition with men.
[5] Manorial records indicate that many unmarried women held land on the manor, just as men, and were required to perform the same amount of labor to retain their tenancy.
[10] Given the widespread discrepancy in earned wages and the limited window of seasonal availability, unmarried peasant women struggled to maintain financial security.
[5] Throughout the Middle Ages, social status was a considerable factor in the type of work a townswoman was eligible to perform.
At the lowest end of the spectrum were domestic workers and servants whose physical labors were comparable to that of peasant women in rural areas.
[4] As a result, the trades that did not have professional guilds, like textile manufacturing and the sale of edible goods, became the most accessible options for single women.
