sources:
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 and image is from the 2007 Shannon L. Meyer, University of
Nebraska, Lincoln
06 February 2014
Menstruation
As we know living in the 21st century,
menstruation is the cycle of changes
that occurs in the uterus
and ovary
for the purpose of sexual reproduction (Wikipedia). According to
Wiesner-Hanks since menstruation had not yet been discovered, menstruation was
viewed medically as either a process that purified women’s blood or that
removed excess blood from their bodies (WH 58). At that time, doctors typically
recommended hot baths, medicines, peccaries placed in the vagina (bizarre),
and, for married women, frequent intercourse, to bring on a late menstrual
period (WH 58). It’s our human nature to create explanations with our religious
view. For the Hebrew Scripture held that menstruation made a woman ritually
impure so that everything she touched was unclean, and her presence was to be
avoided by all (WH 59). These taboos went as far as not allowing menstruating
women to enter churches or take communion, such as the Orthodox Slavs (WH 59).
According to Wiesner
Hanks most women seemed to viewed menstruation not as an illness or a sign of
divine displeasure but as a normal part of life. So why did the church think
that women were so unclean during their period? I don’t understand why even
with a woman’s menstruation they had to make it negative? During the
sixteen century, the idea spread that this was medically unwise because it
would result in deformed or leprous children (WH 59). Two questions to think about, why did the
church have such a negative view on a woman’s menstruation? Second, does the
concept of humoral theory affect their opinions?
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4 comments:
Cool question--and sometimes ideas are from the inherited past. The earliest civilizations saw it as a major problem. It was linked to Eve's sin and Leviticus--so the Ancient Hebrews. What you noted however was a difference in views between ideas and actual experience.
It might have to do with it being yet another thing that separates women from men. It's not something they can relate to, or something that men can ever really truly ever understand. And just like everything else, the common thought process is to fear what we do not know/understand. And typically when we fear something, we show negative reactions toward that fear as opposed to positive ones. So, while I have nothing to back this argument up, this could possibly be another theory to explain why menstruation was a way to separate women from religious acts.
McKenzie, I agree with your last statement about seperating women from the church. I think evidence for the argument both you and Lucy made can be found in the creators of these negative views about menstruation. They were created by male elite in the religious and lay community. These theories were used to keep women inferior. Also, I think that probably more of the peasant class didn't know about or believe the taboos associated with menstruation.
To point out that writers understood menstruation enough to include it in basic texts that became part of the canonical tradition. Therefore, since gender signifies aspects of power, it had meaning and was used to set up layers of society that were more powerful, less powerful; more sacred, less sacred. As Wiesner-Hanks points, medieval theologians looked to the Garden of Eden as one place where women were punished for a lifetime of childbirth and pain, therefore, menstruation.
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