MEDIEVAL SOCIETY.
As the concern of this pamphlet is to find in the course of woman's evolution those women who are or should be directly interested in the Socialist movement, we have little or nothing to do with the women of the upper class. It is the working women that concern us.
With the reorganization of society after the downfall of the Roman Empire, chattel slavery disappeared in the progressive part of the world as a general and worldwide institution. The exploited class were serfs, attached to the land and sold with it. The freemen consisted of two classes—the feudal class, the owners of the land and the serfs, and the artisan and trading class of the free towns.
With the dissolution of chattel slavery, woman regained an economic foundation in the homes of the burghers and serfs. The home became the unit of production and a number of occupations developed within its walls that fall entirely to the lot of women. Spinning, weaving, carding, brewing, baking, sewing, and for relaxation fancy work of various kinds by which home and clothing were made ornamental, kept the housewife busy from early morning until late. To teach these various occupations was the duty mothers owed to their daughters, and a bride's chief value was her efficiency in them. Medieval society was a combination of the various family units and much of the prosperity of a nation depended upon the skill and industry of its women.
To judge by song and poetry and romance, one should think that these homes were ideal ones. But economics is not poetry. These women were household drudges, coarse and ignorant from the very nature of things. The serfs of the middle ages were not slaves in the historic sense of the word, but they were working drudges over whom the master possessed the right of life and death. The women were not slaves in the historic sense of the word but they also were mere working drudges. They were drudges at home and serfs under the master, and the indignities to which they could be
