I don’t write much medieval stuff, but the Régine Pernoud book does sound interesting. Maybe I can find it at the library…

Ah, yes, Nero, not Commodus, sorry.

He even tried to sunk his mother’s ship, when she was abroad, but finally was forced to send troops, in order to kill her, because she’d survived earlier several assasination attempts. As for Sparta – Athens were even more female-friendly. In fact, if you were a courtesan, you had a privilage of learning in the best schools, with the best scholars available. I digress: there was a famous political trial of a courtesan called Fryne. Her “barrister” torned up Fryne’s clothes in front of the judge and asked, whether such a beautiful woman could be guilty or not…and he won the case. A year ago, one Polish author wrote a wonderful historical fantasy about Fryne. The Roman Empire, however, wasn’t as friendly for females as Greece. The legal system in Rome was patriarchal, indeed.

Speaking of fantasies: well-done female character was in “The Lions of Al-Rassan”.

by the way – there’s a great book about a role of a medieval female (don’t know the English title, so I’m posting the French one), La femme au temps des cathédrales, written by Régine Pernoud. Good stuff, too!

Roman women, especially of high rank, could definitely be very frightening, even though Rome didn’t even grant them legal existence. I don’t know about Commodus, but Nero certainly tried to murder his mother several times (and finally succeeded, though he ended under the sway of another woman).

Courtesans are great characters; I’ve seen some of them in fantasies, but not as much as I’d expect who were also main characters (belay that: I have seen a bunch of them, but not so many that were well-done as a character).

>However, even in China there were woman fighting (with fire and sword) against sexual discrimination and the rule of man.
Oh, definitely, though I should think they were more uncommon. There’s nothing against having a female warrior if you’re perfectly aware that she’s extraordinary; however, if you put twenty of them in the same story, then you’re in a little more trouble… That’s mostly what gets me with some historicals: it’s not unlikely characters, it’s the profusion of them combined with blithe unawareness that they don’t fit in the expected norms of the society.

I’m not surprised that the Chinese would be shocked by the freedom of Khmer women, since they were experts at confining their own women (bound feet being pretty devastating in that regard). Most medieval societies were patriarchal–which didn’t mean they granted the same amount of freedom to their women, I agree: lots of variability depending where and where you are.

That’s pretty interesting about women-specific professions–those would make very neat backgrounds for a majoritarily female cast, without being set in a harem.

Also, we might find some interesting facts about woman in the history of Great Britain, for example. During the Roman Invansion, Queen Boadicea, the last queen of the Celts, took over power and led her people to an uprising agaist the Romans, defeating the Empire in several battles, before she lost and died. In the 16th century, one female, Grace O’Malley, ruled British coast as a pirate queen, before she was taken in front of the Queen Elizabeth.

Nevertheless, I admit that freedom of a female depended on a culture. However, even in China there were woman fighting (with fire and sword) against sexual discrimination and the rule of man.

On the Bayon in Angkor Thom there is a famous and really fantastic stretch of carvings depicting ordinary life in the time of the king who had it built (Jayavarman VII maybe? I can’t remember). Anyway, exactly as you say, upper class women are seen in set apart chambers isolated by curtains and stairs, while lower class (although I’m not sure “class” quite works in that context, but anyway I’ll let that go for now) women are out selling in the market. Chinese merchants who came to trade with the Khmer commonly married a local market woman so she could work the business with him. So the story goes, anyway. And the Chinese were kind of shocked by the freedom and in particular the sexual freedom held by the Khmer women, although it was still very much a patriarchal society.

Interestingly, some other professions also allowed women depending on the culture. For example I think it is in Malayasia that panning for certain gemstones is traditionally a female occupation. Cigar-makers were overwhelmingly female in Mexico.