Her husband, John, expected her to perform her wifely duty and give him some booty, but Margery whined and complained so much that the two finally struck a deal. John would stop the sexual advances and allow Margery to live the remainder of her life chaste and free of fleshly desires. What a guy! Oh, there was one other little caveat to their bargain. Margery, a milliner who managed to save a few shillings, would pay off John’s debts. We find this somewhat empowering… reverse prostitution, if you will. If a man is able to pay a woman for the use of her vagina, then Margery could pay a man to keep her vagina to herself. Still, in a perfect world, the pocketbook should stay out of the bedroom.
But back to Margery… After the deal with her husband, Margery tried to live like any good virgin would. She moved out of her husband’s house. She prayed a lot. She went on pilgrimages. And she wore white. In the medieval virgin-whore binary, there was no place for divorcees or born-again virgins. Margery contended that she was akin to a real virgin in that Christ has declared her “a maiden in her soul.” She also claimed that Christ had given her permission to wear virginal white clothing, a move that confused and angered the townspeople and the Church and gave rise to the quote from The Book of Margery Kempe that we used at the opening of this chapter.
In keeping with her name, the Virgin Mary made appearances in numerous medieval texts as a virginity doctor. Stories abound about helpless maidens whose virginity was taken by rape, but the Virgin Mary would appear and assure the victim that her virginity would be restored, even if a child was born.
Sometimes, the maiden didn’t need to be the victim of a rape for the Virgin Mary to make her a born-again virgin. The maiden just needed to feel really, really guilty about her fornication. The great Albert the Great included an anecdote about one particular young virgin who gave in to temptation. Afterwards, she was so overwhelmed with guilt that she tried three times to take her own life. During the third attempt, the girl cut herself open to surgically remove the lust that was polluting her body. It was then that the Virgin Mary appeared and pronounced the girl to be a virgin anew.
Reclaiming what was once lost is tough endeavor. The sexual experience status of a medieval woman was very much a public matter, because her virginity, so they thought in the Middle Ages, was not hers. Rather, a woman’s intact hymen, and ultimately her entire vagina, was “owned” by a man, either her father or her husband. Coupling this thought with the economic and spiritual value of virginity, and it is no wonder that experienced ladies sought to get back their most valued asset. Praying, alum water, and nutmeg aside, we all know that you can’t fool Mother Nature.
To sum up, the maiden vagina was a source of commodity, currency, dowry, and negotiation—although possessed by women, it was in a sense owned by society. Medieval women went to measures extreme and small — pun intended — to maintain counterfeit, preserved, and renewed chastity. Fumigation and other extreme methods to preserve the sacred hymen proved how important virginity was in the medieval times.
The Vagina Under Lock and Key: Chastity Belts
“A chastity belt! That’s going to chafe my willy!”
When most people think about medieval virginity and sexuality, images of the chastity belt pop into their heads (go ahead, admit it!). We have long equated the chastity belt — a metal contraption worn by a woman to metaphorically lower the portcullis on her vagina — with the medieval era. There are plenty of tales about heroic knights who, before riding off to fight in the Crusades (with a key in his armor pocket), slap chastity belts on their ladies to ensure that she remains faithful during his absence. But these stories are unsubstantiated and most likely they were invented later and incorporated into the romantic legends about lusty medieval knights and their hot, horny ladies. In reality, chastity belts were more of a Renaissance era fad, but because so many people mentally link the chastity belt with the Middle Ages, we decided to include some information about them.
As the name implies, the chastity belt was designed to preserve a woman’s chastity because she obviously couldn’t be trusted to do it herself. Like the crusading knights, distrustful husbands could lock up wives’ vaginas to make sure she doesn’t give in to temptation. The belt was also used to thwart rape and to discourage masturbation. Most scholars agree that the belt was used, but only occasionally, in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. It gained popularity during the nineteenth century as an anti-masturbation device, often prescribed by doctors.
We may think of the chastity belt as the tangible manifestation of misogyny but the invention of the chastity belt is credited to a woman — a rather intriguing woman whose reputation has gone through more ups and downs than a middle school girl’s popularity. By most accounts Semiramis was an Assyrian queen who we would now diagnose as a nymphomaniac. For example, she built pleasure gardens where she could lure young soldiers into her sexual embrace. After Semiramis had had her way with the hapless soldiers, she ordered them to be killed. (Yikes!) She also carried on an incestuous relationship with her own young son. (Apparently she also changed marriage laws to permit child marriages.)
Semiramis also had a terrific jealous streak. So afraid was she that the women in her household would seduce her son that she ordered all the women to wear a locked chastity belt of her own design. So the invention of the chastity belt had less to do about a man locking up “his” vagina to protect it for himself and more to do with a woman protecting “her” penis from other vaginas. Hmm.
Konrad Kyeser von Eichstatt included a sketch of a chastity belt in his 1405 book Bellifortis, which roughly translates to “strong fortress”. Although this is a book about medieval military strategies and techniques, it is easy to see how the chastity belt could fit, metaphorically, into this category with the vagina becoming the fortress in need of protection. Von Eichstatt’s drawing depicts a heavy and awkward-looking chastity belt that would not have been comfortable to wear (not that any of them were).
Later, chastity belts from the Renaissance period included padded velvet linings to prevent metal-on-skin abrasions and infections. Several belts from this era remain and can be seen on display at various European museums. In fact, a Paris museum has two chastity belts in its collection that once protected the vaginas of Catherine de Medici and Anna of Austria
Long linked with the medieval era, chastity belts were actually invented in antiquity (and by a woman!) and popularized in the centuries after the end of the Middle Ages. We certainly don’t want to perpetuate the myth that knights employed chastity belts to force faithfulness on their wives but instead call attention to the very concepts behind the device: the value and ownership of the vagina. We tend to lock up items of value. This means the vagina has value and is worthy of protecting. Yet the ownership of the vagina must also be considered for it is men who lock up the vagina (except in the case of Semiramis) — either because they don’t trust the women or they don’t trust the men around her. What we infer from this is that, in the male dominated culture, men took ownership of the valuable vagina.