Women's Dress

(Fig. 1) This is the illustration of the Wife of Bath in the Ellesmere illuminated manuscript of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. 

The first thing one might notice about this object, the dress of the Wife of Bath, a character in The Canterbury Tales written by the medieval poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, is that it isn’t an object at all—merely an illustration. Unfortunately, even though clothing was obviously an important part of everyone’s daily lives, it is rare for textiles to survive to the present day. Wool, cotton, and furs are all extremely perishable materials, and though there are environments that successfully preserve ancient textiles, they are not typically found in London (Crowfoot 2). The Wife of Bath’s dress survives in a different form than many of the other objects studied here, as a medieval illustration (Fig. 1)

This image is the full page in which the illustration is present. The drawing itself is very small and detailed.

The Wife of Bath, named Alisoun, has many notable accessories that Chaucer details, all of which serve to illustrate her social status and physical appearance; the medieval reader would have understood exactly what kind of person she was based on her manner of dress. That said, the dress itself is not specifically described by Chaucer; rather, it is present in an illustration from the Ellesmere manuscript, likely completed within ten years of Chaucer’s death (Beidler 391). Therefore, even if the Ellesmere illustration does not perfectly match the description in the text, it can be assumed that the illustration accurately depicts clothing worn by contemporary women much like the Wife of Bath in status and appearance. More than just an illustration of the text, then, this drawing is a valuable source for a type of artifact that normally doesn’t survive to the present day. 

(Fig. 3) This image of Christine de Pizan presenting her writings to the queen of France also illustrates the style of sleeve that was popular at the time. The queen (in red) and the lady-in-waiting in the green dress both have similar sleeves to the style worn by the Wife of Bath—while the sleeves here are far larger, this simply demonstrates the great wealth disparity between them. While Alisoun could, by some standards, be considered fairly wealthy for her time, her means would be nothing compared to the luxuries that the royal houses could afford (British Library, Harley MS 4431, fol. 3r.)

Alisoun’s red dress, unlike her traveling accessories, does not sacrifice form for function; the fur trim on her sleeves, for example, displays her status just as much as it provides warmth. Furs were used quite ubiquitously, even by peasants, as a way to make their few articles of clothing warmer. Today, fabric is cheap, and it is a simple process to bundle up in another layer of clothing. Such was not the case for the people of the Middle Ages, for whom cloth-making was an extremely long process. 

Most commonly, furs were used to line the insides of garments, where they weren’t visible and thus were more for practical purposes rather than fashion. The Ellesmere illustration, however, is not depicting a dress worn by a peasant woman, as the dress’s wide-brimmed sleeves have a visible fur trim, called a purfelle.  In terms of practicality, these are nearly useless, since fur on the outer trim doesn’t provide very much warmth at all (Fig. 3). It is purely a fashion statement, evoking the luxurious trim on the garments of the very wealthy (Kelly). 

(Fig. 4) The people in this illustration, of a significantly higher class than Alisoun, have sleeves to match this class difference. Like Alisoun, their sleeves have a luxurious fur trim, but theirs are much longer, more expensive, and therefore more stylish. Note the colors of the fur; gray was a more valuable fur color than the more common brown of Alisoun's dress, and the ermine fur (white with black specks) was the most valuable of all.

Some furs are much more expensive than others, and white furs (with or without gray) were typically the most valuable of all due to their relative scarcity (Fig. 4). Brown furs, such as the one depicted in the illustration, were more reasonably priced for someone of the Wife of Bath’s social status: just wealthy enough to begin adorning their clothes. 

While the Wife of Bath is, as her epithet suggests, not actually a Londoner, the Ellesmere manuscript’s illustration depicts the character in the clothing the London artist would have been familiar with; clothing that women of her social status and means would have worn in London (though not beyond her position according to the Sumptuary Laws). This is a valuable insight to such a group, since most medieval art shows either the very wealthy, or the peasants working in fields. The style of the clothing, the manufacturing process, and the level of practicality it possessed all reveal the realities of people living in London in the late fourteenth century.  

In a world of fast fashion, it can be very difficult for us to understand the value of clothing to the people of the Middle Ages. As Crowfoot (p. 15)succinctly put it, “A lengthy series of processes has to be carried out before fleece is turned into a finished length of cloth; among them are willowing, washing, dyeing, blending, combing, carding, bowing, spinning, winding, warping, sizing, weaving, fulling, stretching, teasing, shearing, and calendering” (Fig. 5). This is still the process of making cloth today—the only difference is that our machines are more sophisticated (and autonomous) than theirs. Alisoun certainly knew the process—as Chaucer notes, she was herself a cloth-maker. Then, when the cloth was complete, it could still take days to sew it into a garment. It should make sense, then, that people typically didn’t have very many unique garments; they were built to last.