A Day In the life of a Medieval Peasant Housewife

My Final project is a vlog-style video encapsulating a typical day in the life of a medieval peasant housewife. I wanted to shed light on the hard labour peasant housewives endured during the early and late middle ages. The traditional day-to-day lifestyle of peasants sustained the household economy during these centuries. My video examines how a peasant housewife, whom I named Agatha, contributed to the care of the household. It was the norm that peasant men and women would spend their entire day working and labouring on their farms. My vlog allows a little sneak peek into the daily chores and an inside look at family dynamics. The housewife typically started her day making breakfast for the family using leftovers from the night before, porridge, or oatmeal using whichever grains were available at the time. Religious life in the middle ages was a very important aspect of medieval culture. In my vlog, the peasant family was headed off to mass after breakfast because it was Sunday. After mass, the day's labour began: tending to the farm involved milking the cows, picking the growing produce of whatever crops the family grew, collecting eggs from the chickens, and watering the crops. Household maintenance involved doing the laundry, sweeping and mopping the house, cooking and baking for the family. My vlog explored how bread was made and baked and the slow but satisfying process of turning milk into butter. The strenuous and time-consuming labour during the middle ages at the time was made easier by the brood of kids families would have at the time to help with the manual labour. In the vlog, Agatha has a husband, Tom, and two children, Leslie and Branson, with a third baby on the way, with the expectation that there are more to come. This vlog helps to contribute to a better understanding of women's social and economic roles in medieval society and their significant contributions to their family life.

Here is the link the vlog: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IP2Djngm-OxeQ_OCzPKRP3Bpz6-lGkL-/view

Layan Ajawi