Be a wife of whom he can make no complaint, Margaret. That is the best advice I can give to you. You will be his wife; that is to be his servant, his possession. He will be your master. You had better please him.
Philippa GregoryTag: women history marriage personhood ownership
But the magic moment when he walks alone has not yet happened, and I was praying he would do it before I have to leave. Now he will take his first step without me. And every step thereafter, I know. Every step of his life, and me not there to see him walk.
Philippa GregoryTag: history motherhood royalty
Another husband, another new house, another new country, but I never belong anywhere and I never own anything in my own right.
Philippa GregoryThe castle will seem very quiet and strange without you here. The stone stairs and the chapel will miss your footstep, the gateway will will miss your laughter, and the wall will miss your shadow.
Philippa GregoryI am old enough to be married twice. I am old enough to be bedded without tenderness or consideration. I am old enough to face death in the confinement room and be told that my own mother--my own mother--has commanded them to save the child and not me! I think I am a woman now. I have a babe in arms, and I have been married and widowed and now bethrothed again. I am like a draper's parcel to be sent about like cloth and cut to the pattern that people wish. My mother told me that my father died by his own hand and that we are an unlucky family. I think I am a woman now! I am treated as a woman grown when it suits you all, you can hardly make me a child again.
Philippa GregoryTag: history
Mother, before God," I say, my voice shaking with tears, "I swear that I have to believe that there is more for me in life than being wife to one man after another, and hoping not to die in childbirth!
Philippa GregoryTag: women history personhood
Men die in battle; women die in childbirth.
Philippa GregoryTag: purpose men women history war religion gender-roles childbirth
The baby should always be saved in preference to the mother. That is the advice of the Holy Church, you know that. I was only reminding women of their duty. There is no need to make everything so personal, Margaret. You make everything into your own tragedy.
Philippa GregoryTag: women history religion personhood
It matters not at all that I do not want to marry, that I am afraid of the wedding, afraid of consummating the marriage, afraid of childbirth, afraid of everything about being a wife. Nobody even asks if I have lost my childhood sense of vocation, if I still want to be a nun. Nobody cares what I think at all. They treat me like an ordinary young woman, bred for wedding and bedding, and since they do not ask me what I think, nor observe what I feel, there is nothing that gives them pause at all.
Philippa GregoryTag: women history personhood
A parcel--taken from one place to another, handed from one owner to another, unwrapped and bundled up at will--is all that I am. A vessel, for the bearing of sons, for one nobleman or another: it hardly matters who.
Philippa GregoryTag: women history personhood
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