Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris was written by Sharon Farmer, who thoroughly analyzes the many differences between the poor and the elite during the High Middle Ages of Paris. Her main purpose was to provide perspective on urban poverty during this era, while also emphasizing the important aspects of an individual that ultimately decided their faith within a society. Farmer analyzes the poverty from an elite’s perspective, while supplying sufficient details on the gender roles among the poor and the social classes among society that separated the poor from the rich. Such factors not only played a major role in forming their social standing and networks available to them, but also affected the altruistic assistance by those in power that …show more content…
One scholar, James Farr, who has reviewed Farmer’s work, argues that she does not supply enough accuracy of the lives of the poor in her analysis because very few points address perspectives of the poor themselves, rather more of external perspectives on the poor. Gender played a major role among both the rich and the poor, but affected the lower class differently. Farmer explains how each gender had its own defining factors that made them either masculine or feminine. She defines these masculinities and femininities: “Woman is identified with body and physicality while man is associated with soul and immateriality” (39). Men were more identified by their profession, while women were identified by relationships to their father, husband, or family members. When it came to physical gender roles, men were responsible for productive labor, while women were responsible for reproductive labor. To further specify, Farr provides a medieval perspective: “medieval clerics elaborated a binary and gendered schema that associated male/mind/public and female/body/domestic […] associating men with reason and …show more content…
Low wages and lack of employment became an issue in Medieval Europe after a slight decline in Europe’s economy at the end of the thirteenth century. Peasant migration replenished wealthy nations and was common among unmarried men and women in their teens and early twenties who needed to support themselves and survive through their poverty. Some migrants traveled about thirty miles to Paris, while others traveled over hundreds of miles, some learning a new language in order to acquire a job in France. Migration and life-cycle servitude were crucial elements in European households who housed and employed the poor as their domestic servants. Farmer explains how family legacies predispose one’s future economic status: “An individual migrant’s share (or lack of it) in a family inheritance could not only determine whether or not he or she was able to accumulate wealth, but also lead that person to migrate, and, in some cases, to return home” (23). Such predicaments are supported by the peasants’ acceptance to work as domestic servants, the lowest paid jobs that were available and applicable to them. Farmer insists that such lifestyle points to a “significant number of people,” while the scholarly reviewer refutes this speculation by arguing that not enough evidence is supplied to support still speculative