11th century CE

The 11th century CE is a hinge in Simone de Beauvoir’s account of feudal women: as fiefs became hereditary, some daughters could inherit when there were no male heirs, yet their inheritance remained subject to male control. The period illustrates her broader argument that formal changes in women’s status did not necessarily free them from the institutions that defined them as dependent.

Feudal inheritance and guardianship

Before hereditary succession, feudal property was tied to military service and armed power. Because women were deemed unable to defend a fief, they were excluded from holding it. When fiefs became hereditary and patrimonial, however, surviving elements of Germanic maternal law allowed daughters to inherit in the absence of male heirs. Around the 11th century CE, feudal law thus began to accept female succession.

The change did not make an heiress an independent holder of her domain. Military service remained the basis of feudal obligation, and a woman who inherited still needed a male guardian. Her husband could hold the fief’s title and enjoy its goods, while she functioned as the means through which the estate passed onward. In this arrangement, inheritance altered who could transmit a domain without establishing the woman as its effective sovereign.

Marriage as a means of control

An heiress represented land and a castle, making her a prize in contests among suitors. A girl could be given in marriage by her father or his lord before she was twelve. Since marriage could bring a man additional domains, repudiation served the interests of those seeking further alliances and property; the book notes that some women in the 11th century CE were repudiated four or five times, with annulments pursued through claims of prohibited kinship.

Widowhood did not reliably end this dependence. A widow was expected to accept a new master, and accounts from the period depict kings and lords arranging remarriages for women whose husbands had died. The widow’s need to defend her land could itself become a reason to seek another powerful husband. The language of protection therefore concealed a system in which a woman’s property and marriage were managed by men.

The limits of a historical turning point

The later decline of feudal wardship offered a different possibility. As military obligations were converted into monetary payments and lords lost authority over vassals’ marriages and property, women’s inability to perform military service became less decisive. In France, unmarried women and widows could eventually hold property and exercise authority over their fiefs; elsewhere, including Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, perpetual guardianship persisted.

This contrast prevents the 11th-century change from reading as a simple story of emancipation. Female succession expanded within a system that still assigned women guardians and treated marriage as a mechanism for transferring property. Simone de Beauvoir uses the period to show how rights could shift while dependence endured: changes in the rules of inheritance did not, by themselves, dislodge the social power that made women subordinate.