The Way the Ladies Ride
Richard Almond has trawled medieval and Renaissance sources for insights about ladies’ riding habits in the Middle Ages and what they reveal about a woman’s place in that society.
When Gerald of Wales wrote in The Topography of Ireland (c. 1188) that ‘The women, also, as well as the men, ride astride, with their legs stuck out on each side of the horse’ he was making a comment on something significantly unusual in everyday medieval life. Readers were expected to seize on this female departure from the norms of decency and splutter with indignation. However are we any different from our ancestors in our conception of how women rode horses, asses and donkeys hundreds of years ago?
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