In her fourth letter to Abelard, Heloise asks the question, "Oh what will become of us obedient ones?" The question presents a paradox. By putting her question in writing, Heloise violates the code of silence imposed on medieval women. The medieval church and the literate aristocracy agreed with Sophocles and Aristotle: silence is the adornment of women. Gender roles in medieval society were unambiguous. Men, by nature, belonged in the public, political arena where they directed the affairs of the world, in part, by thinking, speaking, and writing. Obedient to male authority, a woman's natural place was in the private, domestic domain where she was expected to perform the duties of daughter, sister, wife, and mother in muted obscurity. In spite of these restrictions, a few women put pen to parchment during the Middle Ages. This thesis examines the writing of three of these women, Perpetua, Dhuoda, and Hildegard of Bingen. Like Heloise, they considered themselves obedient even though they created texts in which they made their ideas and experiences available to readers in the male-dominated public discourse community. Research indicates that, because they were born into upperclass families, Perpetua, Dhuoda, and Hildegard probably enjoyed an education comparable to that of upperclass men. Although the curriculum available to each of these women included reading and writing Latin, researchers agree that writing was not considered an appropriate activity for medieval women. In addition to the cultural belief that good women were obedient and silent, it was also assumed that women were intellectually inferior to men and therefore not equipped to be competent writers. Research into theories about the process of thinking and writing has demonstrated that once such cultural assumptions are embedded in the human meaning-making system they are rarely questioned. These assumptions are perpetuated because the process of defining experience and developing ideas involves recombining patterns and metaphors provided by other writers and thinkers who usually share these beliefs. Perpetua's, Dhuoda's, and Hildegard's texts indicate that they accepted these cultural assumptions about women and did not question the fact that patterns and metaphors created by female writers were not available to them. Nevertheless, it is evident throughout the writing of all three women that they possessed genius and skill equal to that of men with similar intellectual gifts and educational opportunities. Yet the texts written by these women are often dismissed as less significant than texts written by men. Further research in rhetorical theory led to the realization that Perpetua, Dhuoda, and Hildegard have often been considered inferior writers, not because they were, but because the reader knows that he or she is reading a text written by a woman. Readers of these texts traditionally have assumed that these authors were obedient because they accepted their subservient position to men and the belief that women were, by nature, less intelligent and capable than men. This has led to the assumption that if the author acknowledges her inferiority she must indeed be a less competent artist than her male counterparts. Such readings have resulted in assessments of theses texts that ignore the complexity, art and significance of the work. This thesis demonstrates that the reader willing to suspend these assumptions in the process of reading Perpetua, Dhuoda, and Hildegard may find writing that is anything but the work of obedient, submissive women. He or she may also find authors whose thinking and writing skills equal those of male writers and whose opinions, observations, and experiences are more than marginal glosses on their historical context

Hildegard alleged a spiritual connection with the physical world in her claim that she, a woman, was chosen by God to incarnate His Word on earth as Christ had done in the flesh years before. Woman, the embodiment of the feminine, was connected to the physical world in the medieval era. It was with this idea in mind that Hildegard attached an important significance to nature and the Virgin, seeing each as the ultimate expressions of the feminine divine on earth. However, included in the incarnation, according to Hildegard, was the Church itself along with the clergy, both men and women. In earth, in mankind, in all of nature, she saw a dimension of God, a dimension that found its expression uniquely in the world yet paralleled the God beyond this world. Using Hildegard's letters in German translation, I will show how, in a patriarchal world of the 12th century, Hildegard emphasized the feminine as salvific as a means to establish a balance in the world, a balance that had been offset by the corrupt behavior of Church and State. I will preface this with a brief discussion of the era (p. 6). In Chapter II, I will focus first on how Hildegard saw the feminine manifested in the world and how, for various purposes, she expressed it in her letters. Secondly in Chapter II, by citing further examples in her letter, I will concentrate on how she saw a lack of feminine expression in the world and how she viewed the negative result of this lack. Finally in Chapter IV, I will show how she achieved the expression of this balance. In concluding my paper, I will consider whether she was successful in her efforts: Did she achieve, from others as well as from herself, the balance she sought or were her efforts in vain?