Hi
I’m not sure if the term “adult” is appropriate for 13 year-old boys and 12-year-old girls in Chaucer’s time. I understand the term ‘teenager’ is term that was coined around the time of the Great Depression. But since the term child doesn’t seem appropriate for the responsibilities places on 12 and 13-year-olds several hundred years ago, never mind 100 years ago, what as the term used for boys and girls at that age?
davidmich
I don’t think any one had the time to wonder what to call them because they probably were too busy trying to make a living without dying of some disease or war.
To the best of my knowledge, the word “adult” doesn’t exist in Middle English, although “man” and “woman” certainly did, and might have been applied to teenagers, although I’d say that “youth” and “maid” would be more common. If we’re talking Chaucer specifically, Grisilda’s daughter in the Clerk’s Tale, aged twelve and considered marriageable within the context of the story, is referred to at various points in the story as “this mayde,” “this tendre mayden,” and, collectively with her eight-year-old brother, as “noble children.” Twelve-year-old Virginia in the Physician’s Tale is also a “mayde.” There are fewer adolescent boys in Chaucer, but “knave” gets used sometimes for young male servants, who would often have been in their teens; the Squire, aged about twenty and of a higher social status, is called a “bacheler.” (Per the online Middle English dictionary, this word can refer either to his social rank as a squire aspiring to become a knight or to his status as an unmarried youth; the two meanings seem to have shaded into one another.)
Thank you Fretful Porpentine for your very informative reply. To the best of your knowledge when if ever were children of that age called adults in England, since the term “teenager” didn’t exist and they were did take on the responsibilities of adults as of 13?
davidmich
I’m pretty sure that they were referred to simply as “boys” and “girls”.
The word “adult” didn’t exist till about 1650:
I suspect that you’re trying to make a clear distinction between children and adults that didn’t exist in Chaucer’s time.
Thanks Wendell Wagner. It’s clear to me now that the term “adult” was not used for 13 year-olds in Chaucer’s time but now that i’m aware of that the term was first used in 1650 that throws up the question of who was referred to as an “adult” ? What was the minimum age requirement to be deemed an adult?
davidmich
I think you are letting your cultural bias of our time in history affect what you think of adult and child. In our times we clearly define adult/child by chronological age. ie, that when you are a 17 year old that you are a child and that when you turn 18 you suddenly become an adult. In other times and in other cultures people would look at how developed you are and from that decide if you are adult or child. Was common for a 15 year old girl to be of marrying age not that far back in history. If you were a 20 year old girl and not married people would wonder why not? I believe part of the reason for this thinking was the high mortality rate and shorter expected lifespan. Once a girl was developed enough to bear children then it was time to become a mother. Also, with harder living conditions the kids all had to take on work to support the family and no one could afford to indulge having a kid unproductively spend their day playing games when there was work that needed to be done. If you are a 16 year old “boy” and head of the household and your 13 year old wife was pregnant with child then you really are adults and not really children any more. Nobility could afford to have an extended childhood but not the common folk.
Well in Jewish tradition boys became adults at 13 and girls at 12 following their Bar Mitzva and Bat Mitzvah respectively. I’m simply trying to determine how boys and girls were legally designated in England/English tradition. If they were simply called boys and girls, so be it. There is no doubt that children of that age bore many responsibilities we usually give adults and were expected to do so. I simply want to determine if there was a collective term for this age group after 1650.
davidmich
This from wikipedia:
The legal definition of entering adulthood usually varies between ages 16–21, depending on the region in question. Some cultures in Africa define adult at age 13…
In most of the world, including most of the United States, parts of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Wales), India and China, the legal adult age is 18 (historically 21) for most purposes, with some notable exceptions:
Scotland (United Kingdom) and the Netherlands (16)
British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Yukon Territory in Canada; Nebraska and Alabama in The United States, and South Korea (19)
Indonesia and Japan (20)
davidmich
Actually, at least in early modern England, the period I’m most familiar with, it was the other way around. (These figures are obviously from a few years after Chaucer, but my understanding is that things were similar in the late Middle Ages.) Nobility could and did marry at very young ages; ordinary people generally could not afford to. The usual pattern would have been for children to leave home in their teens, spend several years living in someone else’s household as an apprentice or domestic servant, and marry only in their mid-twenties, when they had a reasonable prospect of being able to support a family. (Bear in mind that while the average life expectancy was low, this reflects massively high infant and child mortality, as well as a high number of young women dying in childbirth. Healthy young single people weren’t dropping like flies except in wars or epidemics, and if you were a woman you were less likely to die young if you waited to get married and therefore had fewer children.)
A couple of CENTURIES after Chaucer, I mean. Sorry, not much good at thinking clearly on Sunday mornings…
I’d much prefer a good book on the subject but the link below has some useful information.
If anyone can recommend a few good books on the subject of the legal/cultural history of the “age of majority” in England, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks for all your feedback Very helpful.
davidmich
This isn’t true. There was a concept of “legal majority” in the Medieval England, its not a modern concept. Before the age of 21, they could not inherit land, were exempt from certain legal punishments and couldn’t enter into contracts.
People younger then 21 were said to be “infants” and “in there infancy” (thus the legal documents of the time often refer to 20 year-olds as “infants”, which sounds a little weird to modern ears).
It’s older than that, the Romans already had it, but at different times and locations it’s been staged differently. Same as the US have many different ages at which people can do different things (vote, drink, drive, become a Representative, Senator or President), many other cultures have had ages at which different legal actions could be done.
And were infants unable to inherit, or to administer the land themselves without a tutor?
Not necessarily. “Girl” originally meant a youth of either sex. It didn’t acquire the specific meaning of a young female until the late 14th century.
Actually the term “infant” is still used as a legal term in many states. It means something like, “person with reduced legal obligations due to age, in this circumstance.”
So for example, under the NY Penal code, in most cases people under 16 are infants before the law (they cannot bear criminal responsibility) however there are exceptions as described in the statute:
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/PEN/ONE/C/30/30.00
note that “infant” and “minor” do not have the same meaning. A 17 year old would be a minor, but not an infant before the law.
My immediate thought was “youths,” of course, but I don’t really know much about Chaucerian Middle English.
Has “youth” really been supplanted so completely by “teenager”? I blame descriptivists! 
And even the word ‘child’ hasn’t always had the meaning we think of. It originally meant a baby; for a while it could mean a young person of noble birth (as in ‘Childe Harold’). The sense we use (a young person before puberty) seems not to have evolved till late Old English.
That link says that in the 16th-17th century it was used to mean a girl child, specifically. Here in Dublin, it still occasionally gets used that way - it’s old-fashioned but in use, almost always in the phrase (referring to a new baby) ‘Is it a boy or a child?’ Someone asked me that just a few months ago.
More specifically,
So, more specifically, the Squire is referred to as yong, implying that age 20 was young enough to be considered a “young person”.
As for the bachelor remark, it’s interesting to look at the words that surround it. He is a “lover” and a “lusty bachelor”. If you read some of the lines that follow, it seems to describe a horny guy who uses his charm, appearance, and musical ability to enhance his romantic appeal. Things really haven’t changed much, have they?
Can’t sleep, too much lovemaking.
<3