The previous chapter spent much time analysing the impact of the ‘holy’ women of medieval drama. But as Coletti observes, many of the women within the cycle dramas are ‘vulgar’, they are the worldly helpers and servers. Coletti's observation on the role that women play raises the difficulty of how to interpret these women as their roles barely seem more than secondary. I have discussed some of the reasons that women characters seem so resistant to a ‘feminist’ reading: namely that they are frequently influenced by their biblical antecedents. In order to counter this tradition I want to foreground various aspects of the context that surrounds women characters. By placing them within historical and cultural frameworks it is possible to release them from the margins.

It is obvious that there must be a relationship between the fictional representation of women and their position in medieval society. I have detailed within the Introduction the ways in which much medieval drama, and in particular the mystery cycles, were formed through a dialogic relationship with their participants and thus were based upon a strong relationship with the social matrix. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the Chester ale-wife.