Freedman guessed right. In the film, Richard’s mother, Joan of Kent (Katherine Waterston), who is simply called “the countess,” is not one of Richard
Freedman guessed right. In the film, Richard’s mother, Joan of Kent (Katherine Waterston), who is simply called “the countess,” is not one of Richard’s advisers but subtly urges him to exercise his power as the kingdom’s rightful ruler. When her carriage crosses paths with The Ploughman, she appears sympathetic and tells him that she prays God will reveal his will through her son. In reality, “We know nothing about her influence in the revolt,” according to Freedman.
Greengrass’s film also portrays a fictional peasant woman with shorn hair called Alyce (Thomasin McKenzie), who befriends The Ploughman en route to London and ultimately becomes the rebel leaders’ sidekick. After the peasants spend a night killing and looting, The Ploughman, sickened by what he’s seen, chooses to return home. Alyce then tells him how a monk raped her and her baby was taken away, which, for some unclear reason, changes The Ploughman’s mind, and he turns around to rejoin the revolt.
But Jones provides a more confident view of women’s involvement: “Given that women were 50% of the population, they played a big role in the revolt,” he says. “In a popular rebellion where women are workers just like men, there is actually far less of an all-male affair.”
From Pestilence to Revolt
The Ploughman’s family was wiped out seven years earlier during the Black Death, which he calls “the sickness,” but which was historically more frequently referred to as “the pestilence.” The Black Death actually occurred decades before the Peasants’ Revolt, in the overdue 1340s and early 1350s. And while it ravaged the population, Freedman says, “If you managed to survive the Black Death, which is a big if, then nutrition levels, economic opportunity, they increased.” It’s uncomplicated math. “If a third of the population dies, the price of labor should go up astronomically. You still need people to harvest. You still need servants. In a non-machine or limited-machine era, wages should go up. And so there is, to some extent, a revolution of what’s called ‘rising expectations,’” he explains.
But in 1349, the year after the Black Death broke out, Parliament passed legislation prohibiting wage increases. This was followed by the Statute of Laborers in 1351, which sought to restrict peasants from moving elsewhere to seek higher pay. Freedman says, “There’s some debate as to whether this legislation had any effect at all”—but what the legislation did do was enrage the peasant class, which had come to expect a higher standard of living. That anger, simmering for decades, finally boiled over during the revolt.
One reason The Uprising is a fitting tale for our times is the obvious parallels with COVID-19: A society grapples with devastation wrought by a pandemic. But according to Freedman, the social fabric of the overdue Middle Ages was actually much stronger than it is today. “What’s amazing to me is that the society actually held together. It’s impossible to avoid comparisons with COVID, which had a mortality rate of 1%, 2%, maybe for elderly people 4%, yet it completely upended American society. You would expect that the Black Death might end the hegemony of the Church, might lead to a kind of anarchic disruption. It’s an indication of the strength of the bonds of society at the time that it survives,” Freedman says.
