Medievalists.net has an article which is a useful survey by Duncan Hardy and in which he challenges popular modern misconceptions about the lives of the medieval peasantry. In contrast it sets out something of the variety over time and place, and within particular communities, of life for individuals who might be grouped together as peasants or as being of the peasant class.
Whilst this would not be news to those with knowledge of the centuries surveyed the article does give an excellent summary to counter the stereotypes seen in films and which lie in the popular imagination. Studies which do open up surviving records can indeed be a revelation to those who are aware of the complexities of medieval daily life for the majority. It can be surprising to anyonesee how little human temperaments change, how strikingly familiar even in a very different milieu people from the past can be revealed to have been, and how diverse were individual experiences and expectations. This article is a good way to approach that understanding by pointing to the evidence and to what should, but often is not, be obvious.
The article itself, which will be in the November edition of the BBC History Magazine can be read at Why there’s no such thing as a typical medieval peasant
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