A history of village life told through the experiences of Cecilia Penifader, a peasant woman who lived in the early fourteenth century, the second edition of A Medieval Life features an entirely revamped illustration program and sidebars that reveal how medieval historians are able to reconstruct the past from scattered evidence.
Access options:
The following links lead to the full text from the respective local libraries:
"Written for everyone interested in women's and gender history, History Matters reaffirms the importance to feminist theory and activism of long-term historical perspectives. Judith M. Bennett, who has been commenting on developments in women's and gender history since the 1980s, argues that the achievement of a more feminist future relies on a rich, plausible, and well-informed knowledge of the past, and she asks her readers to consider what sorts of feminist history can best advance the struggles of the twenty-first century."--Jacket
A singular past / Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide -- Singlewomen in medieval and early modern Europe: the demographic perspective / Maryanne Kowaleski -- "It is not good that [wo]man should be alone": elite responses to singlewomen in high medieval Paris / Sharon Farmer -- Single by law and custom / Susan Mosher Stuard -- Sex and the singlewoman / Ruth Mazo Karras -- Transforming maidens: singlewomen's stories in Marie de France's Lais and later French courtly narratives / Roberta L. Krueger -- Having her own smoke: employment and independence for singlewomen in Germany, 1400-1750 / Merry E. Wiesner -- Singlewomen in early modern Venice: Communities and opportunities / Monica Chojnacka -- Marital status as a category of difference: singlewomen and widows in early modern England / Amy M. Froide -- The Sapphic strain: English lesbians in the long eighteenth century / Margaret R. Hunt -- Singular politics: the rise of the British nation and the production of the old maid / Susan S. Lanser
AbstractFollowing on from 'Married and not: Weston's grown children in 1268–1269', this article places the Lincolnshire village of Weston within a realm-wide context to demonstrate that, as the rural economy stumbled after c. 1250, many young women and men either delayed marriage or could not marry at all. The European Marriage Pattern (late marriage for some and no marriage for others) can be discerned in England long before the socio-economic adjustments that followed the Black Death, and it grew mainly from poverty, not prosperity.
AbstractIn 1268–1269 Spalding Priory created an inventory of its male serfs in Weston and the whereabouts of their offspring. Historical demographers have long laboured over this unique document, but their efforts have brought more confusion than consensus. Aiming to revive the historical utility of the Weston inventory, this article provides context for the inventory and access to the text itself. It also reorients analysis of the inventory away from a focus on households and families (both unsatisfactorily reported) and towards the extensive information it contains about how a generation of serf children grew into adulthood.
Based on arguments developed more fully in the author's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (2006), this article urges historians of women and gender to develop a richer appreciation of the distant past. The article uses data from recent conferences and journals to demonstrate that our field is now overly focused on the modern era, and especially the last century. Then, in the spirit of encouraging further discussion and debate, the article lays out some reasons for this contemporary tilt, some ways we might right the balance and some benefits of doing just that.
This exploratory essay shows how attention to long-term continuities in the status of women can create new interpretive possibilities for women's history. These continuities suggest a patriarchal equilibrium that has worked to maintain the status of European women in times of political, social, and economic change. This essay suggests a critical distinction between change in women's experiences and transformation in women's status, and it illustrates how historians of women have often confused one for the other. Arguing that narratives of transformation are unduly dominant in women's history, this essay then analyzes four factors that have promoted this dominance. The essay uses European history to frame its discussion but suggests that its conclusions might be applicable beyond Europe. The essay closes with an example, taken from the history of women in the English brewing industry, of how the concept of patriarchal equilibrium opens new and productive questions.
