History of Women in the West

By Michelle Perrot and Georges Duby

Book Overview

Drawing on myriad sources--from the faint traces left by the rocking of a cradle at the site of an early medieval home to an antique illustration of Eve's fall from grace--this second volume in the celebrated series offers new perspectives on women of the past. Twelve distinguished historians from many countries examine the image of women in the masculine mind, their social condition, and their daily experience from the demise of the Roman Empire to the genesis of the Italian Renaissance.

More than in any other era, a medieval woman's place in society was determined by men; her sexuality was perceived as disruptive and dangerous, her proper realm that of the home and cloister. The authors draw upon the writings of bishops and abbots, moralists and merchants, philosophers and legislators, to illuminate how men controlled women's lives. Sumptuary laws regulating feminine dress and ornament, pastoral letters admonishing women to keep silent and remain chaste, and learned treatises with their fantastic theories about women's physiology are fully explored in these pages. As adoration of the Virgin Mary reached full flower by the year 1200, ecclesiastics began to envision motherhood as a holy role; misogyny, however, flourished unrestrained in local proverbs, secular verses, and clerical thought throughout the period.

Were women's fates sealed by the dictates of church and society? The authors investigate legal, economic, and demographic aspects of family and communal life between the sixth and the fifteenth centuries and bring to light the fleeting moments in which women managed to seize some small measure of autonomy over their lives. The notion that courtly love empowered feudal women is discredited in this volume. The pattern of wear on a hearthstone, fingerprints on a terracotta pot, and artifacts from everyday life such as scissors, thimbles, spindles, and combs are used to reconstruct in superb detail the commonplace tasks that shaped women's existence inside and outside the home. As in antiquity, male fantasies and fears are evident in art. Yet a growing number of women rendered visions of their own gender in sumptuous tapestries and illuminations. The authors look at the surviving texts of female poets and mystics and document the stirrings of a quiet revolution throughout the West, as a few daring women began to preserve their thoughts in writing.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674403681
• ISBN13: 9780674403680
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 1.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Medieval misogyny: not exonerated, but explained

The Virginia Quarterly Review comments: "Analyses of medieval popular culture and art are woven together judiciously in this comprehensive and well-informed volume." The Review caught the book's strengths just right. Its thoughtful assembly and much of its writing shimmers. The book makes the non-rational logic of medieval minds much clearer. Editor Christiane Klapisch-Zuber marshals participating authors and their work in a well-ordered sequence, showing her command of subject and materials in her Introduction, "Including Women." She starts at the appropriate pressure point, with Western Europe's first female professional writer, Christine de Pisan, and her "The City of Ladies." Klapisch-Zuber writes, "Just as the Middle Ages were giving way to the Renaissance, around 1400," Christine de Pisan was describing the "misfortune" of having been born a woman. For the first time a western woman dared to dissect and expose the "women's issue" in writing for publication. Six hundred years later, "A History of Women in the West, Volume II, Silences of the Middle Ages" is still pressing the task that Christine de Pisan started, exploring and explaining the plight of the medieval female condition with a broader brush. Its first part, "Norms of Control," describes the need for priests to supervise women and explores the "Nature of Woman" (which was held to be different and inferior from the "better" male gender). Naturally, such weak and erratic beings needed protection, not least from themselves--which brings us to the final section of the first part. The book leads us through well-balanced essays where expert authors explain how society--especially the male half--tied itself in knots to solve the mystery: What is "Woman"? Two and a half centuries earlier, Eleanor of Aquitaine's Court of Ladies had argued the case for women as the arbiters of social graces, and for a while the female condition in Christendom improved. But reactionary forces soon clawed back most gains: reactionaries found their literary champion in Jean de Meun's satirical "Romance of the Rose." In her turn, Christine de Pisan launched a resolute literary counterattack against de Meun. Essays in "A History of Women in the West, Volume II, Silences of the Middle Ages" lead logically forward, charting the medieval ebb and flow of women's lib. and anti-lib. We accompany the changing status of women in a journey both informative and entertaining. Robert Fripp, Author, "Power of a Woman. Memoirs of...Eleanor of Aquitaine"

Actually, this book is quite good

Blame it on my European origin, but it was pleasing, like a change of the landscape, to read most of the essays. Even though I do consider myself a feminist, I was glad to finally find a modern academic book which doesn't share the pretentious and dry obsession about gender! The style is fluid, with many anecdotes. Of course, one could argue that it is sometimes too easy-going or not focused enough, but it is a recommendable introduction.