She shares insights, and at the paragraph level I read happily, but the abrupt changes of direction tired me, the prospect of the next chapter was a little wearying, so much so that Seierstad was able to grab me by the hand and drag me off to spend One Hundred and One Days in Baghdad with her in the middle of reading Leyser's book. The downside of this is that if you asked me to recommend a book to learn about the lives of Anglo-Saxon aristocratic women, Female monasticism, peasant women, I could not recommend this one on it's own, Leyser eludes comprehensiveness. Perhaps that is a point that Leyser wanted to make.

Bridget of Sweden and her daughters fight their way in even if Joan of Arc doesn't. The reality of the book undermines the subtitle, there can't be a history – a narrative – of all women, covering a thousand years and more, even if one only considers England not that Leyser does that exclusively, St. It makes for a curious reading experience, like wandering through the bare bones of a very much longer book that hasn't yet been written. The chapters, bar one or two references, are not interlinked, you could read them as free-standing, well not as free-standing essays because the chapters plainly are not like essays – they pose no one question and come to no one answer. That was my experience of reading this book – the closest thing I've ever come across to a historical If on a Winter's Night a traveller.Įach chapter covers different topic Archaeology, History & Hagiography, Law Codes, Vernacular Literature, 1066 for Women, Sex Marriage & Motherhood, Women at Work, Widows, Female Monasticism, Anchoresses and Recluses, Lay Piety, Literary Interests & Images. From there your companion points out below the flash of sunlight on a distant stream, a stretch of path emerging then disappearing among the trees, a corner of a glade.

36.You've climbed up through woodland to the summit of a hill.

MEDIEVAL WOMEN celebrates the diversity and vitality of English women's lives in the Middle Ages. The intellectual and spiritual worlds of medieval women are also explored.

9781842126219 Medieval Women 36.9000 NZD InStock /shop/books/non-fiction/history /shop/books /shop/books/non-fiction /shop/books/non-fiction/history/general /shop/books/non-fiction/mathematics-science /shop/books/non-fiction/history/military-history /shop/books/non-fiction/mathematics-science/engineering-technology Henrietta Leyser considers the problems and attitudes fundamental to every woman of the time: medieval views on sex, marriage and motherhood the world of work and the experience of widowhood for peasant, townswoman and aristocrat.

Medieval Women by Henrietta Leyser