Women in Early Modern Polish Society, Against the European Background (review)

Building on her initial 1988 general study of Polish women, Dr. Bogucka's latest work is a translation into English of that publication as well as an expansion of that work. Polish women's history has thus become widely available to historians and specialists in the areas of women/gender studies of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The work is interesting, informative and written in a style that makes it highly accessible, a very welcome addition to the study of Early Modern history and is highly recommendable for all Early Modern scholars.

The Introduction provides a precise overview of the rise of women's studies in the European field, citing the move from the Annales School to the influence of feminist writers and groundbreaking work in theoretical, methodological, and methodical reflections on women's history. Stressing the importance of remembering that women's historical experiences have been varied and dependent to a large extent on the social status of each individual woman, Bogucka traces the expansion of the discipline into gender. From the Polish perspective of Early Modern women's studies, Bogucka sees the development of gender study as a social, historico-cultural and political category, the introduction of which is of enormous methodological importance in the historiographical context. Within Polish studies, she cites the necessity of developing standard concepts and terminology, and the requirement of theoretical reflections, particularly studies which devise terminology. Such a framework is needed in order to promote further research on gender in Poland. Sources are raised as a key problem area. Bogucka implies that research in Poland has so far tended to concentrate on a narrow use of available resources and reiterates the need to expand beyond this.

Practising what she preaches throughout the book, Bogucka uses a wide variety of documents and resources. Her study of the phases of women's lives from birth to womanhood, then as married and widowed women, explores women's familial position and position within society throughout the social changes experienced from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The chapter on women and economic life presents the urban and rural experience for women through the dimension of social status and levels of education. Religious life, as elsewhere, offered women pathways that were not bound by the home, and the discussion of the impact of the Reformation on Polish women provides an informative view of women and religion.

The great debate about women in Polish society examines the impact of humanist publications and the views of theologians and lawyers on the nature of women. Medical debates, discussions through literary mediums such as satires, poems and ballads, as well as the contributions from women writers on the subject, are shown to have had little impact in Poland. Indeed, statements in favour of women were made at the beginning of the sixteenth century in Poland and, although there were detractors, misogynistic publications were few. The chapter concludes with an overview of Polish witchcraft studies as an aspect of the Early Modern discussion about women, the emphasis on archival research being paramount in what Bogucka regards as a fledgling but highly significant aspect of Polish women's studies.

The chapter on patterns of female behaviour cites the mainly positive literature on views of the perfect Polish woman, but makes the point that the literary ideal and the social reality presented a very different picture. Women in Old Poland 'were frequently temperamental persons of an impetuous, vehement, sometimes even adventurous, character.' Learned rather than folk mass culture is the topic of the women and culture chapter, mainly because folk mass culture has undergone very little research in Poland. The education of women in Poland was dependent on social status but no real progress in the education of women was achieved until the end of the sixteenth century. The decline in male education amongst the nobility from the second half of the seventeenth century enabled women to play a greater...