Women and Power in the Middle Ages (review)

Reviews 123 Erler, M . and M . Kowaleski, eds, Women and Power in the Middle Ages, Athens, Ga., and London, U. of Georgia Press, 1988; pp.vii, 277; 24 ill., 1 map; R.R.P. cloth U S $30.00, paperback U S $15.00. This is the book of a theme conference. Almost any scholar's interests, can, with ingenuity, be encompassed in theme conferences. Medievdists being notably ingenious, it is no surprise that these eleven articles on women's power cover sanctity, domestic love, submissive patience and fictiond sisterhood, besides the superficially more obvious subjects: citizenship, patronage, literacy and land transactions. The editorsrightlyjustify their broad scope by the fact that power comprised both public authority and the ability to effect gods and influence decisions. Studies which ignore women's means of achieving these powers are unacceptably narrow. A broader vision of power allows rediscovery and re-examination of neglected evidence; for instance, the use and iconography of women's seds (Rezak), or women's appearances in village legd records (Bennett). But it shodd also lead torigorousre-workingof historicd methods and concepts of power and gender. Otherwise w e risk achieving only a token inclusion of a few women within existing categories. McNamara and Wemple's article exemplifies this danger. Reprinted from their semind study (1973), it shows Carolingian noblewomen exercising some politicd and administrative power, often through family connections. But what about those non-Carolingian women drdted (Herlihy argues) into domestic labour on great abbey estates? Did family structures empower them? If not what was 'power ... through the family'? Did it relate to gender or status? This may forcere-evduationof the general constructs, 'power' and 'gender'. Gender, indeed, is rarely examinedrigorouslyhere. Ferrante deals elegantly with the ironic humility metaphors employed by medievd authoresses. She never tries to define (as Bynum has, with mysticd writings) distinctive femde and m d e elements of authorid disclaimers. Hanawdt elucidates Lady Lisle's skill in sixteenth-century patronage games without ever comparing her methods to those of m d e players. O d y Freeman (on Marie de France's 'Le Fresne'), and Bennett, truly examine gender differences. Implications arising for therelationshipof gender to the public/private dichotomy are often neglected. The editors dfirm that the public/private distinction 'accounts for gneder asymmetry'. Does it? Howell's medievd German townspeople apparently redefinedradicallypublic and private power. Citizenship became a matter for politicians (public men) rather than families. Schulenburg argues that 'fear of the femde sex' led tenth-century churchmen to impose domestic, rather than public administrative, roles onto women sdnts. Perhaps gender considerations strengthened and redefined the public/private <24 Reviews boundary, rather than vice versa. If so, medievalists could refine the anthropologicd theories they use. Few seem willing to attempt this. In short, most articles here appear unnecessarily timid. Chojnacki's insights into the complex agnatic, cognatic and friendly relationships siurounding Venetian marriages have huge unstated implications for Rendssance socid history. Hansen's subtle study of Griselda's subversive silence in Chaucer's 'Clerk's Tde' could, but does not, andyse the potentid demode destructiveness c o m m o d y imputed to medievd women. Strangely, the book ignores this darker side of women's power, although Eve's reputed success as temptress was paradoxicdly important in debarring her daughters from medievd public authority. Only Bell's article is dispensable. Its ridiculous cldm to tabulate all European laywomen book-owners, 800-1500, its wild leaps to unverifiable conclusions, and its overwhelmingly second-hand sources, disqudify it for inclusion in serious scholarship. This book fdls to ded with the great issues itraises,dthough these issues arise from the richness and variety of the contributors' research, and the book therefore deserves serious attention. Philippa Maddem Department of History University of Western Australia Fox, A. and G. Waite, eds, A Concordance to the Complete English Poems of John Skelton, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1987; pp.1001; R.R.P. U S $49.95. If a concordance is the bulky headstone that indicates that a poet's reputation has findly been ldd to rest with honour, then Skelton's is not so much overdue as distinctly premature. He received a burst of popularising enthusiasm in the twenties and thirties and a sluggish tide of scholarship in the sixties, but for a poet of his range, skill, learning and inherent complexity he has been remarkably little examined. There are extrinsic reasons for this, such as his fdlure to be a comfortably datable medievd or rendssance writer, and dso the disabling disrepute in which he fell in the sixteenth century. Then the intrinsic problems appear: he wrote neither improving narrative, nor introverted dream vision, nor passionate love poem, nor self-reflexive monologue. Instead, he offers art, craft registers of style, ranges of topoi, the regular business of a major and at the same time minor poet ...