Woman is a worthy wight: women in English society c. 1200-1500 (review)

Reviews 143 satiric and negative comments on w o m e n in Jacobean texts as 'perhaps reflecting King James's dislike of women' is again to simplify to a personal bias the massive misogyny of a wide range of popular literature. While the appearance of new early m o d e m texts avaUable forteachingis always to be welcomed, this edition wiU need to be used with caution. Patricia Crawford Department of History University of Western Australia Goldberg, P. J. P., ed., Woman is a worthy wight: women in English society c. 1200-1500, Stroud and Wolfeboro Falls, Alan Sutton, 1992; cloth; pp. xvii, 229; 22 tables, 3figures;R.R.P. £28.00, US$62.00. This collection of essays, which grew out of a conference at Clare College, Cambridge, in 1988, is a fine example of recent work by demographic historians on later medieval England. By investigating extant historical records the contributors to this volume aim not only to shed light on the social circumstances of English women in the late Middle Ages but also to illuminate the structure of the family and households, age at marriage, and patterns of migration. The records drawn on are varied, and of considerable interest. They include pastoral manuals, letters, deposition records, wills, didactictexts,court rolls, cloister archaeology, and nunnery seals. The sequence of essays is nicely arranged. Thefirstfour are concerned with the implications of marriage for medieval English women's economic and social situation: 'Marriage, migration, and servanthood: the York cause paper evidence' by P. J. P. Goldberg, 'Geographical diversity in the resort to marriage in late medieval Europe: work, reputation, and unmarried females in the household formation systems of northern and southern England' by Richard M . Smith, 'Marriage patterns and women's lives: a sketch of a pastoral geography' by P. P. A. Biller, and ' "For better, for worse": marriage and economic opportunity for women in town and country', also by P. J. P. Goldberg. The second half of the collection broadens the focus to survey women in relation to labour, landholding, charity and piety: ' "A woman's work . . . ": labour and gender in the late medieval countryside' by Helena Graham, '"How ladies . . . who live on then manors ought to manage then households and estates": w o m e n as landholders and administrators in the later Middle Ages' by Rowena E. Archer, '"And his name was charite": charitable giving 144 Reviews by and for women in late medieval Yorkshire' by P. H. Cullen, and '"Blessed art thou among women": the archaeology of female piety' by Roberta Gilchrist. A recurrent theme of the essays is the contrast between the records of north-western Europe, as evidenced in the English material, and those of the Mediterranean. In England, for instance, marriage tended to be companionate, and many of those who later married had spent time in service in then adolescence and early adult years (Goldberg, p. 7). Whereas in northern Italy entering into service seemed to be the path followed by those who had not married, in England women appear to have turned to marriage as a consequence of having been driven out of the labour market (Smith, pp. 45-46). Another theme elaborated in the essays of Graham, Archer, and Gilchrist is Bynum's observation of the nexus in the medieval period between women and food; especially, in this context, in its production, sale, and charitable distribution. Overall, this collection presents carefuUy argued and very well annotated research. Because of the quality of the interpretations and the historical scholarship underpinning them, the records, varied and scanty as they sometimes are, prove to be illuminating indeed. Judy Quinn Department of English University of Sydney Goldstein, Bernard R. and David Pingree, Levi ben Gerson's prognostication for the conjunction of 1345 (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 80, part 6), Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1990; paper; pp. 60; R.R.P. US$12.00. This is an edition of an astrological work, left incomplete upon his death, written by the famous Jewish scholar, Gersonides, (1238-1344); albeit that neither that name, nor his acronym Ralbag, are mentioned in the introduction, even though less consequential aliases are given. Although he made frequent references...