Women in Early Medieval Europe, 400–1100 by Lisa M. Bitel (review)

REVIEWS 208 Lisa M. Bitel, Women in Early Medieval Europe, 400–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002) 326 pp., 18 b/w ill. Women in Early Medieval Europe is the most recent volume in the Cambridge Medieval Textbook series. The purpose of this series is to offer broad introductions to a variety of historical topics; it is primarily aimed at students and teachers . Bitel’s contribution to this project is, as she puts it, an attempt to present “not just a history of women, but a history of the early European Middle Ages through the eyes of women” (12). In other words, this book is intended to do more than simply plug the holes in the existing historiography by inserting information about women wherever evidence of them can be found. To be sure, Bitel does want to flesh out the stories of hitherto marginalized figures to the extent that the meager evidence will allow. However, her larger objective is to reexamine the canonical story of the early Middle Ages from a new historiographical perspective: to look at well-known evidence in a new way. In Bitel’s view, the evidence that has passed down to us from this time period has been molded and preserved according to men’s concerns, men’s memories, men’s categories and men’s priorities. This applies not only to the evidence itself, of course, but also to the way it has been interpreted by scholars in subsequent centuries. What Bitel wants to present, then, is a history of early medieval Europe that takes into account the gendered nature of the evidence, reads between lines written by men and manages to tell us something about the perspectives and day-to-day experiences of women. This, as one might imagine, is a devilishly difficult thing to do. “Early Medieval Europe” is a big place and seven hundred years is a long time. The existing evidence is finite but tremendously varied. Bitel considers everything from law codes to narrative histories to images to archaeological remains, and an astonishing range of items in between. Armed with these tools she tackles her massive subject: in effect, every woman who lived in Europe between 400 and 1100 A.D. The book is arranged roughly chronologically. Its five main chapters, sandwiched between introduction and conclusion, are organized around broad themes. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with the physical world at the beginning of the Middle Ages, the movements of different groups of people around this world, and the role of women in the shifting landscape. The middle portion of the book, chapters 3 and 4, acts as a transition, providing a synchronic treatment of themes such as religion, kinship structures and family dynamics. Chapter 5 deals with the latter half of Bitel’s period, and centers on economic change, gendering of labor and an analysis of women’s economic opportunities during these years. It goes without saying that any attempt to cover this much ground in a single volume is bound to leave some readers unsatisfied, especially those with a passion for detail. The fact that Bitel’s book is intended to be a broad introduction rather than an in-depth historical analysis does much to mitigate that dissatisfaction . However, even as an introductory text it is problematic in several respects . As noted already, the variety of places, times, cultures and types of evidence being handled is quite dizzying. Because the book is organized along thematic lines rather than geographic or strictly chronological ones, this can lead to confusion even for the most attentive reader. For instance, at one point in the dis- REVIEWS 209 cussion of kinship and family structures Bitel breezily surveys, in the space of four pages, examples from the law codes and literature of Ireland, Frankish Gaul, Scandinavia, Visigothic Spain, southern Italy and Brittany (160–163). It is disorienting to try and follow a discussion that is jumping so rapidly from place to place. Even more distressing, the author is dealing with her theme as if it transcends time and place—a reckless thing to do in a book aimed at students, who tend to have difficulty thinking historically in the first place. It is hard to...