Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in Medieval England by David Gary Shaw (review)

REVIEWS 296 confessions and rumors surrounding them, it should come as no surprise that this latter half contains the most alluring material. In the third part, “Womanhood ,” it is a real strength of scholarly approach to turn the female point of view from the witches to those who had reason to fear them the most: young brides and mothers, whose concerns over fertility and healthy children were often heightened by the antagonism of elderly maids armed with diabolical salves and curses, if they were scorned by their younger counterparts. Widening the scope, Roper takes us through the various artistic representations (here the book is lavishly illustrated) of elderly women and witches, both mangled, perverted caricatures set against the healthy and fertile mother, deemed especially valuable in eras of depopulation. The researcher gives heed to the larger construct of cultural prejudice against the elderly woman, an attitude that lurked behind the persecution and prosecution of witches and existed independently as a set, preventative measure rather than a reaction against farmstead mischief. This shift in contemporary notions of witchcraft, the move to identify and deter its genesis, rather than respond to its manifestations, underscores the last section of the book, misleadingly titled “The Witch.” This is the last stop in Roper’s study, the eighteenth century and its growing desire to undergo psychological examinations of the accused and record the psychological motives of the accusers, an approach that suits the present book quite well. The last chapter, “A Witch in the Age of the Enlightenment,” may very well be the most readable of the book. In a rare moment of dictating a chapter by a single case study, that of Catharina Schmid, Roper confronts the testimonies not primarily of farmers whose animals do not produce milk, but of “people, their loves, tiffs and jealousies.” This far removed from the heyday of witchcraft investigations in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, we encounter not the folklore and boogeyman stories of Macbeth and earlier dramatists, but a more scientific approach to possession and witches and the anxieties and prejudices of the society that feared them, all of which is encapsulated by Roper’s interest in the “unconscious.” Such attitudes towards witchcraft may still seem naive later centuries, but it marks another step towards Freud, seemingly always on Roper’s mind, and the increasingly modern analysis of these same matters. Herein lies the value of reading both through the increasingly objective records of the witchcraft era and beyond them to the collective fears and opinions outside the interrogation room. CHARLES RUSSELL STONE, English, UCLA David Gary Shaw, Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in Medieval England (New York and Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2005) xiii + 292 pp. Through all of its complexities, Necessary Conjunctions follows the central course of challenging previously-held assumptions about the Middle Ages as self-effacing in isolation and/or communally oriented in structure. David Gary Shaw skillfully directs us to the “medieval possibility” (4) of responsive “human agency” and “medieval personhood” (3) as the most active constituents of historically neglected realities. Now is the time, he argues, to recover “nuance, skepticism, and close attention to detail” (5), and focused attention on the activities of “quieter more common people” (3) as participants in socialization REVIEWS 297 is an appropriate beginning. In fact, chronicling the drive to create one’s identity should be appreciated as “grander than reality” (13); such an approach is often more informative than any other form of writing centered on historical evidence. Shaw’s ambitious project is centered on medieval law courts, clothing styles, and gendered obligations. The medieval world was “overwhelmed” by social reorganization that “rarely left them alone” (47). Frustrations and rebellions, often within similar social groups and with a multiplicity of “physical and material” (123) reverberations, ultimately demanded an emotional and spatial outlet. Yet while medieval law was often the means of arbitration and reprobation , it was also a significant rite of passage for those seeking “social and political advancement” (17). Additionally, a myriad of defense strategies for honor and self-preservation often went beyond traditional concerns for the preservation of name and property. Social maneuvers elevated the constructed ideals of emotional balance and the...