Conduct Becoming: Good Wives and Husbands in the Later Middle Ages by Glenn D. Burger (review)

Conduct Becoming analyzes conduct literature of the later Middle Ages to explore the developing concept of the "good wife." This new model of wifehood accommodates secular daily reality and asserts the value of the affective bond in marriage. Glenn Burger argues that texts written for women offer a model of feminine virtue defined not by virginity but by contribution to the domestic household and the larger social order it reflects. He explores the repercussions of this new model for gender relations, affect and emotion, and class identity. Burger's claims are rich and thought provoking, and this book will be of interest to those working in gender, marriage, class, and late medieval subject formation.

Chapter One reads the journées chrétiennes as a secular Book of Hours, providing a religious structure for the housewife's day that offers her an opportunity for virtue previously restricted to virgins. The chapter provides informative and nuanced background on literacy practices, in particular a discussion of the spiritual and mental shift that resulted from the rise in silent reading. Connecting silent mental scripts to embodied practice, Burger draws heavily on Sarah McNamer's work to argue that these texts facilitate an intimate affective script performed in external habitus. Burger goes on to compare texts aimed at an unspecified audience with ones aimed at female readers, arguing that both use similar strategies to foster private devotion and to break down barriers of class and gender, encouraging hybridity and androgyny. His reading could have benefitted from additional close analysis of the text, but this is a minor quibble with an informative and compelling chapter.

Chapter Two turns to conventional conduct literature aimed at the good wife, primarily focusing on Le Livre du chevalier de la Tour Landry. Burger sees conduct texts as expansive and hybrid, and this hybridity enables the construction of a new ethical subject through performative reading strategies. Burger claims that these texts treat women as capable of improvement. However, the discussion of the Chevalier text focused on the good husband more so than the good wife. While Burger rightly states that the construction of the good wife necessarily entails a corresponding construction of the good husband, I would have been interested to see more analysis of how these two identify-formation processes work independently as well as relationally. Additionally, some consideration of place and context could have enriched this chapter, particularly in the analysis of Le Livre du chevalier and its English translation by Caxton.

Chapter Three looks at the movement of gendered ideas of secular conduct from the noble context into the merchant household in Le Menagier de Paris. Burger argues that the text reflects the hybrid household space and class identity of a merchant, encouraging fluid self-identification. This chapter delves into the concept of the affective contract, which goes beyond the strictly legal contract into a more productive and performative model based on care. The affective contract as modeled in Le Menagier, Burger argues, consists in the husband's care to assist his wife in her desire to improve and the wife's obedience and submission in seeking her husband's instruction. Burger also examines the text's structure, claiming that the narrative experimentation in the text matches merchant class experimentation in forming social identities.

Chapter Four traces the Griselda story from Boccaccio's Decameron through Petrarch's Latin translation into the re-vernacularizations of Philippe de Mézières and Chaucer. While the longest chapter in the book, it is also the richest in close textual analysis and the most persuasive. Burger argues that Boccaccio's version offers a case limit in the affective contract: the tale justifies Gualtieri on the grounds of husbandly concern while also depicting such excessive concern as unsettlingly close to tyranny. Petrarch's retelling accepts the affective contract and compares it to larger social contracts. In Petrarch, Griselda is both real and exemplary, and Burger claims that...