Practising Shame: Female Honour in Later Medieval England by Mary C. Flannery (review)

To say that Mary Flannery's Practising Shame: Female Honour in Later Medieval England is timely would be an understatement. Through close analysis of popular and understudied texts, Flannery gives the reader a thorough tour of the double bind that is shamefastness, a bind that encouraged women to practice humility and yet, simultaneously, excoriated them for being false practitioners of shamefastness, as the practice was an obstacle for men's lust. Shamefast women themselves became targets of the very same male misogynistic writers for practicing shamefastness, but since men could never be sure of their honor, these women were insulted as being false. In our own moment, when the integrity of women's testimony has stood at the center of high-profile trials and convictions, Flannery's book reveals how deeply this ideological misogyny is embedded.

Flannery begins by addressing the issues surrounding concepts of shame, honor, and proof, and how the burden of proving one's shamefastness falls on women and the manner in which they present themselves. She outlines that shamefastness is tied to a number of different genres that encouraged women to practice a "specific emotional disposition: a hypervigilance against the possibility of disgrace that was commonly referred to as shamefastness" (2). With this definition, Flannery proceeds to trace the nuanced recommendations as to how women should behave, guard themselves and their chastity, and present themselves garbed in humility to men—all in the name of virtuous living. One might point out the subtext running throughout this amazing book: women have always had to prove themselves to men at the same time as they sacrifice their identity to fit an impossible category.

Flannery situates her work in the tradition of the study of habitus, the concept first proposed by Pierre Bourdieu that allows for an analysis of the communal standards that are "baked into" a person's behaviors. As she points out, theological and philosophical understandings of habitus highlight the conscious elements in the perfection of behavior; the conscious intent leads to an analysis of the practices of shamefastness in which knowing how to act shamefastly may lead to accusations of falseness: Is the practitioner of shamefastness indeed shamefast inside and out? It is the woman, of course, who must bear the brunt of answering this question. Flannery's many contributions in this book include this distinction between shamefastness and shame itself. While shame is an oft-discussed emotion in medieval studies of late, shamefastness is unique and is most pointed at women's sense of honor.

In Chapter 1, "Show and Tell: Shame and the Subject of Women's Bodies," Flannery explores the double bind of shamefastness within metaphors of concealing and revealing. She focuses on "prevytees," the word for female genitalia, to examine the relationship between shame and the embodiment of shamefastness. She points out the ways that female nakedness is more erotically charged than male nakedness, connecting that double standard to concepts of sexual continence and chastity. As the Middle Ages progressed, all women—whether married or not—were supposed to practice a kind of shamefastness that suggested they were not sexually promiscuous. Flannery turns to two Middle English texts on women's health: The Sickness of Women, a translation of Gilbertus Anglicus's Compendium medicinae, and The Knowing of Women's Kind in Childing, which is the earliest translation of sections of the Trotula. Both of these texts frame women's ability to talk about their medical problems and ailments with their doctors. Flannery examines how each text assumes a female community, addressing women and invoking shamefastness as a key to discussing women's unique medical issues. However, as she notes, they both invoke shamefastness as a key to reading. In other words, acknowledging women's shamefastness in this context allows for a more "courteous and charitable" (51) attitude toward women. These texts school men to be better.

In Chapter 2, "Lessons in Shame," Flannery examines how conduct literature educates...