Yet it’s the almost incidental moments that give real glimpses of everyday life in the medieval period.Ĥ. By following a poor woman for a year, the reader gains insights into broader issues including natural disasters and plague. However, most of us would have lived lives more like that of the protagonist of this book – Marion. When asked what historical person they would have been, the majority of people pick out a ruler or a rich person. Medieval Women: Village Life in the Middle Ages by Ann Baer But many travelled vast distances and engaged with cultures thousands of miles away, as this book reveals.ģ. It is easy to assume that everyone in the middle ages, particularly women, lived and died within sight of their local parish church. River Kings: The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads by Cat JarmanĪrchaeology has always looked for the many rather than the few, so it is the natural bedfellow for more inclusive historical approaches. This book has also affected the true crime genre, where more writers are focusing on victims rather than perpetrators.Ģ. By immersing readers in the social conditions the women experienced, the five have contexts other than being written off as “prostitutes”. Rather than continuing to fetishise the murderer, Hallie presents the victims’ stories. This book has done more for women’s history than almost any other. The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold Here are 10 books that have pushed the boundaries of history as a discipline and put the women back in:ġ. My approach puts the frame on lost women to expose broader societies and draw in others that have also been overlooked. Not just mothers and wives, these medieval women are spies, writers, scientists, entrepreneurs and warriors – all words usually associated with men. In writing Femina I wanted to show a version of the medieval world that is as rich and diverse as our present, full of fascinating characters who challenge assumptions. Putting the frame on them can allow us a different way of thinking about the past. Women have always made up half the globe’s population. Breakthroughs in archaeology, with the help of technology and science, are bringing us a rich and full cast of people who lived before us.

Today we can all access archives, have our DNA examined, trace our genealogies and research globally at the click of a mouse. Looking for lost women requires a different set of tools and techniques. But they also seek people from the past through the words, rituals, songs, artwork, buildings and music they’ve left behind. Historians found their work on documents and artefacts.

Medieval Women by Henrietta Leyser