The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society

by Eleanor Janega

A “provocative, colloquial and entertaining” (Carolyne Larrington, Times Literary Supplement) exploration of medieval thinking about women’s beauty, sexuality, and behavior.



“A timely corrective…Ms. Janega’s witty but merciless dissection of medieval misogyny is a welcome challenge to us to stop recycling the same old prejudices.”—Elizabeth Lowry, Wall Street Journal


What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love, and be? In this vibrant, high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages, the era that bridged the ancient world and modern society, to unfurl its suppositions about women and reveal what’s shifted over time—and what hasn’t.


Enshrined medieval thinkers, almost always male, subscribed to a blend of classical Greek and Roman philosophy and Christian theology for their concepts of the sexes. For the height of female attractiveness, they chose the mythical Helen of Troy, whose imagined pear shape, small breasts, and golden hair served as beauty’s epitome. Casting Eve’s shadow over medieval women, they derided them as oversexed sinners, inherently lustful, insatiable, and weak. And, unless a nun, a woman was to be the embodiment of perfect motherhood.


In contrast, drawing on accounts of remarkable and subversive medieval women like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Hildegard of Bingen, along with others hidden in documents and court cases, Janega shows us how real women of the era lived. While often mothers, they were industrious farmers, brewers, textile workers, artists, and artisans and paved the way for new ideas about women’s nature, intellect, and ability.


In The Once and Future Sex, Janega unravels the restricting expectations on medieval women and the ones on women today. She boldly questions why, if our ideas of women have changed drastically over time, we cannot reimagine them now to create a more equitable future.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Medieval, Audiobook, Womens, Historical

260 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 17, 2023

Reviews

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

On its surface the constancy of women’s place in society is depressing, but the thing about social constructs is that they are just that — constructs. Fundamentally if we have created these strictures, then we can deconstruct them and make new ones. Seeing the past and rejecting it allows us to imagine new futures and make the changes that are necessary to create a more equitable world. It’s time to start constructing that different future.

Medievalist Eleanor Janega (with an MA in Mediaeval Studies and a PhD in History) states that her intent is to look to the past in order to understand our present, and hopefully, to construct a future that sees more equality between the sexes. In The Once and Future Sex, Janega primarily focusses on how the people of power and influence in the Middle Ages regarded women in four broad categories — how their weird bodies worked, ideals of beauty, fears of their sexuality, what work they did outside the home — and while this book is loaded with frequent quotes and citations, it didn’t really add up to a cohesive thesis to me. I enjoyed the factoids, I liked the often ironic tone, I appreciate the intent, but I seem to be missing the throughline; I don’t know that these facts from the past explain women’s place in modern society. Certainly not a waste of my time — there is much of interest to be found here — I’m simply left wanting. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

One way or another, though, when we consider the way women are conceptualized in the global north, we can ultimately start laying the blame back to the ancient Athenians. They have a lot to answer for.

It’s always interesting to note that the Renaissance began with a few monarchs rediscovering the “Classics” and monasteries then teaching boys to read and write ancient Greek and Latin. This led to society taking as a given that the ancients (Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates) had human biology figured out with their humours theory, “Men were seen as hot and dry, or naturally sanguine and socially useful. Women, in contrast, were cold and wet and therefore more likely to be phlegmatic, or placid.” This combined with the Judeo-Christian origin story — Adam was made in God’s image (ie. the standard model) and Eve was formed (with inside-out genitals) from Adam’s superfluous rib (making woman the less god-like variant) — were the two theories that underpinned the “science” of how women’s bodies work. As for how those bodies should look:

All in all, medieval society spent a long time concocting a beauty ideal for women that was possible only for wealthy women to live up to, and then furiously policing it when commoners tried to emulate it. At every opportunity women were told that they must be beautiful, and that that made them desirable, lovable, and holy. However, attempting to live up to this rigid standard, especially if one was poor, was called sinful and at times was illegal. The Church thrust women into an impossible quandary: If they were not born with looks that accorded with the beauty standard, should they lose status and perhaps remain single? Or should they use subterfuge to get closer to that exacting standard, even if it meant they might face an eternity in Hell?

Janega writes that the Classics — while noting the beauty of various goddesses, mythical creatures, even Helen of Troy — don’t actually describe what that beauty looks like. It isn’t until the sixth-century that elegiac poet Maximianus (who linked himself to the classical tradition through his Etruscan lineage) wrote the first such description, saying that the ideal woman had: Golden hair, downcast milky neck, ingenious features to make more of her face; black eyebrows, free forehead, bright skin and little swollen lips. Maximianus and his poetry were used to teach Latin in the mediaeval period, and his idea of beauty was reinforced by those who would later pen guides to composing poetry: Matthew of Vendôme (twelfth century) in his The Art of the Versemaker and Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200) in Poetry Nova. And apparently this societal conditioning is the entire reason why gentlemen prefer blondes?

Janega notes that the most damaging aspect of this beauty ideal is that it was impossible for poor women to attain (peasants working the fields are unlikely to have a “milky neck”), and for those who might turn to cosmetics to attain the standard, both the Church — who equated makeup with the Whore of Babylon riding the seven-headed beast into the Apocalypse — and the continuing belief in humour theory — it was apparently verboten for a woman to depilate because a whiskery chin signalled a poisoned womb to potential partners — made it clear that a woman was supposed to be naturally beautiful, but also modest and chaste. And speaking of sex:

To be honest, the likelihood that medieval women inserted live fish into their vaginas and then fed them to their husbands was probably low. It cannot be ruled out, but all in all it seems unlikely, no matter how lacking their sex lives might have been. However, actual practice mattered less than the fact that Burchard found such behavior plausible and enough of a worry that he advised clergy members to interrogate female parishioners about it. The idea that women were horny enough to suffocate a fish in their genitals if it meant more and better sex was one thing. It was another that they were willing to do occult magic and endanger their soul.

Thinking at the time was that women wanted sex more than their weary partners (for reasons relating to humour theory and Christian fear of women’s strange bodies) and this led to the Malleus Malificarum (Hammer of Witches) written by Church inquisitor Heinrich Kramer (ca. 1430– 1505): a guide for rooting out all the lusty witches consorting with the devil to sate their unnatural needs. Janega contrasts this to the tropes of today — the randy husband begging his frigid wife for sex — but she doesn’t really explain how this flip occurred. Her last section is on women’s work outside the home, and while she writes that we think of this as a recent phenomenon, she stresses that this was the case even in mediaeval times:

Women have always been a part of the world’s economy writ large. In fact, women’s work in the premodern world is generally ubiquitous. The idea that women largely existed in a domestic bubble wholly removed from the realities of labor and work would have seemed laughable to medieval people. In all classes of society, women worked and were expected to do so.

From peasants and other outdoor labourers to ladies-in-waiting; brewers and bakers and laundresses; from sex workers to those who took Holy Orders, Janega describes all of the roles that women played in the mediaeval economy…but this hardly felt like new information. While the information that Janega shares about these jobs was all interesting, I couldn’t really see how it relates to society today. And that is the point: “Society” hasn’t been made out of whole cloth — every belief about the differences in the sexes has been passed down from earlier times and a more equitable future begins with deconstructing those beliefs. I get that. I just didn’t really get that from this book. Still an interesting read overall.

[Ashleigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote my master’s thesis on a topic very similar to this one, so I was very excited to see this book while browsing Barnes & Noble.
*If curious, here is a link to my master’s thesis- https://edspace.american.edu/taddeosc... (note that it is best viewed on a computer!)

I appreciated that the author analyzed the impacts of medieval misogyny on multiple classes of women, as history tends to focus largely on the noble and powerful. Her writing was succinct, informative, and even funny. This book is definitely written for a public audience, as opposed to an academic one, as the author does a lot of work to dispel various myths regarding medieval history, which I loved and appreciated. I’ve spent so much of my adult life informing people on the internet that, YES medieval Europeans did wash themselves!

Overall, Janega’s careful consideration of historical biases towards women and their connection to modern day subjugation is enlightening, no matter your familiarization of the topic.

[Beata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful and enagaging, as you may expect from Ms Janega. I'll watch any doc with her!

[Lizzie S · Rating 5 out of 5]

** Thanks so much to NetGalley, Eleanor Janega, and W. W. Norton & Company for this ARC! The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society will be out on January 17th, 2023!

"...while many of our attitudes toward women's sexuality have changed since the medieval period, one thing has remained the same: women are not sexual in the correct way."

In reading this book, I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes by Rebecca Solnit: “The status quo would like you to believe it is immutable, inevitable, and invulnerable, and lack of memory of a dynamically changing world reinforces this view.”

The Once and Future Sex undermines the inevitability of several narratives we have about women in the present-day, including the biological understanding that women are "naturally" less interested in sex than our male counterparts. Janega discusses the ways in which beauty standards, understanding about women's sexuality, and the roles played by women in society, have changed between now and the medieval period. In doing so, she highlights that one of very few stable perspectives on women is that we are inferior. The reason for this, and the rationale behind it, has shifted from religion to science, but the narrative that we are lower is consistent. In expressing the ways in which thoughts about women have changed, Janega highlights that they are constructed and opens us up to changing them.

This was a fascinating book. I had no idea that for much of written history, women were seen as the ones with insatiable sexual urges who could not be held responsible for their efforts to get sexual release. I loved realizing how everything from our conceptualization of women's sexuality to our beauty standard has shifted over time. This was the kind of book that made it difficult to remain quiet - I kept sharing facts with my partner as I read.

Highly recommended :) I'll read anything this author writes in the future!

[Hannah]

my grandmother, a librarian, passed on to me such various life advice as "The trouble with children is that as soon as they get worth talking to, they leave home", "Before you give anyone a name, you ought to think about how their initials will look on a briefcase", and most relevantly in this instance, "You're allowed to give up on a book once you've read a number of pages equivalent to your age." of course she did die before she could tell me how to adapt this rule to the Kindle—in percentage terms? but surely I shouldn't be expected to leave books three-quarters finished in my old age?—and of this would likely have said something along the lines of, "That's the reason you shouldn't smoke—because you never know when they're going to invent e-books", but I really find any disappointment or irritation at having to give up on a book soothed by the fact that I think of her every time I do, in this instance in particular:

the complaints I had in the introduction sustained themselves through 28% of the book, so I am leaving it for the wolves. I was excited for this one! literally all I want to read about ever is how conceptions of what a given gender is/means can change! I like Eleanor Janega! the introduction contains thoughts on how the model of "history as a linear path from Bad to Good" contains basically fatalist assumptions about how oppressions work, and whether they are natural, and I will treasure those thoughts for life! unfortunately the tone of the rest of the book is so unbelievably patronizing—I gather that this is meant to be "accessible", but I'm several light-years from being an expert on the Middle Ages, or a scholar of any type whatsoever, and you simply don't need to talk to me in this cutesy voice. "Famously, the mathematician Pythagoras (you may have heard of his theorem?)"; "[women's] good traits were gifts typified by Mary—the universal perfect mommy"; "While most of us would probably say that the thing that marked Jezebel as the wrong sort was, you know, the murder, medieval biblical exegetes disagreed."; "When [Achilles] was forced to give [Briseis] to the higher-up King Agamemnon, he was so incensed (read: pouty)"...

[closes eyes] not least because I am also in the middle of the excellent Emily Wilson Iliad, I am not going to read the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles, son of Peleus, which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain and sent so many noble souls of heroes to Hades as "pouty", because I think it is fun to intellectually engage with things instead of writing Marvel movie dialogue about them. on this note, it also drove me up the wall that Janega described Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies as "what we might now describe as fan fiction"—we wouldn't! we the fuck would not! do you know what fanfiction is?? and finally, "The fact that Hipparchia had to dress like a man to make a case for her equality gives some hint as to whether people took the work of women seriously." is this really... is this really the amount of simplistic we're still being about the dozen reasons why historical people might choose to crossdress, in 2023. about a woman who, as we know for a fact, fucked her identically dressed husband on the street in broad daylight because of her deeply held philosophical beliefs

I will repeat that I like Eleanor Janega! I think she is a better historian than this! this frankly feels like acceding to the idea that for history to be popular and accessible, it needs to be anti-intellectual! stop talking down to me, stop doing this weird youth preacher "this is jUST like FAN FICTION! reference to 'women be shopping' jokes!" thing, stop telling me which names of books of the Bible are "cooler". the thing is that despite everything I've just said I would probably find all of this a lot of fun if the jokes were funny. but the jokes aren't funny. the jokes read as jaded, defensive, and insecure. they have the voice of an okay YouTube video essay.

see now I'm mad again but I'm also thinking about the time my parents said they were thinking of naming me Miriam and my grandmother said, instantly and in deeply ominous tones, "The word Miriam sounds like a girl crying in the rain." and you know how mad can I really get. surefire solution for ailments every time

[Katya]

Medieval literally means “middle time.” It describes a span of about eleven hundred years, from the fall of Western Rome in 476 to sometime in the sixteenth century, the interval between the ancient period and our modern period. In other words, it acts as a kind of bridge, explaining how modern society moved from the ancient world to its current state, or rather it would if we paid attention to it. Because of the period’s placement between two eras, studying its gender norms allows us to see where some of our ongoing assumptions about gender come from. Our consideration of women as “naturally” weak and inferior, and therefore requiring protection and guidance, is an ancient and medieval holdover. Understanding that allows us to interrogate why we still believe it. If we think medieval people are so backward, why do we agree with them about this?

A tese que a historiadora Eleanor Janega propõe não é nova - a ideia de que herdámos ideais relacionados com sexo e género, seja da época medieval seja do período moderno mais recuado, é já formalmente aceite. O que Janega traz de (relativamente) novo é um foco particularmente direcionado para os conceitos que orientaram estes ideais e que hoje se tendem a esbater, permitindo ao seu produto uma vivência próxima do mito e uma sobrevivência quase mística de princípios retrógrados ainda nos nossos dias:

Overall, writings from the medieval period, whether theological, medical, or fictitious, tell us how medieval people understood women. In general, we learn that women were thought of as men who had somehow gone wrong. Whatever stereotypical masculine quality was considered good (courage, strength, intelligence, restraint), women had the opposite quality (cowardice, weakness, foolishness, sexual profligacy). These attributes were seen as an essential part of women’s nature, handed down through generations from Eve, who had been created as a necessarily inferior companion for Adam and had driven the world into sin and death. Some feminine attributes, however, were considered good, such as kindness, nurturing, and well, a lot of matronly stuff. Much as women’s bad characteristics were inherited from Eve, their good traits were gifts typified by Mary—the universal perfect mommy.

Para chegar ao cerne da questão, a autora aborda o fundamentalismo que, inevitavelmente, moldou a nossa visão (errada) da época medieval...

The ideal default humans were men, while women were an afterthought or mirror of them that was meant to work for and complement the dominant sex. They were also seen to lack the beneficial characteristics that men had. Where men were strong, constant, rational, and pious, women left to their own devices would end up weak, flighty, conceited, lustful, and—worst of all—unmarried as a result.

... e procura reconstruir as vivências que a história tende a apagar (aliás, tende a não registar, pura e simplesmente, por não lhe achar relevância):

For the most part, women taught their children. Local city groups might also hire women to give children the education they needed to keep society running. We know this from personal accounts as well as from illustrations of women working in classrooms. We also have lots of evidence in the form of books of hours-small works that enumerated the appropriate prayers to say at particular times of day. They were generally seen as a feminine affectation and were used by women to teach children, sometimes including alphabets at the front to help them out. The fact of the matter was that women were the suppliers of education, but they were consumers of it only in a private capacity. But women weren't the ones writing the curriculum.

Sem perder a hipótese de denunciar o preconceito latente, Janega evita fazer acusações extemporâneas - um aspeto refrescante -, posicionando o pensamento no contexto que lhe cabe:

This requirement of holy orders also meant that the two major ways to be educated in the medieval period, joining a monastery school or going to university, were effectively closed to women. So even as Plato and Hippocrates and Galen and the Genesis myth were becoming locked into the standard pedagogic system, and even as pedagogy itself was becoming systematized, women were excluded from weighing in. The nature of our natures was being decided, and we weren’t even present for the discussion. Most medieval thought about women was thus written by men, for men, based on readings of work by men.

No respeitante ao detalhe, a autora repesca os modelos clássicos para explicar de que forma evoluem os conceitos de beleza...

Early medieval beauty standards for women were then a conundrum: a woman who was beautiful could rise to power, much as in innumerable fairy tales. If a woman wasn’t powerful, however, could she be said to be beautiful? As vague as it was, early medieval beauty was ring-fenced and could be understood as uniquely tied to well-to-do women.
[...]
In many ways, settling on Helen as an ideal woman made perfect sense. First, a large amount of classical literature praised her beauty but did not detail it, which gave medieval authors a chance to prove their own ability by expanding on the classics. Second, in establishing the supreme qualities of physical womanhood, it is difficult to argue with the woman who was so gorgeous that men started a war for her. Third, linking concepts of beauty to a classical figure gave them the classical cachet that medieval people believed conferred authority, despite the lack of ancient literary portraits to work with. From the twelfth century on, we are treated to many more thoughts on what a classical beauty was, with added emphasis on classical.
[...]
Men who were engaged in conjuring the ideal beauty into existence thought a woman, in order to be truly beautiful, had to be not just young but also sexually inexperienced. In other words, she had to be that medieval construction: a maiden. In the medieval period, the term maiden referred generally to the stage of life that loosely maps to our own concept of the “teenager.” Maidens, much like teenagers, were no longer children but had not yet attained full adulthood. Maidenhood, like the teen years, was a transitory stage. But the term also implied a sexual maturity that had not yet been acted on and as a result was a “perfect” sort of femininity.
(...)
Maidens, then, were more likely to be beautiful women, and vice versa, because they were, as Kim M. Phillips has noted, “possessed of all the attractive qualities of femininity but [were] free of the faults.” They were beautiful, kind, calm, chaste, pure, delicate, modest, and humble. Also, and very crucially, they were sexy, but they weren’t sexual.

...e posteriormente os conceitos de perigo e punição que lhe estão associados:

The sin that was most often connected to women’s interest in their appearance was superbia, which we often translate as “pride” but can also mean “vanity.” Vanity was a sin because it meant that a woman was overly concerned with her mortal and outward appearance, rather than with her immortal soul and her religious duties. Moreover, the vanity that led a woman to interfere with her natural countenance through plucking, shaving, or cosmetic use was an affront to God’s chosen plan. Vain women were telling God they could do a better job than he could, which was completely unacceptable. Pride in appearance was also an issue because when a woman gave in to it, she inevitably sparked in the hearts of others yet another deadly sin: lust, or luxuria.
[...]
If men were concerned that the women in their lives were taking too much of an interest in their personal appearance, and therefore signaling their interest in unacceptable or extramarital sexual activity, they had a remedy: preachers suggested that men render their wives, sisters, and daughters unattractive to prevent them from leaving the house and undertaking affairs. The English preacher Odo of Cheriton (d. 1247), for example, advised that for attractive wives and daughters “every paterfamilias ought to knot up the hair of these women into a bun and scorch it. And he ought to dress them in skins rather than in precious garments. For then they will stay at home.”51 Inflict some casual abuse, and your female relatives would simply be too embarrassed to pursue the sex that they were so clearly desperate to have.

Consequentemente, as teorias misóginas são também apresentadas já que os paralelos com a nossa cultura se mantêm, não importa o quanto tentemos justificar os abusos atuais:

Equally distressing were the implications for victims of rape that orgasm was required for pregnancy(...).
Medieval thinkers generally agreed that rape was a grave crime and that women who were attacked could not have pleasure from the sex act. However, women who had been attacked, and were by all discernible means greatly distressed, sometimes became pregnant. The philosopher William of Conches (ca.1090–1155/70) came up with an explanation for why pregnancy could happen: “although raped women dislike the act in the beginning, in the end, however, from the weakness of the flesh, they like it.” In other words, if a woman became pregnant following her rape, it meant she had ultimately enjoyed herself.

Mas, Going Medieval não traça um retrato apenas a negro - com a devida justiça relembra que, embora a história não chegue a mencionar as mulheres, elas foram sempre parte inalienável da vida humana, representando uma força de trabalho (trabalho manual, trabalho doméstico, ou trabalho habilitado como a medicina)...

Although a working rural woman had any number of roles, she can often be harder to find in records than men due to coverture, her status as under the protection or authority of her husband or father. These women are therefore listed by a male relative’s name rather than their own. William Shepherd in Staffordshire, England, was fined repeatedly for making bad ale, although the records show that it was his wife, not he, who was doing the brewing. We should expect that many more women were being paid for their labor than what we can read in the historical record.
[...]
We celebrate that women can now enter professions and have careers, but we slight the fact that women have worked over the centuries at jobs that they were supposed—and not supposed—to do. We don’t like to admit that even if women are not working outside the home, doing the tasks of a home—cleaning and repairing the interior, making and mending clothing, raising a family, tending to children’s education—is work.

...uma força criativa...

(...) medieval women worked as artists all over Europe. They made altar clothes and stained glass. They illustrated books and painted. They practiced in their families’ artistic workshops. But their names are unknown, not just because of coverture but also because our society is less interested in the artisans who crafted textile works, illustrated beautiful manuscripts, and made religious stained glass than in individual painters or sculptors, who happened to get recorded more often when they were men. While our records for practicing women artisans are fairly detailed, we tend to overlook them because we don’t value the arts that they were engaged in. We are every bit as responsible for the erasure of women artists as our medieval counterparts were.

... e uma força intelectual que fez o mundo avançar:

In both Greek and Roman society, women who were a part of the wealthy elite were often educated and often worked as teachers, wrote poetry, and created art. They were also brilliant philosophers. Famously, the mathematician Pythagoras (you may have heard of his theorem?) was educated by the philosopher Themistoclea (sixth century B.C.E., aka Aristoclea, aka Theoclea), though unfortunately none of her works survive. Hipparchia the Cynic (ca. 350- 280 B.C.E.), a philosopher, shocked Greek society and gained fame by wearing male clothing and living in equality with her husband, the cynic Crates. Her philosophical work was famous enough that she was the only woman to be referred to in Diogenes Laertius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, which was an encyclopedia of famous Greek thinkers. Though sadly very little of her actual work survives, her life itself was considered a philosophical argument for the equality of women. Under Rome, the philosopher Hypatia (ca. 350-415) lived and worked in Alexandria and was a polymath who taught astronomy and neo-Platonic philosophy.

Assim, Going Medieval reúne um conjunto de capítulos muito interessantes para pensar o papel e a imagem das mulheres contemporâneas através de uma abordagem histórica aos vários momentos que instituíram os modelos (e impuseram as limitações físicas, psíquicas e emocionais) através dos quais ainda hoje atuamos, sejam eles os modelos de beleza, sexualidade, maternidade ou trabalho que delinearam os caminhos permitidos às mulheres pelos poderes patriarcais e religiosos.
Com uma estrutura académica respeitável (os primeiros parágrafos estão claramente colados à prática de investigação - o que não deixa de ser curioso dado o público leitor relativamente generalista deste livro), Janega consegue aqui e ali fazer um ou outro comentário satírico, mas sem esticar demasiado a corda. Apesar de simplificar as coisas para o leitor leigo - seja em história, medievalismo ou feminismo -, a autora mantém a coerência e detalhe do discurso, e consegue oferecer uma retórica poderosa.
Todavia, a mensagem principal reside não só no desfazer do mito que acompanha a Idade Média - a muito injustamente apelidada Idade das Trevas -, mas igualmente num alerta muito salutar contra a hipocrisia que nos mantém colados a estes modelos, apesar de os censurarmos.

It is easy to buy into the idea of the distant past as more oppressive than our own time, even if both share the supposition that women are inferior to men. We tend to look at our individual life experience and then make assumptions about history based on that. If we perceive that our personal attitudes toward women have become more equitable over the course of our lives, we presume that previously conditions must have been worse.
[...]
On its surface the constancy of women’s place in society is depressing, but the thing about social constructs is that they are just that—constructs. Fundamentally if we have created these strictures, then we can deconstruct them and make new ones. Seeing the past and rejecting it allows us to imagine new futures and make the changes that are necessary to create a more equitable world. It’s time to start constructing that different future.

[Aldi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of really interesting information on the lives of medieval women, and attitudes about them; however, I found the structure a little wobbly/vague and could have done with a whole lot more of the author’s trademark snark to liven things up. There’s only so much societally entrenched misogyny (historical or current) that I can take in one sitting when served more or less without commentary. I did love the odd pointed aside here and there but I guess I’m so used to her cracking sense of humour from watching her videos that I was expecting a whole lot more of that. I was also taken aback at some noticeably poor editing that gave us gems like “martial sex” (instead of marital – sounds invigorating, if somewhat intimidating!) and had me pondering the time-travelling shenanigans of “Eleanor of Castile (1246-90)” and “her daughter, Princess Joan (1220-79)” for way too long.

I did learn a lot about a period I find incredibly fascinating, and I will continue to pounce on anything that Eleanor Janega cares to publish; I just wasn’t as entirely wowed by this as I’d hoped to be.

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been in a real Medieval non fiction books mood lately and this was a good listen for that. Very informative and engaging. Love it when I get into a mood where I want to read/listen to more then one hook about a subject.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janega breaks down misconceptions and myths of women's roles in medieval society, and how some things change, and many things stay the same.

I enjoyed this quite a bit, and works like this show that diversity in academia and research is crucial. So much of history had been written from a white man's point of view, with other viewpoints obscured, degraded or outright removed, to promote a singular narrative.

This pairs really well with Girly Drinks and In Defense of Witches, because there is a vast history of women brewmasters, and this is also a bit of Feminism 101.

Breathtaking researched, and written for laypeople (instead of other academics), which this dummy really appreciates!

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read courtesy of NetGalley.

Janega aims to explore medieval attitudes towards women in a variety of contexts - appearance, sexuality, education, work, maternity and so on - and to show how that is similar to, different from, and informing modern attitudes. I think she does an excellent job on the first, but I think there's something lacking in the second.

The introduction to the concept of "the Middle Ages" is excellent, as is her argument for why studying this period is important, both for understanding the development of attitudes towards women and more broadly. Janega uses an excellent variety of sources to demonstrate how medieval society - particularly at the elite level, but also how that percolated through the other 99% - developed their ideas; through theologians (mostly male, but also Hildegard de Bingen of course), and medical texts, becoming educational manuals, as well as through 'pop culture' like ballads and Christine de Pizan's poetry, and visual art as well. She also destroys some really important myths, like the notion that women as workers is a modern invention (you think a "farmer's wife" is sitting around doing nothing?) and that beauty standards are in some way objective and timeless (all those images of nude Eve with a wee pot belly).

I do think that some of the ideas Janega draws together from medieval and modern are really important. The thing about beauty, for instance: that only the wealthy could attain what was regarded as truly beautiful, but that women shouldn't be seen to work at BEING beautiful; if you did work on being beautiful that was vain and therefore sinful; if you were poor and somehow, miraculously, beautiful, you were clearly meant to be amongst the great instead... and so on. Also, beauty and virtue going together. It's painfully clear how these things resonate today, with issues of cost as well as luxury time all coming together - think of women who are on public transport in their sneakers, with their high heels in their bag. Beyond the beauty issues, Janega talks about a lot of other issues for modern women and how these are similar to/different from our medieval counterparts. However, I didn't feel like the links were drawn quite strongly enough between the medieval and the modern to show how one developed from, or reacts again, the other.

Overall I do think this is a very good book about historical European ideas of women: who they are and can be and should look like. Janega does make some imortant commentary on modern women, too - the fact that I wanted a tighter connection does't detract from her powerful statements. This can definitely be read with little knowledge of the European Middle Ages.

[Meredith Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This historical study addresses not just the roles but general 'cultural understandings' about women and their sexuality. As the author put it on twitter, "we change what is socially good all the time, but what stays static is that women are not socially good." It's interesting to read all these ancient beliefs and recognize which extremely outdated ideals are still completely embedded in how we view people even if the reason behind it has changed. (Like, nobody is talking about wet/dry natures anymore, but the things wet/dry natures were believed to "cause" are still nearly superstitiously believed.)

The book's strongest (and most frequent) feature is its desire to follow through history specific details -- like tracing back through all the earliest writers of how the epitome of feminine beauty was defined, and how later authors (trying to mimic the classics as they did in all other areas) developed on that and built associated tropes like roses and honey around romance and beauty.

I particularly enjoyed the parts about how it was believed that a woman who wore makeup or was too interested in fashion might go to hell as these were mortal sins and, worse, one who plucked her body hair might cause the apocalypse.

My one quibble with it (if you can call it that) is that it seems to vacillate between assuming an academic audience and a casual one, so we get both phrases like "Lest you think that Augustine was alone in his repugnance for women as a result of Eve's theoretical actions, you need look only as far as Tertullian for yet more aspersions." but also "it stands to reason that medieval women had it worse, lacking the benefits of the Pill, the Equal Rights Act, and Dolly Parton's Nine to Five." I do enjoy a quick change in register for humour or drama, of course, but this back-and-forth also extends to the assumed default knowledge -- so we can have a multi-page explanation that the Greeks thought that the uterus wandered around in a body and caused havoc, but simultaneously explain that the Immaculate Conception was actually Mary's and was often confused for Jesus's, without any discussion or further explanation into this (even though it was acknowledged as a point of known confusion). So I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but it means that some things might be obscure to the casual reader, or dwelled on for too long for a more studied academic. It's just something to watch out for more than anything.

[Jennifer Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very disappointed in this book after enjoying the author’s appearance on Daniele Cybulskie’s Medieval Podcast.

While the information the author is presenting is true as far as it goes, she presents a very one dimensional and well trod view of the period. I’m the last person to argue that misogyny didn’t abound during the Middle Ages, but she tends to treat misogyny and sexual repression as a monolithic fact in a way that’s unsustainable and easily contradicted *if* you explore sources that aren’t just church patriarchs (her discussion of sex as sin, for example)— which she actually does quite often, she just fails to incorporate those other sources into her conclusions.

She also goes the other way and, with the Malleus Maleficarum (1486) specifically, cites a source that’s inappropriate to the time period she chose to write about. At the end of her discussion she admits that its effects were on the early modern era but insist the Maleficarum itself was an outgrowth of medieval thought— okay, that’s fair enough. But should we… talk about what strains of medieval thought and practices it built upon since this is a book about the Middle Ages?

Her: Nope.

I found this book incredibly frustrating because she seems to want to make conclusions about misogyny today using examples from the past and vice versa in a way that just doesn’t work when you’re dealing with a 1500-500 year time gap.

And sometimes she writes something truly asinine, like this gem here:

Before the twentieth century we are told, women did not participate in the economic life of their household… and were either uninterested in or prevented from doing non-domestic work.

No, Ms. Janega. I have never been told that and it would take an astounding amount of willful ignorance in order for someone to believe such a thing. Like, you would have to believe that midwifery wasn’t invented until 1901 levels of ignorance.

Women’s contributions have been and still are undervalued, for sure— and the lines were often blurred as historically most people either lived on farms or had family owned businesses. But you would have to be an idiot to think that women have always been divorced from household economics. Those people certainly exist, but they aren’t the ones reading your book.

I think that line in particular bothered me so much because she seems to think that because she’s focusing on women she’s treading new ground, but most of the time she’s just regurgitating the same old “Middle Ages dumb and backward and mean” perspective that hasn’t been taken seriously in at least a generation— and she has to *really* stretch in order to do it.

She has some witty asides throughout the book— but they don’t make up for the fact that her difficulty balancing her sources also means that her arguments tend to be meandering or inappropriate to the time period because there’s no real way to support her overly broad conclusions.

And just so I’m not completely negative, despite my earlier objection to her transition into women’s work, the actual discussion was very good, as was her discussion of hygiene— they both explicitly considered women of different classes.

All in all, I would recommend that anyone interested in this subject matter go read Rosalie Gilbert’s *The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women*. It’s a much richer, more nuanced, and entertaining take on the period that uses varied sources and kind of delights in the messiness of the subject.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book - it was interesting and informative. As a medievalist myself, I knew a lot of the names, places and practices, but (obviously) not everything. I loved the way Eleanor Janega really showed how attitudes in the past, both real and imagined, can and do affect attitudes today. Janega points out the fallacies we believe today about the roles of women in the Middle Ages, and does so in a concise, factual way. She relates these attitudes and misconceptions to how we look at women and gender today and how our attitudes towards women, sex, sexual assault, and equality have changed for better or for worse, and also how they have not really changed all that much. This book is powerful because it requires the reader to think and consider these same issues today.

[Eavan · Rating 2 out of 5]

More like a 2.5… Not a terrible book, and actually quite interesting at some points, but there are absolutely no new conclusions here and the author’s tone can be so silly at times. When an author purporting to write a book on women’s roles in history has to explain to her audience what the three waves of feminism are, I just can’t take it too seriously, you know?

Basically, it’s a good audiobook to put on in the background.

[Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very engaging look at medieval gender roles! Accessible for a broad audience but also manages to get specific. I would recommend this to a wide audience actually (outside of history buffs).

I’m only hesitant to give it 5 stars because I found the conclusion a bit vague. This book worked perfectly as a dispelling of myths we hold about medieval women — but the core thesis the author tries to explicate at the end is ultimately half-baked to me.

[Becca Packer]

What I learned: the view on women has not changed since medieval times. And I shouldn't have listened to this on election day.

[Emily Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

men (derogatory) should start in prison and work their way out

[Saimi Korhonen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Our notions of th ideal woman have changed a great deal over time, as has our concept of what exactly is wrong with women. What has remained static, unfortunately, is our desire to subjugate women – to judge them by the harshest possible standards and find them wanting. The outcome is the same – it's just that the justification for reaching it has changed."

In The Once and Future Sex Eleanor Janega explores the lives of medieval women, focusing on how women were perceived by scientists and religious authorities, the beauty standard of the time, women's sexuality and the fears and worries women's sexuality roused in people (aka men) around them, and women as workers and the different forms of work women did. Janega's book is not just a book about the medieval world in all its complexities, but also a book that aims to make its reader think about their own time and context and see why our ideas of women, gender and sexuality are the way they are.

This is the first book I have read about gender and sexuality that has focused solely on the medieval period. I think this is a good place to start getting to know this monumental, often misunderstood and wrongly maligned era – you are in good hands with Janega, who guides you through these different themes with expertise and gentle wit. She makes sure you understand the context in which whatever she is discussing happened but she never goes on unnecessary tangents or makes things too confusing – this book is a great example of a popular history book! She deals with difficult, complex topics, such as misogyny and the constructed nature of beauty and virginity, but she does it in an easy-to-understand, fun way.

I really appreciated the way Janega highlighted the similarities as well as the differences between our understanding of women and that of the medieval era. We share many things, such as a fixation on women's youth and sexual purity, the way we both demand women to be beautiful but condemn them for trying to look pretty and the belief that women are meant to be mothers and wives, but in many cases our reasoning for these things differs. What used to be explained largely by religion and the will of God, we now explain through science, biology, psychology and so on. Motherhood and marriage was a woman's lot in life and their duty to their family, lineage and household – it was not a romantic notion, but still a fulfilment of a woman's purpose – but now girls are fed, from childhood, this romantic idea of marriage as the happiest day of their life and motherhood as the thing that will give their life purpose. But some things remain the same: women's labour is still often seen as just something women do and not as true work at all. Of course women raise children and do household chores, because that's what women do. Some things have completely flipped, but the main gist of the thing still remains: in medieval times, when sex was seen as inherently dirty and sinful, it was women who wanted sex and men who were sensible enough to remain in control, but now that sex has become more normalised and less stigmatised, it is men who want sex and women who only tolerate it and are frigid. The problem, in both versions, is women. So much has changed but women are still problematic, difficult, dysfunctional and, as Janega described it, "men gone wrong". Janega makes a great point about how, despite wanting to think of ourselves and our time as more liberated than ever, we are still dealing with the same old nonsense that we have been dealing with for centuries and that, no matter how much we want to see our time as the pinnacle of positive growth, the past was never as black-and-white and miserable as we often think. In painting the history of women as a history of suffering and a complete lack of agency, we do history a disservice.

The Medieval period was very different from ours in many ways, yes, but it was never the Dark Age we often think of it as. Janega busts many common myths such as medieval people all being stinky and dirty (they did bathe, they valued cleanliness, they had bathhouses and archeologists have even found little ear wax scoops women used to clean their ears) and that life was, in general, drab, colourless and gloomy. People, even peasants, wore colourful clothes, had fun watching miracle plays, celebrated holidays and so on. Women are often, because of how we have been taught to believe women entered the workforce for the first time in the 20th century, depicted as domesticated beings who only hang out at home, when in reality women worked all kinds of jobs. Janega talks about domestic work, women as farmers, laundresses, merchants, bakers, alcohol brewers, servants, cleaners, landowners, artists, nuns, midwives, surgeons and barbers. Yes, women's lives were controlled by the men around them and their work was often undervalued (their work might be attributed to their husband and female-dominated fields, like laundry and weaving, was often lesser paid), but they could make money and have careers. I knew women worked a lot more in the medieval world than people often give them credit for, but it was fascinating to read that chapter and realize just how integral women were to their families and communities as workers in all classes. Poorer families needed every pair of working hands and many daughters learned their father's trade, and the rich and the powerful, queens most of all, held notable political power, were in charge of massive estates, took part in negotiations, acted as patrons of church and arts, and took part in the education of younger noblewomen, who were sent to work as ladies-in-waiting.

As a historian of sexuality and sex, I was fascinated especially by the chapter on women's sexuality and ideas of love and "proper" sex. Women's bodies were seen as strange and an inverted, flawed version of a man's body (thanks, Aristotle), and their rampant sexuality was treated as something abhorrent, dangerous and sinful (the Original Sin and so on). The idea of women as these utterly uncontrollable sex monsters is quite foreign to us (even though we still like to shame women for being openly sexual or wanting sex), but it is even more baffling to realize just how much time and mental energy people (men) spent, in the medieval period, talking about women, sex and how men should control the women in their lives. The ideal woman is of course Virgin Mary who was born immaculately and then had a kid while still a virgin but of course no woman can be that (it is rather clever to make the feminine ideal utterly unattainable: that way you can make sure you always have something to shame women for), but since women are not like Mary and carry the Original Sin with them, they must marry to have an appropriate outlet for their sexual desire. Women needed men, cause on their own, some theorised, they were too stupid to control their urges. Someone said that women are drawn to men because that which is "foul is drawn to the good". Lovely. The ideal medieval marriage is also a baffling thing because being chaste is the ideal and sex is dirty, but new Christians must be born. So, people must marry and make babies in an appropriate setting and in an appropriate way. Sex was not about enjoyment or fun or intimacy, but about making babies: sex for any other reason or in any way that cannot result in a child was sodomy. Medieval thinkers did consider a woman orgasming a necessary thing to make a child, but even this, a thought which is on its way toward being a clever idea, was used in horrendous ways when discussing rape. Rape was a malleable concept and a crime against the woman's male "owner" and not the woman herself. She could be pitied but her pain was not the point. And if a woman became pregnant through rape, it was assumed she must've enjoyed the act, even if she did initially resist. I can ready a lot of historical nonsense and remain glib and a bit sarcastic, but this section on sexual violence made my skin crawl.

Women's sexuality being seen as something dangerous and inherently threatening to men was closely linked to women's beauty culture and beauty standards. Beauty was necessary for women if they wanted to hold power, be taken seriously or valued – outside beauty was seen as a reflection of inner, moral beauty. It was interesting to read about how panicky men got about women trying to fulfil the beauty ideal which was, largely, unattainable for anyone other than the rich and those with blessed genes, and how the medieval people attempted to base their assumptions of beauty on ancient ideals (Helen of Troy remained the ideal of feminine beauty). Women were expected to be pretty but if they tried to look pretty, it was seen as sinful. I knew using makeup or any other enhancements was frowned upon, but I didn't know they were seen as sinful as they were. Plucking eyebrows or hair or other facial hair was the worst thing of all – there were even stories of women going to hell for plucking their brows to achieve the arched brows of ideal beauties. Makeup was linked to Jezebel, her dark magic and sexual impurity as well as damnation and the end of days. Makeup was seen as women trying to do better than God and men were advised to teach their daughters humility and even try and make them less pretty to keep them tame and chaste. But despite all this fear-mongering, makeup was common. Women still created and shared recipes, used perfumes, did their hair, took care of their skin and so on. Janega showcases how reality was often quite different from what church fathers and other religious authorities wanted it to be. Same goes with sex: just because they didn't want people to have fun during sex doesn't mean people didn't do all kinds of things in the bedroom. Actually, the fact that they focused so much on what was right and wrong in the sack indicates people were, in their eyes, doing lots of sinful things.

The beauty ideal of the medieval period is very different from our own, apart from their appreciation for good teeth and golden curls. We still tend to like those. Medieval people liked long fingers, a long pillar-like neck, snow-white skin, small and firm and pointy breasts, a big ass, a potbelly, dark eyebrows and strong things. Janega made a great point about how even back then the beauty ideal was only really accessible to those who had leisure time and money. You couldn't have a pale skin if you worked outside all day, nor could you be always clean. Women who did manual labor could not have soft hands, and it was only people who had access to food, especially fatty foods, who could have potbellies. Hiring a wet-nurse was needed if you wanted to look after your breasts and keep them tiny and firm. One thing we do share with the medieval period is that youth is seen as an integral part of being beautiful and desirable. The ideal woman of the medieval period was a maiden, a young woman who was sexually inexperienced but not a child anymore. It was quite frustrating to learn that, according to Christian mythology, when the dead rise during the final judgement, they rise as their ideal selves – men at around 33 years of age, women as teenagers. I have always been interested in what people consider beautiful and just how varied that is throughout history, and while I had a basic understanding of what the medieval man defined a beautiful woman as (cause, let's face it, the ones considered authorities on all things woman were men), Janega's book deepened my understanding of this subject immensely.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in either the medieval European world or the history of gender, sexuality and sex. The Once and Future Sex is a well-written, enjoyable and eye-opening book. I'm giving it only 4/5 stars because I hardly ever give nonfiction higher than that (a 5/5 star is a new favorite and very few nonfiction, though fascinating and helpful to me as a historian, achieve quite that status) and because as much as I like this book and appreciate Janega as a historian, I'm just not a medieval history girlie at heart.


Here are some interesting facts I learned:

- The medieval people loved the ancients, but they venerated Aristotle most of all.

- Universities were first founded at the end of the 11th century.

- 85% of medieval people were peasants (meaning they worked land) and out of those 85% around 75% were serfs.

- Medieval people had pretty much the same life expectancy as us, if they survived childhood and childbirth. The common estimated life expectancy of 32 years is so low because 50% of infants died.

- Protestants complained that Catholic churches had too many pictures of hot women in their art and that that led them to have impure thoughts. Many left Catholicsm because of this.

- Because makeup was seen as women trying to be something they were not and to seduce men, sex workers who were discovered by their clients to use make up might have to give the man back his money cause they had sold "falsified goods".

- Sumptuary laws dictated who could wear what – for example, only upper classes could wear silk.

- Vainness and wanting to look pretty was seen as so dangerous, that some theorised that God had sent the Black Death to punish men and women for focusing too much on clothes and makeup.

- Sexually inactive women (maidens as well as people like nuns) could be treated with vigorous fingering by doctors if they suffered from what medieval people called a suffocated womb. This was not sex, but medicine.

- In medieval times, the punishment for suspected witchcraft was pretty much always fasting, praying and doing penance – while witch-hunting may have some of its roots in the medieval period, it was only much later, in the 17th century, that people truly began to "hunt" witches.

- Women were seen as uncontrollably horny but at the same time religious authority figures declared that men need brothels in towns because if they don't get to have sex enough they will become violent and fuck shit up.

- Beguines were religious women who lived lives of service and piety but were not members of any monasteries. Some formed their own unofficial communities.

- Syphilis entered Europe in 1495.

- Some female-dominated fields included weaving, embroidery, laundry and midwifery (women were barred from official physician training, but could be educated by guilds or family members to act as surgeons or barbers as well as midwives).

- A sex worker could leave their past behind if they wanted to or could relatively easily: most of the time, a former sex worker had to talk to a priest, do penance and get married and tadaa, they were no longer sinful.

- If a sex worker died when practicing their trade, they were not given proper burials: they were ostracised and subjected to shame and ridicule in death like they were in life.

- Courtly love was a popular genre of song and literature which focused on love affairs of married women and unmarried men. Though, on the surface, love stories, they parroted ideas of women as fickle, untrustworthy and sex hungry.

- Women masturbating and engaging in lesbian sex were seen as connected: both were problematic because they didn't involve men and then could not result in pregnancy. Having lesbian sex did require, however, a longer and harsher penance if discovered.

[Leah]

I think I prefer history books about more specific topics than this. the most interesting ideas were in the introduction, mostly that society in the middle ages was not exactly like our own but more regressive, and therefore women are not inherently lesser beings aided by modernity to have more equal status. instead, our ideas about gender are constructed within the context of our culture and can be subsequently deconstructed. the main part of the book was interesting but too broad to really pull me in, although I liked her consistent reminder that class would have been as big a factor as gender in determining medieval women’s lives.

[Kaitlyn Hermansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into the beauty standards, sex lives, and work expectations of women from the medieval ages. Overall the information was new to me and I enjoyed reading it, but I didn’t love the structure of this book. Passages were either too long winded or far too vague with no middle ground. I often found myself getting bored or struggling to follow along with the disjointed information. There were chapters I really enjoyed though and this was overall a good read.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I’ve long been fascinated by gender in the Middle Ages and have heard of Janega’s work so I was excited to read this one. There’s some great stuff in The Once and Future Sex — I particularly enjoyed Janega’s analysis of the intersections of gender, class, and work in the medieval era, as well as a brief reference to the medicalization of gender expression through the idea of imbalanced humors.

However, I struggled with the overarching goal of this text, which is to “unfurl [the medieval era’s] suppositions about women and reveal what’s shifted over time — and what hasn’t.” There are some fundamental presumptions baked in there: firstly that our modern gender roles are barbaric in their outdated proximity to the medieval, and secondly that we have been conceptualizing (and assigning) gender and sexuality in the same way for those thousand years. These are complicated not only by the humor imbalances Janega points to, which allowed for some social acknowledgement of the idea of “masculine women and feminine men,” but also contemporary art and literature like the Roman de Silence and the motif of Christ’s “side wound,” which I found myself wishing Janega would consider. Of course, knowing people in the Middle Ages were firmly connected to and fascinated by the ancients, there’s also the question of modern research into Ancient Greek and Roman models of sexuality — which often differ wildly from our own.

Also, I just found it odd that Janega would bring up a two of the medieval women whose writings on gender we do have (Christine de Pizan and Hildegard von Bingen), describe them as voices who are “important and should be studied,” and then only occasionally reference their work. Largely, Once and Future Sex is more preoccupied with what medieval men thought of medieval women — which is a necessary consideration, considering men’s power and women’s marginalization in medieval society, but certainly not the whole picture.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

an interesting and engaging read. I would like to be a medievalist so that I could consider the arguments presented here more critically....but as a reader, I can be a little critical of stylistic choices, idioms, and flippant asides made for the sake of this being a popular culture, not an academic book. They grated a tad.

[Sveta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thorough analysis of women's life in the middle ages. I really liked the wit and the sarcasm and the connection to modern problems. Unfortunately, in some ways we didn't move far from the middle ages.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been an Eleanor Janega stan for a while after having listened to her talk about medieval history on multiple podcasts, and this book did not disappoint. It’s funny, informative, and an overall great time

[Liv Horton · Rating 4 out of 5]

*1300s fred armisen voice*
women keeping up with fashion? right to jail.
women using makeup? right to jail, right away.
enjoying sex? jail.
disinterested in sex? jail.
women saints looking too sexy in their church portraits, in their statues. right to jail.
a woman knows how to read? believe it or not, jail.
a woman is in love with her husband? also jail.
we have the best women in the world. because of jail.

hey, @ the priest who said a father should burn his daughters’ hair and beat them so they won’t be too attractive and get attention….you’re sleeping with the fishes tonight bitch

the way fanfiction is the new medieval courtly love literature

*women masturbate*
lol girls will be girls, theyre overly obsessed with sex! jail for life and going to hell
*men kill, maim, and rape women*
lol boys will be boys, they’re the best of us! no consequence

tired: women are beautiful, have charm, and are pleasing to interact with
wired: women are sorceresses meddling with witchcraft to bewitch all who behold them

me adding malleus maleficarum to my tbr

oh to be a medieval maiden and happen upon a birds nest filled with castrated penises and corn

Eleanor POPPED OFF on modern society in that last chapter YEEEESSSS the world is rigged against women women are born with pain built in men today have yet to understand women even half as well as medieval intellectuals new justifications dont make old expectations okay

If you like learning enjoy a laugh and want to feel the fire of feminism raging within you read this thanks

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The genre of witty history books is increasingly expanding, a phenomenon I first noticed with the work of Emma Southon. This book found the right balance between historical analysis and sarcastic remarks, something not all of the books in this category have managed. Maybe this was because of the topic - niche enough to have a lot of interesting stuff to say, but broad enough and containing enough misconceptions to warrant some modern commentary.

This book makes medieval women - specifically the brand of working-class women we don't hear a lot about - incredibly accessible to a general audience. Even though the main purpose of this book is to emphasize that history and progress are not linear, there are enough moments of similarity to give the contemporary reader a point of access. I would read an entire book on medieval skincare products. But maybe I am in the minority as an absolutely huge nerd.

Janega's tone is casual without losing the necessary aura of expertise. It feels as though we are two people discussing the appeal of pear-shaped bodies in medieval art over a cup of coffee.

Thank you NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company for providing an early copy in exchange for my review!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Until I have a proper review let me just say: I loved this book, Janega is just so much fun to read while always informative and well researched. I also enjoyed the "general" European perspective, I was expecting a book focusing on the English world and as a catalan and a medievalist I cheered when I read about other territories in Christian Europe. I liked the structure of the book and I enjoyed the last chapter greatly, it helped ratify my own vision on things. Un llibre xulíssim de llegir, quina tia més guai i més divertida.

[Katherine Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though the scope of this book is fairly niche, I absolutely loved it and completely devoured it (probably because it closely parallels the focus of my master’s thesis). While many today are quick to regard the Middle Ages with an attitude of superiority, thinking that we are much more advanced in terms of equality of the sexes than our “regressive and backward” past, Janega argues that, despite modern feminist advancements, many of those underlying attitudes, expectations, and views towards women and their roles in society persist even into our modern age. In looking at the medieval understanding of female anatomy and reproduction, along with ideas of beauty standards, fashion, female sexuality, and women’s work, Janega illustrates how women were held to standards created by men and defined in terms of their relationship to men which was, unsurprisingly, a position of inferiority. Though strides have certainly been made since the Middle Ages, Janega reasons that there is still work to be done and that our socially malleable expectations around women are just constructs, which leaves room for them to be deconstructed and rebuilt.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend. Funny, fast-paced, and informative history of perceptions of women in the medieval period. The experience was similar to reading "How to Hide an Empire." Every few pages, I felt like I learned something new. The chapter on perceptions of women's sexuality stood out in particular. We know that these days, society perceives men as horny and women as relatively less interested in sex (the basis of a lot of "A Theory of Bastards"). In the medieval period, perceptions were reversed. Women were the ones, so people thought, who could never be rational because they could never stop thinking about sex. The last chapter is another place where the book delivers some serious insight. Janega explicitly discusses the implications of medieval vs modern perceptions for our current society and research on sex and gender. Foucault would be pleased with the archeology of knowledge going on here.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book talks about how the ideas of gender norms and beliefs about women for the modern western world were formed during the medieval period in Europe. Medieval Europeans were emulating ancient wisdom and biblical doctrine while trying to forge their own path.

Topics include: beauty standards, ideal femininity, female intellect and women’s work.

Women have ALWAYS worked. This notion that women were cared for and pampered is ridiculous. Housewife status is only something that became glorified after WWII, when the country was super rich and could afford such luxuries. This book describes in detail the ways women were subjected by men and the church, shackled by long working hours and the demands of motherhood. The beliefs we have of women today stem from the distant (ancient) past AND the medieval period. Some stuff has changed but plenty has stayed the same.