Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth Century Lives

by Natalie Zemon Davis

As she did with Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis here retrieves individual lives from historical obscurity to give us a window onto the early modern world. As women living in the seventeenth century, Glikl bas Judah Leib, Marie de l'Incarnation, and Maria Sibylla Merian, equally remarkable though very different, were not queens or noblewomen, their every move publicly noted. Rather, they were living "on the margins" in seventeenth-century Europe, North America, and South America. Yet these women--one Jewish, one Catholic, one Protestant--left behind memoirs and writings that make for a spellbinding tale and that, in Davis' deft narrative, tell us more about the life of early modern Europe than many an official history. All these women were originally city folk. Glikl bas Judah Leib was a merchant of Hamburg and Metz whose Yiddish autobiography blends folktales with anecdotes about her two marriages, her twelve children, and her business. Marie de l'Incarnation, widowed young, became a mystic visionary among the Ursuline sisters and cofounder of the first Christian school for Amerindian women in North America. Her letters are a rich source of information about the Huron, Algonquin, Montagnais, and Iroquois peoples of Quebec. Maria Sibylla Merian, a German painter and naturalist, produced an innovative work on tropical insects based on lore she gathered from the Carib, Arawak, and African women of Suriname. Along the way she abandoned her husband to join a radical Protestant sect in the Netherlands. Drawing on Glikl's memoirs, Marie's autobiography and correspondence, and Maria's writings on entomology and botany, Davis brings these women to vibrant life. She reconstructs the divergent paths their stories took, and at the same time shows us each amid the common challenges and influences of the time--childrearing, religion, an outpouring of vernacular literature--and in relation to men. The resulting triptych suggests the range of experience, self-consciousness, and expression possible in seventeenth-century Europe and its outposts. It also shows how persons removed from the centers of power and learning ventured in novel directions, modifying in their own way Europe's troubled and ambivalent relations with other "marginal" peoples.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Feminism, Womens, European History, Grad School

372 pages, Hardcover

First published October 16, 1995

About the author

Natalie Zemon Davis was an American-Canadian historian of the early-modern period.

Reviews

[Rose LaCroix · Rating 3 out of 5]

While of interest to historians as a solid secondary source on the lives of three 17th century women, this book is not for the casual reader and I found myself struggling at times to get through Davis' lengthy digressions and rather indirect style.

It will remain on my bookshelf as an excellent source for academic papers, but as something to read curled up in bed it was only slightly more engaging than an encyclopedia and at times much harder to follow.

[Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Natalie Zemon Davis wishes to present three lives in the seventeenth century. This book particularly focuses on historiography along with biographical supplements concerning women during this period. Unfortunately the quotations made by Marie De L'Incarnation make her look like a lunatic since she is a mystic. Overall, the New History presented by Davis is unconvincing that sexism completely ruled everyone before the twentieth century.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent examination of three contemporary European women using their own written word to express themselves. Further, the author selects from three religious backgrounds to provide a more vivid mural of events. The subjects of the book each have agency in their lives during a period when men are nearly the entire focus for historians.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be utterly delightful, despite the academic tone. This is the story of three European women of three different faiths who came from relatively normal backgrounds in the 1600s, but left behind enough of a life record to be able to be studied.

The three women are a nun, a Jewish businesswoman and a naturalist, and all while all three of these women had a lot of agency, they were able to use that agency in ways that didn't (for the most part) break with the traditional views of "women" in their communities.

I will say, this is one of those books that I love, but many will not. It is a straight up history/academic analysis of other people's work, and it is pretty dry at times. I would not say that it can be classified as "narrative nonfiction" although at times it is close to that.

My favorite part of this book is the level of love, passion and kinship that Natalie Zemon Davis feels for these women. She champions them, and loves when they are sassy and in control, makes excuses for them, and she is so "in their corner" that she gets mad when people (mostly men) misrepresent their work in any way. You can FEEL her ire when Marie de l'Incarnation's son publishes her work (which she repeatedly reminds us was NOT her wish), and she goes to far as to call one version of Glikl bas Judah Leib's diaries a "mutilation".

Overall, there is a lot to like here.

[Rebecca Radnor · Rating 4 out of 5]

minihistories of ...

[Josy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faszinierend, wie viel NZD aus dem historischen Kontext sowie Bemerkungen in den Werken Merians über die Lebensumstände einer besonderen Frau im 17. Jahrhundert herauslesen kann.

[Sabrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a partial review, because I did a partial read. I wanted to read more about Marie de l'Incarnation from a secondary source grounded in history, so I focused only on the second section of the book, as well as it's references.
Natalie Zemon Davis does an excellent job of explaining the life and motivations of Marie Guyart, based solidly on primary sources. She gives broader context to French life, Ursuline life, religious life in Nouvelle France, and the lives of the Indigenous people who were deeply affected by the presence of religious missionaries and European traders, as well as Marie's own thoughts and perspectives, as shared in her letters and other writings.
The book didn't insist I come away with a particular perspective, and I left deeply uncomfortable with the legacy of French Canadians in Canada (which is my background). Maybe not what everyone is looking for in a history book, but it was the right takeaway for me.

[Denise Kettering · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book describes the religious lives of three different women with three different religious backgrounds. The downfall of the book is that it lacks an adequate conclusion. The book recounts the stories of three different women, but Davis does not do enough to tell us what makes these three significant and fit together into this collection. Glikl is a Jewish woman in Augsburg who wrote predominantly in order to communicate her story to her children. Her religious devotion centers primarily around giving lessons to her children. Marie de la Incarnation was a French woman who ends up joining the Ursuline sisters and coming to North America. Maria Merian was a talented artist and Labadist. She traveled to Suriname to catalog plant and animal life. Each story is valuable and interesting on its own, but I was there was more attempt to pull them together.

[Annika · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Women on the Margins, Natalie Zemon Davis recounts the lives of three seventeenth-century women: a Jewish businesswoman, a Catholic nun, and a Protestant artist/entomologist. The lives of all three were fascinating, but I was expecting less biography and more microhistory. NZD gives a very detailed account of each woman's life, but she only spends a few pages at the end of the book exploring the context of how these women fit into their times and analyzing how being "at the margins" both hindered and helped their ability to shape their own lives. To me, the introduction of an imaginary conversation between NZD and the three women was also a bit out there, but it was definitely creative! All in all, though, I would still highly recommend this book to anyone in early modern history/religious history/women's history.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love both women's history and biography but this one didn't grab me - for some reason - found the writing a bit muddled at times.

[Susannah]

let’s pretend that I read this whole think okay

[Red Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully-written, as ever. The first section definitely seems stronger than the other two; I presume because Glickl left so much more of a coherent testament herself.

[Amy]

DNF.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really dull and ponderous academic tome where I never felt I knew the women—just what they’d done. Read the conclusion at the end and skip the rest.

[sophie ~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars

also read this one for my 'women in history' course and it was good

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las últimas dos biografías molan mucho aunque a veces sean difíciles de leer. La primera sobre la judía comerciante se me hizo insufrible.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book primarily for the third chapter about Maria Sibylla Merian, but found the other two interesting in their own way. Davis presents the three women in a humorous dialog at the start of the text. Her way of giving each a voice, before the start of the very first chapter, is slightly cheeky but a nice way to tease the rest of the book. How the three different lives overlapped and maybe even intersected, in the case of Merian and Glikl bas Judah Leib, is fascinating. I am constantly reminded that we live in a very small world. Davis has riddled her book with notes and commentary that I appreciate. It is wonderful to be able to dig a little more whenever there is an endnote. Reading the chapter on Glikl made me want to know more about the Germanic region of the Baroque era. Similarly, by covering Marie de l'Incarnation's time in Quebec I began to wonder more about the Huron, Iroquois and Mohawk during the time of the Jesuit's evangelistic efforts. Yet the chapter "Metamorphosis" was my main reason for picking up Davis' book. It was cited in Joyce Sidman's The Girl Who Drew Butterflies. I wanted to know more about Merian and how she fits into the larger late 17th century artistic world of Germany and the Netherlands.

Below are two quotes that I found useful about Merian:
“Almost all of the women artists of the early modern period were, like Maria Sibylla Merian, born into a family of artists. In that setting their talent could be welcomed, and contemporary beliefs about the dampening effects of the female temperament on genius ignored(10). Difference did exist, however, between female artists and their brothers. One of them was not important for Maria Sibylla: the usual exclusion of women from large-scale history painting and from the representation of the nude body. These were not projects of either the Merian or the Marrel atelier. While her mother taught her and her stepsister to embroider, Maria Sibylla was able to learn drawing, watercolor, still-life painting, and copperplate engraving from her stepfather along with his male pupils.” p143

“There is no sign in her 1697 letter to Nuremberg or in her 1699 will of any persistence of Labadist enthusiasm; her preface to the Metamorphosis describes the Friesland years disingenuously as if they had been a mere research trip. Yet her divesting herself of property once again and her taking off with her Wieuwerd-raised daughter across the ocean remind one less of the intellectual curiosity of Amsterdam naturalist than of the experimental mobility of Jean de Labadie and Anna Maria van Schurman(136). Merian would never have produced the Metamorphosis if she had stayed with the elect, but she would never have crossed to Suriname is she had not once dared to be a Labadist.” p.172

[Nataliya Borys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating stories of women on margins. Different margins.Why these women? NZD:"I wanted to have a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant.I could see what difference, religion made in women's lifes, what door it opened for you and what door it closed". Women on margins, religions on margins.NZD "I also showed how women in your position made the best of it I asked what advantages you had by being on the margins". Not only women on the margins, but religions too, for Glikh Christians are also on the margins of her Jewish center.It is an interesting new approach of microhistory :) My favorite story is of Marie de L'Incarnation.

[Patricia Tienken-boman · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is always interesting to see how much we have progressed over the years in equality, this book was a litttle difficult to read, I felt it was more like for a class and it had so many references that I skimmed most of it. It is a comparison of these women (one Jewish, one Catholic and a Protestant) and how religion influences them.I was not enamored with this but if you are doing research on women's issues then this is a good read.
My favorite woman in this book is the Catholic nun, her story seems more interesting to me anyway.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Subjects:
Glueckel, of Hameln, 1646-1724.
Marie de l'Incarnation, mère, 1599-1672.
Merian, Maria Sibylla, 1647-1717.
Women -- Biography.
Biography -- 17th century.
Jewish women -- Germany -- Biography.
Women merchants -- Germany -- Biography.
Women missionaries -- Québec (Province) -- Biography.
Protestant women -- Suriname -- Biography.

[Itsbecka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book on how three women lived in the 16th century. These were not "common" women - they wrote extensively so this isn't a book of what life was like for common 16th century people. But it was interesting.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read, interesting story painted by Davis, but a bit light on analysis.

[Carissa]

I don't remember anything from this book. I read it for a college course. Actually, I probably skimmed it.

[Betsy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

History with lots of footnotes, but well-told, from the women's own journals and memoirs and more.
See Siria's review.

[Kaiti · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really interesting, and very well put together!