This work is an expansion of a chapter in the author's Medieval Hunting (2003) and is the first book in English specifically on hunting by women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. However, one should note Katharina Fietze's Im Gefolge Dianas: Frauen und höfische Jagd im Mittelalter (1200-1500), published in 2005, which approaches the subject, albeit rather superficially, from the same general perspective.
In his introduction Almond attributes the omission of references to women in previous hunting literature to "ruling-class male bigotry" (7). He finds a greater general acceptance of hunting by upper-class women in the nineteenth century and goes on to note recent works which consider medieval and Renaissance women hunting or hawking. Almond's own approach relies heavily on iconographic evidence. His definition of hunting is extremely broad: "Hunting is the pursuit and taking of wild quarry whether animal or bird, using any method or technique" (4- 5). Thus he considers wild fowling, trapping, and ferreting to be hunting. He goes on to state, "It can also be argued that the procurement, preparation, cooking and serving of game constitutes involvement in hunting." Virtually all other writers on the subject, modern as well as historical, take a narrower view.
The first chapter, "The Huntress as a Cultural Icon," describes depictions of such classical figures as Artemis/Diana, Venus, and the Amazons in hunt scenes, as well as discussing a number of themes which the author relates to hunting. These include the wild man and wild woman, the unicorn hunt, and the portrayal of Maid Marian of the Robin Hood legends as "a skilled huntress." Almond concludes, "[F]or many centuries, women were not divorced in men's minds from an active involvement in hunting but were accepted . . . " (52).
Chapter Two, "Ladies in the Field," deals with upper-class women. Hunting and hawking were part of a gentleman's education, and Almond believes, "It appears likely that wives and daughters looked at and possibly read their menfolk's books on hunting and hawking" (59). He then describes a number of sixteenth-century illustrations of women being introduced to various aspects of hunting (reproduced in the text) and concludes that women were directly involved in educating "their young sons, and perhaps pre-pubescent daughters, in hunting and hawking" (67). He goes on to describe courtly hunting procedures and women's hunting dress and to discuss whether women rode side-saddle or astride before arriving at the main subject of the chapter. The section on women actually hunting begins with some documentary material, including a twelfth-century Scottish poem, a 1221 grant allowing the Abbess of Barking to chase foxes, and several instances of women poaching. Then come descriptions of a number of illustrations of noblewomen hunting, a section on women hawking, and finally some notes on the cooking of game.
Chapter Three, "Commonalty women," discusses in general terms hunting by the lower classes as well as the English Statute of 1390 which attempted to limit such hunting. The material on women can be considered hunting only if one accepts Almond's very broad definition. Most of his evidence is visual, the few documentary citations are inconclusive, and even in the case of cooking game Almond states "there is almost no hard evidence," and falls back on such phrases as "must have had" and "no doubt" (117-18).
Chapter Four, "Hunting, Sin and Eroticism," considers moral attitudes towards hunting, both negative and positive, as well as relationships between hunting and sex. Apart from symbolic and iconographic connections, Almond notes two motifs which bear on women's actual participation in the hunt. The first is the general depiction of aristocratic ladies as "admiring onlookers;" the second is the presence of ladies at the dismembering of the stag at the end of the courtly hunt--the "unmasking." When this occurred ladies "were liable to be presented with a foot, or occasionally the head, of the slain quarry" (130). Only one instance is cited in which a woman actually dispatched a stag, and that was Queen Elizabeth I.
In his final chapter Almond comments on English scholarly neglect of the history of hunting, "consigned to the élitist bin". He states his own "common-sense view: what could be more natural than a woman accompanying her husband, lover, relative or male friend out hunting" (148), and justifies accordingly his own use of art-historical evidence. Feminists will appreciate his statement that "women are better at most things than men including hunting" (156).
This is a useful book. It contains much information, some of which is tangential to the main topic, and students of women's history should find it interesting and informative. I enjoyed reading it. However I question a number of the author's methods. For one thing he tends to make generalizations for the entire period he writes about. With upward social mobility at the end of the Middle Ages and Renaissance more people engaged in sport, hunting manuals were written specifically for the gentry, and no doubt more women hunted. What is true later may not have been true previously.
Almond's "common-sense" argument seems rather anachronistic. In a society of arranged marriages, heavy responsibilities, large families, and very limited leisure time, one doubts if modern ideas of shared activities were as commonly held as he suggests.
Almond's definition of hunting is much too broad. The thirteenth- century English royal household differentiated between falconers and hawkers and fowlers and between huntsmen and ferreters. Those associated with the kings' sport had higher status and were paid correspondingly more. Edward of Norwich's The Master of Game does not mention ferreting, and his section on hares is about coursing: he does not write about taking rabbits in warrens. Almond's all-inclusive definition may be meaningful for anthropologists, but it is too diluted to be useful for social historians. Even if one uses the traditional narrower definition of hunting, Almond's criteria for inclusion are questionable. He considers women's "public attendance at a sporting event, providing support and appreciation of their menfolk" to be hunting (150). But taking part in hunting is not hunting per se. One can use Almond's criteria to prove medieval women jousted.
Still another concern involves the interpretation of marginal illuminations. At the base of folio 43v of The Romance of Alexander a woman is depicted holding a hawk. Next to her are two monkeys on stilts. On f. 81v a hare is shown shooting an arrow at a boy and then carrying the trussed boy off. Are the illustrations of ladies hawking accurate or satiric? Two of the scenes of ladies hunting in The Taymouth Hours give one pause. F. 77v depicts an unaccompanied woman on foot killing a boar with a spear; f. 83v shows four unaccompanied women--no huntsmen, no dogs--dismembering a stag. Are these realistic, exaggerated, or possibly symbolic? Virginia Sekules writes of the series, "The pictures may have been intended to be funny, in the 'world turned upside-down' tradition. More likely, however, they are allegorical, and allude to another kind of hunting altogether, that of men by women and vice versa" (Age of Chivalry, 47). Certainly possibly relevant images should be identified and noted, as Almond has done, but I believe correct interpretation of their significance depends on documentary evidence.
There is enough such evidence to show that some upper-class women actively took part in hunting. But what did they actually do? No doubt some rode with the hunt and were present at the dismemberment, but did they kill game, and if so was this usual or occasional? One can get a sense of male attitudes and perhaps of frequency of women's hunting from the English public records. The thirteenth-century English kings were generous in their gifts of deer. John, Henry III, and Edward I gave away more than 25,000 deer to over 1300 people from many different social groups. Roughly 10% of the deer were given to women, who represented 13% of the recipients. A further mark of favor was to allow a recipient to take gifted deer in a royal forest or park. Only 131 of such grants were made, of which only 4 (3%) were to women. In one case the deer were to be taken by the woman's husband; in another by her men; and in a third case, that of Beatrice de la Roche in 1293, the keeper of the park of Freemauntel was ordered "to aid and counsel" Beatrice in taking three does. Only Amice Ripariis was allowed to take the king's deer without male surrogates or supervision. Similarly, all three cases cited of women charged for poaching involved a single woman in the company of men (81). I infer from these examples that even upper-class women's participation in hunting was significantly more circumscribed, at least for the thirteenth century, than Almond suggests. Perhaps some lower-class women did hunt, but Almond has not provided sufficient evidence to conclude this.
Richard Almond has effectively presented positive arguments for women's participation in hunting and his views are worth considering. Whether one agrees with them or not depends on one's conception of historical evidence.