Medieval women are having a moment. From the British Library’s recent exhibition, “Medieval Women: In Their Own Words” (which closed in March 2025), to books for popular audiences--such as Eleanor Janega’s The Once and Future Sex (2023) and Janina Ramirez’s Femina (2022)--and Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley’s 2021 podcast miniseries Close Readings: Encounters with Medieval Women for the London Review of Books, scholars and writers are increasingly translating the lives of medieval women for audiences beyond the university, inviting them to consider characters, times, and places that they seldom or perhaps never would have otherwise.
Hetta Howes’s recent contribution to this conversation is a book titled Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women. She presents four women as our guides to medieval life. Marie de France (the poet) leads the reader into the world of knights and ladies by virtue of her secular lais, laced with courtly romance, drama, and the supernatural. Julian of Norwich (the mystic) recorded her revelations while living as a recluse, promising that “all manner of things shall be well.” Christine de Pizan (the widow) took up writing and book production to support her family after her husband’s death, leveraging her noble connections and becoming well-known as a writer during her lifetime. Margery Kempe (the wife) is available to us through her autobiographical Book of Margery Kempe that chronicles how her ambitions to lead a religious life in the world were impelled by her own mystical visions and imperilled by many around her, not least her husband, John.
These women are all known to us because they were authors of long-form literary texts, something that Howes states is relatively rare for the medieval period. We also know these women and their works thanks to accidents of history, by which the manuscripts containing their works happened to survive and to make their way to people who recognized their value. Howes, a scholar of literature, approaches these texts as at once literary works and historical evidence of their authors’ lived experiences, especially in the case of Christine and Margery’s autobiographical writings. Howes peppers her descriptions of the four main characters with slangy phrases, grabbing the reader’s attention and seeking to evoke a connection between medieval women and Howes’s imagined readers of today. This is particularly so for Christine de Pizan, “the definition of a hustler” (8) who “was creating a brand,” (10, 97) and Margery Kempe who, according to Howes, can teach readers a key life lesson: “haters gonna hate” (202). In addition to these four female authors, Howes draws on a remarkably wide array of primary sources from across Europe, including conduct literature, alehouse poems, court records, personal letters, pilgrim badges, pharmacy bills, and more besides.
The work’s chapters proceed thematically, with the four central women as touchstones for the themes discussed. The nine chapters, plus introduction and conclusion, roughly outline a human lifecycle from birth to death.
Chapter 1, “Knocked Up,” begins with Margery Kempe’s traumatic birth experience, then discusses theologians’ views of Eve and her painful childbirth juxtaposed against the painless Virgin Birth, Galenic and Aristotelian views of conception via De secretis mulierum and the Trotula, and the material cultures of the birthing chamber, plus contraceptives, abortifacients, and the stigma that women could face when pregnant out of wedlock.
Chapter 2, “Tied Down,” examines the theme of marriage. Starting from Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, in which marriage is a recurrent theme, Howes states the basics of medieval marriage (the consent of both parties, preferably but not necessarily with witnesses) as well as conventions for betrothals and weddings, the freedom (or not) to choose one’s own partner (including Christine’s), dealing with unhappy marriages or a family’s disapproval, the multilayered account of marriage given by the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and finally, the option of celibacy preferred by Christina of Markyate and, eventually, Margery Kempe.
The third chapter, “Bit on the Side,” discusses sexuality. The first section of this chapter discusses sex outside of marriage in the form of courtly tales, adultery laws, and clerical texts, drawing on Arthurian legends, Andreas Capellanus, the “Tour de Nestle” affair, and the Malleus maleficarum, as well as the writings of Christine and Marie. The second section presents various medieval ideas about sex, including Margery’s sudden sexual desire (a spiritual test), Jeanne de Montbaston’s humorous penis tree illustrations, a one-sentence mention of Christ’s famously vulval side wound, and the ribaldry of the Miller’s Tale. The third section of this chapter turns to same-sex interest and activity, presenting evidence for and attitudes towards female same-sex sexual activity, then rightly (if briefly) noting the relative invisibility of such activity in the sources and consequently in scholarly work.
Chapter 4, “Wanderlust,” examines travel, framed by Margery’s pilgrimages. Howes presents the general conditions under which medieval travel occurred--including the obtaining the necessary time, money, and walking staff, and discourses in travel accounts narrating the unpleasantness of travel by sea or describing exotic lands, such as John Mandeville’s Book of Marvels and Travels--before turning to women’s specific experiences of travel, such as increased danger on the road and imposed or idealized limits on mobility, suspicion toward female pilgrims, the fascinating story of the fourteenth-century pirate Jeanne de Clisson, and, in the final page and a half of the chapter, Mandeville’s descriptions of non-white women, the experiences of Jewish travellers, and concerns about interreligious couples.
Chapter 5, “Hustling,” explores the world of work through the prism of Christine’s writing and role in manuscript production. Howes presents medieval examples comparing men’s and women’s work, such as the Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband, which stages an unfinished debate over whether a husband’s ploughing in the fields or a wife’s housework are more difficult (Howes’s money is on the wife’s domestic labour of tending to cows, making butter and cheese, childrearing, brewing, baking, spinning, and making clothing for everyone, among other tasks). Women married to Christ were also much employed in keeping the canonical hours and leading communities as prioresses or abbesses. As an anchorite, Julian prayed but also gave advice. Contemporary writings and modern scholarship on Marie de France serve as an example of a woman’s work being devalued compared to men’s. The chapter ends by briefly considering sex work in Britain and German-speaking regions.
Chapter 6, “Making Friends...” opens with the scene, evoked in Margery’s book, of her visit to Julian’s cell. The chapter focuses on female friendship. Presenting male writers’ anxieties about gossip as evidence of the subversive potential of female solidarity, Howes continues on to describe women’s relationships in Christine’s and Marie’s writings, Julian’s possible networks of religious women and patrons, Margery’s attempts to make friends and reliance on the women around her, Margaret of Cortona and her female supporters, the Paston letters, the beguines of Paris, and the poem Emare, in which a silk cloth created by one woman becomes another’s means of survival.
Chapter 7 completes the previous title: “...And Influencing People.” Its central subject is medieval women’s ability to influence their societies. The chapter presents two strategies available to ambitious women--complete feminine virtue like the Virgin Mary, or a virago who takes on masculine traits--but explores only the virago. Joan of Arc, for Howes, demonstrates the double bind of adopting masculine qualities to lead and being condemned for that very bargain. She sees the same occurring in cases of queens like Blanche of Castile and Margaret of Anjou, further viragos in Christine’s descriptions of Semiramis, the Amazons, and Hypsicratea, plus a virago streak in Christine herself. The chapter ends with Margery, influenced by saints including Bridget of Sweden and Margaret of Antioch, and desiring to be influential in her own society.
The book’s eighth chapter, “Having It All?,” begins with Julian of Norwich, describing her as a woman who did not try to “have it all,” but chose one role, a recluse and writer. Howes then contrasts her with Margery, a woman who tried to “have it all” as at once a wife and a religious person. Examples of conduct literature--such as How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter, La Perfecta Casada, and some of Christine’s writings--describe women’s responsibilities for reproduction both sexual and social: having children and then tending, rearing, and teaching them. Howes also discusses Christine’s account of balancing writing and motherhood, and Margery’s accusation of heresy and attempt to become a recluse or vowess.
Chapter 9 is simply titled “Death,” the final stop in any mortal life. Drawing on associations between reclusion and death, Howes opens the chapter with Julian in her anchorhold. She notes that reclusion’s death to the world was so strict that some women “escaped” (perhaps more puzzlingly to today’s readers, many more women lived out their days voluntarily enclosed). She notes that death was more visible in medieval western Europe, especially in times of plague or other epidemics--during which misogyny also increased along with other types of scapegoating, notably anti-Jewish sentiment. Christ’s pains during the Passion, a major subject in both Julian’s and Margery’s writing, were also ubiquitous and offered a way to understand suffering as salvific. Lovesickness, as it appears in Marie’s lais, could also cause death. For this reason, Howes writes, a good death was of utmost importance, drawing on the Ars moriendi and Marie’s translation of The Purgatory of St Patrick. The chapter ends with thoughtful sketches of how each of the four central characters might have envisioned heaven.
A brief conclusion sets these four central medieval women against modern concerns, speculating about what they might think of our present age and measuring medieval against modern views on marriage, sexual assault, childbirth and -rearing, abortion, travelling solo as a woman, representations of female friendship, sexism in the workplace, difficulties facing working mothers, and death.
In short, Howes presents her four main characters--poet Marie, mystic Julian, widow Christine, wife Margery--as prisms through which the medieval world can be not only refracted and seen by today’s readers but also made familiar. The choice of lifecycle as a structure allows the book to cover a great deal of ground and to incorporate many fascinating anecdotes and tidbits. Interestingly absent from this lifecycle are childhood or young adulthood, both currently emerging areas of scholarship.
This book contains multitudes, ranging widely within each lifecycle topic. Perhaps as an effect of its kaleidoscopic nature, certain elements of the book are at times obscure. One concerns the exact identity of its intended readership. Much about this book implies an audience of educated non-specialists, but some moments suggest assumptions of more specialized knowledge. Would a casual reader not need a gloss for “a newe huswyfre” (9) or some follow-up on a passing reference to Le Roman de Silence as a queer text? In either case, more references to key scholarly works on topics under discussion--Jacques Le Goff on Purgatory, Judith Bennett on lesbian-like relationships, or any source at all on anti-Jewish violence during outbreaks of plague--would help readers wade more deeply into the worlds being described.
Recent interest in medieval women suggests a political moment in which womanhood, femininity, and gender are being redefined and questioned. Medievalists are ready to respond, as the exhibitions, books, and podcasts mentioned earlier attest. Howes draws explicit connections between medieval and modern women, but some of these comparisons leave the reader wondering exactly how to take them. Are they lighthearted juxtapositions, such as some of Howes’s passages on medieval and modern birthing rituals? Are they encouraging personal identification with medieval girlbosses as a means of liberation? Are they revealing statements about lasting inequalities, such as those in work and pay that have remained almost unchanged for over one thousand years?
In articulating some of this book’s takeaways, a concept such as Judith Bennett’s patriarchal equilibrium might have come in handy: across history, despite many changes to their status, women continue to be disadvantaged compared to men of the same group. It is precisely because this situation has been so long-standing that it must be dismantled today, and because it is so deeply ingrained that it is difficult to combat. We may indeed, as Howes proposes, be able to look to the past for strategies and solutions--such as the subversive solidarity of female friendships that she discusses in chapter 6. This book is strongest where it identifies these patriarchal continuities and the ways that women have always resisted them, through solidarity, sorority, and persistence.