History 2800 – Women in Ancient and Medieval Times

1. History 2800 – Women in Ancient and Medieval Times Approaches to Women’s History Terminology Theory Methodology Primary Sources

2. Why Study Women? • “Women have had a unique past.” (Hilda Smith) • “Women have a different experience as to consciousness, depending on whether or not their activity is male-defined or woman-oriented.” (Gerda Lerner) • “To those who argue that women’s history is just another narrow specialty, we must reply that we are talking about the rich and varied past of over half the human race.” (Offen, Pearson and Rendell)

3. Definitions

4. Approaches to Women’s History • Theoretical (a belief system; controlling insight) • Attacking the dichotomy between men and women • Study of power, subjugation, subordination, dominance • See women as active agents not passive victims • Methodological (from sources to interpretation) • Re-evaluating primary sources (interviews, folktales, etc.) • Re-interpreting traditional sources • Historiographical (writing women’s history) • Compensatory “Women worthies” • Contributory (women’s groups) • Life cycle (production, reproduction, psyche, kinship) • Gender history

5. Theoretical Frameworks I – Nature/Nurture • Traditional view: Men and their activities were cultural and of cultural value, women’s natural and outside of history and society • Moreover, the relations of power and subjection were attributed to “nature” • Female scholars challenged the view that motherhood was “natural” but fatherhood was “social” because they implied a devaluation of women’s lives under men’s lives (Gisela Bock)

6. Theoretical Frameworks II – Work/family • To move away from women’s lives as “natural” rather than “cultural” was to investigate changing and distinctive patterns of work • Production and reproduction were both work – therefore “paid” and “unpaid” labour • This presupposed a hierarchy, a higher value on “paid” work

7. Theoretical Frameworks III – Public/Private • Also known as the political/personal, or the sphere of power and the domestic sphere • Traditionally seen as a dichotomy of “separate spheres” • The controlling idea is one of power – “the personal is the political” means power is not confined to “high politics” • The private could become the public as well, as legislation on midwives, abortion, and sterilization attest

8. Power: hegemony & patriarchy • “Power” can be understood when defined as: • “hegemony” – the predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others and • “patriarchy” – a social system in which the father is the head of the family and men have authority over women and children • How does this help explain feminism and history?

9. Applying Feminist Theory to ancient and medieval history • Gerda Lerner, in The Creation of Patriarchy (1986): • “Women’s history is indispensable and essential to the emancipation of women.” • “Like men, women are and always have been actors and agents in history.” • “Women are and have been central, not marginal, to the making of society and to the building of civilization.” • “Women have also shared with men in preserving collective memory….This oral tradition was kept alive in poem and myth…created and preserved in folklore, art and ritual.” (emphasis mine)

10. Feminist Theory and “history-making” • Lerner: Unlike history, “history-making…is a historical creation….[Historians] have selected the events to be recorded and have interpreted them so as to give them meaning and significance. Until the most recent past, these historians have been men, and what they have recorded is what men have done and experienced and found significant.”

11. Theory, patriarchy and “victims” • So…women are victims? • Lerner acknowledges: “No man has been excluded from the historical record because of his sex, yet all women were.” • “While women have been victimized by this and many other aspects of their long subordination to men, it is a fundamental error to try to conceptualize women primarily as victims” • Women were present throughout history, yet they have been denied access to interpreting it – traditional methods did not work

12. Traditional Methodology and its Discontents for historians of women What traditional methods of examination were used? • Primary sources (‘hard evidence’) – Q. Why are these a problem for historians of women? • A. written sources dominated by men • Secondary sources (interpretation) – Q. Why are these a problem for historians of women? • A. written by men with access to primary sources • Revising interpretations (Marxist/social history) “history from the bottom up” looking at primary sources such as the census and court records to find out how lower classes lived – Q. why are these a problem for historians of women? • A. Placed the class struggle above all others

13. “Traditional” Methodology and women’s history How’s that working for women and women’s historians? (with apologies to Dr. Phil) • Some powerful women could be examined, but within traditional framework (politics, military, religion) “women worthies” - compensatory history • Some groups of women could be examined, but also within traditional frameworks (suffrage, women at the Home Front, nuns) contributory history

14. Methodology and women’s lives • A new methodology to examine women’s lives proposed (by Lerner) in 1975 women-centred: • Production • Reproduction • Kinship • Psyche • In each case, the sources could be re-examined specifically to suit women’s lives

15. Social History and Women’s History • Couldn’t women just have written like Marxists? • Many did, most were trained as social historians, BUT: • Traditional (Marxist) interpretation of subordination centres on economics • These historians argue that the class system was the FIRST SYSTEM to establish subordination • Lerner examined ancient societies and argues that patriarchy came first

16. Methodology and Patriarchy • If patriarchy predates the class system, how did it begin? • Lerner: “changes in kinship organization and economic relations, in the establishment of religious and state bureaucracies, and in the shift in cosmogenies expressing the ascendancy of male god figures” all subordinated women • In other words: economics, politics, and religion

17. Ten Things About Patriarchy (the first five) • Men controlled sexual and reproductive capacity BEFORE a class system developed • States were organized along patriarchal control • Men learned dominance and hierarchy over other people by their earlier practice of dominance over women • Women’s sexual subordination was institutionalized • Class for men is based on relationship to means of production, for women, it is mediated through their sexual ties/relationship to men

18. Ten Things About Patriarchy (the second five) • Even after sexual and economic subordination, women play active and respected roles in mediating between humans and gods including metaphysical power (life) • Dethroning power goddesses (replaced by dominant male god) occurred in most near Eastern societies • Hebrew monotheism attacked fertility goddesses and associated sex with sin • Women’s only access to God was as mothers • Devaluing women in relation to the divine becomes one of the founding metaphors of Western civilization.

19. What happened to women’s history in the 1980s and 1990s? What happened to women’s history? • It didn’t go away, but it took a major hit when Joan Scott published Gender and History (1986) in which she argued that women should not be studied in seclusion. • The second hit came with the accusation of racism, particularly in N. America • Another wave, less easily defined by date, came with what Susan Faludi termed “Backlash” - when feminism became a word meaning “gone too far”

20. Reading Primary Sources • Definition and value of primary sources: • Primary source documents are those written at the time of the period under study. • Taken together, primary sources provide evidence that later historians use to interpret history. • Primary sources are the building blocks of historical scholarship.

21. Reading Primary Sources What are primary sources? Four general categories: • Official/legal • Personal • Financial • Communications

22. Official and/or legal sources • government records • deeds • wills • inventories • court documents • military records • tax records • census records Ulpian’s Rules (3rd century textbook of Roman law) Adultery The lex Julia declares that wives have no right to bring criminal accusations for adultery against their husbands, even though they may desire to complain of the violation of the marriage vow, for while the law grants this privilege to men it does not concede it to women…

23. Personal Primary Sources • letters • diaries • journals • travel logs (Insert) The Paston Family Letter (15th century England). Margaret, who married John Paston in 1440, dictated most of her letters, and they are preserved in a vast family archive along with the letters and business documents of many of her relatives and employees and business associates. 24 December 1459 Right worshipful husband, I recommend me unto you. May it please you to know that I sent your eldest son to my Lady Morley to have knowledge what sports were used in her house in Christmas next following after the decease of my lord her husband. And she said that there were no disguisings nor harping nor luting nor singing, nor any loud disports, but playing at the tables and chess and cards…

24. Financial Sources • Invoices • Bills • ship records/logs • account books (Inset) An invoice for Pick Wick Mining Candles to the Storeys Creek Tin Mine Co (1927)

25. Communications • newspapers • advertisements • broadsides • maps (Inset) Broadsides are today most often called “leaflets”; this one calls for an abolition of slavery

26. “Interrogating” primary sources In order to effectively use primary source materials, we must ask questions of them to reveal information contained within them. Essentially: • Who wrote it? • Why did she or he write it? • To whom did he or she write? • Under what “influence” or “atmosphere”?

27. “Interrogating” primary sources 1. Who wrote this document, and what does this tell us about their perspective?For instance: • What was this person’s "point of entry" into the world? To which “class” or “caste” did they belong? • What was this person’s role in their society? (government official, minister, merchant, midwife, land owner, farmer, etc.) • What was this person’s world-view (religious perspective, economic interests, political ideology) based on who they are? • What might be this author’s social status and education?

28. “Interrogating” primary sources 2. Knowing what we know about this person, why do you think he/she wrote this document? • Always try to rise above the temptation to suggest it was written “for money” or “fame”. • Better to fall into the assumption “self-interest” because then you can ask the question “Who would benefit from this source?” • Classification – private letter, public apology, official statement, confidential memo – each assumes a different “voice”

29. “Interrogating” primary sources 3. Who was the intended audience for this document? What were its uses? • It’s important to know who the person is writing for (sociologists call this “manifest function”) • But equally important to find out what happened when the unintended audience found the source (sociologists call this “latent function”)

30. “Interrogating” primary sources 4. What were the cultural and historical contexts and the environment in which this document was written? For instance: • What was the political climate at the time? Was it written during a time of war? Was this a time of great change, or were the dominant groups working to keep the status quo? • What assumptions did that author’s society hold about people of color? • What were the roles and expectations of men and of women at that time?

31. Images as Primary Sources • What do we do with primary sources that are images? Can we apply the same criteria? • Yes and no. Yes, because we often know who created the image, and in fact, we often know more about why, and for whom, because they were often commissioned. • No, because art is a different medium than the written language – its purpose may be for a local or national audience, but it is universal

32. Primary Sources as Images • How to “read” an image: • Context and construction – every image is communicating something to the viewer • “art” (sculpture, painting, fresco, etc.) • Artists attempt to capture a mood as much as an image of a person - what mood is the artist trying to create, to what effect? • Photography (including stills from a movie) • Photographers begin with a specific moment but can alter, enhance and transform their images – what is the photographer trying to make you see and why?