Skip to main content

Late night historical lady talks

Maybe it's 1 AM, and maybe I drank some Coke at midnight, and maybe I need to talk about Medieval Women by Eileen Power for a sec.

And also Christine de Pizan — WHAT? What? Christine de Pizan, who even are you? You're writing in like 1405 and you're attacking misogynists and defending women as intelligent beings who are just as human as men? WHAT? In 1405?? HOW. I feel like I missed something, OR the 1400s weren't as shitty as I thought, OR Christine de Pizan is basically the greatest human being ever.

She wrote Book of the City of Ladies, which is basically like "Oh, women are evil? Here's a list of A MILLION AWESOME WOMEN WHO WERE NOT." And then men were like


...I assume.

But EILEEN POWER even. I've had this book Medieval Women kicking around since I was in high school. I remember bringing it on my high school's spiritual emphasis retreat and while trying to read it, arguing with my History teacher (whom I obviously sat near on the bus) and then ended up calling him a papist, because that's my favorite insult other than communist and ANYWAY, said papist argument meant I never actually read much of this 1975 book by this Eileen Power woman.

WHO, it turns out, died in 1940. But an enterprising gentleman assembled some of her lectures on medieval ladies and put them in a book to be sold for ₤1.95 in nerdy bookstores everywhere. 

So Eileen Power was born in 1889, which ASTONISHES me, mainly because I'm usually astonished when women write awesomely before 1960, despite all the evidence like Wharton, Eliot, Sayers, the aforementioned Pizan, etc etc.

Eileen Power looking smart

I'm still on her first lecture (vaguely titled "Medieval ideas about women"), and she points out — EXCELLENTLY, I might add — that:

In the early Middle Ages what passed for contemporary opinion came from two sources — the Church and the aristocracy. In other words, the ideas about women were formed on the one hand by the clerkly order, usually celibate, and on the other hand by a narrow caste, who could afford to regard women as an ornamental asset

Oooooh.

Let us all be aware these two ladies existed and were awesome.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't...

Harry Potter 2013 Readalong Signup Post of Amazingness and Jollity

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'. You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters. If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing: We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilar...

How to Build a Girl Introductory Post, which is full of wonderful things you probably want to read

Acclaimed (in England mostly) lady Caitlin Moran has a novel coming out. A NOVEL. Where before she has primarily stuck to essays. Curious as we obviously were about this, I and a group of bloggers are having a READALONG of said novel, probably rife with spoilers (maybe they don't really matter for this book, though, so you should totally still read my posts). This is all hosted/cared for/lovingly nursed to health by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) because she has a lovely fancy job at an actual bookshop ( Odyssey Books , where you can in fact pre-order this book and then feel delightful about yourself for helping an independent store). Emily and I have negotiated the wonders of Sri Lankan cuisine and wandered the Javits Center together. Would that I could drink with her more often than I have. I feel like we could get to this point, Emily INTRODUCTION-wise (I might've tipped back a little something this evening, thus the constant asides), I am Alice. I enjoy...