History 2800 – Women in Ancient
and Medieval Times
Approaches to Women’s History
1.
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2.
Terminology
Theory
Methodology
Primary Sources
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)
Definitions
Patriarchy
Feminism
“Feminine mystique”
Capitalism
Marxism
“Double-bind”
Judeo-Christian Orientalism
“Second sex”
Greco-Roman
Imperialism
Madonna/whore
Feudalism
Estate system
Norm/deviant
Liberalism
Individual rights Maternal/equity
Darwinism
Socio-biology
“Whig” history
Feminist history Historiography
Essentialism
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)
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Compensatory “Women worthies”
Contributory (women’s groups)
Life cycle (production, reproduction, psyche, kinship)
Gender history
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)
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
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
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?
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)
Feminist Theory and “historymaking”
• 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.”
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
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
“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
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 reexamined specifically to suit women’s lives
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
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
Ten Things About Patriarchy (the first five)
1. Men controlled sexual and reproductive
capacity BEFORE a class system developed
2. States were organized along patriarchal control
3. Men learned dominance and hierarchy over
other people by their earlier practice of
dominance over women
4. Women’s sexual subordination was
institutionalized
5. Class for men is based on relationship to
means of production, for women, it is mediated
through their sexual ties/relationship to men
Ten Things About Patriarchy (the second five)
6. Even after sexual and economic subordination,
women play active and respected roles in
mediating between humans and gods including
metaphysical power (life)
7. Dethroning power goddesses (replaced by
dominant male god) occurred in most near
Eastern societies
8. Hebrew monotheism attacked fertility
goddesses and associated sex with sin
9. Women’s only access to God was as mothers
10. Devaluing women in relation to the divine
becomes one of the founding metaphors of
Western civilization.
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”
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.
Reading Primary Sources
What are primary sources?
Four general categories:
• Official/legal
• Personal
• Financial
• Communications
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…
Personal Primary Sources
• letters
• diaries
• journals
24 December 1459
• travel logs
Right worshipful husband, I
(Insert) The Paston Family Letter
recommend me unto you.
(15th century England).
May it please you to know
Margaret, who married John
that I sent your eldest son to
Paston in 1440, dictated most of
my Lady Morley to have
her letters, and they are
knowledge what sports were
preserved in a vast family
used in her house in
archive along with the letters
Christmas next following after
and business documents of
the decease of my lord her
many of her relatives and
husband. And she said that
employees and business
there were no disguisings nor
associates.
harping nor luting nor singing,
nor any loud disports, but
playing at the tables and
chess and cards…
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)
Communications
• newspapers
• advertisements
• broadsides
• maps
(Inset) Broadsides are
today most often
called “leaflets”; this
one calls for an
abolition of slavery
“Interrogating” primary sources
In order to effectively use primary source
materials, we must ask questions of
them to reveal information contained
within them. Essentially:
1. Who wrote it?
2. Why did she or he write it?
3. To whom did he or she write?
4. Under what “influence” or “atmosphere”?
“Interrogating” primary sources
1. Who wrote this document, and what does this
tell us about their perspective?
For instance:
a. What was this person’s "point of entry" into the
world? To which “class” or “caste” did they belong?
b. What was this person’s role in their society?
(government official, minister, merchant, midwife,
land owner, farmer, etc.)
c. What was this person’s world-view (religious
perspective, economic interests, political ideology)
based on who they are?
d. What might be this author’s social status and
education?
“Interrogating” primary sources
2. Knowing what we know about this
person, why do you think he/she wrote
this document?
a. Always try to rise above the temptation to
suggest it was written “for money” or
“fame”.
b. Better to fall into the assumption “selfinterest” because then you can ask the
question “Who would benefit from this
source?”
c. Classification – private letter, public
apology, official statement, confidential
memo – each assumes a different “voice”
“Interrogating” primary sources
3. Who was the intended audience for this
document? What were its uses?
a. It’s important to know who the person is
writing for (sociologists call this “manifest
function”)
b. But equally important to find out what
happened when the unintended audience
found the source (sociologists call this “latent
function”)
“Interrogating” primary sources
4. What were the cultural and historical contexts
and the environment in which this document
was written?
For instance:
a. 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?
b. What assumptions did that author’s society hold
about people of color?
c. What were the roles and expectations of men and of
women at that time?
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
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?