Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 2387
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Duby , Georges.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Women and Power [the ways in which aristocratic women in northern France took part in the power of command and of punishment].
  • Source: Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe.  Edited by Thomas N. Bisson.  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.  Pages 69 - 85.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Essay
  • Subject (See Also): Family Genealogy Households Noble Women Politics Power Widows Wives
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: France
  • Century: 11-12
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract:
  • Related Resources: "Duby also moves away from institutional concerns in his discussion of women in a world which had to express power to coerce, he believes, in masculine terms. Rather than analyzing the formal elements of marriage alliances and the gifts that fleshed them out or the authority exercised by widows or abbesses, Duby stresses the informal means women employed in the menage. Both through control of the household servants and pillow talk, they indirectly had access to the potestastheir culture considered part of a natural order dominated by males. When inheritance occasionally allowed women to head lineages, they were often suspect. Noblemen were lords of women in their households as well as peasants surrounding their castles." From the review written by Stephen Bensch of "Cultures of Power," "Medieval Review" (TMR ID: 97.06.04). [Reproduced by permission of the "Medieval Review."].
  • Author's Affiliation: Collge de France
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1995.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 0812232909