I recently purchased and just finished reading this book and wow! What an eye opening read.

It's a book about women in the medieval period, and I can't believe how many misconceptions I had. This book (as I find history books often do) has completely changed the way I understand our modern world.

It starts at the foundations of the medieval understanding of women- the Greek and Roman philosophers, and of course Christianity- and builds upon this to explain the contemporary view of sex differences, the beauty standard, and the act of sex itself. In medieval times women were seen as the lustful ones, and a pot belly was very sexy!

Throughout the beginning of the book, we are given snippets of insight into women's lives and work through all levels of society. A later chapter is devoted to just this, and describes how women of all classes were expected to labour both outside and inside the domestic sphere. It highlights how women were (as is true today) expected to work more than men, and to receive little credit for it.

The book ends with a bang in the last chapter 'Why It Matters' and I feel that to go in to detail on this chapter would do it little justice!

I will say that this book has led me to understand that our modern understanding of "womanly" behaviour is no more enlightened than the medieval one. We've replaced god with the likes of evolutionary psychology and neuropsychology, to explain why women's and men's positions are what they are.

I'm sure many of you ladies are more well read than I, and are already acquainted with these ideas, but I still absolutely reccomend the read. It's a short book (less than 200 pages before the notes) and has a keen focus on women's history in a oft-forgotten period.

I was very surprised to learn that this book was published in 2023. There's no mention of trans anything, and while there is one use of the word 'intersex' it's defined quite reasonably as 'morphological variance'. Prostitution is of course described under the euphemism of 'sex work' but in no way propped up as a desirable outcome for women and instead shown as something women need aid to escape from.

All in all, I strongly reccomend, and if you've read this far in my post you'll probably be relieved at the shortness of the actual book!

If anyone has read, please share your thoughts, I'd love to hear them.