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A spectacular, vivid, groundbreaking work of history which takes us into the minds and lives of medieval women. What was life really like for women in the medieval period? How did they think about sex, death and God? Could they live independent lives? And how can we hear the stories of women from this period? Few women had the luxury of writing down their thoughts and feelings during medieval times. But remarkably, there are at least four extraordinary women who did. Those women were: Marie de France, a poet; Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchoress; Christine de Pizan, a widow and court writer; and Margery Kempe, a no-good wife.Four women, writing hundreds of years ago, long before feminism existed - yet in their own ways these four, very different writers pushed back against the misogyny of the period. Each of them broke new ground in women''s writing and left us incredible insights into the world of medieval life and politics. Hetta Howes has spent her working life uncovering these women''s stories to give us a valuable and unique historical insight that challenges what we hold to be common knowledge about medieval women in Europe. Women did earn money, they could live independent lives, and they thought, loved, fought and suffered just as we do today. Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife paints a portrait of the world in which these women lived, and the ways their lives speak to us in the present.>
About the author
Dr Hetta Howes is a Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature at City, University of London, and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. She regularly contributes to broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and 4, as well as writing for publications such as
The Times Literary Supplement and
BBC History Extra. She has a BA and MPhil from Cambridge University and a PhD from Queen Mary, University of London.
Her academic book
Transformative Waters in Late Medieval Literature was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2021.
Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife is her first book for a popular audience.
