Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500

Medieval Women looks at a thousand years of English history, as it affected - and was made by - women. Henrietta Leyser considers the problems and attitudes fundamental to every woman of the time: medieval views on sex, marriage and motherhood; the world of work and the experience of widowhood for peasant, townswoman and aristocrat. The intellectual and spiritual worlds of medieval women are also explored. Based on an abundance of research from the last twenty-five years, Medieval Women celebrated the diversity and vitality of English women's lives in the middle ages.