Women in History Books - Page 5

On the Trail of the Women Warriors: The Amazons in Myth and History

Lyn Webster Wilde

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Readers who associate "Amazon" primarily with a South American River or an online retailer are in for a big surprise. In On the Trail of the Women Warriors, Lyn Webster Wilde investigates the original Amazons, independent women warriors who lived without men. First mentioned by Homer, who considered them "women the equal of men," Amazon women fought bravely and ruthlessly in the Bronze and Iron Ages (2000 BC-300 BC), and sought out masculine society only once a year to conceive.

Webster Wilde concentrates her study on the Amazons of Greek mythology, and with clarity, wit, and detail, she examines various possibilities as to what the source of their images and myth may have been. Unlike most scholars, she examined--firsthand--Amazon remains: she traveled to the Ukraine, Russia, and the shores of the Black Sea to investigate graves of Scythian women warriors and the lost city of Themiscyra. Her findings reveal fascinating information about not only the Amazons and the societies that validated their myth, but also "our understanding of what women and men are, and what they can be, if we remove our ideas of what they should be." For example, in Classical Greece, women were utterly suppressed and misogyny was rife, while democracy ironically evolved. In the powerful myth of the Amazon and the subliminal recognition of female power as expressed in religious rites, however, women experienced the liberation denied them by society at large.

A glossary, maps, footnotes, photos, and timeline make her already accessible results even more relevant and coherent. So, did the Amazons exist as portrayed in Greek mythology? Probably not, the author concludes, but all the components of the myth most likely existed in different times and places, and "pieced together, they make an image close to the Amazon archetype." On the Trail of the Women Warriors allows readers to draw their own conclusions. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack

Hildegard of Bingen

Sabina Flanagan

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A very nice biography on Hildegard. 4 out of 5 stars.
22 of 31 people found this review helpful.

Hildegard certainly was a fascinating person, and this is a very informative book about her life and works. The book is written in a scholarly manner, and is very clear and readable. The author speculates a bit on why Hildegard was as she was, but never in an unreasonable way, and the argumentation is never gets absurd.

Interesting and informative biography of Hildegard of Bingen 4 out of 5 stars.
19 of 19 people found this review helpful.

Sabina Flanagan's book provides a clear, coherent, and interesting account of Hildegard's life, without veering toward excessive speculation or sensationalism - always a temptation when dealing with topics like "vision" or "prophecy" or "faith healing." The book opens with a biographical overview of Hildegard's life, and of the context in which she lived. Succeeding chapters deal with the various dimensions of Hildegard's ministry. For the most part, the material is well-chosen; my only complaint would be the amount of attention given to her role as "healer." This chapter of the book has a certain arcane interest insofar as it reflects the culture and beliefs of the Middle Ages, but it is not an edifying or relevant discourse. For the most part, it is a somewhat belabored description of Hildegard's very non-scientific advice for healing various disorders. This was decidedly not her major contribution to human history. Other chapters deal with more significant and/or inspiring topics: Hildegard's role as administrator and pastoral theologian of sorts; her considerable contributions to the field of music; her writings and preaching; and her role as spiritual counselor.
The book takes a bit of a downturn in the final chapter, when the author, albeit somewhat cautiously, hazards an interpretation of Hildegard's visionary experiences as being rooted in migraine headaches. Granted, the author admits that it is a major step from visionary to prophet, and that Hildegard's status as prophet cannot be reduced to neuro-physiological phenomena. Nevertheless, the thesis is forced, and highly speculative, since there is no objective evidence to indicate that Hildegard even suffered from migraines, much less that she confused them with divinely inspired visions. I personally suffer from migraines - and believe me, I'm in no danger of confusing them with divine revelations.
Overall, it is a well-written book, although clearly intended for an educated audience. It is not an academic treatise, but neither does it fall into the genre of what we might call "popular biography." For motivated readers, it is a solid investment of time and energy - but read the last chapter with a few grains of salt.

Editorial Review:

Drawing on contemporary sources, the text unfolds Hildegard's life from the time of her entrance into an anchoress's cell to her death as a famed visionary and writer, abbess and confidante of popes and kings, more than seventy years later. Against this background the author explores Hildegard's vast creative work, encompassing theology, medicine, natural history, poetry, and music. This new edition includes: a new preface, additions to the biographical sections which reveal new discoveries about Hildegard's life, updated references to the latest critical material on Hildegard's writings, and a new bibliography and discography.

Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation

Silvia Federici

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Witch Hunts R Us 4 out of 5 stars.
30 of 32 people found this review helpful.

Published the same month, April 2004, that Fallujah first turned back the American onslaught and that the photographs of American tortures in Abu Ghraib prison were displayed to the world, Silvia Federici's book, Caliban and the Witch, although describing a time and place remote from the lawless atrocities in Mesopotamia, being as it is a study of the witch-hunt, of medieval heretical movements, and of European mechanical and materialist philosophy from the 'Age of Reason,' nevertheless, it is essential for understanding either. At the same time, the paradox of the hideous pun of the Structural Adjustment Program and the Special Access Program as the SAP, or the grotesque contradiction found between chapter 39 of Magna Carta and order 39 of the Iraq occupation are explicated.

Nothing can so clearly help us understand the torture and the project of neo-liberalism as this, for Federici describes a foundational process creating the structural conditions for the existence of capitalism. This is the fundamental relationship of capitalist accumulation, or (as it is called in decades of technical literature) 'primitive accumulation.' This mystery perplexed (however coyly) Adam Smith. It was the 'original sin' of the political economists, and for Karl Marx it was written in "letters of blood and fire."

The birth of the proletariat required war against women. This was the witch-hunt when tens of thousands of women in Europe were tortured and burnt at the stake, in massive state-sponsored terror against the European peasantry destroying communal relations and communal property. It was coeval with the enclosures of the land, the destruction of popular culture, the genocide in the New World, and the start of the African slave trade. The 16th century price inflation, the 17th century crisis, the centralized state, the transition to capitalism, the Age of Reason ­ come to life, if the blood-curdling cries at the stake, the crackling of kindling as the faggots suddenly catch fire, the clanging of iron shackles of the imprisoned vagabonds, or the spine-shivering abstractions of the mechanical philosophies can indeed be called "life."

Federici explains why the age of plunder required the patriarchy of the wage. Gender became not only a biological condition or cultural reality but a determining specification of class relations. The devaluation of reproductive labor inevitably devalues its product, labor power. The burning of the witches and the vivisection of the body enforced a new sexual pact, the conjuratio of unpaid labor. It was essential to capitalist work-discipline. This is what Marx called the alienation of the body, what Max Weber called the reform of the body, what Norman O. Brown called the repression of the body, and what Foucault calls the discipline of the body. Yet, these social theorists of deep modernization overlooked the witch-hunt!

The historic demonization of women is on the face of page after page in profuse and magnificent illustration. The book contains many and beautiful illustrations, such as Vegetable Man, the Land of Cockaigne, the Fountain of Youth, and the Witch's Herbary. It contains powerful images, many are woodcuts (one of the first uses of the printing press). One shows witches conjuring a rain shower, others show a 15th century brothel, Dürer's depiction of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the common land, Jacques Callot's Horrors of War, Dürer's woman's bath-house, The Parliament of Women, and the Anabaptist's communistic sharing of goods.

If one image from Abu Ghraib gave us a crucifixion, another as surely gave us a pyramid: these fundamental forms of graphic design, known to every art student. Hans Grien's Witches Sabbath (1510) or the title page of Andreas Vasalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543). All its magic has gone: the human body has become a factory, or a mechanism of circulating blood, connecting tissues, little cells, obedient to commands of science. The mechanical body is depicted: to crown all, the hideous gathering in a Corinthian-style rotunda of the Renaissance mob of bourgeois at the anatomical theater where a pregnant woman's corpse lies naked in the middle, on a table, her womb gashed open as the assembly leers, gazes, peers, points, spies, shoves, elbows each other, scrutinizes, assesses.

Product of intense debates within the international women's movement, with a perspective on European history made possible by three years' residence in the mid-80s in Nigeria where a campaign of miscogyny accompanied the attack on communal lands under the direction of the 'structural adjustment plan' enabled her to understand the adjusting structures of European capitalism at its violent beginnings. Drawing on the non-conformity of British social history, on the lucid periodization of French scholarship, on Mediterranean openness to Asia and Africa, on the cultural endurance of indigenous people of the Americas, on the power of the women of west Africa, her scope is authentic and broad, from the Saracens in the east to the Incas in the west, with Europe in the north and the Caribbean in the south. Its zones of interest are west Africa, England, France, Germany, Mediterranean, Yucatan, Oaxaca, eastern Europe, and the Caribbean. The global perspective is one of a multiplicity of locales: not an envisioned totality but a manifold of villages, neighborhoods, common lands.

Editorial Review:

Caliban and the Witch is a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the capitalist rationalization of social reproduction. She shows how the battle against the rebel body and the conflict between body and mind are essential conditions for the development of labor power and self-ownership, two central principles of modern social organization.

Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life

Kikue Yamakawa

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a realistic and engaging account of samurai life 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is a very realistic and engaging account of samurai life just before the Meji restoration. Samurais are not idealised in this book, but instead their every day life is described. The focus is on women, as it retells history mainly from the view of the author's mother, but as women were completely dependent on men at the time, a lot of the account deals with how men as well as women lived. Topics such as school, dress, dwellings, amusments, family, marriage and divorce are covered, and at the same time the unrest in Mito domain before the restoration. The grandfather of the author had his own school and worked at the Office of Japanese History. He was one of the lower class samurai, but was recognized by the daimyo for his great learning and taught even his children at some point.
If you want to understand Japanese society in the 19th century up to the Restoration, this is an extremly interesting book. Highly recommended!

Editorial Review:

Based on the recollection of the author’s mother, other relatives, and family records, this is a vivid picture of the everyday life of a samurai household in the last years of the Tokugawa period.

Women in Roman Law and Society (Midland Book)

Jane Gardner

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Editorial Review:

The legal situation of the women of ancient Rome was extremely complex, and - since there was no sharp distinction between free woman, freedwoman and slave - the definition of their legal position is often heard. Basing her lively analysis on detailed study of literary and epigraphic material, Jane F. Gardner explores the provisions of the Roman laws as they related to women. Dr Gardner describes the ways in which the laws affected women throughout their lives - in families, as daughters, wives and parents; as heiresses and testators; as owners and controllers of property; and as workers. She looks with particular attention at the ways in which the strict letter of the law came to be modified, softened, circumvented, and even changed, pointing out that the laws themselves tell us as much about the economic situation of women and the range of opportunities available to them outside the home.

Dreaming of East: Western Women and the Exotic Allure of the Orient

Barbara Hodgson

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu visited the baths in Turkey in 1717 she was so tightly corseted that Turkish women were convinced her husband had locked her into some devious machine. Montagu’s account of her journey helped bring the region into the Western world’s consciousness, and by the 1800s, the vogue for Orientalia had overtaken a continent slowly sinking into the gloomy repressions of the Victorian era. Richly illustrated with color photos and sketches, Dreaming of East examines not just the exotic trappings of the Middle East but the heady freedoms it offered Western women. Conditioned to defer to men, women travelers were suddenly free to make their own choices and form their own opinions, ones that were respected by all people, including men. For a woman all too used to her inferior status, this venture into quasi-equality — and latent sexuality — was exhilarating. When she returned home, and found herself again relegated to second place, she would never be content there again.

Women in Twentieth-Century Europe (Gender and History)

Ann Taylor Allen

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Editorial Review:

Women's lives changed more in the twentieth century than in any previous century. It was a period of transformation, not only of the political realm, but also of the household, family and workplace. Innovations in military technology, the mass media, manufacturing, medicine, travel and communications shaped the lives of women. Ranging widely over the whole of Europe and the entirety of the long twentieth century, this fascinating account is the first comprehensive survey of women in twentieth-century Europe.

The Life of Christina of Markyate (Oxford World's Classics)

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Editorial Review:

'I wish to remain single, for I have made a vow of virginity.' This is the remarkable story of the twelfth-century recluse Christina, who became prioress of Markyate, near St Albans in Hertfordshire. Determined to devote her life to God and to remain a virgin, Christina repulses the sexual advances of the bishop of Durham. In revenge he arranges her betrothal to a young nobleman but Christina steadfastly refuses to consummate the marriage and defies her parents' cruel coercion. Sustained by visions, she finds refuge with the hermit Roger, and lives concealed at Markyate for four years, enduring terrible physical and emotional torment. Although Christina is supported by the abbot of St Albans, she never achieves the recognition that he intended for her. Written with striking candour by Christina's anonymous biographer, the vividness and compelling detail of this account make it a social document as much as a religious one. Christina's trials of the flesh and spirit exist against a backdrop of scheming and corruption and all-too-human greed.

The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women

Nicola Denzey

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Editorial Review:

When Nicola Denzey leads tour groups into the Roman Catacombs, participants are struck by the splendor of the burial chambers—many of which were created by or for women. In The Bone Gatherers, Denzey uses this archaeological evidence, along with text records, in an unprecedented way: to resurrect the lives of several powerful fourth-century women who, until recently, had been lost to history.

Surprisingly, she finds that representations of aristocratic Roman Christian women show a shift in the value and significance of womanhood over the fourth century; these depictions belie a power struggle between the sexes within early Christianity—one that women lost, and one that has had long-lasting implications for the roles of women in the Church.

"Nicola Denzey's lively, readable book opens up a fascinating, long hidden world of early Christian women. This fine work not only lets us into their world, but shows how it was kept hidden so long."
—Elaine Pagels, author of Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity and The Gnostic Gospels

"A brilliantly argued book that weaves archeology, art history, and sociology; it's refreshing that unlike many historians, Denzey is a gifted writer and storyteller . . . Whether or not you're religious, it's a great feminist read."
—M. L. Madison, Feminist Review blog

"Denzey's prose paints vivid pictures of the sites she visits . . . her densely layered inquiry is insightful and haunting."
—Publisher's Weekly

"Nicola Denzey's impeccable scholarship and intimate and vivid style of writing makes tangible and credible the power of the holy that was mediated by women—women saints and women patrons. The Bone Gatherers allows the reader to transcend both historical and scholarly distance to encounter the forgotten women who also shaped Christianity."
—Karen Jo Torjesen, author of When Women Were Priests: Women's Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity

"Unique in its restricted time/place focus, the study probes in-depth with a twenty-first century feminist eye."
—Library Journal

"A masterful study written in a lively narrative style, The Bone Gatherers is pitched perfectly to both the interested general reader and to scholars. Denzey's expert placing of the funerary images of early Christian and pagan women into their social and cultural milieus, and her rich, well-researched iconographical reading of ancient imagery helps us to see the changing roles of women—both Christian and pagan—during the early centuries of Christian Rome."
—Ann Steinsapir, museum educator, J. Paul Getty Museum, and author of Rural Sanctuaries in Roman Syria: The Creation of a Sacred Landscape

From Eve to Dawn, A History of Women in the World, Volume III: Infernos and Paradises, The Triumph of Capitalism in the 19th Century

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Editorial Review:

Praise for the previous volumes:

"French gives us grand theory at its best. . . . Highly recommended."-Library Journal

"Beautifully sourced and referenced. . . . Filled with fascinating detail and powerful arguments . . . massive and valuable."-Publishers Weekly

Writing about what she calls the "most cheering period in female history," international best-selling author Marilyn French recounts how nineteenth century women living under imperialism, industrialization, and capitalism organized for their own education, a more equitable wage, and the vote.