Femina: The instant Sunday Times bestseller – A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

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Margery Kempe was a merchant’s wife in early 15th-century Norfolk who was halfway through a comfortable life when she decided to give up her smart clothes and good table and marry Christ instead. Briskly informing her husband, with whom she had 14 children, that she would rather see him beheaded than have sex with him again, she set off on a series of highly idiosyncratic pilgrimages which took her as far as Jerusalem. Ramirez makes sure to include individuals not only geographically diverse, but also figures who presented themselves and lived in ways that challenged societal and cultural norms regarding gender, sex, and identity. Femina concludes with the story of Eleanor, a fourteenth-century sex worker arrested for acts of sodomy and prostitution. The case originally reported Yorkshireman John Britby participating in ‘the most nefarious and ignominious vice’ with ‘John Rykener, calling [himself] Eleanor, having been detected in woman’s clothing.’ Although it does not appear Eleanor was prosecuted for either crime, their testimony evinces involvement with members of the clergy, monks, and nuns, suggesting that their arrest was about moral corruption by high-status individuals rather than prostitution or sodomy. Throughout the trial, Eleanor shares how they had sex with men and women, using their job as a barmaid, seamstress, and prostitute to acquire clients. As the only surviving legal document from late-medieval England to document same-sex intercourse, Eleanor’s trial discloses how the scribes struggled to find suitable terms to express the sexual and gendered aspects of the case. The marginal and queer existence of Eleanor, whose testimony radically subverts accepted societal norms, reveals that complex humans who transgress and subvert sexual and/or gender expectations have been around for a long time.

Trois romancières rejoignent le jury du Prix Femina". LEFIGARO (in French). 2 June 2021 . Retrieved 8 March 2022.This book has done more for women’s history than almost any other. Rather than continuing to fetishise the murderer, Hallie presents the victims’ stories. By immersing readers in the social conditions the women experienced, the five have contexts other than being written off as “prostitutes”. This book has also affected the true crime genre, where more writers are focusing on victims rather than perpetrators. The middle ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings: a patriarchal society which oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the 'dark' ages were anything but. Le Femina 2016 pour Marcus Malte, Rabih Alameddine et Ghislaine Dunant". livreshebdo.fr. 25 October 2016 . Retrieved 26 October 2016.

Janina Ramirez is a born storyteller, and in Femina she is at the peak of her powers. This is bravura narrative history underpinned by passionate advocacy for the women whom medieval history has too often ignored or overlooked. Femina is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Middle Ages and its place in the modern mind Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets and Powers and Thrones Generell hat das Buch leider keinen erkennbaren roten Faden: es handelt sich um eine Aneinandereihung von Biographien von Frauen und Essays über Personengruppen bzw . Kunstobjekten aus dem Mittelalter, was grundsätzlich ja ganz spannend sein kann. Jedoch ist die einzige Gemeinsamkeit das in irgendeiner Form Frauen beteiligt waren, und das war's auch schon. Über die Auswahl kann man definitiv streiten; ich hätte keine weiteren Ausführungen über Hildegard von Bingen gebraucht, über die gefühlt schon alles geschrieben worden ist. Der Texte über den Teppich von Bayeux war ebenfalls deplatziert, man erfährt nichts über die Frauen die den Teppich hergestellt haben (weil es dazu auch gar keine gesicherten Erkenntnisse gibt) - die Autorin gibt nur anekdotisch wieder, was auf dem Teppich zu sehen ist. Das Kapitel über die Katharer war völlig überflüssig, von Frauen war kaum die Rede und am Ende erzählt die Autorin krude Theorien von Nazis und dem Heiligen Gral, wobei sie mich völlig verloren hat. An der Stelle hatte ich kaum noch Motivation weiterzulesen.This is a thought provoking book, which is successful in that it has made me further question popular history books for the general reader, and it is well written and engaging. I’m dissatisfied to the extent that it is (hopefully) making a historically dated argument (I may be optimistic here!) and does so in a disjointed way. In de kijker staan een aantal vrouwen, en 1 keer een ding, waar telkens een hoofdstuk aan gewijd is. Jammer genoeg is de vertaling van dit boek ondermaats en hangt het vertelde aaneen van “wellichts” en “waarschijnlijks”. Overall, I did like it, and I did hear about some new-to-me ladies from history, but the context of the women wasn't always the focus, and what I really learned is how much has been suppressed or changed or just not uncovered as yet. I felt as if it was fairly sad that such minimal evidences had been found and smaller effort was going towards the belief in, or discovery of, women in history. I wish there was more specific focus on them and more detail to be uncovered and shared in this book. Gabinari, Pauline (6 December 2021). "Ananda Devi, lauréate du Femina des lycéens 2021". Livres Hebdo (in French) . Retrieved 15 January 2022.

A groundbreaking reappraisal of medieval femininity, revealing why women have been written out of history and why it matters As both writer and broadcaster, Dr Janina Ramirez radiates tremendous passion for her subject. To spend time in her company is to soon find yourself intoxicated by the vast drama of human history, with all its far-off wonders, frustrating mysteries, and tantalising echoes that still resonate in our modern world Greg Jenner, author of Ask a Historian and Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity Jean Birnbaum (5 November 2018). "Le prix Femina pour Philippe Lançon et son livre " Le Lambeau " ". Le Monde . Retrieved 13 February 2019. These accounts of how discoveries in the 20th and 21st centuries have allowed for the rewriting of ancient women’s lives are easily the best part of Janina Ramirez’s survey of current scholarship. Even when hi-tech methods are not in evidence, the findings still tell us so much about how medieval women’s lives came to be misinterpreted or marginalised in the first place. The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the “Dark” Ages were anything but.Le Femina couronne "le justicier" Philippe Jaenada pour "La serpe" ". Yahoo! News. 8 November 2017 . Retrieved 8 November 2017. The really wide variety of evidence cited - historical, material, archaeological, written, artistic, architectural In her final thoughts, Ramirez says : “Like so many others, I have been led by generations of historians before me, their contemporary agendas often presented in the guise of empirical truths. I have tried a different, but similarly loaded, approach in this book, putting the spotlight on women. It is no less biased, and is representative of the time in which I am writing. But by re-examining extraordinary women like Hildegard and Margery, casting a new light on over-written females like Æthelflæd and Jadwiga, and using recent discoveries to reconstruct lost individuals like the Loftus Princess and Birka Warrior Woman, the medieval world has taken on a different complexion.” Setting the stage: At the beginning of each chapter, Ramírez employed a rather ingenious writing technique. She set the stage. Painted us a picture of the time and place. Such a thing is usually mainly done in fiction, but I found it very engaging and enlightening. I loved those little insights in the world and the time. After the Great War, in 1919 Librairie Hachette proposed to the allied countries to create a similar prize. Great Britain accepted, and the first meeting of its jury was held on 20 June 1920. The prize was called the Prix Femina–Vie Heureuse, and it was awarded to English writers, from 1920 to 1939. Among the winners were E. M. Forster in 1925 and Virginia Woolf in 1928.

Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It. Janina Ramirez. Penguin. 2023 Inventive, informative, surprising - this book is a revelation! Seeing so many remarkable women creating so much powerful history rewrites our entire sense of the medieval past Waldemar Januszczak, Chief Art Critic, Sunday Times Before her death, Æthelflæd ensured that her crown would go to her daughter, Ælfwynn – the only time rule passed from one woman to another in early medieval England. And yet, the Lady of the Mercians is little known. Ramirez writes that her brother Edward, who succeeded Alfred as king of Wessex, “actively suppressed her reputation” out of fear that her power might rival his, and removed Ælfwynn from the throne she had inherited. Femina brings together what we know and how we know it about key (mainly western European) women from the Medieval period. It's aimed at a general audience - pitched at the level of a BBC4/PBS documentary. As I've watched a lot of these, not least those presented by Ramirez herself, many of the stories were familiar and I did find myself skimming in places.As she puts it in the author's note, "I am not here to convince you that it is high time we put women at the centre of history. Many have already done that." And she is correct, because thousands of women have tried and for the most part, begun to succeed. What is necessary, rather, is that these women have their stories told and remembered. A modern angle: Also at the beginning of each chapter Ramírez gave us a modern "version" of the medieval story, she was about to take us through. By telling us of the archeologists, who uncovered the gender of the Birka warrioress or when the writings of Margery Kemp were found, Ramírez gives us an insight into the invaluable work of those people, who first brought the women's stories to life and gives credit were credit is (over)due. About half the book focuses on England, which has really been done to death in popular history, but I was curious about a couple of the non-England chapters. One is on the Polish female king, Jadwiga, who was later canonized—sadly this chapter read like a detailed Wikipedia entry; I didn’t get any more out of it than that. As for why Jadwiga was “king” rather than “queen,” this apparently was a question of semantics: her father, king of Poland and Hungary, had no sons and wanted his daughters to inherit in their own right, and this seems to have been a way of getting around rules against women ruling. Both were declared kings while still young girls, but married off to older men on top of the usual control by advisors that any young rulers face. Both also died young.