The single woman is a troubling and disruptive category. Does it denote all unmarried women, therefore creating a group which every female was part of at some stage in her life? Or, were the categories "maiden" and "widow" so culturally significant in late medieval England that "single woman" was a residual category for women seen as anomalous? Was the category "single man" used in an equivalent way and, if not, why? This study offers a way into the complex process of social classification in late medieval England.
All societies use classifications in order to understand and impose order. In this book, Cordelia Beattie views classification as a political act, an act of power: those classifying must make choices about which divisions are most important or about who falls into which category, and such choices have repercussions. Defining how a group or an individual should be labelled, means variables such as social status, gender, or age, are prioritized. Rather than isolate gender as a variable, this book examines how it relates to other social cleavages. Using a variety of approaches, from social and cultural history, to gender history, and medieval studies, its original methodology offers an innovative approach to a range of historical texts, from pastoral manuals to tax returns, and guild registers.

This book stakes out new territory within an exciting, emerging field of study. Not only does it uncover the history of a neglected group, but it also offers valuable insights into the significance of marital status which are equally relevant to current debates on marriage and family. The book examines representations and experiences of men and women who never married between 1914 and 1960, drawing upon an exceptionally wide range of sources including biographies, oral histories, novels, films, government statistics and social surveys. An introductory chapter on work and non-familial lifestyles highlights the significance of age, generation and gender. The main focus in the rest of the book is on unmarried men and women's intimate, sexual, familial and professional relationships. These raise important questions about how these categories have been defined and expose power relations between married and single people. The material on adult/child relationships is particularly innovative. The author probes the boundaries of the nuclear family in the mid-twentieth century through her account of the high levels of interest and involvement in children's care and education by unmarried women as well as largely invisible relationships between children and unmarried men. As the first major study of the history of single women and men in England, this will be a valuable resource for researchers and students in social history, gender studies, women's studies, social policy and sociology. Its accessible style and the inclusion of personal material from the author's life and family will undoubtedly also attract a wider readership. -- .

Attitudes towards `labour', in the wake of the Black Death, shown to range from early protest literature to repressive authoritarianism. At the very moment that the image of the honest labourer seemed to reach its apogee in the Luttrell Psalter or, a few decades later, in Piers Plowman, the dominant culture of the landed interests was increasingly suspiciousof what it described as the idleness, greed and arrogance of the lower orders. Labour was one of the central issues during the fourteenth century: the natural disasters and profound social changes of the period created not merelya "problem" of labour, but also new ways of discussing and (supposedly) solving that problem. These studies engage with the contrasting and often competing discourses which emerged, ranging from the critical social awareness of some of the early fourteenth-century protest literature to the repressive authoritarianism of the new national employment laws that were enforced in the wake of the Black Death, and were expressed in counter-cultures of resistanceand dissent. JAMES BOTHWELL and P.J.P. GOLDBERG lecture in history, and W.M. ORMROD is Professor of History, at the University of York. Contributors: CORDELIA BEATTIE, CHRISTOPHER DYER, RICHARD K. EMMERSON,P.J.P. GOLDBERG, KATE GILES, CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON, STEPHEN KNIGHT, DEREK PEARSALL, SARAH REES JONES.

Fresh approaches to how premodern women were viewed in legal terms, demonstrating how this varied from country to country and across the centuries. There has been a tendency in scholarship on premodern women and the law to see married women as hidden from view, obscured by their husbands in legal records. This volume provides a corrective view, arguing that the extent to which the legal principle of coverture applied has been over-emphasized. In particular, it points up differences between the English common law position, which gave husbands guardianship over their wives and their wives' property, and the position elsewhere in northwest Europe, where wives' property became part of a community of property. Detailed studies of legal material from medieval and early modern England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Ghent, Sweden,Norway and Germany enable a better sense of how, when, and where the legal principle of coverture was applied and what effect this had on the lives of married women. Key threads running through the book are married women'srights regarding the possession of moveable and immovable property, marital property at the dissolution of marriage, married women's capacity to act as agents of their husbands and households in transacting business, and married women's interactions with the courts. Cordelia Beattie is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh; Matthew Frank Stevens is Lecturer in Medieval History at Swansea University Contributors: Lars Ivar Hansen, Shennan Hutton, Lizabeth Johnson, Gillian Kenny, Mia Korpiola, Miriam Muller, S.C. Ogilvie, Alexandra Shepard, Cathryn Spence.

The study of medieval women has flourished over the last forty years or so. This new collection of major works addresses the different ways in which medieval women have been studied by looking at religious and secular women, women according to their stage in the life cycle, and according to their social status. Importantissues are also tackled, such as feminism, the cultural construction of the body, and the periodization of women's history.

Legal records illuminate womens' use of legal processes, with regard to the making of wills, the age of consent, rights concerning marriage and children, women as traders, etc. Determined and largely successful effort to read behind and alongside legal discourses to discover women's voices and women's feelings. It adds usefully to the wider debate on women's role in medieval society. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW What is really new here is the ways in which the authors approach the history of the law: they use some decidedly non-legal texts to examine legal history; they bring together historical and literary sources; and they debunk the view that medieval laws had little to say about women or that medieval women had little legal agency. ALBION The legal position of the late medieval woman has been much neglected, and it is this gap which the essays collected here seek to fill. They explore the ways in which women of all ages and stations during the late middle ages (c.1300-c.1500) could legally shift for themselves, and how and where they did so. Particular topics discussed include the making of wills, the age of consent, rights concerning marriage, care, custody and guardianship (with particular emphasis on the rights of a mother attempting to gain custody of her own children within the court system), women as traders, women as criminals, prostitution, the rights of battered women within the courts, the procedures women had to go through to gain legal redress and access, rape, and women within guilds. NOELJAMES MENUGE gained her Ph.D. from the Centre of Medieval Studies at the University of York. Contributors: P.J.P. GOLDBERG, VICTORIA THOMPSON, JENNIFER SMITH, CORDELIA BEATTIE, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, NOEL JAMES MENUGE, CORINNE SAUNDERS, KIM M. PHILLIPS, EMMA HAWKES