The Once and Future Sex
Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society
23 February 2024
Description
A vibrant and illuminating exploration of medieval thinking on women’s beauty, sexuality and behaviour
What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love and be? In this vibrant, high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages, the era that bridged the ancient world and modern society, to unfurl its suppositions about women and reveal what’s shifted over time—and what hasn’t.
Enshrined medieval thinkers, almost always male, subscribed to a blend of classical Greek and Roman philosophy and Christian theology for their concepts of the sexes. For the height of female attractiveness, they chose the mythical Helen of Troy, whose imagined pear shape, small breasts and golden hair served as beauty’s epitome. Casting Eve’s shadow over medieval women, they derided them as oversexed sinners, inherently lustful, insatiable and weak. And, unless a nun, a woman was to be the embodiment of perfect motherhood.
In contrast, drawing on accounts of remarkable and subversive medieval women like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Hildegard of Bingen, along with others hidden in documents and court cases, Janega shows us how real women of the era lived. While often mothers, they were industrious farmers, brewers, textile workers, artists and artisans and paved the way for new ideas about women’s nature, intellect and ability.
In The Once and Future Sex, Janega unravels the restricting expectations on medieval women and the ones on women today. She boldly questions why, if our ideas of women have changed drastically over time, we cannot reimagine them now to create a more equitable future.
Reviews
"[An] eye-opening and provocative account of the lives of women in the Middle Ages…[Janega] builds a convincing picture of the positive and resourceful part that women played in medieval society, not only as adjuncts to their husbands and fathers, but in their own right." — Christina Hardyment, The Times
"Both the subject matter and the author’s engaging conversational style make this a book of many delights… very entertaining" — Gillian Kenny, The Spectator
"A robust and well-sourced academic book. The primary sources Janega draws on are remarkable in their variety… There are colourful anecdotes on almost every page" — Rachel Cunliffe, The New Statesman
"Provocative, colloquial and entertaining.. As The Once and Future Sex makes clear, misogyny, oppression and conflicted ideas about sexuality and desire have not vanished, they just now take different forms." — Carolyne Larrington, The Times Literary Supplement
"A hugely entertaining and informative account of medieval thinking about women…this is a highly rewarding read, which reminds us that we can only tackle present injustices if we remember that there is nothing universal about the ways in which people treat one another." — Hannah Skoda, BBC History Magazine
