Book Review: Studying Gender in Medieval Europe

The idea that gender studies are synonymous with women’s studies has been an academic pitfall since its inception in the 1970s. Gender studies use an intersectional approach to consider how gender, class, able-bodiedness, and race all impact our position in life, building upon traditional feminist theory and the work of Kimberle Crenshaw. In Studying Gender in Medieval Europe, Patricia Skinner implements this approach to create a model of gender studies for historical research. She questions how gender was policed in the medieval period through law, literature, and social expectations. Throughout this book, not only does Skinner show how gender readings can be used as a historical approach when studying the medieval period, but also where our own gender biases have impacted our understanding of the past.

Skinner introduces this text by setting the reader’s expectations. She states that for some, this book may come as a disappointment and that ‘although it will explore the impact of theory on gender history, it does not form the starting point in this survey, and [she] does not analyse literary texts at all’ (Skinner, 2018: 2). This is not untrue; the focus of this text is the discussion of theory itself and where it has arisen from in the past. For those readers looking to unpack gender in the medieval ages, this book would not be suitable. However, if you are questioning the history of medieval gender studies, or want to build upon these theories yourself, I would highly recommend this text as a starting point.

Skinner devotes a large portion of this book to contemplating how an intersectional approach to gender is always key to medieval gender theory. She writes in her conclusion that ‘the gendered practice of medieval history is not enough if, in focusing on binary gender relations, it ignores other dynamics at work such as class, racial prejudices’, able-bodiedness and heteronormativity (Skinner, 2018: 161). This is an integral part of Skinner’s investigation throughout Studying Gender in Medieval Europe as she questions the access women had to language, how religion and law impacted them, and how men were socialised to construct gender and masculinity at this time too.

A key argument in Skinner’s intersectional model for medieval gender is her discussion of how social class has affected the accounts of women from the medieval period. She asks the reader to examine how our idolisation of female writers in this period as the creators of modern feminist writing has possibly enabled us to ignore some of the wider contexts around these figures’ success (Skinner, 2018). Skinner points out that many of these texts may not have existed were it not for their authors’ social and class status. The ability to pay for a scribe or fund a gentry education in Latin is key to their conception. Skinner asks how much ownership these female authors had over their own texts when they were scribed by other people, who were also often men (Skinner, 2018). Christine de Pizan, for example, is mentioned as the daughter of a wealthy cartographer allowing her access to an education in Latin and Literature due to wealth. Pizan was often cited as one of the first feminist authors of this period, and yet it is her social and economic status which allowed her admittance to literature. Those with access to education had a privileged advantage over others at the time, and this was often only obtained through social and economic status. This leads us to ask if the accounts of gender we have from this period are so highly impacted by class, to what extent do they represent everyday experiences of gender? And furthermore, how can we construct an understanding of medieval gender outside of the dominant male voices of this time period?

Skinner prefaces this argument by demonstrating how gender categories were constructed through social and cultural behaviours at this time (particularly through religion and law), and how we have come to consider them since. In her first chapter, Skinner reminds us that gender is a ‘relational category’ and that gender readings of the medieval period must be ‘highly conscious of not only what is presented on the page, but how it came to be presented in that way’ (Skinner, 2018: 9). This outlook can become a helpful tool to readers who are looking to study this field themselves. It demonstrates how we as researchers must consider not just what is said in the accounts we have from this period, but also what remains unsaid. In questioning these possibilities, we can make room for unrecorded histories and invest in an academia outside of the male canon we have been given.

I personally felt that the language of this book was lacking at points, presenting a binary context for medieval gender and using a discourse that favoured biological essentialism. I had expected to find more discussions of how gender can be studied outside of the binary. It was not until the final chapter that Skinner began to question how ‘a queer approach allows the idea of exceptionality to vanish, in favour of studies that do not measure these lives against a predetermined medieval norm’ (Skinner, 2018: 156). A lot of the author’s discussions felt largely focused on studying medieval gender history from the perspective of a binary gender system. I would have liked to see this final chapter incorporated more throughout the text as I believe it would complement Skinner’s argument about gender conception in context of an intersectional perspective.

Skinner does well to use this book as an interactive framework for her readers, not only in her narrative discussions, but also through her source lists. She offers an extensive further reading list, as well as interactive source hunt tasks. It is evident throughout this text that Skinner was always aiming for accessibility and inclusion in her work, using the book’s formatting, as well as its contents, to break down barriers for readers and offer them guidance within the field.