Heroines of the Medieval World by Sharon Bennett Connolly

Women such as Matilda of Flanders, the wife of William the Conqueror and Isabel de Warenne represented a kind of ideal of womanhood.Īnd perhaps the acme of that ideal was personified in Blanche of Lancaster, the first wife of John of Gaunt. The Maid or Orléans in an exception to the rule. The heroines are mainly royal, or at least aristocratic, because there aren't many women of humbler birth whose lives have been chronicled. Joan of Arc by Arnoud Schaepkens (Rijksmuseum) That gives you a clue to how enjoyable this book is. Bennett Connolly's blog is called History - the Interesting Bits. What is fabulous about it is that it doesn't just treat the well known women listed above but some really recherché names. This does make navigating the book a bit difficult but that's my only slight criticism. The contents page is organised not by female subjects but more general categories like 'Scandalous Heroines,' 'Warrior Heroines,' 'The Medieval Mistress' etc. Now, how many medieval women can you name? Eleanor of Aquitaine? Joan of Arc? Julian of Norwich? They are all here in Sharon Bennett Connolly's Heroines of the Medieval World (Amberley) but you have to find them in the index. How snobbish was that? It reminds me of Alan Clark's jibe about Michael Heseltine having 'to buy his own furniture.'Įleanor's tomb in Fontevrault Abbey (g0ng00zlr) If you had to have a set of them, the inference was that your normal cutlery was NOT silver. The reason that special cutlery for fish was a class marker (a negative one), as alluded to in John Betjeman's poem, was that they needed to be silver, or at least silver-plated. The first was a duck press (poor duck), the second an egg separator and the third was a fish knife and fork.

First, the kitchen items pictured in my post on 1st November, some of which did look a bit medieval!

Heroines of the Medieval World by Sharon Bennett Connolly