Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women

Amy Noble narrates Howes’s (English, City Univ. of London; Transformative Waters in Late-Medieval Literature) latest with a documentarian’s cadence, ensuring that facts are communicated crisply and clearly. This study of the lives of four extraordinary medieval women—Marie de France, Julian of Norwich, Christine de Pizan, and Margery Kempe—boasts a wealth of fascinating information. Alongside biographical facts and quotations from the women’s works are nuggets of humor (delivered with panache by Noble) that may have listeners laughing out loud. Even so, Howes’s discussion is often sober, revealing the challenges these women faced and the inequity that was part of their everyday lives. Depressingly, many of the attitudes they had to contend with, from the expectation that women should be meek and mild to conceptions of the selflessness of motherhood, persist into the present day. Despite the limitations placed upon them, these women found ways to find space for themselves, exercise their minds, and write for posterity.