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...

This collection of essays focuses attention on how medieval gender intersects with other categories of difference, particularly religion and ethnicity. It treats the period c.800-1500, with a particular focus on the era of the Gregorian reform movement, the First Crusade, and its linked attacks on Jews at home.

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...