Medieval Women, Material Culture, and Power

This book argues that the impressive range of belongings that can be connected to Duchess Matilda Plantagenet—textiles, illuminated manuscripts, coins, chronicles, charters, and literary texts—allows us to perceive elite women’s performance of power, even when they are largely absent from the official documentary record. It is especially through the visual record of material culture that we can hear female voices, allowing us to forge an alternative way toward rethinking assumptions about power for sparsely-documented elite women.

This book is available as Open Access.

Jitske Jasperse is Assistant Professor of Medieval Visual Cultures in the Department of Art and Visual History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

[T]he book impresses with its pointed, easy-to-read presentation and its combination of different objects and perspectives that help insert noble women as active participants into discussions of how power was performed during the twelfth century. Readers seeking a full-fledged biography of Matilda or her female relatives should look elsewhere first, but those interested in gendered approaches to material culture and power will have much to discover. While the chapters do have connections, they could easily be read on their own. One of the strong points of the book is that it draws on a wealth of international research. It includes not only English-language but also German, Spanish, and to a lesser extent, French scholarship. [...] Most importantly, Jasperse is not afraid to put forward a carefully argued thesis and thus presents thought-provoking suggestions for further discussion. Her book underscores the great potential for studying material culture through both material remains and objects documented in written sources

Medieval Women, Material Culture, and Power contributes tremendously to the field of medieval art history and the history of influential European women. This groundbreaking work opens multiple avenues for research on other women and other objects and reaffirms that written silence is articulately rebutted in the study of material culture of women. Medieval scholars and women’s studies advocates as well as graduate and undergraduate learners will benefit greatly from reading this book.

Meredith Clermont-Ferrand, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 17, no. 1 (2022): 210-12.

Mercedes Pérez Vidal:

Este libro logra cuestionar no una sino varias divisiones binarias: la señalada entre imágenes y objetos, la división durkeimiana entre sacro y profano, la existente entre fuentes escritas y cultura material y, por último, una división binaria del poder en términos de género. [...] Jasperse demuestra aquí cómo esquivar este binarismo nos permite una mejor compresión del poder. Sin negar las limitaciones impuestas por las estructuras patriarcales a nivel político y cultural, las imágenes y artefactos analizados en este estudio muestran una mayor negociación y paridad en la construcción del poder.

(This book questions not one but multiple binary divisions: that between images and objects, the Durkheimian division between sacred and profane, that between written sources and material culture, and, finally, a binary division of power in terms of gender. […] Jasperse demonstrates here how circumventing these binaries allows for a better understanding of power. Without denying the constraints imposed by patriarchal structures at the political and cultural level, the images and artefacts analyzed in this study show greater negotiation and parity in the construction of power.)

Lois L. Huneycutt:

In this impressively researched and well-written monograph, Jitske Jasperse shows once again how scholars can investigate people who have left relatively little trace in the written sources by studying the objects associated with them. [...] This is a book that accomplishes its ambitions remarkably well. One of Jasperse’s strengths is an ability to take fairly complex concepts and then explain and apply them clearly. [...] Jasperse is also fully immersed in the relevant secondary literature, including both textual and material sources. She handles historiography superbly and was clearly thorough in her research. Its relatively short length, clarity, and comparative framework would make it an ideal supplement in medieval history, art history, and women’s studies courses. Its argument is straightforward enough for undergraduate use and would also lead to thought-provoking discussions in graduate courses.