Society and Culture in Early Modern France by Natalie Zemon DavisReview by: Mary Lynn McDougallSigns, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 983-985Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173250 .

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Summer 1976 983

thing Spacks has to say in the chapter on "The Artist as Woman." The most annoying aspect of this chapter, once again, is her choice of sub- jects. Thus she begins with Isadora Duncan because "the dancer pro- vides an illuminating example of what it means to 'think of oneself as an artist,' precisely because words are not her chosen artistic medium. Her writing pours forth her imaginings." What of all the women artists, and those struggling like Stephen Dedalus to forge the tools that alone define the conscious artist?

The remaining three chapters-"Finger Posts" (which contains the most interesting discussion in the book concerning Hester Thrale Piozzi), "The World Outside," and "Free Women" (Beatrice Webb, Marie Bonaparte, Doris Lessing, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Lillian Hellman, Isak Dinesen, Anais Nin)-are merely repetitions on the theme of what Spacks describes as the "depressing vision of feminine experience." Among all the writers considered, Spacks believes only Isak Dinesen capable of "accepting her womanhood but insist[ing] on her freedom within it." In commending the imaginative constructs of a woman whose existence she admits "bears little relation to the 'normal' lives of women," Spacks does every woman, writer, and reader a disser- vice by denying the validity of precisely that community of experience -the "fundamental likenesses"-she promised to document and record.

The Female Imagination suggests that without new critical criteria to open up avenues of debate and enlightenment hitherto unexplored by women, the exegesis of women's writings is as banal as the writing of any other subspecies. Obviously, one of the contemporary challenges to women theorizing about women is to create new paradigms, new plumb lines with which to explore, illuminate, and ameliorate generic experi- ence, assessing and employing those female likenesses which are so much greater than female differences. There is, indeed, splendor and glory as well as anguish and grievance in the writings of women through time-and time has much to do with the real concerns of "the female imagination."

Society and Culture in Early Modern France. By Natalie Zemon Davis. Stan- ford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975.

Mary Lynn McDougall, Smith College

Only two of the eight essays published as Society and Culture in Early Modern France deal with subjects of immediate interest to historians and students of women's lives: one examines city women's response to the Reformation; one discusses sexual reversal in early modern Europe. The other six essays treat topics of less obvious relevance to women's studies: strikes and welfare reform in sixteenth-century Lyon, religious

Signs

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984 Book Reviews

riots, literate and oral culture in sixteenth-century France, associational life, learned and popular wisdom in early modern Europe. Five of the essays, including the one on city women, have previously appeared in various journals and collections of articles. Nevertheless a collection of Natalie Zemon Davis's articles has much to recommend it, especially to people who wish to learn about and understand women in the past. The essays on women take a fresh approach to issues of importance to women's history; they and some of the other essays provide fascinating information and insights on women's role. More importantly, Davis's imaginative methodology-well represented in this book-can be used to study women in other times and other places.

Both articles on women challenge traditional historical, sociological, and/or anthropological theories on women's behavior and position. In "City Women and Religious Change," Davis tests Max Weber's theory that women are attracted to emotional, even hysterical religions and finds, on the contrary, that Protestantism appealed to many French women because it enabled them to participate in intellectual activity. Similarly, she rejects the thesis propounded by Lawrence Stone and other historians, that women who lived useless, frustrated lives turned to Protestantism. Instead she analyzes data on French Protestant city women to prove that most lived economically active lives before conver- sion, and notes that in their independence, they resembled the French Protestant noblewomen studied by Nancy Roelker. Davis concludes by examining the effects of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism on the position of women. She adopts Alice Rossi's models for talking about equality to characterize the Protestant solution to the relations of the sexes as assimilationist, the Roman Catholic solution as pluralist.

"Women on Top" questions anthropological interpretations of sex- ual reversal in preindustrial societies as mere safety values or outlets for conflict that actually serve to reinforce the hierarchical order. Davis argues that sexual inversion could also function to widen women's be- havioral options, sanction riot and political disobedience for men and women, and thereby favor change. Late medieval and early modern Europeans perceived women as changeable, disorderly, even violent, and used sexual symbolism to express all forms of dominance and sub- ordination. In this context, sex reversal was a regular feature in litera- ture and popular festivities. Davis suggests that this form of literature and play could enrich the fantasy life of women and encourage some to action. Women-and men dressed as women-certainly participated in many riots and revolts. The women were no doubt influenced by the idea that women were not fully responsible for their violent actions and accordingly were not as severely punished. While this article is necessar- ily speculative (few women have recorded their fantasy life or their reasons for rioting), it does point to new avenues of investigation, such as

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Summer 1976 985

the role of the unruly woman in medieval society, when sovereignty was less at stake.

Some of the remaining articles contain negative or peripheral in- formation about women, information which might also indicate new lines of inquiry. In "The Reasons of Misrule," we learn that women did not belong to the festive organizations, or Abbeys of Misrule, though they did watch and even engage in some of the festivities. One wonders why women's organizations did not sponsor play, and why they re- mained more religious and practical? "Printing and the People" discloses a sixteenth-century bibliographer who included forty female writers, of whom sixteen had works in print. Who were these writers? Let us learn more about them.

Despite the wealth of information and insights about women, and the suggestions for further research, the most valuable aspect of this book is its methodology. Attempting to understand people historians have traditionally dismissed as inarticulate, Davis uses the methods of historians of the crowd and of popular literature, as well as the an- thropological approach. Such an approach is absolutely essential to the study of women, since they have rarely left the kinds of sources his- torians normally rely on. Then too, Davis is aware that power is based not only on property and status, but on sex and age. Finally, she talks about the necessity and the difficulty of respecting one's subjects. This discussion, buried in "Proverbial Wisdom and Popular Errors," ought to be read by every feminist who attempts to study and understand the lives of those women who were not and are not "appropriate" role models.

Many Sisters. Edited by Carolyn J. Matthiasson. New York: Free Press, 1974.

Bridget O'Laughlin, Stanford University

Thirteen anthropologists and sociologists, each drawing on her special perspective as a woman as well as on her professional training, contrib- ute descriptive essays on the experience of women in different cultures to Many Sisters. Their studies range from analysis of small ethnic groups (Dole on the Amahuaca of Amazonia, Smedley on the Birom of Nigeria) to comparisons of socially or ethnically related groups (Maynard on Ladino and Indian women in Palin, Guatemala; Briggs on two Eskimo groups of the Canadian Arctic) to national patterns (Wong's essay on the changing position of women in China or Jacobson's attempt to encom- pass regional, class, and caste differences in her lengthy discussion of women in north and central India).

All the authors share with Matthiasson, the editor of the volume, a

Signs

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