Welcome to Litsy!

Eleanor Janega goes for a tongue in cheek tone in this history of women in the Middle Ages. It‘s a quick, short read with illustrations. I‘m glad I read a library copy though!

I was just reading about “The icon” and what was said in this book flashed in my 🧠. Oh and keep the mental illness is sexy in the 90s where it belongs.

Women's roles during medieval period, society's views of women, and our modern misconceptions about medieval women and society.

It‘s going on “just a girl” because that‘s where it belongs😉.

👍👍👍👍👍 Honestly 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻.

“Even if women from common backgrounds could afford the clothes that were considered attractive, they likely could not afford to buy the license to wear them”. 🤨

“Cosmetics occupied a dark place in the medieval imagination for a number of biblical reasons. First and foremost, they were not natural, and naturalness was the benchmark of anyone truly beautiful. The moment a woman resorted to cosmetics, she was attempting to embellish the work of the divine. This in turn led to a second concern, a conflation of makeup with dark magic 🧙🏼‍♀️🧛‍♀️. Both concerns were combined in the biblical story of Jezebel

#Two4Tuesday 1. The above. I‘m stretching out reading it. 2. Classes. Spring is bursting out all over, though currently it‘s very wet. Enjoying the new plant life. Mom‘s birthday. All the things that make March March. Hopefully getting a new job. @TheSpineView

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Eve/Mary were the only women considered in early Christian ideas of gender. A range of characters pop up in medieval theological and natural philosophical debates.Mary/Eve can be considered the anchors of medieval Christian femininity.They comprise a Christian shorthand for the best and the worst possible outcomes for women and are referenced most often in musings about the nature of women.*Sarah checks doesn‘t see her own name and 🥱*

“Eve had decided to eat the fruit of the tree because when the snake tempted her, she was easily swayed and lacked sufficient mental and moral strength to push back. Adam, according to Augustine was tempted and ate the fruit not simply because he was weak but because he wanted to participate in the experience with Eve. Yes, he was forced to leave the garden, just as she was, but his reasons for being forced out were certainly purer than hers or

Women weren‘t considered stable enough to vote in Rome, and they certainly weren‘t considered able to join in scholarly debate about their humanity. However-and this is important- they still tried. In both Greek and Roman society, women who were a part of the wealthy elite were often educated and often worked as teachers, wrote poetry, and created art. They were also brilliant philosophers.

The fact that Plato accorded wild-card status to both penises and uteruses might seem like a kind of evolution or marker of progress over Hipppocratic thought. It was not. While the unruly penis makes a brief appearance in his characterizations, the wandering uterus is a major figure, as well as the necessity of keeping it held in place by making babies. Plato understood women as fallen men and naturally inferior to men as a result. 😒😝

“These ideas about women and their nature didn‘t spring fully formed from the head of Zeus:they derived from ancient scholars.The intellectuals of the time believed they were “standing on the shoulders of giants” a phrase that was coined by the philosopher Bernard of Chartres (ca. twelfth century).What he meant was the knowledge was cumulative,begun by the great philosophers/thinkers of the ancient world and steadily built upon by later scholars.

😃There is something very satisfying about getting a book the day it comes out (Ok two days after).

Late Christmas gift (because it was a preorder) from my husband 😍😍😍