Women of the Past, Issues for the Present heralds a bold, ambitious new series “Women of the Past, Testimonies from Archaeology and History” published by Brepols, Turnhout.[1] This inaugural volume fulfils an important role in setting the tone for the series as a whole. Its introduction by editors Nina Javette Koefoed and Rubina Raja ties the personal to the political in a survey of the difficulties that the modern-day female academic faces. The global pandemic unsurprisingly emerges as one of the main culprits and indeed catalysts for accentuating both continuing and newly pressing gender inequalities. When placed alongside Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929), the picture of historical progress slowly fades and appears rather bleak indeed. The editors identify Woolf’s woes of undisturbed access (to work time and to physical academic amenities free from unpaid labour often assigned to women), securing funding (or, “din[ing] well,” 40), and female representation as persistent challenges for the modern female academic, which show that progress, while made, has been lamentably stagnant. The example of the generally gender-progressive Denmark—women make up but “24 per cent of full professors” (according to Dansk Universiteter 2021, 99–101)—should suffice to make a grown (wo-)man cry. This review aims to offer as complete a perspective as possible on this volume, which investigates a variety of topics ranging from antiquity to modern times through the overarching lens of mobility and female agency.
Three chapters on these very themes in ancient antiquity set the tone. Lien Foubert’s chapter “Gendered Mobility in the Ancient Mediterranean: Getting Rid of Faceless and Sexless Crowds” is a two-pronged study on female mobility in the ancient world after an overview on the state of gender studies in Classics. The first part on Velleius Paterculus’ remarkably diverging representations of the moving (or indeed fleeing) Livia and Fulvia (and to a smaller extent the various treatments of Julia Berenice) serves to demonstrate the performative filter to which these representations are subject depending on the author’s agenda. Reflections on female mobility in antiquity are the focus of the second part of the study: Foubert argues for a more mobile picture of female movement than originally believed; one that emerges, for instance, when one investigates female presence in the military sphere through evidence on papyri and graffiti. Foubert’s concluding remarks (“the time is here to decentre Rome and take on a truly Mediterranean-wide perspective,” 36) is particularly apt. The second chapter by Trine Arlund Hass and Sine Grove Saxkjær “Daughter of Caesar, Wife of Pompey: The Role and Narratives of Julia Caesaris” continues this theme of female representation in the Late Roman republic through the different literary narratives about Julia Caesaris. Her marriage to Pompey, which functioned as a bond between her father Caesar and his colleague, and the premature death that broke this very bond are the main events of note. The authors present a comprehensive overview of Julia’s biography and literary appearances (Cicero is a contemporary source), ranging from some rather standard depictions of the virtuous Roman matron in historiography (e.g., Plutarch and Velleius Paterculus) to a much more coloured appearance in Lucan’s epic Bellum Civile, where Julia appears as a Sabine peacemaker in the first book only to be transformed into a vengeful spectre intent to haunt Pompey upon his remarriage in the third book. Hereafter, the authors compare her ancient appearances to those in Dante’s Inferno, Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus, and even HBO’s television series Rome. Like Foubert’s preceding chapter, the study demonstrates with how much care we should approach these elusive female figures. The final chapter on classical antiquity, “The Trafficking of the Enslaved: Women and Children in the Legal Documents from the Roman Empire” by Nathanael Andrade, investigates, by means of papyri, long distance slave trafficking, ranging from Mesopotamia to the Middle Euphrates, to Egypt from regions outside of Egypt, at times even with distances transcending 200 kilometres. Andrade also draws on wooden and wax tablets in Latin-speaking provinces in Britain and Dacia and some epigraphic testimonies. Even if the labour of male slaves left an indelible mark on the Roman economy (mostly because of agricultural labour), Andrade detects a disproportionately high number of trafficked women and children. Thus, this chapter closes the portion on ancient antiquity with another insight on gendered mobility in the wider ancient world.
The next set of papers makes a leap in time and geography. First, the reader travels to the period of 790–1300 in Northern Europe. Here, Alexandra Sanmark, in “An Examination of the Concepts of Sex and Gender and their Application to Viking-Age and Old Norse Society,” combines modern theory with both Icelandic sagas and Norse Laws and “osteoarchaeology, DNA analysis, and archaeological sex/gender estimations based on grave goods” (87) to examine issues of “gender transgression and non-conformity as well as third gender” (93) in Viking-Age and Norse Society. Issues about ideal gender performance and, indeed, the usefulness of gender, continued from the first set of chapters, are relevant both here and in the next chapter, which traverses a few centuries (roughly 1550–1880) but remains in Northern Europe (Sweden). In “Wet-Nurses and Verbs: Methodological Experiences of Studying Gender and Work in Early Modern Europe,” Jonas Lindström and Karin Hassan Jansson lay out research conducted in the Swedish Gender and Work project and its extensive database through the lens of lactation work. They shed light on the existence of wet-nurses by investigating anecdotal evidence and court records of, e.g., 1696 and 1723 rural Sweden. In considering these wet-nurses’ class and social and marital status, the authors find that descriptions of the work and tasks (“verb phrases”) more commonly appear than their actual occupational titles. While the next chapter by Anne Montenach, “Women in Trade: Female Advertisers in Eighteenth-Century French Provincial Towns” remains in the same era (eighteenth century) and general topic (female labour), the chapter takes us to fashion and consumerism hubs such as Grenoble, Lyon, and Marseilles. The focus of the study is female commercial advertising and use of Affiches. Common trades included cleaning and fabric repair for mostly “women tailors, dressmakers, and hairdressers” (125), but also wet-nurses and midwives, a fitting overlap with the previous chapter, which could have been interesting ground for connection and comparison amongst the chapters.
The theme of female labour continues in a different age group and geographical setting in “Working Girls: Girlhood, Mobility, and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Europe” by Deborah Simonton. Aware of the difficulty of defining girlhood, Simonton stresses that recovering actual voices of girls (let alone nonelite girls) from this period is a difficult task, given the scarcity of evidence. Time at home, schooling, service, and apprenticeship are some of the main areas of inquiry, for instance, through data from Staffordshire and Essex in England. Simonton also regards the data through mobility studies, which thus fits well with, e.g., Foubert’s, Andrade’s and Raja’s chapters. As for girls’ mobility, Simonton identifies a tendency to keep girls closer to home in relation to their male peers. This chapter then paints a picture of the nuanced state of (young) female agency: while limited because of age, “active and participatory, girls took advantage of opportunities, made the best of options available, and contributed to creating the experience that was eighteenth-century girlhood” (148).
Kristine Dyrmann’s chapter “Elite Women’s Spaces and Practices of Letter-Writing in Late Eighteenth-Century Denmark” remains in the eighteenth-century but returns to Northern Europe and investigates the cultural environment of the Copenhagen salon and correspondence culture of the upper strata of Danish society, with a focus on Charlotte Schimmelmann’s circle, including her older sister Sybille Reventlow. Woolf’s Room of One’s Own may pose some similarities as Dyrrman suggests in her section on ‘le petit cabinet’ (159–60), to which the final chapter in the volume returns. Here, as in many of the chapters to follow, the status of female head of a household is granted significant agency. The function of vehicles of correspondence, such as letters and pocket diaries, Dyrrman suggests, ranges from art form to news channel (even if the intended audience may have been mostly private).
This strand of network studies then continues in a slightly later time (1811–1911), though still in the same area (Denmark), in Birgitte Possing’s chapter “Will, Wisdom, Values, Life’s Works, and Networks.” The chapter first treats the life and career of the pioneering brewer J. C. Jacobsen of the Carlsberg Brewery and Foundation, before turning to his wife Laura Jacobsen and their circle. Possing returns to the theme of gendered virtues and divisions of labour but applies it to the Denmark of the Jacobsens and their rise in society through their expanding business and cultivation of networks. While scholars believe that most of Jacobsen’s letters have been preserved, he seems to have discarded most letters from his wife and his son (only one letter by Laura Jacobsen remains). Careful vetting and legacy crafting seem to have caused this remarkable erasure of traces of the early life of the ambitious brewer. One theme that recurs is Laura Jacobsen’s household making, patronage, and international network crafting activities, which arguably contributed to the larger Carlsberg business and foundation’s success. Networks, female agency, and, especially, professionalism also form the focus of Karen Gram-Skjoldager’s chapter “Gabriele Rohde and the Transformation of Mid-Twentieth-Century Diplomacy,” though in a different configuration: that of Second World War diplomacy by the Danish exile activist Gabriele Rohde (1904–1946), who served as an international civil servant for the League of Nations in London in the 1940s. Gram-Skjoldager aims to unearth her until now relatively obscure biography and traces Rohde’s diplomatic activities during the Second World War, whilst engaging with New Diplomatic History and Women’s International History and ‘personal politics’ (206). As one can imagine, Rohde’s rise to the diplomatic top taking her from Geneva to London, Montreal and Washington, though slow, was remarkable and indicative of her competence in international affairs. Still, it goes to show, her gender often posed limitations to her agency. Marriage in May 1945 and motherhood in November 1945 changed her circumstances to one of a ‘diplomatic spouse.’ These, however, were not meant to last long, as she met her end by a tragic fall and bout of pneumonia in May 1946, thus curtailing an impressive life through which Rohde made significant impact on US post-war planning efforts.
The final chapter by Rubina Raja, “‘This Is a Man’s World’: Women Working in Jerash in the Early Twentieth Century and Some Notes on the Societal Contextualization of Research Interest Development,” takes famous crime novelist’s Agatha Christie Mallowan’s reflections on her travels to excavation sites in the Near East, including Ur in 1931, as a starting point. The chapter’s focus is, however, the archaeological work of Gertrude Bell, Grace Mary and Dorothy Crowfoot in ancient Gerasa of the Decapolis in modern day Jerash in Jordan, including its Temple of Artemis. Raja’s application of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own sees a similar return to the importance of money and space in any type of professional success. Diary excerpts and letters of Bell and the Crowfoots provide insight into the experience of twentieth century female archaeologists. It appears that their female touch, as also seen in the chapters on Charlotte Schimmelmann and Laura Jacobsen, left an important impact on camp organisation. Raja concludes her chapter and the volume by a return to Agatha Christie with a poem featured in her archaeological memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live (1944). As a reflection on female travel and labour, the poem is a fitting conclusion for both the chapter and the volume itself, even if a more extensive envoi for the way forward would have been welcome.
The range in topics, methodologies, and materials examined in this study, all through the lens of female agency and mobility, is vast and varied. This reviewer, for one, has learnt a lot; the volume’s variety and originality of topic are significant merits of this publication, which is well edited, if unwieldy in its format and layout. Two opportunities, however, have been missed. The first pertains to more direct engagement between the chapters. This type of mobility and networking amongst chapters could have enriched an already engaging volume. Secondly, if the diversity claimed in topics and methodologies is present and visible, diversity in representation and identities could have been improved, as most of the chapters read as particularly Euro-centric: only three chapters (1, 3, and 11) look beyond Europe. The reviewer grants, of course, that certain choices had to be made and honoured in view of this specific project and looks forward to subsequent iterations of this worthwhile, thought-provoking, far-ranging series, all the more if the two suggestions offered above are incorporated.
Authors and Titles
Nina Javette Koefoed and Rubina Raja, “Women of the Past, Issues for the Present”
- Lien Foubert, “Gendered Mobility in the Ancient Mediterranean: Getting Rid of Faceless and Sexless Crowds”
- Trine Arlund Hass and Sine Grove Saxkjær, “Daughter of Caesar, Wife of Pompey: The Role and Narratives of Julia Caesaris”
- Nathanael Andrade, “The Trafficking of the Enslaved: Women and Children in the Legal Documents from the Roman Empire”
- Alexandra Sanmark, “An Examination of the Concepts of Sex and Gender and their Application to Viking-Age and Old Norse Society”
- Jonas Lindström and Karin Hassan Jansson: Wet-Nurses and Verbs: Methodological Experiences of Studying Gender and Work in Early Modern Europe”
- Anne Montenach, “Women in Trade: Female Advertisers in Eighteenth-Century French Provincial Towns”
- Deborah Simonton, “Working Girls: Girlhood, Mobility, and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Europe”
- Kristine Dyrmann, “Elite Women’s Spaces and Practices of Letter-Writing in Late Eighteenth-Century Denmark”
- Birgitte Possing, “Will, Wisdom, Values, Life’s Works, and Networks”
- Karen Gram-Skjoldager, “Gabriele Rohde and the Transformation of Mid-Twentieth-Century Diplomacy”
- Rubina Raja: ‘This Is a Man’s World’: Women Working in Jerash in the Early Twentieth Century and Some Notes on the Societal Contextualization of Research Interest Development
Notes
[1] This volume anticipated its sophomore addition in late 2024, Elite Women in Hellenistic History, Historiography, and Reception (Borja Antela-Bernárdez, Marc Mendoza [eds.]) with a third volume Representations of Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period (Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky [ed.]) set to come out in 2025.