Friday's Forgotten Books: The Life of Christina of Markyate

I don't think there's much chance of overlap with this week's choice. The life of a twelfth century recluse: it doesn't scream popular appeal, I suppose. But it should! A fascinating story and an early biography of a woman in a time when few but kings and saints got their stories told (fortunately at least someone important considered Christina close enough to the latter). I have begun writing a play about Christina's life in hopes of making it known to a broader audience, but as with so many things, it has had to wait in the queue for a bit. I have actually been spending these months in Ireland completing long delayed projects and jettisoning ones that are no longer relevant to my path.

Of course my brain insists on constantly coming up with new ideas, so it's a rather hopeless cause. If I had all the time in the world, it still wouldn't be enough.

Christina is born in Huntingdon to noble Anglo-Saxon parents, Autti and Beatrix. The story is a dove flew over to Christina's mother from the monastery and nestled in her sleeve and stayed there a week while she was pregnant, demonstrating of course that the child was touched by the Holy Spirit. You'd think after such a clear sign, her parents would resign themselves to offering her to the church, but no.

They get her engaged to a rich young man despite her protests that she'd like to devote her life to quiet contemplation. While we tend to think of the church as a repressive organisation in the current age, for women in the Middle Ages it offered one of the few opportunities for independence and a little authority (assuming you weren't born to a royal family or likely to be married into one). So they married her against her will, but she refused to consummate the marriage. So the bishop tried to rape her to make her more compliant; in a hilarious scene, she's divinely assisted to resist him.

She ends up running away to live dressed as a man with a monk: talk about a modern gal! Eventually she's allowed to take up the life of a recluse as she wished, but there are always problems. Christina's peerless conduct evokes envy in others and she has to frequently chastise her superiors because those men would rather wheel and deal wealth than praise god. So it's a busy life, fighting off demons and receiving prognostications from the Holy Spirit -- and only a few recognised her for what she was:

Hence, some of them called her a dreamer, others a seducer of souls, others more moderately, just a worldly-wise business woman...others who could think nothing better to say spread the rumour that she was attracted to the abbot by earthly love.

It's a wonderful capsule of twelfth century life; it's a familiar tale of the difficulties of being an exceptional woman. The Talbot edition has a terrific introduction, but can be a bit pricey unless you find a used copy. There's a more inexpensive edition of her life available now:





Drop by Patti Abbott's blog for the round up of other FFBs.

I am not a Cowgirl; I am not a Quilter

But I guess that doesn't matter.

If it's Tuesday, this must be...

So this is how the whole of September has felt: me as Durga with at least eighteen arms and too much to do and people standing in my way who need a good poke with a sharp stick.

Where's my lion? Or tiger! I will take either.

Part of it is the normal start to the semester: the first week of classes hits like a steam engine out of nowhere even though I know exactly when it will arrive. Somehow I always seem to find myself standing on the tracks. While this is supposed to be my "pseudo-sabbatical," administrative tasks for myself and for others (writing tenure letters for two folks today) have taken up an awful lot of time. The hope is that October and November will actually be writing intensive times for the non-fiction project, but argh! So far there's been no progress on that.

Not that I haven't got writing done: just not what I planned. And there's editing to do, too. Fortunately, the editing for Kit Marlowe's first publication -- the novella "The Big Splash" -- went swiftly. My editor had few changes and a couple of questions re: period slang (it takes place in 1929 London) -- she also said it was "hilarious" which made my day! The big editing job is getting to The Mangrove Legacy, Kit's next publication. I haven't had much time to work on that comic Gothic novel, but I have to make it a priority now.

I do have a new publication, though it will be of interest to fewer of you: a review of Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre and the Limits of Epic Masculinity in the latest issue of The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures. Oh, and Stephanie wrote nice things about me over at WLoAD: the journal looks like it will be fabulous!

All right: back to work!

The Old Boys Club

We had a panel discussion on campus last night about negotiating the Catholic heritage of the institution, founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet as a college for women (who still make up the majority of the student body). Most of the audience last night, too, were women. The panel, however, was entirely made up of men. My department chair, Kate, was the first to bring this up at the end, which I applauded. But I was struck by the comment one of the panelists made that, "It's just part of a conversation we [a fellow panelist] have been having for years."

I used to think the "old boy's network" was insidious and deliberate. Some may be, but I learned over the years that largely they're just like that: friendships. At heart it's a good thing: you help out your friends, you work with your friends, you share with your friends. It's a natural enough impulse. That's the way that this kind of thing gets going, for example on Twitter where people like @Glinner and @serafinowicz and @edgarwright all help publicize each other not as a deliberate marketing ploy, but simply because they're pals.

The problem, of course, is that few men are friends with women in the same way. I think it's changing (I hope it is!) and there are always exceptions (I have a lot of male friends), but certainly in the past men were often not comfortable being friends with women because of the potential problem of sex (if he wanted it and she didn't, or he didn't and she did, etc.). In the past -- and in current films -- women existed only as sex and not as people (<-- feminism: the radical notion that women are people). I kind of hope that the very boring trend of "father" centered films is a last gasp of that mind set. Maybe we can move beyond the pervasiveness of the old boy network.

But even if they're not deliberate or insidious, the effects are. I often tell people about my moment at a meeting of the Joint Committee on the Status of Women at the Harvard Medical and Dental Schools, seated at a conference table in Countway Library when our chair asked, "How can we make the atmosphere more welcoming to women?" I looked around the dark paneled room, where we were surrounded by oil paintings of the old patriarchs of the medical school and I just laughed.

What starts as friendship often ends in compromise: as a writer I'm thinking of anthologies filled with stories from drinking buddies even if they're not particularly good. I also think of Comedy Central, where the old boy network reigns supreme, even with very untalented people -- girls are okay if they're pretty. It's difficult to dismantle the system, because it springs from a good thing, friendship. But dismantle it, we must.

C'mon -- let's all be friends!

Whew!

Lovely Ganesh, remover of obstacles (and wearer of leis and Mardi Gras beads).

Sorry! Busy busy busy -- last night was the Women's History Month concert put together by my fabulous colleague Yvonne Hansbrough and featuring colleagues Young Kim and David Bebe as well as Jamecyn Morey, who all played music by women composers, including Éizabeth Claude-Jacquet de la Guerre, Hilary Tann, Clara Schumann, Rebecca Clarke and Cécile Chaminade. It was magical! Thanks to everyone who turned out, especially Jenise and Cate and my students.

It's hectic this month (when is it not, I know I know) and I have a conference at the end of it. Somehow it will all come together, right?

In Anticipation of Women's Month

Last year's celebration of women during Women's History Month went so well, I'd like to invite participants to be guest bloggers for this March. All you need to do is pick a day and send me (in advance, please) a blog post. Please feel free to link to your own work or sites that are important to you. This is a chance to celebrate fabulous women, so set aside those culturally ingrained notions of humility and carpe bloggem (feel free to correct my Latin, Crisipinus). You don't have to talk about yourself. As long as your post celebrates women and/or women's history, I will be cheered. I already have a few people on the calendar, because I mentioned this on Twitter, so choose your day soon even if you don't know what you're going to write yet (but do try to have your post ready at least two weeks before the live date).

If you've thought about maybe blogging, here's chance to dip your toe in the water safely. If you blog regularly (no, doesn't have to be a personal site, Cranky) build your network further and share here.

Back to School

Yes, the dread day has rolled around again -- the beginning of the semester. I'm half joking, of course. It's always good once it starts, but there's always so much nervousness about the semester before it starts -- how will the classes be? how will I be? have I lost my touch?

Add to the usual stress the fact that I am now officially director of Women's and Gender Studies (and all that entails, including a bunch of things that need doing now) and I am applying for tenure -- package due October 1! -- and well, it's a more heavily freighted first Monday than usual. This semester is all medieval, including my sophomore level gender in medieval course, the upper division course I'm team teaching with my History colleague, Jenise, and the grad medieval class.

So much to do!