The lady & the Virgin

By Penny Schine Gold

Subjects: Social history, Women, Femmes, Social history, medieval, 500-1500, Medieval, Attitude, Women's Studies, Symbolisme, Histoire, Vrouwen, Mary, blessed virgin, saint, Middle Ages, Mensbeeld, Women, france, Historia social, Symbolism, SOCIAL SCIENCE, Culte, Public Opinion, History, Histoire sociale, Religieuze aspecten

Description: Penny Schine Gold provides a bold analysis of key literary and artistic images of women in the Middle Ages and the relationship between these images and the actual experience of women. She argues that the complex interactions between men and women as expressed in both image and experience reflect a common pattern of ambivalence and contradiction. Thus, women are seen as both helpful and harmful, powerful and submissive, and the actuality of women's experience encompasses women in control and controlled, autonomous and dependent.