Author(s): Suzannah Lipscomb

History

This book recovers the lives and aspirations of ordinary French women in a vanished past. It is the first book to give us a study of ordinary sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women's concerns about their lives, menfolk, friendships, and faith, based on a set of rich sources that capture women's voices - when most non-elite women who ever lived left no trace of their existence on the record of history.Suzannah Lipscomb has closely examined1,200 detailed moral cases to illuminate the realities of women, sex, and marriage. Her findings demand the reassessment of much of what we thought we knew: women emerge as more resourceful, moreviolent, and more powerful than we ever thought.