IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 208: Women and Wills in Late Medieval Britain, I
Monday 5 July 2021, 14.15-15.45
| Organiser: | Chris Woolgar, Department of History / Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Culture, University of Southampton |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Chris Woolgar, Department of History / Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Culture, University of Southampton |
| Paper 208-a | 'My chamber on the north side of my house where I now dwell': Domestic Space in the Wills of Late Medieval Women (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Mentalities, Social History, Women's Studies |
| Paper 208-b | 'My best beades': Childbirth Objects in English Wills, 1450-1550 (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Mentalities, Social History, Women's Studies |
| Paper 208-c | Margery Langrich's Bed Linens (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Mentalities, Social History, Women's Studies |
| Abstract | Although wills are heavily mediated through legal formulae and regulation, they can be used to show the priorities and concerns of women from the aristocracy to those at a much lower level of society. This session focuses on three important aspects of women's lives which they illuminate: the ways in which goods and furnishings were distributed within the household; the devotional and therapeutic material culture associated with childbirth, and the priorities illuminated by the will of the widow of a London tailor, considering the afterlife of her bequests as a way of understanding memory, domesticity and family relationships. |