THE ONCE AND FUTURE SEX

A vibrant and illuminating exploration of medieval thinking on women's beauty, sexuality, and behavior.

What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love, and be? In this high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega unfurls the era's ideas about women. Some of these attitudes were not new to the time: beauty ideals of the Middle Ages, for instance, rested on the mythical and unparalleled Helen of Troy. Janega explores the paradox of real women being expected to look like goddesses while attention to appearance was denigrated as vanity by medieval Christian philosophers. Such men also cast Eve's shadow over contemporary women, deriding them as oversexed sinners, inherently lustful and weak. This era marked the cultural relegation of women to motherhood, but Janega shows that despite these expectations, medieval women were industrious farmers, brewers, textile workers, artists, and artisans, paving the way for new ideas about women's nature, intellect, and ability. Eleanor Janega is a professor of medieval and early modern history at the London School of Economics. She runs the popular blog Going Medieval, is an Opinion contributor for the Washington Post, has written reviews for Slate, and has also contributed to the BBC and History Today. She is the author of The Middle Ages: A Graphic History. Born in the US, she currently lives in London.