Brandon Flint Book Review Bennett, Judith. History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism.

. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Written with a feminist audience in mind, Judith Bennett in her work offers an apology for history in general, medieval history specifically, and feminist ideas. In many ways this book is a piece of intellectual autobiography detailing the reasoning by which a woman integrated her two halves, a radical feminist by night, medievalist by the day (Bennett, 1). In the first section of the book Bennett considers the problem of womens history. While Bennett praises feminists academic success in entering a male-dominated profession, she points out that one cost of this victory has been a feminism that has been muted and diluted (20). While part of this dilution is the result of the new complexity of studies, perhaps a deeper reason is the succumbing to pressure, evidenced in the lack of forthright language like patriarchy or subordination. A second problem of modern feminist history is its lack of historical perspective, a relatively recent shift in womens history that has not always been the case. Bennett ably proves her point by comparing the long chronology of The Dinner Party exhibition to more recent issues of leading feminist journals characterized by presentism. For Bennett, feminism has much to gain by abandoning its artificial division between modernity and the premodern such as a better understanding of the link between women and citizenship. As a way of dealing with these problems, the fourth chapter of the book advocates focusing less on change and more on continuity. Perhaps the most important area of such study is patriarchy, an institution of complexity supported by both genders. Such a view of continuity links the societal troubles of women of the past with women of the present, modern females workers with female brewsters of the 1300s.

The third section of the work consists of two chapters focusing on concrete examples of how the study of the distant past can benefit modern feminism. In the first of these Bennett focuses on the problem of wages and labor, an area in which women have consistently trailed their male counterparts. The consistent wage gap casts doubt on a clear narrative of historical decline from a golden age as well as a modern increase of wages, perhaps only the result of changes within the range of fluctuation. In the next chapter Bennett focuses on lesbianism and history, advocating the adoption of the term lesbian-like to deal with problems of modern categories applied to the past. Using the new term will allow for greater complexity of study that can only enrich lesbian history. The final chapter, not counting the relatively miniscule conclusion, focuses on grand narratives and those instruments which perpetuate them: the textbook. As Bennett is responsible for co-writing one of the recent and popular volumes on medieval history, this is an area of her particular expertise. By inserting womens history in the grand narrative, a continual problem for feminist historians, textbooks will more ably empower students to recognize the still prevalent challenges of women within patriarchal systems. Written for a general audience, Bennett succeeds in not only arguing on behalf of a deeper historical perspective, but is also able to insert and explain the language and historiography of modern womens scholarship. This is where womens history has been. This is the difference between sex and gender and why they have developed different connotations. This is where we [the first person consciously used by Bennett herself] are now. Through this process, the reader is not only convinced of the need of the distant past but gains a greater understanding of modern womens history.

In her emphasis on continuity versus change, Bennett clearly places herself within recent historiography. Bennett consistently rejects viewing the rise of modernity as a simple concept, either one that brought improvement or as one that led to the decline of a golden age. Adopting instead a more Latourian framework, Bennett casts the entire idea of modernity into doubt. Although the forms of womens work and position may have changed, perhaps the substance remains the same (Bennett, 74). Bennett argues that the presentism within the classroom ought to be abandoned. History becomes important not because of its connection to the present but because of the new comparisons and perspectives it can offer.