The "gender gap" reconsidered: manuscripts and readers in late-medieval England (1).

Publication: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies

Publication Date: 06-AUG-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University Press

ABSTRACT

A study of the late-medieval owners and readers of texts originally addressed to female audiences raises a multitude of questions about the relationships between text and readers and, in particular, the influence of gender on reading. The patterns of manuscript ownership, in particular, reveal a "gap" between the intended audience and the actual readers of these texts. Ownership inscriptions suggest that texts which were originally addressed to female audiences rapidly found their way into the hands of a wide range of readers, which included both men and women and ranged from secluded anchoresses to laypersons who were very much involved in the social and political climate of their day. The wide variations in readership show that medieval women were not relegated to the marginal wastelands in their devotional reading; nor were their reading habits and materials substantially different from many men, particularly laymen. This is not to say that a "gender gap" did not exist -- rather, that the gendered attitudes and patterns of literacy are more complex than has previously been recognized.

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With the renewed interest in writings by and for medieval women in the past two decades has come a recognition of the role of women readers in the development of vernacular prose. New research into women's manuscript ownership and literary patronage in England has begun to challenge many of the assumptions previously held about women's literacy in the late Middle Ages. For example, in the past it has been commonly assumed that medieval women were, on the whole, illiterate. Those who could read, primarily nuns, were generally assumed to be literate in the vernacular only, especially by the end of the Middle Ages. The proliferation of devotional texts in the vernacular addressed to female religious audiences in the 14th and 15th centuries seems to support this assumption; it suggests that women could not read Latin, and therefore created a demand for religious texts in English. The addresses in such texts certainly reflect the assumption on the part of their male authors that their intended audience consists of women religious, untutored in Latin but in need of instruction nonetheless. However, when the readership of these texts is taken into account (the actual rather than the intended audience), the distinctions between male and female and, indeed, religious and lay readers begin to break down. The evidence suggests that, while the audience for these texts may well have been, in the first instance, women religious, in very short order these texts were owned and read by both women and men, lay and religious. While it is true that many English lay women in the late Middle Ages could not read, and that those who could were often literate only in vernacular, the same is true of most lay men. Amongst women religious, it seems that, while Latin literacy was indeed on the decline, it had not, by any means, disappeared, and if women religious were reading more vernacular texts than their male counterparts, it is far from being true that male clerical readers confined themselves strictly to Latin. This begs the question o f whether the great divide in literacy is truly a gendered one. In the early stages of vernacular writing, it is clear that the primary divide was between lay and religious; those who followed the religious life (both male and female) were more likely to be literate than layfolk. While this continued to be true for Latin literacy, the evidence suggests that lay literacy in the vernacular rose rapidly towards the end of the middle ages. Further, when one considers the evidence of manuscript ownership, the division between male and female readers (both lay and religious) becomes much less clear than has been assumed.

In order to explore this question, I want to attempt to reconstruct a picture of women's reading and book ownership in 14th to 16th century England, focusing in particular on the legacy of Ancrene wisse and its influence on two centuries of readers and authors, through a study of texts which descend from it. (2) Like Ancrene wisse, many of these texts were addressed to women religious, at least in the first instance. Many, however, have been adapted for more general audiences which included men and laypersons. While my main focus is on women readers and owners of these texts, it is important to put these readers in a context of general literacy and book ownership, and information about male readers and owners is crucial in supplying such a context. In this paper, then, I want to address questions of what the (admittedly fragmentary) evidence which survives can tell us about who read these texts and how they were used and adapted to suit the needs of varied audiences, and what this might suggest, in particular , about the women readers to whom Ancrene wisse and its descendants were so often addressed.

In many cases, there is a great deal of internal evidence available in the texts themselves which makes it possible to identify their intended audience. For example, addresses (such as "dear sister"), the alteration of such addresses, or other details within the texts themselves give indications of the audience for which the work was composed or adapted. Such indications should not be taken as restrictive -- the original intended audience has a great influence upon both the form and content of these texts, yet the intended audience and the actual audience did not always coincide. Even texts such as Ancrene wisse, which was directed in the first instance to a very specific audience of three enclosed sisters, contain indications of the author's awareness that the text would reach a wider audience. Ancrene wisse and its descendants reached a broad audience which included men and women, religious and lay.

The determination of the actual readership of texts is more complicated, and depends heavily on evidence of manuscript ownership and transmission, such as names inscribed in the manuscripts and bequests of specific books in wills. Due to the partial nature of the evidence, such a study is necessarily limited and incomplete, (3) and information about individual readers is not always easy to find. The information which does survive is often scattered, and must be painstakingly gathered. In identifying the gender of readers, I have relied on several different kinds of evidence: both internal (the texts themselves and the combinations in which they are found) and external (such as marginalia, names and ownership inscriptions, coats of arms). (4) Even such fragmentary evidence, however, yields a great deal of information.

These texts raise a multitude of questions about the relationships between text and readers and, in particular, the influence of gender on reading. The patterns of manuscript ownership, in particular reveal a "gap" between the intended audience and the actual readers of these texts. Since the texts that I have been studying are primarily addressed to devout female readers, one might expect to find a high degree of female ownership, and indeed, women did own and read these texts. However, the readers and owners of these texts were by no means exclusively, or even predominantly, women. Ownership inscriptions suggest that texts which were originally addressed to female audiences rapidly found their way into the hands of a wide range of readers, which included both men and women and ranged from secluded anchoresses to laypersons who were very much involved in the social and political climate of their day. Nevertheless, the female ownership of these manuscripts is indeed high, suggesting a level of literacy that i s wider than we have often assumed. Even a quick glance at the numbers, for example, suggests immediately that simple assumptions about women's literacy in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries are risky. Out of 237 manuscripts that I have listed for this project, I have been able to identify the gender of readers or owners for 136, or just over half. Of those manuscripts for which I have been able to identify owners, or the gender of the original recipients, 107 were owned by (or copied for) men, and 60 by women. Of these, 36 were owned by both men and women at various times, and 14 were passed down through families. (5)

It must be considered, of course, that these texts occur in manuscripts which contain a wide variety of other material, addressed to both male and female audiences. Nevertheless, it is interesting that, overall, the rate of female ownership of these texts, written specifically for a female audience, comes in at about half the rate of male ownership. These numbers suggest two things to me. When considering the manuscripts as a whole, it is astonishing that so many were owned by women, even given that some of the texts contained in these manuscripts are addressed specifically to female readers. This suggests that women read far more widely than has often been assumed. When considering the manuscripts as evidence about the actual audience of texts addressed to women, however, it is also surprising to note that these texts were read by twice as many men as women. The evidence which survives, then, suggests that issues of gender and literacy in medieval England were more complex than has previously been assumed.

1. Internal evidence: The texts and their arrangement

In some cases, internal evidence suggests that a particular manuscript was originally intended for a specific audience of male or female readers. Sometimes, a clue can be found in just one text in a collection. For example, Bristol Public Libraries MS 6 contains a form of confession for a woman, suggesting that it was copied for a female audience (Tarvers 1992; Ker 1977: 203). But such evidence is somewhat tenuous, and can be misleading, as will be seen below.

In other cases, however, the texts and their arrangements provide more compelling evidence of their original recipients, even in the complete absence of any other evidence of ownership. For example, CUL Hh i 11 bears no evidence whatsoever of any actual owners or readers. Here, however, the evidence for an intended audience of female readers is based on indications found throughout the manuscript. CUL Hh i 11 is a collection of devotional material containing, among other things, extracts from Nicholas Love's Mirror of the blessed life of Jesus Christ, Hilton's Qui habitat and bonum est, two versions of the Middle English translations of Flete's De remediis, and extracts from the Middle English Stimulus amoris (The prickyng of love), and Suso's Horologium sapientiae, similar to other manuscripts owned by any number of devout people, religious or lay, male or female. On the basis of its language and contents, however, Doyle has suggested that CUL Hh i 11 was written by, and possibly in, an East Anglian contempl ative nunnery. CUL Hh i 11 is a smallish volume, about 8 x 5", copied in 14 different hands, at different times. Yet, it appears to be not a composite volume, but the work of one community, according to Doyle, "almost certainly" a nunnery, such as Carrow or Thetford (Benedictine), Campsey (Augustinean), Bruisyard or Denny (Franciscan). Various internal references, such as a reference to "your" clothing in a sermon on the assumption of the Virgin Mary, suggest a nunnery dedicated to the Virgin Mary, such as Carrow, Campsey or Bruisyard. The ordering and selection of texts suggests to Doyle that this manuscript was compiled at the direction of a spiritual director of the nunnery "for his communication to them or their own use" (Doyle 1954: 96).

In this context, the contents of this manuscript can tell us other things as well. In several cases, when the hand changes, it is at the beginning of a quire, which might suggest several scribes copying material at the same time to be gathered together on completion. Yet, this is not always so -- in some cases the hand changes in the middle of a gathering, and even in the middle of a folio, suggesting that pieces were added as they became available for copying. It is possible that the manuscript was even copied by the nuns themselves for their own use -- there is no evidence either way. Another significant feature of Hh i 11 is the mixture of Latin and English texts, which suggests that the nuns could read Latin. This supports David Bell's (1995: Chapter 3) contention that one should be wary of the easy assumption that nuns were generally illiterate in Latin and that, therefore, manuscripts containing Latin texts must have been intended for clerical audiences.

Another example of a manuscript which seems to have been copied for a female audience is Cosin V. iii. 24 (mid-l5th century). Doyle suggests that this manuscript was probably written for an East Anglian nunnery, like CUL Hh 11, parts of which were copied by the same scribe as Cosin V. iii. 24. (6) Indeed, based on the contents, it can be confidently asserted that Cosin V. iii. 24 was clearly intended for a female audience. It contains three texts, all addressed to female religious: The doctrine of the heart, a "lettre of relygyous gouemaunce sent to a relygyous woman", and The tree and twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost. The texts are clearly arranged in such a way as to guide the reader(s) from an introductory level through to a more complex understanding of their religious life, in order to prepare them for more contemplative reading. Indeed, the "letter of religious governance" (which appears as a kind of condensation or prologue to The tree and twelve fruits) specifically counsels its readers that they shoul d move on to more contemplative reading such as the Stimulus amoris (translated into English...

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