Normal Women: 900 years of women making history
Philippa Gregory
William Collins, £25, 688 pages
Shortly after I finished reading Normal Women, I rocked my friend’s newborn baby to sleep. While she napped in my arms, we traded birth stories. Shortly after that, I sat by my grandmother’s side in hospital, holding her hand as she died.
Birth and death: women’s work since time immemorial. And yet it is strangely absent from this 600-page rollercoaster through British history from 1066 to the present. Its focus is the economic and legal position of women – which, don’t get me wrong, is absolutely fascinating. Did you know that it was the Normans who legally enshrined women’s status as the property of their husband or father, to the extent that their male “owner” was legally responsible for crimes the woman committed?
