Reaction, Consolation and Redress in the Letters of the Paston Women

Abstract

Apparently removed from letter-writing firsthand, the Paston women were nevertheless far from unlettered. Their mastery of the topoi of administrative and familial letters is well documented, their expressive force memorable. Envisaging their composition of a letter, however, scholarly tradition has the Paston women sit down with amanuensis rather than pen. Norman Davis has remarked the likelihood that Agnes and Margaret Paston ‘could not write themselves, or at any rate did not find writing easy and did not like it’1 — a view supported more recently in V.M. O’Mara’s survey of female scribal activity in late medieval England: ‘there is very little proof provided by the Paston letters that women could write. and even if they could, they did so but rarely’.2 KeywordsFalse ReportCompanion LetterFamily HonourScholarly TraditionFemale WriterThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.