Shulamit and Margarete: Power, Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe (review)

Abstract

Shulamit and Margarete: Power, Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe, by Claudia Ulbrich, translated by Thomas Dunlap. Studies in Central European Histories, volume 32. Boston and Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004 (originally in German in 1999). 336 pp. $165. This translation makes Claudia Ulbrich's provocative and highly original work available to an English-speaking audience, and for that Brill Academic Publishers and the editors of the series Studies in Central European Histories are to be thanked. As always, Thomas Dunlap has crafted a very exacting and polished translation. Taking her test case of the unusually rich sources from the small village of Steinbiedersdorf, southeast of Metz on the German and French border, Ulbrich argues that gender relations in an estate-based society were not private or individual, but socially and culturally constituted and endowed with power to shape the structure of political domination, economic life, and culture. The volume begins with a review of some recent literature in gender and women's studies and goes on through detailed case studies to offer important insights into the role of women in pre-modern society, utilizing this orientation to grapple with Jewish and Christian relations as well. The choice of Steinbiedersdorf as the focus of the study is extremely helpful, since there was a large percentage of Jews (about one-sixth of the population) living in a city predominantly Catholic but embroiled in a host of complex territorial politics. Throughout Ulbrich not only taps engaging source materials, but she also culls from tight-fisted sources-often legal cases-a wealth of information. After providing a general overview of the history and political position of the village, Ulbrich turns to women's and gender history in the Christian and Jewish communities and, in a sense, attempts to rewrite the history of the village from female and Jewish perspectives. While Ulbrich contends that women faced inequality-in the separation of men and women in church or synagogue seating, for example-she also argues that women had recourse to communicative structures not available to men and could develop strategies of and networks for empowerment. Women may have been structurally disadvantaged, but they could set legal proceedings in motion, and wives could appear in court in place of husbands. Amidst the complex and at times confusing web of courts Ulbrich writes that even when excluded from institutionalized public space (such as courts), women had unencumbered spheres of agency not available to men, which they could use to their advantage. In addition, the accelerated pauperization in Steinbiedersdorf after 1770 increased the importance of women's agency, which was not restricted to the house. Women often sought gainful employment, and the work of widow households-22% of Christian and 12% of Jewish households were headed by women-included the supervision of non-familial personnel. Women, Ulbrich argues, believed themselves to be capable of running a farm, and they often successfully defended their positions, at times enjoying fairly extensive financial freedom of action. Rioting women were prepared for violence, and women in general were ready to use force to defend their children and household. Jewish women also had spheres of religious and social tasks in and out of house. In fact, the labor of Jewish women was extremely important, particularly within the context of Jewish social and economic conditions. Jewish women also had some level of recourse to the courts, and legal cases involving women could be treated with great sensitivity, especially since there was a general concern that such cases might provide an opportunity of governmental or church intervention. Though the distribution of wealth may have been somewhat more equal than in the Christian community, there was a weak middling stratum and a wide gulf between rich and poor in the Jewish community. …