Tending the ‘Contested’ Castle Garden: Sowing Seeds of Feminist Thought

Karen Dempsey

doi:10.1017/s0959774320000463

Karen Dempsey

Open Access

PDF Available

https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774320000463

Copy DOI

Export

Save

Cite

Abstract
Highlights/Summary
Full-Text PDF
Similar Papers

Abstract

Listen

Medieval women are typically portrayed as secluded, passive agents within castle studies. Although the garden is regarded as associated with women there has been little exploration of this space within medieval archaeology. In this paper, a new methodological framework is used to demonstrate how female agency can be explored in the context of the lived experience of the medieval garden. In particular, this study adopts a novel approach by focusing on relict plants at some medieval castles in Britain and Ireland. Questions are asked about the curation of these plants and the associated social practices of elite women, including their expressions of material piety, during the later medieval period. This provides a way of questioning the ‘sacrality’ of medieval gardening which noblewomen arguably used as a devotional practice and as a means to further their own bodily agency through sympathetic medicine.

Highlights

European society in the Middle Ages was patriarchal: key roles in political and religious institutions were occupied by men who controlled the dominant narrative, as well as governing rules and regulations
How do we move beyond the current tension that exists between the need to represent the fragmentary archaeological evidence faithfully and the desire to understand lived experiences more fully?
My methodological approach draws on a wide range of contemporary or related sources to create a framework that foregrounds elite women’s lived experience within their contemporary social milieu

Summary

Introduction

European society in the Middle Ages was patriarchal: key roles in political and religious institutions were occupied by men who controlled the dominant narrative, as well as governing rules and regulations. Another interpretative layer incorporates evidence from ecological surveys carried out at castles in Britain and Ireland, which revealed the presence of relict medieval plants (Connolly 1994; MacGowan 2015). The relational approach applied here highlights the entanglement of women’s bodies, medieval castle gardens, female piety and plants which facilitated the nurture, care and prayer aspects of their gender roles.

Results

Conclusion