Women in the Medieval and Early Modern Netherlands

Abstract

This survey of old and recent literature about Dutch women in medieval and early modern times discusses power and politics, labor, religion, criminality and prostitution, family, body and sexuality, arts and sciences, and, finally, image and self-image. Women in the Netherlands share a history with other European women, but they also were distinctive in some respects. Beguines, women of the Modern Devotion movement, kloppen (semireligious women), midwives, female cross-dressers, and prostitutes give Dutch women's history a character of its own. What Dutch scholars call "egodocuments," such as autobiographies, diaries, and letters, are especially important because women's voices can be heard.