Normal Women

Normal Women is a social history of women in England from the Norman Conquest to the modern period. Rather than concentrating on exceptional queens and celebrated individuals, it examines work, family, law, religion, protest, trade, warfare and sexuality through the experiences of women whose lives are often absent from conventional national narratives.

The book brings together evidence about labourers, widows, craft workers, sailors, campaigners, criminals, performers and householders. Its central argument is that women were continuously involved in making English society even when institutions and later histories obscured their agency.