Women's History, Literally

It's strange for me to go this long without a post, but this past week at work had me so busy that apparently I wasn't coming home in much shape for writing even here.  More important to focus on querying, so at least if I gave up on something it was the irrelevancy of this page.

Still, tonight has provided some entirely fascinating things to read, so it it time to fire up again and share some of these things with you.

First we have an arresting piece of legal history for women's history month, this piece on Hittite law and its protections for my sex.  Like many ancient legal codes, it's fascinating for its mix of enlightenment and dismissal as regards gender rights.  This comes to us courtesy of my newest Twitter pal, Judith Starkson, who works in this interesting period.

The provisions regarding rape are interesting in the bald assumptions made - if a woman is raped outside the home, the man is guilty.  If she is caught with a man in the home, it is not rape - and, indeed, if married, her husband may kill both her and the man with impunity.

In my own research, the traditions of law and wergild eventually informing and becoming part of the Salic law placed the value of a woman in her childbearing years extremely high, societally speaking.  Wergild (the "man-price" as it is often called in explaining the concept - or the recompense owed for the life of someone if they are murdered) is higher for a woman of fertile years than it is for an old man or a boy not yet of an age to fight nor contribute to his community.  She is quite literally valued at a good rate.

The tension between how highly valued women were as potential and actual mothers can be difficult to take for those of us who presume our value is independent of whether we can and/or do bear a man a child.  And yet, especially for those of us who write historical fiction, it is a crucial dynamic in understanding almost any period other than our own.  This valuing(-but-only-on-specific-bases) informs so much about women's power, and lack of it, throughout the world and history.  To try to write around it - or to try to read about history while ignoring it - will obstruct real understanding.  Like so many other aspects of cultures and societies other than whatever may be here-and-now for you, me, or that guy over there smoking a cigarette on the corner, understanding these things is entirely the point.  Without opening up to mores we might find personally questionable, there's no in-depth reading ... and no worthwhile writing.