Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives.

Adams, Christine

Natalie Zemon Davis opens her new book with an imagined dialogue, in which the three women of the title challenge Davis' interpretation of their lives, and her decision to include the three of them together in the same book. Davis justifies her project, urging her subjects - and the reader - to take a closer look. (p. 2)

The reader might indeed ask what these three women had in common. Davis, with customary virtuosity, explores the lives of Glikl bas Judah Leib, a Jewish merchant woman; Marie Guyart, known as Marie de l'Incarnation, mystic and co-founder of the first Ursuline school for girls in North America; and Maria Sibylla Merian, an artist-naturalist and author. Davis' goal, in her own words, is to bring attention to these women whose "stories reveal other possibilities in the seventeenth century, as they carved out their novel ways of living on the margins." (p. 209)

Davis was aided in her efforts to bring these women to life through an abundant variety of source material. Glikl wrote a detailed autobiography for her children, as did Marie de l'Incarnation, who also left extensive correspondence. Maria Sibylla Merian wrote and illustrated several naturalist texts. Davis adds to these sources, as she did in The Return of Martin Guerre, by plumbing the archives - but also by bringing her own extensive historical knowledge and imagination to this work. The result is a richly textured treatment of the lives and times of each of these women.

The book considers each of the women in turn. "Arguing with God" brings us into the world of the German Jewish merchant family, and specifically the world as seen through the eyes of Glikl. Davis moves effortlessly back and forth between a broad analysis of the problems facing seventeenth-century Jews, Glikl's narrative of her life, her ordeals and difficulties, and the various parable-like tales, recounted for the edification of her children, that pepper Glikl's account. Glikl, like many women, showed both energy and resourcefulness in dealing with the trials of her life. Davis' analysis of Glikl is most compelling when she places her stories side-by-side with the events of her life, to show how Glikl shaped her autobiography in part as a moral teaching for her children. But Davis also argues that Glikl was "exploring the meaning of suffering and seeking to find a way to accept what God sends." (p. 53)

In "New Worlds," Davis examines a woman very different from the family-centered Glikl. A young widow and mother of a son, Marie Guyart sought mystical union with God through mortification of her flesh and renunciation of the things of the world. Finally, at the age of thirty, she entered the Ursuline convent. But greater adventures awaited her. In 1639, Marie left France and set sail for Quebec, where the Jesuits were teaching Amerindians about Christianity. She became the first Mother Superior of the Ursuline house in Quebec, and set up a school for the Amerindian girls as well as daughters of French colonists.

Davis plays on the multiple meanings of the word "Metamorphoses" in her chapter on Maria Sibylla Merian, famous for her paintings and copperplates of flowers, plants, and insects. Merian was an avid observer of the world of caterpillars, spiders, and other such creatures, and her studies, according to Davis' careful analysis, focused on the process of change, the life cycle of these living creatures. But Davis also highlights the process of change in Merian's life. Married for twenty years, Merian experienced a dramatic religious conversion in 1685, and abruptly left her husband to join the Labadist religious community in Friesland. Six years later, she went to Amsterdam, where she found welcome among naturalists like herself. Finally, in 1699, she was moved to undertake, with her daughter, a long and expensive voyage to the Dutch colony of Suriname, a voyage that would allow her to write and illustrate her most important book, Metamorphosis.

All three women are fascinating, and Davis offers a creative and compelling look at her subjects. She brings Glikl and Marie de l'Incarnation to life more successfully, due to the nature of the sources - unlike the other two, Maria Sibylla Merian left only her naturalist texts, rather than personal letters or autobiographical sources. To a certain extent, however, the reader is left asking - as do the women themselves in the introduction - what brings these three lives together? Glikl seems a very traditional woman within the context of early modern Jewish society, certainly when compared to Marie de l'Incarnation and Maria Sibylla Merian, both of whom more explicitly challenged gender boundaries. In the case of Merian and Guyart, the comparisons are more obvious. Guyart's adventurous voyage to the New World of Quebec parallels Merian's to the New World of Suriname. In fact, one wishes that Davis had drawn more explicit links between their experiences - for example, a closer comparison between Merian's views of the Africans and Amerindians of Suriname with Guyart's comments on the Amerindian women of Quebec.

In fact, this comparative aspect is what this otherwise rich and original book lacks. While Davis does treat some common themes in each of the chapters that she highlights in her short conclusion - the nature of these women's work, the influence of religion in each of their lives, the gendered nature of their individual experiences, and the importance of family relations and experiences - more sustained comparative analysis would have brought the three chapters together into a more satisfying whole. Most notable, according to Davis, were the unique lives these women created for themselves on the margins. I was not entirely satisfied with her definition of "living on the margins" - most individuals throughout history have lived "on the margins," away from centers of political power or formal centers of learning and cultural definition. However, her argument that "each woman appreciated or embraced a marginal place, reconstituting it as a locally defined center" (p. 210) is a persuasive and compelling one. Clearly, these women had an impact in their worlds, and their stories are well worth reading today.

Christine Adams St. Mary's College of Maryland