"Women, Family, and Inheritance in Bologna During the Black Death" by Shona Kelly Wray addresses the topic of family decisions during times of difficulty and even death. Wray argues that families in Bologna, Italy were steadfast in maintaining functionality and normalcy within the family, despite the imposing threats of the Black Death.
As evidence, the author uses the last will and testaments of individuals in this region, both before and during the plague. These primary sources are very insightful when looking at demographics and inheritance trends. Yet, they are presented in such a dry and mathematical way that it is hard to engage in and interpret the significance of what is being said. The author incorporates very little secondary sources and it is hard to grasp the overarching view that such sources offer. It almost seems as if there are two arguments that are being presented. The first one, the one that technically is defined within the article, is that families functioned and maintained familial ties despite a primitive instinct to engage in the "survival of the fittest" mentality. The second argument is the issue of inheritance procedures and the significant changes that recognized women, namely daughters and sisters, as potential heirs. Both of these arguments are engaging and significant in our perception of history. However, I believe that the authors choice to try and join the two arguments into one unit only broadened and watered down the potential for one poignant and delightful article.
As evidence, the author uses the last will and testaments of individuals in this region, both before and during the plague. These primary sources are very insightful when looking at demographics and inheritance trends. Yet, they are presented in such a dry and mathematical way that it is hard to engage in and interpret the significance of what is being said. The author incorporates very little secondary sources and it is hard to grasp the overarching view that such sources offer. It almost seems as if there are two arguments that are being presented. The first one, the one that technically is defined within the article, is that families functioned and maintained familial ties despite a primitive instinct to engage in the "survival of the fittest" mentality. The second argument is the issue of inheritance procedures and the significant changes that recognized women, namely daughters and sisters, as potential heirs. Both of these arguments are engaging and significant in our perception of history. However, I believe that the authors choice to try and join the two arguments into one unit only broadened and watered down the potential for one poignant and delightful article.
5 comments:
I agree with what was brought up by the author of this blog, Kathryn. I think that the topic Wray is researching is important and that the question she is asking is important. This is a clever way to look at the changes in inheritance trends. However, I found the author, much like Kathryn found, to be very dry and unaware of how to present her findings. I also had a problem with her actual research. I thought that her sample size was so small to make a meaningful assessment of changes in inheritance trends. I think that it would have been more informative to do this research with a larger sample size. It also would have helped to look at other towns and even other countries, to see if this was generalizable and if there was a pattern.
This reading was a bit dry in presentation, but what an interesting way to go about researching the family during the plague. What I found interesting was the movement of people away from clergy and holymen to perform their burials, to their own relatives: husbands, wives, brothers, sisters. A main find in this article is that during the plague, women gained more rights then before. They were put on as solo heirs of inheritances for the first time. Even people who were not wives, meaning daughters, sisters, sister in laws, began being named heirs to inheritance. This showed an interesting trend of people moving away from traditional male inheritance due to the necessity of the times. A follow study that interests me is did society return to their old patterns after the plague ended, or was this a large stride made for women in the family that lasted.
I too would be interested to learn if the pre-plague inheritance trends (fewer women heirs/ executors) returned after the plague. Another interesting point which was brought up was that before the plague, only 31% of men appointed relatives to as executors. The article also states that no men during this time appointed religious men as executors either. With these two options out, who were these men appointing? And why in this time of patriarchy did they feel more comfortable appointing someone who was perhaps not as loyal to their family as a family member would probably be?
In response to T Coons' point that the trend turned towards family members to bury the dead I can't help but wonder if it wasn't by choice, but rather an unwillingness by the clergymen to touch the diseased bodies. There is even the possibility of laws or mutual agreements by the general population that the less people that had to come in contact with someone who had died from the plague, the better. It would be interesting to research these and other aspects of social norms during this time. I like the author's technique, but I think that the article was so focused on one aspect and one source that other possibilities were not considered.
You all raise good points. It does make the reader wonder why she didn't sample more of the wills even for Bologna and why, if she argues that pre-Plague trends rapidly returned, she did not sample post-plague wills to substantiate that claim.
If you were to puruse of the lines of inquiry you discuss, how would you go about it? What sources, potentially, could answer those questions?
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