sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 9

Caroline Dunn: Ladies-in-Waiting in Medieval England

Caroline Dunn's Ladies-in-Waiting in Medieval England addresses a significant gap in medieval scholarship by examining the lives and careers of female personnel in royal and aristocratic households between 1236 and 1536. This study challenges their marginalisation in historical narratives and demonstrates their integral, albeit liminal, role in the structures of medieval power.

The book's most remarkable contribution lies in its methodological approach. Dunn has created an extensive database of 1,240 women with 3,992 references, and 259 additional unnamed female attendants, spanning three centuries. This longue durée approach enables a sophisticated analysis of continuity and change in female household service, bringing together multiple and diverse primary sources to construct a comprehensive prosopographical study masterfully rooted in existing scholarship. Moreover, the author's decision to use the term "ladies-in-waiting" despite its anachronistic nature is well-justified, as she carefully distinguishes between the various categories of female servants according to their status, birth, and marital circumstances; informed by the nomenclature used in the sources.

The book's structure around three key themes provides a brilliant thread for the reader. The first two chapters focus on the people of the household. Chapter 1 provides a diachronic analysis of household composition, contrasting idealised images of courts as female strongholds with the reality of predominantly male households served by smaller groups of women. Dunn traces how household size expanded in the fourteenth century, contracted during the Black Death, and flourished again in the Tudor era. The chapter explores recruitment patterns and the duration of service, highlighting how selection criteria included courtly skills, education, moral character, and physical beauty, all intended to reflect and enhance the grandeur of the household mistress.

Building upon these findings, chapter 2 examines the intersection of service with marriage and family networks. Dunn identifies five categories of female attendants who achieved courtly positions through family ties: those related to their employers, women who gained positions at court through already-serving husbands, unmarried women involved with the courtly marriage market, the offspring of courtier marriages, and extended family members. Dunn effectively demonstrates how household advancement cannot be studied in isolation but must be understood within broader networks of patronage.

The second theme explored in this book is that of the rhythms of life. Chapter 3 explores the symbiotic relationship between mistresses and female servants through an analysis of their daily life and domestic duties, managing the gendered spaces of the household, handling precious objects, overseeing household finances, entertaining, aiding with travel, and caring for the children, among many other roles. Dunn's examination of the blurred boundaries between companionship and employment reveals the complexity of these relationships, while also providing compelling evidence for the occasional existence of genuine affective bonds and even friendship.

Chapter 4 analyses the crucial role of female attendants in ceremonial life, with a particular focus on royal households. Through examination of life-cycle events (arrivals to the kingdom, coronations, marriages, childbirth, christenings, funerals) and seasonal ceremonies (such as Christmas, Easter, May Day, parliamentary openings, among others), Dunn demonstrates how female attendants gained increasing prominence in the kingdom's ritual and political life, and shows how the distribution of special liveries and the value of ceremonial gifts served as public markers of status and hierarchy.

The final two chapters examine the possibilities of access to power by female attendants and the rewards this entailed. Chapter 5 explores the diverse experiences of ladies-in-waiting to four queens: Isabella of France, Anne of Bohemia, Margaret of Anjou, and Catherine of Aragon. These ranged from the highly successful, those who achieved unusual degrees of power and influence, to those who fell from grace, facing threats or even captivity. This chapter also includes the case study of Alice Perrers, whose meteoric rise from lady-in-waiting to royal mistress is re-examined. Dunn demonstrates that female courtiers operated in an environment that provided them with significant opportunities and access to status, due to the "great overlap between domestic governance of the royal household and the crown's governance of the kingdom" (239).

Following this, chapter 6 is perhaps one of the most illuminating due to its treatment of a complex topic addressed with a nuanced long-term approach. It explores the many and varied ways in which personnel were retained and rewarded, ranging from room and board, liveries, grants of land, annuities, wages, corrodies, material gifts, bequests, and other privileges. Dunn illuminates this diverse landscape of rewards, which was characterised by its inconsistency throughout the period examined.

This is a rich and thoroughly researched study into female service, embedded in current historiographical debates. While this book is difficult to fault, a few minor points could enhance it further. First, Dunn's analysis could include a more explicit discussion of the differences between royal and noble households beyond scale and opulence. While she effectively demonstrates many similarities between these two contexts, greater attention to the distinctive features of royal service would better illuminate the boundaries of elite society. The tendency to equate royal and noble households, with the latter characterised primarily as less opulent or scaled versions of the former, could be elaborated further.

Second, the author's use of "Spanish" for fifteenth-century contexts (particularly regarding Catherine of Aragon's attendants) overlooks the medieval distinction between Castilian, Aragonese, and other Iberian kingdoms and territories. While peripheral to the main argument, this imprecision slightly undermines an otherwise nuanced study.

Lastly, there is scope for even further statistical analysis, perhaps by including a prosopographic catalogue and more tables that would highlight the richness of the dataset of over 1,200 women - although this is more compelling to the specialised historian than the average reader.

In conclusion, Dunn's analysis of ladies-in-waiting in medieval England stands out as a groundbreaking study, successfully demonstrating that female servants were not merely marginal figures but key participants in the political, social, and cultural life of medieval England. This book is an outstanding contribution to scholarship that significantly enhances our understanding of female medieval servants and their lived experiences.