Rulebreakers Medieval Women and the Art of Defiance

This is a history of medieval England that hasn’t been told, through the lives of medieval women that you have almost certainly never heard about. Most people, especially women, who lived between 1000 and 1600 have been forgotten. But to truly understand the past we’ve got to know all of it - including the messy, complicated women who were rebellious, proud, argumentative, opinionated and educated. There are women who fought battles alongside husbands, women who were blacksmiths who earned a good wage, trans women and Black women, Jewish moneylenders and religious leaders. There are women who believed they changed the world, and women who died knowing they had made no difference. In Rulebreakers, Emily Murdoch Perkins puts some of our preconceived ideas to the test with this rebellious, revisionist new history. Along the way we discover how the women of the medieval period lived, how they rebelled, and how they changed our world.