Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of Widowhood

This wide-ranging collection considers the history of widowhood across a variety of different cultures. It brings together contributors from various disciplines: social, legal and religious history, anthropology and literature. Between Poverty and the Pyre covers the realities and representations of the widows' lives with studies which are historically and culturally wide-ranging, from ancient Israel to eighteenth-century Britain and France. There are discussions of widowhood from legal and religious perspectives. The differences and similarities between the experience of rich and poor widows is also examined. The contributors present and explain many fascinating aspects of widows' lives: their prominence in marginal religious movements, their desirability as heiresses to the throne in Anglo-Saxon England, their precarious legal position in relation to the European colonies, and their disappearance from view in modern times, Between Poverty and the Pyre shows how difficult it is to define the typical 'widow' because the history of widowhood has been so varied. This book should help all those with an interest in the history of women to perceive the rich cultural variation in the experience and representation of widowhood. Rolf Bremmer Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Marjo Buitelaar Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Heleen Gall Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Dieneke Hempenius-van Dijk Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

Table of Contents:
Preface 1 WIDOWS’ WORLDS Representations and realities 2 THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF THE WIDOW IN ANCIENT ISRAEL 3 PAUPER OR PATRONESS The widow in the Early Christian Church 4 WIDOWS IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND 5 WIDOWS AND THE LAW The legal position of widows in the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 6 ‘EUROPEAN’ WIDOWS IN THE DUTCH EAST INDIES Their legal and social position 7 WOMEN WITHOUT MEN Widows and spinsters in Britain and France in the eighteenth century 8 NOBLE WIDOWS BETWEEN FORTUNE AND FAMILY 9 THE ULTIMATE JOURNEY Sati and widowhood in India 10 WIDOWS IN ISLAM 11 WIDOWS HIDDEN FROM VIEW The disappearance of mourning dress among Dutch widows in the twentieth century 12 WIDOWS IN WESTERN HISTORY A select bibliography

About the Author :
Lourens P. van den Bosch is Associate Professor of History of Religion at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. He is the author of Atharvaveda-parisista: Chapters 21–29, Introduction, Translation and Notes (1978) and Inleiding in het hindoeïsme (1990). Jan N.Bremmer is Professor of History of Religion at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. He is the author of The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (1983) and Greek Religion (1994), co-author of Roman Myth and Mythography (1987), editor of Interpretations of Greek Mythology (1987), From Sappho to de Sade: Moments in the History of Sexuality (1989) and A Dictionary of Ancient Religions (1995), and co-editor of A Cultural History of Gesture (1991).