'The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany' is a fascinating study of 'deviant' women. It is the first scholarly account of how women were prosecuted for theft, infanticide, and sexual crimes in early modern Germany, and challenges the assumption that women were treated more leniently than men. Ulinka Rublack uses criminal trials to illuminate the social status and conflicts of women living through the Reformation and Thirty Years War, telling, for the first time, the stories of cutpurses, maidservants' dangerous liaisons, and artisans' troubled marriages. She provides a thought-provoking analysis of labelling and sentencing processes, and of the punishments inflicted on those found guilty. Above all, she brilliantly engages with the way 'ordinary' women experienced authority and sexuality, household and community.
This fascinating study is the first to investigate the crimes of women living in Germany during the time of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War. Ulinka Rublack uses court records to examine the lives of shrewd cutpurses, quarelling artisan wives, and soldiers' concubines, and explores women's experience of communities and courtship, marriage, the family, and the law.
