Starting from the approach of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault to ‘identity formation’, Helene Scheck aspires to unravel the social and historical circumstances under which ‘women are able to emerge as autonomous subjects and, if so, how’. Unlike Althusser and Foucault she includes the question of gender and the consequences that living within a female body had for medieval women's subject formation within the ‘masculinist’ western culture. Never discussing the possible anachronistic implications of her presumptions, Scheck assumes that periods of conversion offer the best conditions for strong female subjects to emerge while times of Church reform ‘recognize women as only supplementary subjects or abjected beings entirely’ – an observation, though, Scheck does not want to be understood as being cast in iron (p. 22). Her scrutiny focuses on three areas: she starts with the early Carolingian reforms, contrasting Theodulf of Orleans as representative of the official ecclesiastical position which saw women as weak, impure and dangerous and Alcuin whom Scheck understands to ‘transcend traditional views of gender and to promote instead an egalitarian basis for understanding what it is to be human’ (p. 71). Proceeding to the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine reform Scheck first examines the anonymous Old English Life of St Euphrosyne and Ælfric's version of the Eugenia legend, both so-called transvestite saints whose legends did not in fact encourage women to transgress their natural gender and assume the superior male form but exhorted them not to disrupt the proper social order. Scheck also scrutinises Ælfric's sermons with respect to his perception of the Virgin Mary and the Old English Genesis B poem as to the development of the figure of Eve, concluding that both texts were used to warn against improper roles for and behaviour of women. Finally Scheck turns to Ottonian Saxony and celebrates the tenth-century canoness and writer Hrotsvit of Gandersheim as a paragon of self-assertiveness, offering women through her texts ways to present themselves as autonomous subjects – maybe not too surprising, given Hrotsvit's addressees and background, if we compare her approach, for example, to Hildegard of Bingen's writings. In her three case studies, which form more or less unrelated parts of her book, Scheck does not offer comprehensive overviews; rather she – and this is one of the strengths of her book – refers to her sources and closely interprets key texts (thankfully she offers the original quotations in her notes). Despite this text-based approach her conclusions are often too general and – for someone who is interested in research on women's history – not really surprising, since she often reiterates well-known positions. Sometimes, though, Scheck's generalisations are breathtakingly indiscriminate and she reads her sources too literally: her assessment of the role of ‘Germanic women’ includes Tacitus' remarks about women's prophetic power, moves on to the Vikings and sees similar ‘underlying attitudes’ (p. 75) in Anglo-Saxon England without reflecting on the cultural context of the first-century Roman writer and the changes which may have occurred over the long period of time. On the whole, though, Scheck has presented an examination of very interesting source material which allows her readers to follow up further the quest for testimonies of the roles of medieval women.