In this brief volume, Judith Bennett brings together her thoughts about many issues facing women's history, feminist history, and history in general. In particular, she explores the “eroding relationship” (2) between feminism and history, a topic that she first addressed nearly twenty years ago. Some of the chapters draw heavily on previously published articles that have appeared in a variety of journals and collections. Bennett freely acknowledges this, and it does not detract from the book's merits at all. Indeed, readers familiar with Bennett's earlier work, both her substantive research in medieval English history and her more theoretical pieces, will welcome having all of this within two covers. Those not familiar with her work should read this book immediately. Feminist theory has been plagued by prolixity in recent years, and Bennett reminds us that deep insights can also be expressed in crisp and clever prose.

The book contains six main chapters. “Feminist History and Women's History” examines trends in women's and gender history over the last several decades, both those that Bennett celebrates and those she views as problematic. Among the latter is the focus on representation that accompanied the turn toward cultural history and an overemphasis on the pluralism of women's experiences. Both of these encourage taking power relationships as givens rather than analyzing or resisting them, which, in Bennett's opinion, increasingly makes history irrelevant for feminist activists.

“Who's Afraid of the Distant Past?” explores the overemphasis on the recent past, and especially the twentieth century, which has emerged in women's history during the last decade. Bennett uses charts of published articles and conference presentations to demonstrate this trend, though books would have worked just as well, as I can attest from a just-completed three years on the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly prize committee for the best book in women's history. (This trend is mitigated somewhat by the large number of articles on women and gender that is currently being published in many journals that specialize in the premodern period, though this may also reinforce one of Bennett's points, which is that presentism is even stronger among women's historians than it is in the field as a whole.)

“Patriarchal Equilibrium” brings the points of the first two chapters together. By focusing so much on the recent past, Bennett argues, women's historians have avoided investigating long-term continuities, a trend reinforced by history's disciplinary bias toward change and transformation. The most significant continuity for women is patriarchal power, a topic that has been avoided in much recent women's and gender history, with its emphasis on differences and representation. As Bennett notes, patriarchy is often seen as a depressing or boring construct, with those who even use the word dismissed as old fashioned and essentialist. She argues that this need not be so. Historicizing patriarchy can allow historians to confront what has indeed been a central continuity in almost all world cultures but a continuity that is malleable and flexible. Bennett asserts that patriarchy's malleability has, in fact, been the source of its strength. It is not maintained by some hidden group of male misogynists seeking to oppress women in all that they do (well, not only by such men) but by men, and also some women, with other goals primarily in mind. The maintenance of patriarchy, what Bennett cogently labels the “patriarchal equilibrium,” often seems to be a relatively accidental result. This should not be the end of the story for historians, however, but the beginning, for patriarchy's mechanisms and endurance call for explanation. In this chapter, and in the others as well, Bennett practices what she preaches. She does not simply describe developments but analyzes them, thus demonstrating as well as asserting that a primary function of history is the exploration of causation rather than simply an examination of meaning. This chapter should make it onto the syllabi of many graduate and advanced undergraduate seminars for the substance of the primary argument, the sense of what history is about, and the clarity of the writing.

The last three chapters provide specific examples of many of the points made in “Patriarchal Equilibrium.” “Less Money than a Man Would Take” examines one area in which continuity is, to Bennett, particularly evident: women's work in Europe during 1350–1700. She argues that the household economy, often portrayed as a partnership, was in fact structured legally, economically, and intellectually to benefit the husband. The changes in the organization of work during this era enhanced the power, wealth, and authority of some men (while decreasing that of others), but this was not a decline from some “golden age,” nor did it bring fundamental transformation in women's work. In “The L-Word in Women's History,” she proposes the notion of “lesbian-like” to help historians study same-sex relations between women in the premodern past. Such a reconception, Bennett argues, would allow historians to think outside the heteronormative box and to view a range of women's activities and behaviors in new ways. “The Master and the Mistress” discusses ways in which women's history can change master narratives, particularly the peculiar type of master narrative that is a textbook for undergraduates. In this, as in all chapters, Bennett draws on her own experiences, as she has recently revised Warren Hollister's Medieval Europe: A Short History (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002). Here and elsewhere she also includes suggestions for materials that work especially well in the classroom, a welcome part of the book's extensive footnotes.

The book ends with a brief conclusion, “For Whom Are We Doing Feminist History?” in which Bennett points to the multiple audiences that feminist history has had and could reclaim. This chapter is an unapologetic call to arms, as is the book as a whole. Many of us may have no trouble with the L-word but sometimes find ourselves avoiding both the P-word (patriarchy) and the F-word (feminism, of course) so as appear nonthreatening, inclusionary, or hip. For such a condition, Bennett's book is a much-needed tonic.