This informative book focuses on the property that twelfth- and thirteenth-century aristocratic women could hold, both in theory and in practice, and on the control they were able to exert over that property. There are eight chapters, including methodology/historiography and an overview of the sources in Chapters 1 and 2 and a conclusion in Chapter 8. In between Ricketts tackles law/legal theory (Chapter 3), property (Chapter 4), remarriage (Chapter 5), power (Chapter 6) and identity (Chapter 7). The study stems from her 2005 AHRC- and US Historical Association-funded PhD thesis, and its overriding methodology is comparative history, as advocated by the Annales school. Accordingly, the societies under discussion are deliberately chosen for their dissimilarities regarding kinship structure, political organisation and legal framework. As the author notes, such a contextual approach is necessary because sweeping statements are often made about medieval widows (for example, their comparative ‘freedom of action’). Indeed, it is demonstrated that factors which divided women also divided widows – for example, wealth and social status, existing children, potential fertility, politics and the influence of their kinship networks – so that the universal category ‘widow’ could not have existed. A key finding is that a widow's potential fertility was crucial to her control over her property, and indeed her life choices. However, while the possibility of future offspring was as an overriding factor in the remarriage of Yorkshire widows, it was not as decisive an issue for widows in Iceland. The main conclusion of the book is that in the absence of similar comparative studies, it is misleading to generalise. An individual widow's circumstances determined how much room she had for manoeuvre, and thus how much power or authority she possessed within the limits dictated by the cultural norms of the society of the time.

A major aim of Ricketts's study is thus to place her sample widows in context and relate their experience to their life cycles (pp 3, 14) over a relatively short period – but one of significant change (p 11). For example, she hopes that her findings will shed light on the effects of the Gregorian reforms on women and widows, focusing especially on Iceland, where Church influence was more limited (p 12), and challenge the received wisdom that Gregorian reforms concerning female consent in marriage universally benefited twelfth- and thirteenth-century women. In Yorkshire, however, where Church influence was stronger, women appear to have been coerced into marriage more often than in Iceland (p 308). Icelandic widows also seem to have enjoyed more sexual freedom owing to the Church's failure to restrict extramarital relationships. Neither did illegitimacy preclude their inheritance, whereas the one illegitimate widow in the Yorkshire sample was prevented from inheriting. There was more scope for influence over one's offspring in Iceland, but greater opportunities for power and authority derived from land transactions in Yorkshire. That is, in Iceland, children invariably remained with the mother, giving widows more control over their children's future lives and property, potentially bringing them greater wealth and social status, while in the Yorkshire sample the only widow who gained custody of her child was past childbearing age. This probably explains the fact that in Iceland the presence of existing children was among the most significant factors in shaping a widow's identity, whereas landholding seems to have been key to the self-identities of Yorkshire widows. Such differences justify the author's comparative approach. Had Yorkshire alone been studied fertility would probably be seen as the determining factor in whether or not a widow remarried, but it might not have even been considered had Iceland been studied in isolation. Thus Ricketts argues forcefully that blanket generalisations should be investigated before being made. Nevertheless, her findings also uncover universal factors. In both Iceland and Yorkshire, a widow's position as heiress appears to have set her apart from others of similar social status, wealth and age.

In all, fifty high-ranking Icelandic widows and twenty-five from twelfth-century Yorkshire are studied. Notwithstanding the disparity of the size of the groups, Ricketts calibrates her findings through detailed analysis of a wide range of primary sources, facilitating the ‘family reconstruction’ fundamental to an analysis of widows’ property, power, marriage and identity. These include Icelandic and English legal texts as well as contemporary sagas such as those collated in the Sturlunga Saga, which have been referred to as ‘indigenous social documentation’. In the absence of similar English sources, charters are mined for their detail on family, property and the opportunities open to widows. The author acknowledges the varying usefulness of these texts.

Ricketts overturns received wisdoms, continually testing the generalisations of historians, and exhorts readers to do likewise. That her work is supported by an Eileen Power Postdoctoral Research Fellowship is testament to its likely impact, and it is successful on several levels. For example, there is a wide discussion of the historiography of medieval women and a discussion of definitions of power and agency, each of which will provide useful starting points for students. There are extensive appendices (including databases incorporating references) and genealogies. The book is thus a key text for those of us working in the fields of women and gender in the Middle Ages.