Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network

Episode: Patricia Anne Simpson, "Early Modern Women's Work: Kinship, Community, and Social Justice" (Routledge, 2025)
Date: November 30, 2025
Host: Yana Byers
Guest: Patricia Ann Simpson

Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Patricia Ann Simpson about her new book, Early Modern Women's Work: Kinship, Community, and Social Justice. The interview explores how privileged women in early modern northern and central Europe engaged in labor—intellectual, emotional, and manual—that often fell outside the traditional, male-defined historical canon. The discussion delves into historical reinterpretations of kinship, community, and social justice, highlighting how women’s work shaped and subverted societal norms from the 16th to early 18th centuries.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Genesis of the Book & Approach (02:43)

• Simpson traces the origin of the book to ongoing scholarly collaboration and friendship with Carol Levin, emphasizing inter-disciplinary and transnational approaches to women's history.
• Simpson was prompted to "redeem the image of Eve from the misogynist representation of Eve in early modern culture."
• The book is influenced by dialogue with German research on the history of emotions, looking for "emotional communities" formed by early modern women (04:53).

Challenging Canonical Interpretations (07:43)

• Standard histories, written mostly by elite Western men, placed women in passive, private, domestic roles.
• Simpson investigates "models of kinship and community that broke those molds," acknowledging the term "gesellschaft" already contains a gendered labor hierarchy (08:06).
• Privileged women like Maria Katharina Prestel contributed to family businesses, sometimes independently supporting their families through skilled, respected work (09:10).

"I see in the early modern period that that model [division of rational men and emotional women] is not yet in place. And there are exceptions and maybe they're leveraged by privilege..." — Patricia Simpson (15:40)

Women’s Education and Religious Influence (10:45)

• Access to education and skilled labor often came through relationships with religious reform movements, especially Protestant sects (pietism).
• These sects promoted literacy as a path to personal religious engagement, opening doors for women’s intellectual labor.
• Women used writing and the arts to process experiences like loss, aging, and public engagement, often creating supportive enclaves or communities.

Notable Example:

"I look at acts of writing as acts of mourning, acts of writing that do the work of mourning..." — Patricia Simpson (12:43)

Emotional Labor: The Work of Mourning (17:41)

• The first chapter focuses on how women turned grief (pregnancy loss, bereavement) into creative, pedagogical, and public acts.
• Anna Cuffeline’s woodcut of the imaginary "Kinderhaus" symbolized both personal loss and a creation of public meaning, teaching household management (18:14).
• The act of mourning through writing, especially publicly, became a subversive form of emotional labor, sometimes challenging both social and religious comfort zones.

"Thus be witness mute suffering of my sadness." — Simpson reading Margaretha Susanna von Kunsch (25:40)

• Simpson explores the concept of "maternality"—the maternal as community care, beyond biological motherhood (27:30).

Women Publicly Intervening: Anna Ovena Hoyers (29:36)

• Hoyers’ life and work highlight women’s public engagement and authorship, especially in support of religious minorities.
• After widowhood, she managed estates, took up writing, and offered refuge to heterodox groups like Anabaptists.
• Hoyers’ writings were angry and forceful, leveraging her status and emotion to critique corruption and advocate for social justice.

"She makes her own authority. She assumes that agency and is extremely unapologetic about it." — Patricia Simpson (37:41)

• Despite persecution (her books were burned), Hoyers persisted in advocating unification through love, ultimately dying in poverty and relative obscurity.

Women and Natural Science: Maria Sibylla Merian & Agnes Block (41:22)

• Merian, an artist and entomologist, subverted gender and scientific norms by focusing on insects and plants, collaborating with indigenous and enslaved peoples during her time in Suriname.
• Despite benefiting from colonial networks, Merian used her skills to produce scientifically important works, helped by a circle of women like collector/artist Agnes Block.
• Both navigated societal constraints using the word "amateur" as "lover of" (nature, art), marking a distinction from male-dominated scientific authority.

"She curls, she cuts. This life, makes a life for herself. That does not suit this narrative." — Yana Byers (41:11)

• Notions of collective authorship and community, rather than individual genius, underpin much of these women’s creativity (51:11).

The Importance of Community and Networks (51:11)

• Simpson emphasizes the communal and often transnational nature of women’s networks, extending support, patronage, and protection beyond kinship lines.
• Community bonds were "forged through work," creating spaces for women’s labor and leadership despite social constraints.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Gendered Work:
  "There are women in this time period who are engaged actively in optimizing their skills, their training, their intellectual capacities... to create spaces in which work can take place..." (53:30)
• On Mourning and Writing:
  "I just was incredibly and deeply moved by this kind of articulation of loss. And even today we don't have a good category for mourning a miscarriage." (26:00)
• On Anger and Authority:
  "Women aren't allowed to be angry. Women's anger is hysteria... And she just goes with it." (35:20)
• On Collectivity:
  "There's not a sense of ownership, and there's not necessarily a sense of entitlement... these bonds are forged through work." (51:38)

Timestamps: Key Segments

• Genesis of Book & Career Path: 02:43
• Challenge to Canonical History: 07:43
• Role of Religion and Access to Labor: 10:45
• Emotional Labor & Mourning: 17:41
• Reading from Margaretha Susanna von Kunsch: 25:40
• Concept of “Maternality”: 27:30
• Ana Ovena Hoyers & Authority: 29:36
• Maria Sibylla Merian and Natural Science: 41:22
• Community and Networks: 51:11
• Lessons from the Book: 53:14
• Next Projects: 55:34

Lessons & Broader Insights

• Simpson redefines "women's work" as multi-layered, emphasizing how elite women’s emotional, intellectual, and artisanal labor both conformed to and subverted societal constraints.
• The history of early modern women is one of unexpected agency, collectivity, and innovation—stretching the definitions of kinship, community, and social justice in ways that resonate with contemporary concerns.
• The book’s final takeaway: labor in early modern Europe was ubiquitous, but the types of work women performed and their historical visibility remain underappreciated and misrepresented by traditional narratives.

Closing Note:
Patricia Ann Simpson’s scholarship throws much-needed light on the creative, collective, and subversive dimensions of women’s work in early modern Europe, offering a richer and more just historical memory.