The Evolution of Women's Asylums Since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women.

The subject of most of this book, not apparent from its title, is three houses for dependent women in early modern Tuscany. After a valuable survey in chapter one of women's institutions across Renaissance Italy, the author in chapter two zeroes in on the Nunnery of the Convertite (or converted former prostitutes, founded 1332), on the secular House for immoral or Badly-Behaving Wives (Malmaritate) (1579), both in Florence, and on the Pistoian house of Santa Mari Maddalena (1604), also for former prostitutes. These remain her objects of stud during the following chapters. The last part of Cohen's book springs from her interest in contemporary social policy. It amounts less to a description of the "evolution of Women's Asylums," in general, as to a valuable appendix dealing with prostitute asylums ("Magdalenes") of the nineteenth and twentieth centurie outside Italy, mainly in England and the United States (Philadelphia). Here, I limit myself to a review of the contribution Cohen's book makes to early modern Tuscan history.

The author accepts the stated intentions of the male donors in founding these female houses, and builds her book around this dominant discourse. Cohen labors to identify a particular stated mission for each house, distinct from one another, as well as evidence of change in their missions over time. As indicate by the subtitle of her book, new donors' "devotions," that is, new types of women's refuges, were at least initiated, if not always sustained, over the centuries. By searching the Tuscan records to identify such missions, the autho unearths and finely describes elements of the discourse the patriarchy used in regulating non-normative females, usually revolving around the women's alleged negative gender characteristics. Could young girls be placed among the Convertite to prevent them from becoming prostitutes, or should only converted prostitutes be in the Nunnery? Did problems arise by mixing such types together Was it wise to call a spade a spade and label working wives prostitutes, or wer the Tuscans judicious in avoiding such terminology, making it possible to reconstruct broken unions and spare family honor? If Tuscan wives were never "prostitutes," perhaps nubile females who had lost their virginity could indeed "regain their honor" by their future actions. Could a house of former prostitutes function only if each entered of her own free will, or was it acceptable to force women into these houses? And, quite apart from any woman's sexual behavior, what was wrong with males using such houses as mere "custodial warehouses" (75) for any girl or woman who proved problematic to her lord? In chapters four and five, on "Life Inside the Women's Refuges of Tuscany" and "Th Tuscan Refuges as Social Institutions," partial answers to these and other questions are posed. This is a richly documented work.

However, the last question posed here shows why Cohen's search for coherence of intention in these different houses ultimately comes up short. On her own rich evidence and that of earlier scholars, it is clear that the patriarchal regimes that ruled Florence during the Republic and the Grand Duchy often put any type of female into any house it wanted to, whatever the intended purpose of that house. Despite Cohen's claim that a "system" dividing (unmarried) reformed prostitutes from immoral wives existed that began to "break down" at some point (52), she in fact documents no such system at work at all. The reader is thus left with a work that is rich in apercus and citations, but problematic in its presentation and arguments, in good part because the actual use of these houses was not clearly divined by the author and thus not used to structure the work.

Cohen would have profited by posing three crucial tasks and problematics at the beginning of the work. First, Cohen pays little attention to the history of the three institutions in question, and in turn, this bespeaks her habit of springing across large periods of time with little attention to historical specificity. The origins and history of the Nunnery of Former Prostitutes, for instance, are richly documented in the laws of Florence, but Cohen (191, no. 121) cites not a one of them, Latin or Italian.(1) The work is indeed marked by a consultation of many archival sources, yet Cohen omits several important early-modern descriptions of and authorities on these houses. As a result, this reader preserves no clear image of any of these houses in their times and places, something that a serious historical precis on each of them would have done much to alleviate.

A second problem concerns the organization of the work, which was not clearly thought through. The factual and ideational core of the work deals with how the city fathers institutionally disposed of non-brothel prostitutes, yet on every page of her work and in the whole of chapter three, Cohen recognizes the presence in these houses of what she calls "anomalous women," that is, females who entered or were put in these houses for reasons other than prostitution: To prevent the same, or because they could not live with their husbands, or becaus they had been raped, or because they were disobedient, or as servants for the residents of the houses, and so forth. Indeed, Cohen excludes the whole categor of young nubile girls from her "system" and treats them all rather as anomalous Yet in fact, the city fathers had long considered unsupervised young girls as a fundamental category for internment. Back in 1354, in fact, a major Florentine confraternity got government approval to create a lay conservatory to intern al girls without relatives until they found a husband](2) Unmarried young girls should have been a fundamental category of this work.

But the point to be made here is that Tuscan lords often had the option of incarcerating their females. Just as important, some females had the option of deserting or bettering their present circumstances by entering these houses, perhaps, as the city's laws suggest, to join women's sewing collectives.(3) A crucial question was, therefore, not posed by the author. From her own institutional point of view, but quite apart from the ideology of male discourse, does female prostitution provide a coherent organizing principle to study these houses as they were actually utilized?

In short, the author follows the normal patronal discourse in describing these houses according to the "devotions" of their founding patrons, rather than organizing her work around how the institutions worked, over time. On the one hand, here were houses that were available to the patriarchy for the warehousin or institutionalizing of problematic females. On the other hand, here were room available, at a price, to those females who wished to establish a primary or even secondary residence. Such women tended to enter these houses, including th allegedly cloistered Nunnery of the Convertite, of their own free will, to sometimes exit, as Cohen shows, and then reenter. The image this reader derived from reading this book is of houses with rooms which harbored at any time a variety of women, from those who were forced to enter, to those who negotiated their entrance with patrons, to those women on their own who chose to live in these rooms because the rent was right or because they offered income-producing work.

It is worth asking if the occupants of these houses would have bonded with each other only or mainly as prostitutes. Cohen's difficulty in imagining these houses from one possible women's point of view--as a resource--is surprising, given her sure sense for a meaningful turn of phrase, and the important if limited information she develops about their demographics: they were not retire prostitutes, but usually in their twenties and were usually without children. I is the more surprising because the women in these houses either paid for their lodgings outright, or benefitted from patrons who did so for them, and some of them had servants. These were not destitute women, but of enough means to partially shape their own lives.

Sherrill Cohen has made an important contribution to the study of women's asylums in early modern Europe by examining Tuscan houses founded, if not necessarily used for, converting women. The material she has unearthed is rich, and her interpretations of much of her microhistorical material is careful and insightful. With Cohen's book serving to clarify the problems in the field, wha is needed now are theoretically informed detailed studies of specific institutions, to build the foundations for a history of institutionalized women in early modern Europe. The social history of early modern penology will, I think, play a more crucial role in such a study than Cohen may believe. Historians who wish to learn how female institutions worked will need to problematize, if not abandon, the established male discourse of the age. As is well known, that begins with the notion that wanton women require imprisonment or, put otherwise, that imprisoned women are, and regard themselves as primarily, wanton, or about to become so.

Richard C. Trexler SUNY, Binghamton

ENDNOTES

1. The foundation documents for the Florentine Convertite are in Archivio di Stato, Firenze, Provvisioni, 26, 8 bis (19 May 1332) and 56 rv (24 Sept. 1333). The revelatory foundation documents for the (aborted) Fiesolan house of Convertite (to have been built within the city of Florence), also unknown to Cohen, are ibid., 65, 106r-107r (29 July 1377).

2. Apparently unknown to Cohen, though in the printed literature; ibid., 145, ff. 97v-100r (20 July 1354).

3. Because recluses, the early Convertites could not beg publicl}. In their words, they rather begged with their hands, which were constantly occupied in suendo !et^ filando; ibid., 26, ff. 56rv (24 Sept. 1933).