Admittedly I wasn't reading this book for pleasure, as I had to read it for a class, but it is very poor indeed. Okay, I'm not a PhD historian like Bennett, but that shouldn't mean my criticism is invalid. The book is an interesting concept, trying find out what a peasant's life was like, but is just FULL of "perhaps she did this..." and "maybe she did that..." Bennett, in reality, is writing a book about the medieval peasantry, trying to make it interesting and accessible to college students by making the book revolve around a character. However, the book proves condescending, and left me very frustrated as a slammed the book shut on the final page. Here are a few examples:

"I felt as if Cecilia was demanding...that I write her life" p. 138

And regarding the 'doodle' in the court records: "If Cecilia is the woman shown in this drawing, we can surmise that she was tall, thin, curly-headed, and perhaps the bearer of a prominent nose" p. 130

As with many other textbooks for college, this was too expensive for only 138 pages, and should be the $10 it is in the Marketplace, not the $30 that my bookstore was charging.

The unfortunate truth is that it will be very difficult to ever know what life was like for the average medieval peasant since they did not write anything, and Bennett's account seems to add no real value to this subject area, and the 'story' of Cecilia Penifader could have easily been summarized on a page or two.

This was an assigned book in my Medieval History class. It's not a thorough book, but that would be almost (if not entirely) impossible given the fact that Cecilia Penifader was a peasant and peasants' lives were irrelevant and unimportant to the rest of medieval society. Still, the book gives you a good understanding of what life would have been like for this particular woman in terms of work, religion, family, dealing with manorial courts and the harsh existence for peasants.

I found the book interesting. It's an easy read and though the author has to make inferences about Penifader's life, it is a well written book that at least gives some "face" to the typically unknown peasant. Bennett (the author) uses records from the courts and other written records of the times to at least give a good outline of Penifader's life.