JUSTICE FOR JEHANNE: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor, and thriver, and role model on top of all that

JUSTICE FOR JEHANNE: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor
SARA McDOUGALL
Princeton University Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.95 all editions, preorder now for delivery 15 September 2026

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: A spellbinding narrative history that defies modern assumptions about women’s lives in the Middle Ages and informs contemporary debates about sexual violence and the limits of justice

In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who took the unusual step of making a criminal complaint in an age when victims of sexual violence did so at their own peril. Justice for Jehanne follows Jaques’s investigation as he uncovers one woman’s story of resilience and survival.

Applying forensic analysis to witness testimony and Jaques’s case files, Sara McDougall finds in Jehanne a woman of many lives and many secrets. An outsider on her own in Dijon, Jehanne had every reason to distrust the local authorities, who regularly extorted money from the city’s most vulnerable residents. Separating facts from falsehoods, McDougall challenges preconceptions about the experiences of marginalized women in medieval France, showing how neighbors, clergy, and other residents aided Jehanne throughout her legal struggles—and how justice of a sort was exacted from her attackers.

Richly detailed and powerfully told, Justice for Jehanne paints an unforgettable portrait of a woman who mounted an extraordinary response to a crime that was so difficult to prosecute at the time, and of a community that gave her shelter, protection, and acceptance as she endeavored to survive on her own terms.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The idea that sexual assault is a death knell for a woman's reputation is *still* dying a slow, noisy death. It was my experience in my own lifetime that a woman pregnant and without some kind of man in her life to take the credit was a "slut" and never anything but; her reputation was set, her future decided, that was that. Many were the women who had abortions, fewer went away for "cures" and came back thinner; all were "fallen" ant thus tainted. This was the twentieth century pre-The Pill and well pre-Roe v Wade.

I thought that was just how it was, probably moreso in earlier times, but certainly not better.

Reading is very dangerous to one's ignorance.

A young woman arrived in Dijon, pregnant and alone, spouting some silly-sounding story about a husband visibly absent who...well, no one was buyin' it, but no one was really all that interested in it either because being pregnant was a very common and unavoidable hazard of being female in the world of men. Jehanne settled into a mundane life, making friends, doing work, being alive. All that came to a chaotic halt when mercenaries fighting some endless wars drifted through Dijon and...noticed...pretty, pregnant, manless Jehanne and bad things ensued.

So far it's a tale as old as time. But post-bad things, details not foregrounded (neither glossed over, just not dwelt on) in the text, Jehanne was not going to let herself be cowed into silence about the outrages she'd endured. One sees in this fact the root of her problem, and the reason she floated into Dijon instead of staying wherever she got pregnant in the first place. (Absent any details about this subject in the records, as Jehanne was not forthcoming, the author posits a possible reason for her landing in Dijon that I thought sounded very believable.) Seeking legal remedy for her violation was stunning in its effrontery, enduring the horrible humiliation of the trial, reliving the awful events, having deeply impertinent, invasive questions that can not be avoided asked, Jehanne showed amazing strength of character.

Her neighbors—including the very surprising man who conducted the investigation we still have documented—of fairly short duration, to my utter amazement, mostly had her back.

The records of the trial, the details of which are almost brain-meltingly boring...I deeply do not care about medieval tax-dodging schemes, but they were important to the witnesses' identities...made for what should have been a slog of an academic read. Author Sara, take your bow. Yes, I now know what people did for fun in 1470s Dijon, dreamt up ways to skive off paying taxes and damn do I wish I didn't, but this is leavened by Author Sara peppering the dough with interesting asides and details not strictly on topic. I will say that all those details added up to Jehanne's becoming a firmly embedded member of Dijon's community, a rough patch in the weave to be sure, but really part of a vibrant interesting bunch of folks.

It surprised me, it entertained me...yes, in spite of the stuff about who had what spurious tax exemption...and it gave me a ghost of gleeful recognition in getting to know Jehanne. She's someone I wish I'd known in the flesh.

Proof that academic, footnoted reads can be well worth reading for more than a degree.