Eleanor of Aquitaine

"Eleanor of Aquitaine" by Zoë Coralnik Kaplan (Chelsea House, 1987) captures Eleanor well. Rather than use a sequential approach, Kaplan integrates thematic points of view. Thus, surprisingly, she begins with Eleanor kneeling before the pope, appealing for the annulment of her marriage to her first husband, King Louis VII of France. Pope Eugenius III refused her request. This odd starting point is Kaplan's springboard from which she establishes that a woman in the twelfth century, no matter how well-born or well-married, was still a woman. She did not share the many privileges of being male in the middle ages. Kaplan shows how Eleanor managed to grasp, to wield and to sustain leadership in several roles, despite her gender. Eleanor understood men: even more importantly, she understood how their upbringing limited them in their dealings with women. Kaplan shows Eleanor in action as she describes the queen's struggle to win influence against Thomas Becket during her first years in England. Kaplan's "Eleanor of Aquitaine" is rich in well-chosen, black and white illustrations. Importantly, she gives a full page (p.50) to the limestone bust of Eleanor's face twinned with that of her second husband, the future Henry II. (It's housed at The Cloisters, in New York.) Illustrations with extended captions bring to life the social history of Eleanor's day; and Kaplan includes well-chosen quotes from other historians writing about this extraordinary woman. Her maps on pp.64-65 omit no detail. The map of Henry's and Eleanor's continental holdings even shows the small, but strategically important, Vexin, a buffer region between Normandy and France that "vexes Norman and Frank in equal measure" as another author puts it. Kaplan's "Eleanor of Aquitaine" provides a solid resource for readers who want to learn about Eleanor and her times, but don't need a major biography to do so. The author succeeds in condensing a very great life into her own strange times. Robert Fripp, Author of ... Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine