Introduction: Women on the Hunt—Observations on Female Features and Social Distinctions Throughout Hunting History

The role of women in the history of the hunt is highly ambiguous. They were neither officially encouraged nor completely excluded. Hunting was not the first activity to claim when it came to sexual equality as, for a long time, it largely depended on rank, and thus high-status women were empowered to participate in the cynegetic heritage of nobility. But even at the highest political level, women on the hunt caused concern to their male counterparts, who usually kept the female body under careful control. At the same time, the field of the hunt offered various opportunities for women to transgress ideals of the feminine. This chapter outlines the female features and gendered distinctions in the history of the hunt according to the various techniques that historians have identified among high-ranking circles in Western and Central Europe. It aims at showing the ambivalences of inclusion and exclusion, centered on the fundamental aspect of the body. Both iconic and textual sources from the Middle Ages to the present are examined, a large amount of which still remain to be discovered.