History Of Women In The West, Volume I Book

I've been stuck on this for more than two years now and I'm giving up. It's so tough to get through. The introduction does make a point of saying that this is a very 'academic' book, but as someone in academia I'd like to point out that that isn't an excuse for bad writing.
I really wanted to like this, I did. or at least learn from it. I can't say I did either.

I admire what an endevor this series was when it was publishes, and that the editor makes a point of recognizing that this is a compilation white women's history and that that isn't the universal female experience. After that it just goes downhill. It isn't exiting to read in any way - it doesn't make you wonder or appeal to your curiosity in any way, rather it feels like a chore. Because it is divided by subject matter before chronology, we get a messy mix of Roman and Greek features. There's no sense to the division of the themes either, it seems like everything is just in random order, and it just comes off as a mess. Every chapter I read could be used as an example of what is bad about academic writing; It's abstract, it's pretentious, it's self-contradictory, it assumes the reader has knowledge about niche subjects, it dances around pointsand uses up to much space and then complains about not having enough space.



I got about halfway through the book, which means about 4.5 chapters in, and just because it's an anthology I'm gonna make a few remarks about each author:

1. What is a goddess by Nicole Leroux
Loraux makes a lot of really good and interesting observations, but at times get too vague when discussing abstract ideas. It's clearly written as an academic text where she assumes the reader has knowledge of her field, and analyzes rather that inform. She's at her best when she gets concrete. At times her meta seems out of sync with the text, and often it seems unnecessary and sometimes repetitive. She also writes several times that she needs more space and describes what she wanted to do with that space - maybe she ought to have used that space for something different instead of telling us what she's NOT gonna do?

2. The Sexual Philosophies of Plato and Aristotle by Giulia Sissa
Sissa's chapter was, exactly as the title suggests, about the philosophies of Greek thinkers. It seemed more like a discussion of terminology and theories of selected philosophers than it was women's history, yanno, actually about Greek women. Once again it seems a prerequisite that you have knowledge of the subject. You have to know of each philosopher's works in order to follow most of her discussion. Some pretentious word-choices, som iffy sources and points.

3. The Division of the Sexes in Roman Law by Yan Thomas
I had a looot of problems with this chapter, and like the one before I'm not totally sure it was best this anthology could get. There's also some reeeeally iffy points and the author seems to have a lack of understanding of a lot of things e.g. sociology, how to judge sources, the patriarchy and how gendered oppression works, and seems to argue more for their own perspectives rather than writing women's history. The first 10 or so pages are all about men exclusively because the author thinks that is necessary to go beyond "the usual assertions" of Roman misogyny (spoiler: It's not, it adds nothing), so not off to a great start. It gets contradictory at times and there sooo much repetition. Left a bad taste in my mouth and the fact that it was included made me doubt this anthology.

4. Figures of Women by Francois Lissarrague
This felt like such a filler chapter. It was incredibly superficial and consisted solely of diescriptions of pottery with next to no analyses. A lot of times I was looking for a point that just never came. It was incredibly repetitive.

5. Marriage in Ancient Greece by Claudine Leduc
I've read half this chapter and can say absolutely nothing about it which gotta say something.