Well-Behaved Women

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

It makes a flashy feminist bumper sticker, but like many adages about history, it isn’t exactly reliable. (I.e. History is written by the victors – have you seen how much American Civil War history is colored by Confederate narratives?) Some of the most outrageously behaved women in history don’t make the cut in traditional history books, while mild-mannered Queen Victoria of England is almost always noteworthy. (Nothing against Victoria – she was a babe.) The bigger problem with the statement is that it implies that while women have to misbehave to make history, men can be noteworthy without it. In my professional opinion, no one takes note of Napoleon or Genghis Khan for their exceptional manners or grooming habits.  So, it would really be fairer and more accurate to say, “Well-behaved people seldom make history,” because the people who rise as the heroes and villains of historical narratives tend to be exceptional people who made their mark on the world, while the rest of us become statistics in social histories. (A truly noble cause.)

            The purpose of this blog is not to take down the patriarchy of historical narratives. I do not delude myself into thinking one little blog is capable of that, and there is a veritable army of historians who have made that task their life’s work. I simply want to shed light on some of history’s greatest babes.

 As a kid, the histories I was exposed to made me feel like there were a few female heroes – Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, Cleopatra – but that women didn’t really start doing anything interesting until the 20^th century. However, the more I study history, the more I have learned that women all over the world and in every era have made enormous contributions – I mean, we do at any given moment account for at least half of the world’s population, so it is ridiculous to expect that half of the world is not participating in some meaningful way. The point is, in many history books, women are presented as a monolithic group and the contributions of extraordinary individual women tend to be obscured. My goal with this blog is to introduce you, the reader, to some of the best babes history has to offer.

            Now, some disclaimers. In general, I will be writing about women that most large history books gloss over or leave out, but I will from time to time visit textbook staples like Catharine the Great – I mean, she was called “the Great” for a reason. It is my goal to choose women from all over the world, however, like many Americans, my history education before college was very West-centric and when I did get exposure to non-Western histories, it typically excluded the exploits of individual people. So, you may notice occasionally – especially when I don’t have the time to do a lot of research – that it might get a little Eurocentric in here.

I’m working on it.

 Finally, I will be conducting research on each of these women, but it won’t typically be extensive research. At the bottom of each entry, I will post a list of sources that I consulted (Wikipedia, I must admit, may often be one of them) so that if you wish to conduct your own research, you may do so. Also, I have a degree in history. Citing sources is what I do.

Next week, I will bring you the adventures of Lakshmi Bai (the “Indian Joan of Arc”). For now, I leave you with some thoughts by Kate Beaton, eminent scholar of historical babery.