I would only add to human beings seem to have a need to understand themselves as they are now, and they look back for help in this that women also posit how we might change in future. The work of the most successful women looks invisible to us now, because what they hoped to see has come to pass.
Oh, well done! I've enjoyed this whole series, and this is a splendid conclusion.
I'm not so sure about Queen Tiye's silence. Or Nefertiti's, either. Or the whole concept of "Queen" in Egypt as opposed to "Queen" through the lens of modern Egyptologists. (New research has been coming to light. Exciting stuff--turning the Received Scholarly Wisdom on its ear.)
But when we concentrate on Eleanor of Aquitaine and Wu Zetian, over Blanche of Castille and Xu Yihua, when we chase after fictional mediaeval Irish female lords over Gormflaith and Derforghaill, we are complicit in the silencing
This is *such* an excellent point. Your paragraph about the women who are too "mean" and the women who are too "nice" really hits home.
I have had that conversation about Annabella Milbanke so often, and her 'meanness' comes up, over and over, from other women, as to why she isn't worth remembering. Modern women have made a kind of saint out of Ada Lovelace and cast Annabella into darkness, without examining the deeply suspect reasons for that. I find that so frustrating, because it continues the narrative begun in her lifetime that she does not matter, that's she just nasty and thus can be ignored. It's the same narrative women still struggle with today, that we are required to be nice in order to avoid being dismissed. We meed to get beyond this. And Annabella deserves her place in our history, warts and all. Her rapist, abusive husband has his, after all -- and people continue to make excuses for him to this day.
I suspect people are primed by the desire to pick one person to champion--as if supporting, or admiring, Ada, requires one to condemn her mother. This is understandable given how it works with people we *know*. We like our friend Lucy; Lucy is always complaining about her overbearing mother. So, as friends, out of loyalty we dislike her mother. Maybe we have trouble with our own mothers. Maybe even if we don't! But of course, Lucy's mother herself was a child at some point, with, maybe, a difficult mother--and in any case, this narrative of children being crushed or misunderstood by their parents is peculiarly Western. Not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, but here it's a stereotype.
It's a nasty post-Freudian stereotype that I particularly dislike, as it is rooted in misogyny. I wish we could recognise and celebrate both Ada and Annabella without having to do the patriarchal fan-dance.
I got a lot of flack on someone's blog (a woman) for writing a particular female character as not feisty: how, the author asked, could a modern woman write someone who was quiet and a bit submissive (she wasn't, actually). There is only one way to be according to a number of modern feminists, and that way, to me, is often problematic, because it is very culture-masculine.
Yes! One of the reasons I love Nnedi Okorafor's Zahrah the Windseeker so much is that Zahrah is a quiet, gentle, not particularly brave person. She's not a tomboy, which is now almost de rigueur in YA, she's just a girl like many others. And she's all the more engaging for it.
I think we have had the discussion about Anne in the Famous Five books, who was actually quite brave and stuck to her guns, whereas George is always feted because she is so like the boys. Ditto some of L M Montgomery's heroines, who were not tomboys. I was not tomboyish myself and still am not, so I didn't really relate to a lot of the girls in 70s and 80s YA fiction. I don't really warm to a lot of UF heroines but a sterling example of a woman who is complex, tough and resourceful, without being a surrogate man, is Laura Anne's Wren. I like her a lot: she is often overlooked by people in her world, but this is the whole point of her work as a magical operative.
Women and girls do have their own ways of doing things, which are not male - we know this, but a lot of people seem not to.
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I would only add to human beings seem to have a need to understand themselves as they are now, and they look back for help in this that women also posit how we might change in future. The work of the most successful women looks invisible to us now, because what they hoped to see has come to pass.
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I'm not so sure about Queen Tiye's silence. Or Nefertiti's, either. Or the whole concept of "Queen" in Egypt as opposed to "Queen" through the lens of modern Egyptologists. (New research has been coming to light. Exciting stuff--turning the Received Scholarly Wisdom on its ear.)
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This is *such* an excellent point. Your paragraph about the women who are too "mean" and the women who are too "nice" really hits home.
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This essay not only sparks my mind, it reminds me why I value your friendship so much.
Difficult women indeed!
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I got a lot of flack on someone's blog (a woman) for writing a particular female character as not feisty: how, the author asked, could a modern woman write someone who was quiet and a bit submissive (she wasn't, actually). There is only one way to be according to a number of modern feminists, and that way, to me, is often problematic, because it is very culture-masculine.
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One of the reasons I love Nnedi Okorafor's Zahrah the Windseeker so much is that Zahrah is a quiet, gentle, not particularly brave person. She's not a tomboy, which is now almost de rigueur in YA, she's just a girl like many others. And she's all the more engaging for it.
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Women and girls do have their own ways of doing things, which are not male - we know this, but a lot of people seem not to.
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