A
review of
'A history of their own':
women in Europe
from Prehistory to the present
Volume II
Authors: Bonnie S Anderson & Judith P Zinsser
I
enjoyed this book because it is well written, and it helped
make up the gap in my education about the role that women
have played in history. It is divided into sections, from
the 15th century world of absolute monarchs, right up to
the women's movement. I would recommend it for anyone who
wants to get an overview of the progress of women in the
last few centuries..
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The
book begins by looking at Christine de Pisan, who wrote 'The City
of Ladies' and it states that the premise of the book is to counteract
the myth that women have done little worthy of inclusion into the
history books. It is more accurate to say that history books have
omitted many worthy women from its pages.
One
of the first things that it deals with is that, until recently,
women have been defined by their relationship to men. Instead of
being women in their own right, most women noted in history books
have been daughters, mothers, wives of someone - even nuns were
'Brides of Christ'.
It
contains a lot of telling quotes that shows the attitudes of the
times:
-
Ancient Greece
'The best woman is she who is silent'
-
St. Paul
'The head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman
is the man'
-
Samuel Johnson
'A man is better pleased when he has a good dinner on the table
than when his wife speaks Greek'
Although
some of the women I had heard of - Christine de Pisan, Catherine
the Great and Mary Wollstonecraft - the vast majority of women were
unknown to me. So it has really raised my awareness of the many
women in history - most of them out of the ordinary for their time
- who have added to what is possible for us today.
Top
The
16th century
For
example in the 16th century, the Venetian Lucrezia Marinella hoped
'to wake women from their long sleep of oppression', and the Spanish
writer Maria de Zoyas said "The true reason that women are
not learned is lack of opportunity, not a lack of ability"
- a radical view for its age, which made me realise what an important
time we are living in now, where it is possible to make up for the
centuries of oppression of the female gender.
The
book is full of interesting details - like the fact that the title
'Lady' was changed from being the female\ustrial capitalism to become
the equivalent of 'gentleman' instead. "A Lady, to be such,
must be a mere lady. She must not work to profit, or engage in any
occupation that money can command, lest she invades the rights of
the working classes" - Margaretta Grey (1853).
Another
fact - the French 16th century writer and doctor Rabalais took the
view that hysteria was a female ailment, stemming from the womb
being denied sexual intercourse, being as it was insatiable (a view
from Aristotle) in its desire to procreate.
Top
The
18th century
New
tax laws brought in at the end of the 18th century classified women
in the same category as infants, the insane and criminals - all
legal incompetents. All married women were legal minors, under the
guardianship of their husbands. This seems to have happened across
the Western world in the legal systems and new laws of the late
18th century. After 1857, for instance, a husband could divorce
his wife on the grounds of adultery, while she had to prove adultery
and another crime to divorce him!
The
19th century
The
book moves on to the 19th century, when women writers began to assert
women's moral authority against the conventional limits on women's
behaviour. In 1864, the legal age of consent for women was 12 and
Josephine Butler and her ladies association campaigned to get it
changed. When she suggested that men should be tested for Venereal
Diseases as well as women prostitutes, she received the following
reply: "There is no comparison to be made between prostitutes
and men who consort with them. With the one sex the offence is committed
as a matter of gain, while with the other it is an irregular indulgence
of a natural impulse."
Even
though after the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, wherein
women had joined with the men to fight, they were defeated by law,
they had set a precedent in their getting together which had sewn
the seeds for the future rise of feminism.
Top
The
20th century
Something
which really caught me from the section on women in concentration
camps - 'Women coped with the camp ordeal better than the men.'
Unlike men who tended to be 'lone wolves' the women formed surrogate
families, becoming each other's sisters, daughters, or mothers,
as their real families perished. Women shared food, cleaned their
quarters together, almost all female survivors testified that they
would not have survived without the help and support of other women.
The
book goes on to chart the rise of feminism, the effect of both world
wars, and takes you up to the present day, but it shows that the
roots of feminism go a long way back. During the Crimean War, Frederica
Brenmer, a Swedish equal rights feminist appealed to women to form
a peace league, saying: "Separately we are weak and can achieve
only a little, but if we extend our hands around the whole world,
we should be able to take the world in our hands like a little child".
There
is much in the book that is valuable, but what it allowed me to
grasp is the way that events in womenfs history are culminating
in our lifetime. Now is the time that the critical mass for change
is happening, so I would recommend reading this book if like me,
your education about women and history could do with being upgraded!
Buy
this book on-line through Amazon.co.uk
A
History of Their Own, Volume 2: Women...
or
Amazon.com
History of Their Own Women In Europe
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