Misogyny through the ages
Margaret of Anjou to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Kamala Harris - a repost
Happy day, lovely reader! This is a repost of the first piece I published on SubStack back in February of 2023. I’ve made some edits and added additional research but have left the original post in it’s original form here for posterity. As a reminder, there will be a few reposts throughout 2024 to alleviate the creative load while writing my book.
I can’t thank you all enough for the support, encouragement, and friendships that have blossomed over the last twelve months within this space; I am beyond grateful, though that doesn’t feel adequate to explain the feelings I posses for you all. If you are new here, welcome to the community, we are so glad to know you!
Please consider becoming a subscriber today. This will keep you up to date on all posts, as well as directly support me as an aspiring author within the historical narrative genre.
And please remember, it is not women vs. men, but all of us against the patriarchy.
Misogyny through the ages
I recently saw a prominent medievalist post about the dangers of layering modern thought onto historical experiences in regard to feminism and the female experience of medieval England versus modern day paradigms.
And sure, anachronism is a thing, but there is more than enough evidence that the women of the Middle Ages (and before/beyond) possessed a sense of agency and knew their own self-worth, recognizing that the treatment they received at men’s hands was a testament to the character of men, and not their own. Elizabeth Pepys, whom we know intimately through the diary of her husband Samuel, fully felt the burden the patriarchy placed upon her day-to-day in the mid 1600s. First in the tremendous let down of finding blood in her britches seven weeks into believing she was pregnant; impregnated instead with the weight of disappointment in place of an heir. And again when she had to remove herself from her own daily life due to Samuel’s unregulated emotions when he struck Elizabeth in the face, causing her to develop a severe black eye for which she had to feign sickness. During this time Elizabeth missed dinner parties, community activities, and church to ensure Samuel’s shame wouldn’t become public knowledge.1 Women have been a repository for patriarchal shame for far too long.
Even in a time when every part of a woman’s life was dictated and shaped by the men around her, stripping womankynd2 of autonomy and communal dignity, individual women fought against the patriarchal role expectations that were staunchly enforced, both legally and socially. Feminism would never have been a word these women used, as they existed in a protofeminist world, however the tenets of feminism and womanism that advocate for an establishment of women’s rights and acknowledgment of contribution is a theme that is present nearly every century that possess intact literature and judicial records.
It has always been women that have preserved the history of women.3
In 1405, Christine de Pizan4, who many consider to be the first feminist novelist, sat questioning the impact of the popular writings of the time and the philosophies she was reading, and how every single male author or poet wrote about those sinful, undignified women-folk (my words, not hers). She wondered what sort of impact these woman-hating sentiments would have on women at large, when the reflection of womanhood in the arts around them were characterized by their worst possible human traits and overall unwarranted worthlessness. In 2023, as a woman constantly bombarded by loud misogynists on social media, improbable beauty standards, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the criminalization of women facing reproductive heartbreaks, and the orgasm and wage gap… I can relate.
“I began to examine myself and my own behaviour as an example of womankind in order to judge in all fairness and without prejudice whether what so many famous men have said about us is true, I also thought about other women I know, the many princesses and countless ladies of all different social ranks who have shared their personal and private thoughts with me. No matter which way I looked at it and no matter how much I turned the question over in my mind, I could find no evidence from my own experience to bear out such a negative view of female nature and habits.” – Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of the Ladies, 1405
Much like in 1405, men in 2023 project their insecurities onto women and call it masculinity. See: Andrew Tate, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Tucker Carlson (and every man that then spews their rhetoric).
And let’s be clear, only one subset of society benefits particularly well when we say we can’t layer any modern paradigms onto medieval experiences: men. Specifically imperialist white men.
Margaret of Anjou: Wolf or Woman?
Beauty standards, default parent, invisible mental load, and safety work5 may be new words and phrases within our modern lexicon to more precisely explain the crushing gender expectations women experience within a patriarchy, but our foremother’s were also familiar with these experiences, even if they weren’t given words to define them. Women of the 15th century may not have possessed our modern day dictionaries, but they recognized the patriarchy was binding them to roles that were impossible to fulfill and harmful to maintain.
Enter: Margaret of Anjou, the queen of England from 1445-1461. And then again from, 1470-1471.
Margaret came from a line of strong, powerful women, and was raised in an entirely different culture than the misogynistic backdrop of medieval England she would later find herself in. Her mother ruled a duchy in her own right, fought wars on behalf of her husband, and her grandmother ruled as a regent to a duchy on behalf of her son, heavily influencing The Hundred Years War6. The women that raised Margaret knew their power. These women represented the idea of womanhood Christine de Pizan experienced daily. They were strong, competent, and autonomous. Margaret’s husband, however, ascended to the throne as an infant and grew into a docile, conflict-avoidant, pious man that was unable to manage the task of ruling a country. A stark difference from his warrior father, Henry V.
Margaret’s marriage to Henry VI was yet another attempt between England and France to make peace during The Hundred Years’ war, a time of heavy conflict and trauma between these warring countries. Ultimately, it was a failed attempt, and this failure is often laid at Margaret’s feet, though she was but a pawn in the continental marriage market of the European nobility.
Patriarchal England was not pleased with Henry’s performance, mostly due to his inability to experience any discomfort around conflict and easily folding to the will of those around him which led to civil war, the crown going bankrupt, and the threat of foreign invasion. And Margaret was bound to this incompetent man.
Purposefully picked due to the blood that ran through her veins, but it would be that very blood that xenophobic England would condemn continually throughout her queenship. To make matters categorically worse, Henry fell into a catatonic state in 1453. Margaret, with her long-awaited newly birthed baby boy, suddenly found herself caring for two deeply dependent males: a shell of a man with a heavy crown on his head and an infant. Her family was quickly losing control and soon a protectorate took over, ruling in her husband’s mental absence.
Margaret now found herself in a position that was foreign to her: without societal power.
Understanding the inherent power women possessed, Margaret, upon her husband’s second descent into catatonia, did all she could to insert her authority for the sake of her young son, the rightful heir to the kingdom of England. It’s important to keep in mind here that inheritance was a pillar of the medieval English nobility paradigm. It was the catalyst of most wars, familial squabbles, and civil disturbances. Losing inheritance was losing one’s livelihood, and oftentimes was a death sentence, albeit a drawn out one.
Margaret petitioned parliament to allow her to be recognized as regent, since her husband was proving to be quite unable and incapable, and her son was not yet of age. The patriarchal parliament of course denied this, but Margaret of Anjou continued to fight for her and her son’s rightful position. Literally. She mustered troops, stoked a rebellion, and became feared for her tenacity and strength. One contemporary praising ‘her valiant courage and undaunted spirit.7’ Margaret knew her worth.
Because history was written by men for men for a millennium, we often think plights such as Margaret’s are so audacious because the stories of other audacious women were intentionally erased, minimized, bestialized, or purposefully excluded and deemed insignificant. And this is where historical misogyny comes into play, for Margaret of Anjou is often remembered as a she-wolf queen. Popularized by Shakespeare and still in use today by 21st century male historians to describe Margaret’s motivations.8
A she-wolf. A feral animal. Visceral. Less-than-human. It wasn’t, and often times still isn’t, used to glorify her strength but to strip her of her humanity whilst reminding you of her womanhood, her patriarchal-implied inferiority.
The character assassination Margaret so often receives is unequally applied to the men around her that behaved in similar (or worse!) ways. Reminding us of the impossibility of the patriarchy. Her father-by-law Henry V may have been a warrior king, but he was also the invader, the instigator, the aggressor, raining trauma upon the native inhabitants of northern France, but he has gone down in history as “conqueror,” “good,” “brave,” and “most princely.” When Margaret, a woman, dared to show up in this same way, she was feral, beastly, and inherently bad.
Unfortunately, this sexist behavior hasn’t stayed in the 15th century. The unequal treatment of women in power from the media leaves a lot to be desired in the realm of progress. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Kamala Harris, previous secretary of state and vice president of the United States, respectively, are continually stripped of their personhood and dignity in the media, especially the far-right media. With conservatives calling them names such as ‘crazy, crooked, heartless Hillary’ and ‘nasty-woman-Kamala.’ This attack on women showing up powerfully and confidentiality in a space that has been historically male isn’t original; it’s tried and true, rinsed and repeated.
“Funny how a competent, successful woman accomplishing something heretofore unprecedented seems to do that to people. If a white man had a backstory like Harris', conservatives would openly consider him a formidable opponent and worthy of at least some respect.” Anthea Butler, 2020
“We can’t layer modern thought onto medieval experiences,” yet for women, our daily interactions with the patriarchy are much the same. Projection, the 19th century psychological term, is the act of unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don't like about yourself and attributing them to someone else. As Christine de Pizan said in 1405, “those who criticize the female sex because they are inherently sinful are men who have wasted their youth on dissolute behavior… the only way they can release their frustration is to attack women and to try to stop others from enjoying pleasures that they themselves used to take.”9 Ultimately, not much has changed. Misogyny is deeply baked into modern life, much like it was during Margaret’s time.
If the patriarchy can make us believe our agency and power as women is new, then they continue to dictate the terms of our existence. So, it feels worth repeating: only one subset of society benefits when we say modern paradigms can’t be layered onto medieval experience: men.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4200/4200-h/4200-h.htm via Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words by Jenni Nuttall
There is of course no one kind of woman. Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words by Jenni Nuttall
Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture - Susan Groag Bell
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/493920
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hidden-inscriptions-discovered-anne-boleyns-execution-prayer-book-180977770/
The Book of the City of the Ladies by Christine de Pizan translated by Rosalind Brown-Grant
Contested gendered space: public sexual harassment and women’s safety work Fiona Vera-Gray & Liz Kelly - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01924036.2020.1732435
Conquest: The English Kingdom of France 1417-1450 by Juliet Barker
This is a line from Henry VI, Part 1, Scene 5, though it may have been drawn from a contemporary quote, Shakespeare muddled the historical waters quite thoroughly
As if they alone know her motivations
The Book of the City of the Ladies by Christine de Pizan translated by Rosalind Brown-Grant
Quote by Arab female intellectual (apologies I can’t remember her name but went something like this): If boys were taught to control themselves instead of girls, misogyny could be erased within a generation
Thank you for this thoughtful and thought provoking post. One of the aspects of my work is reframing natural systems to reflect their complexity with a focus on empiricism for kids. I now see that the same needs to be done in bringing women into history and colonialism into context.