Which would you rather Feminist edition

Hello. Today is celebrate your ladyparts day International Women's Day. This is exciting, non? I think so. There is a lot of stuff out there about celebrating the achievements of various women and, alternatively, criticizing countries and regimes which subjugate women. Having read some of this over the past few days, I started to be very glad that I am living where I am, but also when I am. I'm fortunate, I thought, that I live in the 21st century, where, at least in the UK, I am treated as a human being with human rights. So much better, I thought, than in Ye Olden Days.

Until I started reading this book. It's very interesting, as well as that rare sort of History book which is highly informative and well researched, but also fascinating for someone who only has a small interest in History. Written as a travel guide, it's literally like reading about visiting Spain, or China, or Mars for that matter. Anyway, in this book (which I'm not getting paid for the advertising of, honestly), the author talks about the rights of women in fourteenth century England.

In some ways, as people - myself included - it is very much a misogynistic society, with women controlled by men and no one wanting to change this as it is clearly God's will, as punishment for Eve's sins. Lack of understanding about general medicine meant that a lot of women died in childbirth, and as the general life expectancy was lower, women were often married at around the age of 14, quite shocking to us today. Furthermore, though rape was an extremely serious offense, it was extremely rare that a man was convicted, as it was taught that women could only conceive a child if she orgasmed during sex. If a child was conceived, she had clearly orgasmed, thus "enjoyed" the rape, and so it wasn't rape. Alternatively, if no child was conceived, there was no proof that the rape had taken place other than the woman's word, which, especially against a man in a position of power over her, was not likely to be believed.

Though forced marriages were fairly rare, they did still occur and must have been awful for the women who suffered through them. Women were also not considered free as such - even a high society woman 'belonged' to her father before she was married, then to her husband afterward.

Phew, you think, I'm glad I live now and not then.

Well, yes and no. Obviously there were huge inequalities in society, but there were some ways in which women did manage to have fairly equal opportunities. For example, women were allowed to report abusive husbands in their local church, and the men were often punished severely for their actions. Men on the other hand, were not allowed to report any violence against them by women, as if they did so, they would be perceived as a cuckold and therefore ridiculed. A backhanded reason for celebration, perhaps.

Another way in which women were more equal than we might first think was that, in the event of their husbands' death, she could take over his job or trade and make money for herself this way. For most women, this just meant continuing to farm the same fields or sell meat in a butcher's shop, but for a few notable exceptions this could leave them very rich - such as one woman from Coventry who ended up with a cloth business that was exporting its wares as far afield as Spain and earning her in excess of £800 in Medieval terms. 

Though there were a lot of arranged marriages, often men and women worked together to try hard to make it work and most came to love each other after a little while. If not, especially in the upper classes, one or both partners could take partners whom they loved - or at least lusted after.Women had the advantage of not being allowed to go to fight, and as there were a lot of wars going on during the 14th century, it greatly reduced their chance of dying whilst still young. Men who lived to an old age were looked down upon, unable to fight, they were considered no longer masculine. An old woman, on the other hand, was considered at the height of her power, full of the wisdom of the ages. 

Clearly, there was inequality in the Medieval society, and probably more so than there is in today's society in the UK. But conditions were perhaps not as harsh as one might first think, and though I still wouldn't want to live in their society, this is starting to have more to do with the large amounts of germs flying about with the Black Death and whatnot, rather than their treatment of women.  

Sorceress on the Seine

So I'm never sure what I'm going to write about on any given day until I've gone on Wikipedia and read the brief description of what happened 'on this day' and seen who was born, and who died and so on. Anyway, on some days, nothing of real interest happens (or it was just wars and stuff and I am so sick of military history) and on other days, like today, loads has happened. 

For example, today marks the anniversary of George Washington's birth; the anniversary of the refounding of the Serbian Kingdom; the opening of the first Woolworth's; the day the Last Invasion of Britain began (which apparently has to be capitalized...); the first national conventions of both the Republican Party and the Prohibition Party (in separate years) and Dolly the sheep was cloned (yay, science!). So all of these things are clearly very Important and Significant and such and so I was wondering how I was going to get through the mountains of information out there about them and condense it down to a few paragraphs. Also, most of these are quite famous events, so a lot of people already know loads about them, which would probably make reading this quite boring.

But then, tucked away under the 'people who died on this day' section, I discovered Catherine Monvoisin, French sorceress. And I do love magic and fantasy, so I now present the life and times of a witch (who actually is pretty interesting!)

Catherine wasn't originally a witch. Born Catherine Deshayes, around 1640, she grew up around Paris and married a jeweller called Monvoisin. Unfortunately, Mr. Monvoisin wasn't a very good jeweller and they didn't have very much money at all, so Catherine started supplementing their income by practicing medicine - giving abortions or delivering babies as a midwife to women who needed them. This was not enough, however, so Catherine gave herself the name La Voisin and started practicing 'witchcraft'. At first, this was just face and palm reading, but soon she was providing love potions and poisons, and putting on shows, assisted by the magician Lesage (who was also her lover) and a renegade priest, who would perform a black mass - a parody of the Christian mass.

The ingredients lists for her love potions have been uncovered by historians, and well...I'm just glad I didn't have to try one of the poisons.  But anyway, if you maybe have a little crush on someone who's not reciprocating, why not slip a little something in a drink for them? The little somethings you could slip in could include: bones of toads, teeth of moles, Spanish flies, iron fillings (um...?), human blood or the dust of human remains. It'll totally work.

Anyway, these potions became very popular with the many mistresses of Louis XIV, four of whom at some point went to La Voisin and asked her to supply them with a poison to kill one of the other mistresses (and at one point, even the King himself). Maybe. Possibly. The 'evidence' for this is circumspect at best and even at the time, it could never be proven. 

However, sadly for La Voisin, the King's sister-in-law had died in 1676, and her death had been attributed to poison, supposedly given to her by the 'witch' Madeleine de Brinvilliers. Though it was later proven that her death was a result of a perforated peptic ulcer (do yourself a favour and don't Google image search that. Really.) the panic as a result of her 'poisoning' was still at its peak in Paris in 1679.

When La Voisin was accused of trying to kill one of the King's mistresses, she was swept up in a tide of fear and hysteria, and was naturally found guilty, even though no one could come up with any proper evidence. She was executed on 22 February 1680, burned at the stake for being a witch.     

Mary Queen of Scots[land]:

Today marks 424 years since the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. You may be wondering why she was executed, and if you were, you'd be in luck, because I have read some books and I can now tell you why (I'm training to become a proper historian, and I believe that all I have to do is read enough books and stroke my beard thoughtfully enough and I'll be there). If you're not wondering why she was executed, you might want to stick around for the less gory bits, or perhaps go and eat a biscuit, or listen to a song that has my name in. Lovely.

Anyway, Mary, Queen of Scots. Born Mary Stuart, she was crowned Queen Mary I of Scotland at the ripe old age of six days (her father had died in battle), and in an episode which didn't really do much for stereotypes, the male courtiers in charge of the ceremony made a right mess of things, trying to get the baby to grasp a three foot sword and a scepter at the same time. Determined to ignore this rather poor start, they quickly arranged for her to become bethrothed to the French Dauphin (sadly, just a Prince and heir to the French throne, not the French Dolphin, as I initially misread, which would have been much more exciting) and packed her off to France.

There, Mary grew up, into an apparently tall and beautiful woman, who was capable of speaking French, English, Latin, Spanish, Greek and Italian. This proved a problem when the Dauphin snuffed it, and eighteen year old Mary headed back to her home country, where she couldn't understand a word her people were saying to her through their thick accents. However, this was soon to become the least of her troubles, as she was a strict Catholic, whereas most of the Scottish were ardent Presbyterians (like the Puritans, but with less general jolliness) which was to have dire consequences in years to come.

Anyway, Mary decided on returning to the country that she would like to get married again, which everyone thought was a splendid idea until they saw her choice of husband - the deeply unpopular sort-of contender for the throne Lord Darnley. Within two years, however, Darnley had managed to become equally unpopular with Mary herself, when he burst into her bedchamber with 20 men and murdered her private secretary in front of her, whilst she was heavily pregnant.

By this point, Mary decided that they were a bit beyond Couples Counseling, and arranged for her new lover to strangle then blow up her second husband, marrying him shortly after. This, ultimately, led to her undoing. There has never been any solid proof that Mary arranged or had any part in Darnley's murder, but there was enough implication there for her marriage to the supposed murderer to disgrace her enough that she had to abdicate and flee south into England and the arms of her cousin, Elizabeth I. 

Mary had thought that Elizabeth would support her in a sort of "we Queens had better stick together, eh?" way, but she was to be sorely disappointed. England and Scotland had been enemies for too long for the Queen of England to suddenly forget all their previous history together and help her cousin, and besides - she was a Catholic. This was quite a headache for Elizabeth. Keeping Mary in the country would make her a very visible rallying point for Catholic assassination plots - here was a ready made Queen just waiting to be stuck on the throne! - but deporting her meant that she would probably use the opportunity to muster an army and invade England. Executing her was not an option initially, as Elizabeth, whose own mother had been killed by her father, was very opposed to the ideas of both regicide and killing a cousin.

Therefore, she did what politicians have done for centuries since, and launched an inquiry. After much faffing and paper pushing, it was concluded that Mary should be kept captive in various different castles around the country. At first, probably at Elizabeth's assistance, her captivity was a fairly enjoyable experience - she was provided with plenty of clothes and comfortable furnishings, daily meals and was even allowed a few servants and ladies in waiting. The English queen's assistants, however, were not happy with this. Aware of the huge wars between Catholics and Protestants that were occurring on the continent, they believed that the only way to be rid of the 'threat' of the Scottish queen was to have her executed on some trumped up charges.

Elizabeth deliberated, for nineteen whole years. Eventually, "evidence" was found that strongly suggested Mary was plotting with other Catholics to have Elizabeth assassinated and replace her on the throne, and Elizabeth had no choice but to have her put to death. Many historians these days believe that much if not all of the evidence was fabricated, but at the time it was deemed substantial enough that Mary was put on trial, convicted of treason, and set to be executed. 

The execution did not go to plan. It took two or three blows for the axeman to completely sever her head; when he finally managed it and held it up by her hair, it dropped out of his grasp and rolled away, as what he was really gripping hold of was a wig, and after all that had taken place, the watching crowds were horrified, then presumably very relieved when her dress started whimpering and moving, and a small lapdog ran out of the clothing. Lovely.

It was not, it has been noted, a very dignified affair.    

Juxtaposition

I'd like to take a break from identifying cell organelles (yeah!...) to talk about the marvelously ironic country that is the United States of America. Flipping through the Wikipedia article on 31 January, you will discover that, on this day in 1865, the "United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery", yet on this day in 1876, a mere eleven years later, the country "orders all Native Americans to move into reservations". Huh.

America is a very interesting country. It's only been officially independent since 1776, yet in that relatively short time, it has risen to become the world's greatest superpower. (You could argue for days, I am sure, as to whether this is a title it retains, but it is very true to say that it was the dominant world power for almost all of the twentieth century.) A melting pot of many, many different races and religions, and containing immigrants who often arrived incredibly poor, America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had the potential to completely fail as a democracy, simply because of its diversity. From some countries, you had Catholics escaping persecution, other countries, Protestants and others still Jewish (and that's just counting the major European religions), yet these incredibly different groups of people managed to exist side by side once they were in America.

The sheer size of the country probably had something to do with this. There was enough room, if you so required, to pack up and move thousands of miles away from the people who were annoying you, and still be assured of land and space to call your own when you arrived there, unlike in the highly overcrowded European nations. Often, new states sprung up where people of the same religion congregated - Pennsylvania, for example, was founded (first as a colony, then later as a state) by William Penn, a very prominent Quaker leader, and the religion dominated the state's governance for decades; Utah was founded by Brigham Young, a leading Mormon and has retained that connection to the Mormon religion to this day.

Though there were instances of segregation such as these, there are other examples of many different nationalities and creeds living side by side. New York, for example, had a very diverse population simply because it was home to the largest immigration center in the country; California after 1848 had an equally diverse population because of the myriad prospectors arriving from all over the world hoping to try their luck in the gold rush.

This is not to say that the US was not without its problems. Slavery was not formally banned in the country until 1865, whereas most European countries had banned it much earlier in the century (Britain, for example had banned in 1833). Even after this point, treatment of black people, particularly in the Southern states, was often terrible - the so-called 'Jim Crow' laws continued right into the twentieth century, and the Civil Rights Movement was still (understandably) very active until over a century later, when ethnic minorities were finally granted equal rights.

Their treatment of the Native Americans was equally despicable - the forcible moving to reservations of the peoples was just the beginning of the end, with many "savages" having been treated as second class citizens since Europeans had first started coming over to the country. 

Women and other ethnic minorities were also often treated poorly, though in some cases, this was not much different to the rest of the world. Irish and Chinese immigrants were often little better than slaves, as they worked in highly dangerous occupations such as mining or building railways for an incredibly small wage, and no rights to protest, but, sadly, this was pretty much the same as the rest of the world. Though some states allowed women to vote in the late nineteenth century, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (which allowed universal women's suffrage) was passed in 1919, very comparable to most European countries. 

Obviously, the country was not perfect at all, particularly in their treatment of ethnic minorities, but it is truly remarkable that it was able to become such a dominant world power in so little time. They have often been held up as a bastion of democracy, and though clearly there are examples which can be found that illustrate that this was most definitely not true, there are plenty more examples to show that it is. Not for nothing do we still hold true the idea of the "American dream" - that a penniless man could come to the country, escape the rigid class systems of Europe, and make himself a millionaire. Naturally, these situations were very rare, but they did occasionally happen. Social class was much more fluid in eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century  America than it was anywhere else.

It will be interesting to observe what direction the United States takes over the next few decades. Once a model of democracy, the right-wing Tea Partiers, such as Sarah Palin seem to be having more and more influence on life there - the recent shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the other innocent victims is directly attributable to the violent rhetoric that is more and more forthcoming from certain political leaders; and the new Republican congress wants to restrict abortion still further, even going as far as redefining rape (you can be 'forcibly raped' or 'not really raped it was just a bit of harmless fun and who says a woman should be conscious during sex anyway') as if women who have been attacked haven't been through enough. Ironically, we may see, in a few decades time, the Middle Eastern countries that the US has been determined to invade in order to bring democracy to, actually being more democratic and allowing women more rights than America itself.

But who knows? I am a historian, not a fortune teller, after all.     

Proud & Prejudiced: Female writers in the early nineteenth century

For Christmas, my lovely friend Christina got me a copy of the novel Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I've never read it, nor indeed any other of Austen's works, and I haven't seen any of the film or TV adaptations of it either, but the copy she bought me is an absolutely beautiful book (look! It has swans on! Or at least, I think they're swans... And it's gold! What's not to love?!) and Christina insisted that I simply had to read it because it would revolutionize the way I looked at love and I figured that since so so many people rave on about it, it can't be all that bad, so I'm reading it. And it is pretty interesting. 

It's not the first thing I would have picked up in a bookshop, so I'm glad it was given to me because there isn't much chance I'd have read it otherwise, and it's actually quite good. For something that was written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it's still very readable, and the love story itself (yeah, I'm yet to finish it, but I'm pretty sure of exactly who is going to end up betrothed to whom...) is a fairly timeless one.

By which I mean to say, 'Thank you very much for this gift Christina, I'm actually enjoying it'. But I'm not an English student thank God not that they aren't completely lovely people; I just loathe most poetry and I have no idea how to analyse a text, so I couldn't tell you about the writing styles and the hidden metaphors and whatever else it is that write-y people bang on about. Not that you would want to read my analysis of a half-read book anyway. No, I'd much rather talk about the book's author, Jane Austen herself, as today in 1813 was the day the book I've been rambling on about was first published.

There are books and website a-plenty out there about her, so I'm not going to waste time filling you in on facts about her birth, death or daily life - instead, I'm going to attempt to put her writing into context: how, as a woman in the early nineteenth century, did you get published?

With great difficulty, it appears. Pride and Prejudice was not Austen's first published novel, and had in fact been a work in progress for many years prior to it's publishing, but when it finally went to print in 1813, it did so anonymously and only after Austen's brother, Henry, had persuaded Thomas Egerton to publish the novel. Her books, once published, remained steady sellers; they were often reviewed favourably and were fashionable amongst the elite aristocracy of the early nineteenth century, but despite this success, Austen was not persuaded to 'come out' as the author of the books, and when she died, in 1817, her achievements as a writer were not mentioned at her funeral, though the 'extraordinary endowments' of her mind were.

Austen was not the only female author in the nineteenth century and beyond to hide behind a veil. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, which was first published a year after Austen's death in 1818, had the first few editions of her book published anonymously; Charlotte Bronte wrote under two pen names - Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and Currer Bell,  the name which appears on early versions of her most famous novel, Jane Eyre. 

It wasn't until much later in the nineteenth century that authors such as Louisa May Alcott were able to print under their own names as men were - Little Women was published in 1868. Though Alcott herself was a passionate advocate of women's suffrage - she was the first woman to register to vote in the state of Massachusetts - there are some schools of thought which say that she was only published because her novels were deemed 'mere' women's books. Her semi-autobiographical stories were seen as fairly trivial, and not radical enough to be threatening to most men, who in the nineteenth century, and beyond had a firm idea of where women 'belonged' - and it was not in the publishing house. 

Clearly, this is not something I agree with at all, but I can at least understand where most of these men were coming from. They had been brought up in an incredibly patriarchal society, which firmly believed that women should not be involved in business of any description - some even believed that educating women beyond the basic skills needed to write letters or perhaps speak a little French was too much. They were a product of the society they had been brought up in; it took a World War and the womens' suffrage movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to show them how wrong they had been in their ideas, and fortunately for us today, there would be no need for a female author to publish anonymously or under a male pseudonym, because we no longer live in such a sexist society.

Except, a few years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I remember listening to a radio interview with a female author, who was asked why she had used a pseudonym (of sorts) to publish her (very well selling, and well written) books under. The author replied that she had been advised that publishing her stories, which had been written to appeal to neither boys nor girls specifically, under her obviously female name might turn boys off reading the books - young boys wouldn't want to been seen reading a book written by an (eurgh!) GIRL. Her publishing house advised her that she should at least attempt to make her name less obviously feminine, in order to appeal to a male fanbase. 

So she did, choosing to publish using her first initials and surname - 'J' and 'K' and 'Rowling'. It's such a remarkably progressive society we live in.     

Unscrew the stars

Today marks the 163rd deathday of Caroline Herschel, who was possibly one of the most extraordinary women I have ever come across. Deemed by her own parents 'too ugly to be married', the middle-class girl grew up in Hanover, Germany, ensured that she was well-educated and used her spinsterhood to her advantage - the time she would have spent caring for her husband and any children they may have had was spent studying space, and she eventually ended up being more famous than her brother William, also a keen astronomer. She produced two astronomical catalogs which are still in use today, and on top of all this, was a professionally-trained soprano, despite being a mere four foot three inches in height. Basically, she's another woman who makes me feel hopelessly inadequate, hoorah!

Caroline Herschel, 16/03/1750 - 09/01/1848

Herschel was one of six children born to Isaac and Anna Ilse Herschel, a middle-class couple from Hanover, Germany. Isaac was a keen musician, and took a job as a bandsman in the Prussian Army, encouraging his children - including Caroline - to become well-educated not just in the sciences and maths, but also in music. However, in 1760 when she was 10, she contracted typhus, a disease which left her growth stunted (she never grew taller than 4'3") and her body physically deformed. Her own father believed that she was too ugly to ever marry, and her mother discouraged her education after this point, believing that she would be more suited to becoming a house servant, which she did from the time of her father's death in 1767, until 1772, when she accepted an invitation from her brother to go and live with him in England.

Because the King of England (George II) was from Hanover, the two countries were united, and the citizens of Hanover were granted dual-citizenship, so William Herschel (Caroline's brother, who was 12 years older than her) had moved to England in 1766, he had found it easy to set up a house in Bath, from where he taught music and organised various concerts. When she arrived, William tutored her in singing, and she became such a good singer that she was the principle soprano of many of the concerts her brother organised, and was even offered a job as a singer in Birmingham, though she declined this.

Despite being talented musicians, both the Herschels' real passions lay in the field of astronomy. William not only enjoyed spending nights looking through telescopes at the stars, but also making his own telescopes. It was Caroline, however, who ultimately proved better than her brother at crafting the instruments - she possessed incredible dexterity and patience and was willing to spend many hours making the devices. As well as this, she taught herself how to properly record the observations her brother made in the style that the key astronomers of the day used. As this work was fairly mundane, her brother encouraged her to start using the telescopes herself, and during the 1780s and 1790s, she discovered many comets, becoming the first woman to do so. 

In 1781, William discovered the planet Uranus (though he initially believed it to be a comet) and was invited to name his discovery. His initial choice of 'George' in honour of the King was overruled in favour of 'Uranus' (after the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos - making it the only planet whose name comes from Greek mythology), but the King was clearly flattered enough to offer him the position of chief astronomer to the royal family. A few years later, in 1787, Caroline was awarded £50 per year by the King to work as William's assistant - an important milestone, as it marked the first time a woman was paid for scientific work.

When William married in 1788, the amount of work he did reduced, but Caroline's output increased, as her brother's wife was able to take over the general running of the household, freeing up more of her time to study space. As well as continuing to discover comets and nebulae, she produced the Catalogue of Stars - a rather dull, but incredibly useful piece of work. With stars being discovered left, right and centre, it was often impossible to tell if your 'new' star had already been spotted by someone a few years ago, especially as the previous catalogue that had been used to confirm new discoveries was many years old. In 1798, the Royal Society published her new catalogue, which contained all the stars from the previous list, with erroneous recordings removed, as well as 560 new stars. 

After William's death in 1822, Caroline returned to Hanover, though she continued to correspond with her brother's son, John, who was also a prominent scientist. In 1828, she was awarded the Gold Medal for Science by the Royal Society (the first of many awards); the next woman to be awarded the medal was Vera Rubin in 1996. She herself died in 1848, aged 97, and though it was true that she never married as her parents predicted, it was because of this that she was able to become one of the very first female scientists to gain international recognition for her work.    

Rosa Parks, hero

Today marks 55 years since Rosa Parks, a black seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man and was arrested for refusing to abide by the city's racial segregation laws. The law stated that black people must sit at the back of the bus and fill up the rows from the back to the front. If a white person got on the bus and wanted to sit in the seats at the front, the black person must go and stand at the back and give them their seat. I remember learning that, when I was six years old in primary school, and being amazed that such a law should  have existed at a time when my parents were children.

Explaining why she took the action she did, Parks wrote (in her autobiography): "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
 
When Parks was arrested, she was ordered to appear in court on 5th December. To show their solidarity with her cause, the black citizens of Alabama boycotted the buses for the day, encouraged to do so by Jo Ann Robinson, who was head of the Women's Political Council. Despite their actions, Parks was found guilty of disregarding the "law" and was fined $10 with an additional $4 court costs - a lot of money at the time, especially for a poor seamstress. Undeterred however, she decided to challenge the ruling.

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) decided to use her case to test the segregation laws in the state. Interestingly, they had tried to do something similar the previous year, when a black girl named Collette Colvin had been arrested for exactly the same crime. However, as she was fifteen years old and pregnant, she was deemed an unsuitable candidate for advancing their cause, whereas the older, employed, married Rosa Parks, who had excellent standing within her community was seen as someone who would make their case winnable. 

 

the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat 

They therefore decided to extended the boycott of the buses until Parks had won her case. A young preacher named Martin Luther King addressed a crowd at Parks' local Baptist Church where this idea was put forward, and the boycott soon spread throughout the city of Montgomery, eventually lasting 381 days, ending in late December 1956. The NAACP demanded that all bus passengers be treated courteously by bus drivers; that seats be allocated on a first come, first served basis (ie black people should no longer be forced to give up their seats for white people) and that black men should be allowed to be employed as bus drivers, and until these rules were instated, the black community (all 40,000 of them) would not use the city's buses.

The white community did not make this easy for them. When black car owners organized car-sharing schemes so that those who did not own a car were able to get to work, they pressured the local insurance companies not to ensure cars which were being used in the scheme. When black taxi drivers allowed black men and women to ride with them for only 10 cents (the price of a bus ticket), the council passed a law saying that all taxi drivers must charge passengers a minimum of 45 cents, or face a fine. Four Baptist churches, and the homes of Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy were firebombed.

There were some positive stories, though. Black communities all over the US raised money to pay for bicycles and new shoes for the people of Montgomery, and when King was sent to jail for two weeks for "hindering" a bus in June of 1956, the protest started to gain national attention. Pressure was put on the state of Alabama to remove the 'Jim Crow' segregation laws, which, eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that it must. On 20 December, 1956 it became law in the state of Alabama that black people should no longer have to give up their seats for whites - Rosa Parks had won, and helped to initiate the Civil Rights Movement, and draw national attention to Preacher Martin Luther King.

 

Sadly, she did not initially have the happy ending she deserved. She lost her job and faced so much harassment in Montgomery that in 1957 she moved to Detroit, where she worked for John Conyers, a Democratic Congressman until she retired in 1988. She died in October 2005, a hero.

(If you are interested in reading the original BBC newspaper report of Parks' arrest, it can be found here.)

Mother Theresa (not that one)

Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Holy Roman Empress and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia died today in 1780. She was, to say the least, an interesting character. She ascended the throne in 1740, aged only 23, and ruled for another 40 years - the only female Empress in 650 years of the Hapsburg Dynasty. During her time on the throne, she brought about many reforms in the countries she ruled, from the structure of the army to providing adequate working conditions for the serfs. As well as this, she gave birth to no fewer than 16 children - her fifteenth child was Marie Antoinette. Some historians call her the savior of the Hapsburg Dynasty, and one of the earliest feminists. Others are more concerned with her religious intolerance and her absolute monarchy, claiming that this almost tyrannical regime means it is impossible to accept her as a true feminist, fighting for equality for all. A somewhat controversial figure, then.

The House of Hapsburg, of which Maria Theresa was a member, is almost impossible to sum up in one sentence. Very briefly speaking, they were the rulers of Austria (and the Austrian Empire, which covered much of the lands which today surround the country) from 1278-1780. After 1780, when Maria Theresa died, the dynasty became known as the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, which ruled the country until it's dissolution in 1918. Between 1440 and 1806, they were also the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, and in that time, Maria Theresa was the only female Empress - and indeed, queen (who ruled in her own right) of Hungary and Bohemia.

This came about because of a rule, known in Europe as the Salic Law, which prohibited a woman from inheriting her father's lands. When it became clear that Maria's father, Charles VI was not going to produce a son, leaving Maria as his sole heir, he had to pass a hurried law known as the Pragmatic Sanction which guaranteed her the right to the throne - but at a price, for both Maria and the Austrian Empire.

For Maria, the main problem was that, though he named her as his successor, Charles assumed that Maria's husband, Frances Stephen of Lorraine, would take control and therefore didn't bother to teach his daughter how government and state affairs worked. Maria was determined that this was not to be the case, and that she would rule her country herself. However, due to various ill-conceived wars, the Austrian army was weak, and very poor. When Fredrick II of Prussia invaded in 1740, just weeks after she had assumed the throne, he was very easily able to take Silesia (what was historically Poland) for Prussia, thus starting the (rather boringly named) War of Austrian Succession, which lasted until 1748.

Things were not looking good for Maria - she could not afford to take back the land she had lost, and to make matters worse, France and Bavaria had joined in with the conflict and invaded her country from the west. Determined not to lose any more land, she initiated various army reforms, such as doubling the number of troops and creating a centralized tax office which collected money to fund the army. Though she lost Silesia, when the war ended the rest of her empire was still in tact, and the leaders of the other European countries finally recognized her as queen in her own right.

There were a few years of peace, until Maria Theresa decided in 1756 that Austria was capable of taking Silesia back, if they formed an alliance with France and Russia. Fredrick however, decided that Prussia would not stand for this, formed an alliance with Great Britain and invaded Saxony, one of Austria's allies, starting the Seven Years' War, which ended bang on time in 1763. (So maybe I skipped over the events of this war, but again, it's something that's almost impossible to sum up in a few sentences. One of the first global wars, it involved the American colonies as well as most of Europe, and resulted in over 1 million deaths). The Austrian Empire survived the war mostly unscathed as a territory (though they lost many men in the bloodshed), although when she signed the treaty that ended that war, Maria signed away the rights to the area of Silesia, which now officially belonged to the Prussians (one wonders what the Silesians thought about all of this).

Two years after this, tragedy struck when Maria's husband, Frances, died unexpectedly. Unlike most diplomatic marriages of the eighteenth century and before, Maria and Frances had actually been very deeply in love (their sixteen children - a large number even by the standards of the day - could be seen as proof of this...) and therefore, from the day of his death until she herself died, on 29 November 1780, Maria Theresa chose to dress in the clothes of mourning, as well as becoming much more withdrawn.

She changed her foreign policy, so that it was much more focused on maintaining peace in her lands, rather than trying to win back Silesia and became very concerned with serf reform, passing rules which made working conditions easier and fairer for peasants throughout her lands. She passed also brought about several religious reforms, though these were mixed in terms of their liberalism. Although she granted equal status to Greek Catholics and Jesuits - an unusual practice for most Roman Catholic rulers - she was radical in her persecution and suppression of Jews and Protestants, believing them to be enemies of the state.

As well as this, she secured the marriage of her daughter Marie Antoinette to the heir to the throne of France, as well as several less high profile diplomatic marriages for her other children. The rest of her reign passed peaceably, though she did engage in frequent arguments with her son and heir Joseph, as his plans for the empire were radically different from hers. For that reason, she decided not to abdicate, as many of the government officials thought she should, and Joseph had to wait until her death before assuming the throne. 

Though Maria Theresa was not a feminist in the true sense of the word (passing a rule which prevented courtiers from coming to watch her give birth, which they had commonly been able to do - almost like a spectator sport - was more for her own benefit to save herself embarrassment and indignity, rather than it being part of her great feminist principles), she was interested in reform for her country and actively pursued reforms for the poorest people in the empire, which was very unusual for the time. Her religious persecution, though harsh and unfair, was extremely typical of other rulers at the time, and was mostly a result of her very Catholic upbringing. Though she was not perfect, it would be fair to say that, in general, her support for the poorest in the country was radical, and her economic and military reforms helped to save the empire which, when she ascended the throne, had been on the brink of disaster. 

She also did all of this without any formal education in state affairs or how to most effectively rule an extremely large empire, which either goes to show that she was a very intelligent and shrewd woman, or that being Emperor (or Empress) was not nearly as hard as some historians would have you believe...    

Queen Mags

On 18 November, 1541, Margaret Tudor died. Um, possibly. Some of the sources I've read suggest she died on 18 November and some suggest 18 October, but as I'd like to write about her today and not a battle or the second congress of the Senegalese Socialist Party, we'll say that she died on 18 November. 

Maybe we can ignore the specifics and just congratulate her on living to the ripe old age of 51 which is pretty impressive in a time when the average life expectancy was only 35. (This would mean that I, at 18, would have passed the halfway mark in my life, which is a terrifying thing, as so far I have only achieved a bunch of GCSEs and the ability to do circular breathing for 10 seconds at a time. I should have children by now, if I was a sixteenth century girl. What a horrible thought.) 
 

Anyway, I don't want to end her life before I begin it, so to speak, because Margaret actually had quite an interesting one. She was born on 29 November, 1489 to Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth, their second child and first daughter, and grew up in the royal childrens' household (which also included Prince Arthur, who was supposed to take the throne until he died at the age of 18 and the future king Henry VIII) at Eltham. She and her siblings would have had their every whim catered to, though this did not prevent two of her younger siblings dying as infants, or her older brother dying of what some believe to be consumption, others diabetes. 

Despite this tragedy, Margaret's upbringing would have been mostly enjoyable. In order to make her a suitable royal consort, she was taught French, Latin, the clavichord, the lute and archery (so she could shoot prospective husbands who behaved inappropriately? I don't know...) Clearly, she was seen as a quick learner, though, as her husband had been picked out for her by the time she was six years old. She was to marry James VI of Scotland - 16 years her senior - in an attempt to end reunite the Scottish and English royal houses and end the 170 years of warfare between the two countries. In order for the two to marry however, a papal dispensation was required as Margaret and James were fourth cousins, and therefore too closely related to be marrying each other without special permission. However, after several years of negotiations, treaties and proxy weddings, the couple were married in Edinburgh on 8 August 1503, when Margaret was 13 and James 30. Though it was hardly the most romantic of matches, by all accounts the two came to, if not love each other, at least hold each other in great affection.

The first years of her marriage were not happy ones for Margaret. The year before she traveled to Scotland, both her mother and oldest brother died. Between 1506 and 1509, she fell pregnant 3 times, but all of the babies died in infancy. A letter to her father survives: 

 

The different writing at the bottom is Margaret's own - she wrote of her homesickness and unhappiness in Scotland, and her feelings can only have be exacerbated in 1509 when she learned of her father's death. A few years later, however, in 1512, things took a turn for the better when she gave birth to a healthy baby, whom she christened James, after his father. (James was the father of Mary, Queen of Scots and grandfather of another James, who became James I of England in 1603.) 

Things weren't so good for long. Tensions had been mounting between James and Henry, newly crowned King of England and they reached a peak in 1513, when the English Army marched northwards to meet the Scottish. The met at Flodden Field on 9th September and fought, with heavy losses - including Margaret's husband, leaving her pregnant and regent until their baby son was old enough to rule by himself.

This marked the start of an even more troubled period of Margaret's life. Though James IV's will stated that she may only remain regent as long as she also remained unmarried, she ignored this and remarried the powerful and fabulously named Archibald Douglass, Earl of Angus. He had many equally powerful enemies amongst the Scottish lords, however, and they decided to remove Margaret from the regency, deny her access to her children (the baby she was carrying at the time of the King's death survived, and was christened Alexander) and not pay her the income she was entitled to. 

She and her husband fled to England in September 1515, where they remained in her brother James' (yeah yeah, I know, they just weren't very imaginative back then, okay?) castle over the winter as Margaret fell very ill. Come the summer, she traveled further down south to London to see her brother Henry, the King, whilst Angus went back to Scotland.

There, he took a mistress, leaving Margaret with no money, no power, almost no contact with her son, and a terrible marriage. In March 1527, after nearly 10 years, the Pope granted her an annulment and her son James, aged 16, sent his regents away and began ruling the country in his own right. The last few years of Margaret's life were relatively peaceful and happy, though they did have their ups and downs. Despite having a fairly good relationship with her son, they disagreed on who he should marry, with James ignoring his mother's pleas for an English match, preferring to marry a French Princess, who bore him a daughter and heir, Mary, Queen of Scots. James could be forgiven, however, for taking his mother's romantic advice with a pinch of salt - she married a third time to one Henry Stewart, who took a mistress and her money, exactly like her second husband had done.

Eventually, she died (probably of a stroke) at a castle in Edinburgh, on 18 November 1541. Or maybe 18 October... But she was definitely buried in St John's Abbey in Perth, so if you're ever there and want to rant about your ex-husband, I'm sure her ghost would be very sympathetic. 

Not on your Nellie

I haven't written much on my favourite topic - the horrendousness of our terribly patriarchal society - recently, and I think it's definitely time I started being more aggressively feminist, and what better way to do so than by talking about Nellie Bly, who, on 14 November 1889, began a round the world trip which she intended to complete in 80 days (like the book goes...) but actually manage in 72. She did many other pretty amazing things, too, and is my new Person I Want To Be When I Grow Up Which Technically I Have Now Because I'm 18 But I Still Don't Feel Very Accomplished Or Adult. 

Anyway. Yes. Nellie Bly...

Nellie was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on 5 May, 1864, to a wealthy family in Pennsylvania. Her father, an entrepreneur, died when she was six, leaving her mother with fifteen children to raise. Poor old Mary Cochran didn't have it easy - she remarried, but had to sue for divorce when Nellie was 14. She herself testified in court against her stepfather, whom she insisted was drunken and violent, which may have been the basis for her strong feminist principles. 

She wasn't an exceptional school pupil - she even dropped out of boarding school after just one term - but was hired by the Pittsburgh Dispatch when she was 21, after writing a furious letter to the editor in response to a piece about women only being good for housework and taking care of children. Changing her name to Nellie Bly, she soon took up a position at the paper, writing exposés on the appaling conditions in local factories, which employed very young children and had terrible mortality rates.

The problem with this was, most advertising space in the paper was brought by the owners of said factories, who weren't best pleased with seeing their businesses slandered (even if what Bly was writing was true). She was therefore relegated to writing about "women's events" covering such fascinating topics as housework, gardening and child rearing. Clearly dissatisfied with this turn of events, Bly moved to Mexico and became the paper's foreign correspondent.

Again, this worked well for six months until the Mexican government (at the time, a dictatorship) got wind of what she was writing about (for example, an article protesting against the imprisonment of a Mexican journalist who had been criticizing the government) and ran her out of the country, where she continued to write about them in a derogatory fashion, but this time without fear of arrest. After a while though, she was shunted to the theatre and arts section, which she found somewhat unsatisfying, so moved to New York City to see what work she could gain there.

Four months later, with not a penny to her name, she walked into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer, and talked her way into a job at the New York World. Her first assignment was to be an undercover report into the conditions of the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. There had been reports of brutality and horrendous conditions there, so Bly agreed to fake insanity and spend ten days there to see what really went on.

There were many things which could you get classed as insane in the nineteenth century (and even the first half of the twentieth century) if you were a female. Having an eating disorder, protesting as a suffragist, cheating on your husband, having a baby out of wedlock or even having showing too much interest and enjoyment in sex made you crazy, in the view of society but Nellie chose instead to spend a night practicing crazy faces in the mirror (well, who doesn't?!) and walk into a local workhouse, pretending to have amnesia. Doctors quickly declared her insane, and she was taken away to the Asylum.

The conditions she reported were atrocious. The water the patients were given to drink was dirty; the food consisted of gruel broth and spoiled beef; the women were expected to sit for many hours a day on uncomfortable wooden benches with nothing to do; the wards were unclean; 'dangerous' patients were tied together with rope; women were woken by having freezing cold water thrown over their heads and the nurses were physically abusive to their patients. 

Of course, this all proved to be very embarrassing for the Asylum when Bly was released at The World's behest - a grand jury was opened to examine the claims she put forward in her report which resulted in an annual extra $850,000 for care of the insane.

At this point, Bly had achieved nation fame and could have retired from public view, but she continued ever onwards in her quest to break boundaries for women. After spending a couple of years pioneering investigative journalism by writing about the terrible housing and labour conditions in New York (at a time when there were still very, very few female journalists, most  of whom were writing the gardening or crocheting columns), she suggested turning the fictional Around the World in 80 Days into fact, an idea that was very well received by her editor. At 9:40am on 14 November 1889, she began her journey, which The World covered and introduced a competition which called for members of the public to guess when she would arrive back in the United States (the winners were awarded an all expenses paid holiday to Europe). Bly completed her journey in a record breaking 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds - a very respectable time in which to cover 24,899 miles without flight.

She then retired from journalism, marrying businessman Robert Seaman (40 years her senior) in 1895. When he died in 1904, she took over the running of his companies and not only patented a design for the 55 gallon oil drum (which is still in use in America today and earned her a fortune) but also introduced a series of reforms for the workers which included supplying them with essentials such as health care and luxuries such as access to gyms and libraries.

As if she hadn't already done enough with her life, Bly traveled to the Eastern Front of the First World War (she had been on holiday in Europe when the war broke out) and reported the war for the New York Evening Journal. She survived the war unscathed, but died four years after it ended, of pneumonia, aged 57. Frankly, I think it's likely that she packed more into one day than I have done in my whole life, and I'm pretty exhausted having just written all that. I also think that school History curricula should be modified to include more feminists like Nellie Bly, who made a real difference to many people's lives, rather than 'powerful' female members of the aristocracy, such as Queen Victoria or Marie Antoinette, who were little more than puppets, doing what men commanded them to, but sadly I think that's unlikely to happen...

The She-King

So today I was going to write about this being the day that Marie Antoinette was guillotined on, in 1793 as part of the French Revolution. But then something else caught my eye and I decided to write about that, instead. I should like to pretend that this is due to my inner republican not wanting to give the royals anymore time that I absolutely have to (even when they're being beheaded...) or maybe wanting to throw some light on a 'lesser' historical event which has become overshadowed by the French Queen's beheading. That would be a very intellectual stance. I wouldn't want you to think that I was picking what I was going to write about today because I spotted the word 'Hedwig' in it, and it excited my inner Harry Potter nerd. Because that, of course, would be totally false...

On 16 October, 1384, Jadwiga of Poland was crowned King of...er...Poland, which is more intriguing than it first seems because Jadwiga was actually a she and it wasn't like they had the skills for sex-change operations in the fourteenth century (the castrate don't count, as they still had their original sex-organs, just not fully functioning ones...). So Jadwiga managed to retain her femaleness, we can assume, whilst still being a King. Why, you may ask? Because of our shitty patriarchal society. Because, until this point, as in most of Europe, a Queen had not yet ruled the country on her own - preceding Queens had been Queen regnants, meaning they only held that position because they married the King at the time. Jadwiga was crowned King to show that she was a sovereign in her own right, which I guess is early feminism, maybe.

(The first English Queen, for comparison, was "Bloody" Mary I, who ruled from 1553-1558. Some people believe that Matilda [also sometimes called Maud] was the first Queen of England, but this is technically incorrect - though she was the previous King's daughter and her son was crowned King, she herself never had a coronation; was only 'on the throne' for a few months in 1141; didn't have the support of at least half of the country's nobles [due to the Civil War over whether she or her cousin Stephen should be ruling] and wasn't exactly in it to further the feminist cause, more to further the amount of land and money she owned.)  

But back to Jadwiga the sort-of feminist. She was born sometime between 3 October 1374 and 18 February 1374. I have been unable to establish the exact reason for the discrepancy in recording her birth date, but I think we can safely say it has more to do with poor clerical administration than her mother going through the longest labour ever. She spent some time growing up in the Viennese Court and became betrothed, at the age of four to William of Hapsburg, though this was later called off at the behest of Polish nobles, and she instead became engaged and then married to Jagiello, Grand Duke of Lithuania when she was the ripe old age of 12 and he 26. When they married, in 1386, Jagiello changed his name to Ladislaus and was also crowned King of Poland, which must have been quite confusing to explain to the neighbours.

Jadwiga, King of Poland - 1373/4-1399

By all accounts, Jadwiga was a great beauty with long blonde hair and blue eyes (though I'm not sure how popular you would have been in the court if you had written that she was as ugly as sin), and surprisingly tall for a medieval lady - an excavation of her remains in the 1970s put her at an impressive 1.8m. She was also very clever, speaking Polish, Bosnian, German, Hungarian, Serbian and Latin as well as having an interest in the arts, music and science. She was incredibly pious and devout, and apparently had enough miracles attached to her for Pope John Paul II to canonize her in 1997. These days, you can refer to her as Saint Jadwiga, or, in English, Saint Hedwig, which pleases my inner nerd probably more than it should.

Sadly, Jadwiga died one month after giving birth, along with her baby daughter at the age of only 26, though her husband continued to rule Poland for another 35 years. She had left her jewels to Krakow Academy to finance its renovation. Krakow Academy is today known as Jagiellonian University and is still going to this day.    

If I could explain it any better I'm sure I would

I'm a bit sad today. Not seriously so, you understand; it's mostly loneliness. I've taken a gap year, and all my friends have now jetted off to exotic locals Coventry, Wales, Manchester and the like to study new and exciting subjects Chaucer and Mathematics. Still, whatever floats their boats, eh? I, of course, don't begrudge them their time or happiness at their various universities - indeed, I am glad they all seem to be enjoying it so much. But sometimes, when I'm stuck in a tiny village with nothing going on in the arse end of nowhere, things do get a bit lonely.

And yet! It does not necessarily have to be so. I haven't really felt lonely all day - it's only now, when they're all out at the pub or various clubs, having lots of fun that I really miss them, because they're not here to talk to me. Over the course of today, I have spoken to my friends in Wales, Manchester, Shropshire, Coventry and Birmingham via a combination of email, instant message, text message, Skype, Facebook and Twitter (because I am cutting edge a poncy middle class child). If I wasn't so socially retarded, I could even phone them and see how their days had been. In a few weeks, I shall hop on a train and even visit a few of them.

So actually, I'm very lucky. A lot of people, even in this day and age, do not have the option to do any of this. Further back in time, very few people did. Carrier pigeons, whilst generally reliable, aren't always the speediest forms of communication, though they did have the advantage of being less likely to betray you or be intercepted than a rider on horseback was. If you wanted to stay in touch with someone in the thirteenth century, your options were pretty limited.

This brings me to Isabella of Angoulême. Clearly... On this day, in 1200, she was crowned Queen Consort of England, a few months after her marriage to King John I. This is Isabella (obviously quite a few years after her marriage...):

I'm not sure if you can tell from her tomb, but when she married John, on August 24th of the same year, she was heralded as a great beauty - medieval Historians sometimes call her the Helen of the Middle Ages. This was a double edged sword for her - the British people were, apparently, pleased to have such a beautiful wife for their King (and there was me thinking the excessive photoshopping of women in magazines and the like to "bring them up" to the required "standard" was a modern thing...), but she turned said King into a lazy scoundrel. Kings were expected to get up at five o'clock in the morning (effing hell) whereas John used to like to stay in bed with her until nearly midday. This was terribly shocking to medieval sensibilities, and didn't exactly do much for John's reputation as a good-for-nothing waster. The common people of England deemed her a siren, and she was well known for being vain.

Isabella was also French, as you may have guessed. Again this was a double edged sword, as whilst the French had made up the ruling elite ever since the Norman Conquest of 1066, there were still some displaced English nobles who considered themselves - or, to be more precise, their daughters - more worthy of the throne. But she did manage to provide the country with five healthy children, including the future King Henry II, so she was forgiven most things.

Despite the fact that she was so vain, well known for having a terrible temper to match her husband's, a clear royalist and a snob, who detested her lower ranking once her husband had died, which left her merely Countess of Angoulême, I feel rather sorry for Isabella. She was born in 1188, and those who are good with numbers will have spotted that this made her a mere 12 years old when she married John (who was 32 at the time). She would have been relatively alone (I say relatively - clearly she had numerous servants with her, but none of the family and friends she had grown up with) in a foreign country, where most people treated her with suspicion, and, in the case of most men, gruesome lust. 

If I can be lonely, a mere two hour drive from most of my friends - nearer in some cases - with instant virtual access to them if I require - I cannot begin to imagine what life must have been like for Isabella, a little French girl, a pawn in some diplomatic marriage or another, traded off in exchange for money, or land, or both, suddenly thrust into the middle of English court life. I apologize if this has come across as very 'poor little rich girl'; that was not my intention. I merely wanted to raise the issue once again that things are never as straightforward as they first appear, particularly when it comes to History.

I really wish I didn't write so clinically, that my style was more prosaic. I'm not even sure I explained that clearly. If I could explain it any better, I'm sure I would...