by Historical Heroines- 100 Women You Should Know About (retail) (epub)
So what was this intrepid tale that earned her the accolade ‘Canadian Joan of Arc’? It all began in the cabbage fields outside Fort Verchères, the seigneury of Madeleine’s father. Her parents had been called away on business leaving their 14-year-old daughter in charge of her siblings and the fort.
All was peaceful whilst Madeleine and about twenty of the settlers tended their crops, blissfully unaware of the Iroquois warriors hidden in the undergrowth. They had been waiting silently biding their time to attack and it was a huge shock when they pounced, capturing twenty settlers. Madeleine escaped by slipping free of her kerchief that the Iroquois had seized. She ran full pelt to the fort.
In the first letter she was very close to the fort, in the second she had to run much further as forty-five ‘savages’ fired at her. She ran to the fort calling ‘aux armes, aux armes’, climbed the bastion and quickly put on a soldier’s hat. She then fired the canon to alert her neighbours and to give the Iroquois the impression that the fort was well manned. She encouraged the others, who apparently were useless cowards, to make as much noise as possible to fool the natives. This takes a day or two at the most in her first version, and in the later one it takes a full week before the Iroquois end their siege and head for the hills. The French army arrive to relieve the situation. At which point Madeleine dramatically surrenders her arms to the strong hands of the lieutenant so she can go back to being a proper young lady. This was an important addition to the tale as it allowed the settlers and future generations of chauvinist French Canadians to celebrate a national hero but not one that challenges their male dominance – a heroine who knows her place. The second account added further embellishments such as rescuing two visitors by canoe, but the longer version can be saved for an exciting bedside story.
Why did she write these letters, especially the second? Probably money was a strong motive and frankly who can blame her? There were few ways for a woman to earn a crust in the seventeenth century. And she knew just how far to take her heroic deeds making sure to let people know she only acted in a ‘manly’ fashion out of necessity.
But what of the shadowy Iroquois in this narrative? They are nothing more than nameless hostile barbarians making the morally upright settlers’s lives difficult. Perhaps it’s time to hear from the Iroquois women (see Madam Sacho).
Marie Antoinette (1755–93)
If you ask the average person on the street what they know about Queen Marie Antoinette, it’s very likely they’ll utter that well-worn cliché ‘Let them eat cake’. And yet she never said it. Not once. Not ever. Many women were accused of saying it by various misogynists long before Marie was even born. She wasn’t perfect but the scandals and rumours that dogged her reign successfully painted an enduring picture of a degenerate, unfeeling spendthrift. Her courage, philanthropy and maternal skills have gone by largely unnoticed.
It didn’t help that Marie had been woefully unprepared for court and its intimidating, intellectually snobby courtiers. One of many children, she was never expected to marry a future king and consequently her education had been neglected. She was nearly illiterate by the time she became the most viable daughter to marry French royalty, leaving her insecure around the intellectual elite at Versailles.
Her husband King Louis XVI was a chubby, bookish teenager who was suddenly crowned king after his much-lauded brother died. He and Marie were thrust unprepared onto a glittering, gilded and opulent Versailles throne and court. Just slightly intimidating, it’s no wonder the lad couldn’t perform on his wedding night. It actually took seven years to do the deed.
It’s true that Ms Antoinette loved her retail therapy but the Versailles court had embraced an excessive culture of extravagance long before she became Dauphine. And lest we forget, she was only 14 years old when she married Louis. She was literally a teenage girl let loose with an unimaginable income in a candy land of extravagant dresses, lavish parties and big hair that would put the 1980s to shame.
Far costlier to France were the battles Marie endorsed, in particular the American Revolution, which emptied the royal coffers faster than you could say Madame Deficit (the not so affectionate nickname hurled her way). And yet there are several anecdotes that show her to be empathetic and generous, including the time she stopped her carriage to help an injured peasant, refusing to leave until the doctor she called arrived. Nonetheless, the starving, beleaguered population of France needed a scapegoat, amply promoted by thousands of illegal pamphlets printed by her enemies. These accused the queen of various scandals from sexual deviance to blaming her for a famous diamond fraud. In the French imagination she was transformed from a sweet and inexperienced teen queen to a dissolute monster bleeding the country dry.
She was a contradiction, supporting the American Revolution yet raised to mix with all social classes. She believed passionately in the Divine Right of Kings – a deadly conviction to cling to in the French Revolution. She refused to accede to the new government, plotted to run away and encouraged war with Austria in a bid to regain the throne. Robespierre must have rubbed his hands in glee at the woeful mismanagement of the situation.
Daughter of an Austrian emperor, Marie Antoinette was already on shaky ground as the French and Austrians had a chequered relationship. The royal court questioned whether her loyalties were to France or Austria. From there, it was but a hop, skip and a mob-fuelled jump to being convicted of treason, with some incest thrown in too from her young son’s forced testimony (kangaroo anyone).
Her final days showed the strength of her character. Gone was the frivolous, spendthrift teenager and in its stead stood a courageous and resolute mother, protecting her brood and standing by her man. Her final sob-stained letter to her sister asked that her children not take revenge. And she approached the guillotine with her hair shorn wearing a shabby shift and with her head held high, until it was chopped off of course.
Marie was painted into history as the symbol of all that was wrong with noble rule. As we unravel the lies from the truth and discover a human being replete with foibles, faults and amazing strengths too, let those propagandists eat humble pie.
Marie Marvingt (1875–1963)
Marie Marvingt was such an astonishing sportswoman, combat pilot, inventor and nurse, such a veritable Olympian, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was an actual daughter of the gods of Olympus. She won prizes in swimming, fencing, shooting, ski jumping, skating and so on and on and on. She was the first woman to climb most of the Swiss and French Alps; to ride the course of the Tour de France but not during the actual race (women weren’t allowed); to swim the River Seine; to fly a hot air balloon across the North Sea and English Channel. In fact it would be quicker to list what she did not excel at.
So instead we will progress to her other firsts – first woman to fly a combat mission and to be certified as a flight nurse. Oh and lest we forget, she also invented a new type of surgical suture. She won enough medals, declarations and acclamations to decorate a thousand toilets. Superwoman – it’s time to give up your crown. In her spare time she wrote prize-winning poetry. Now be honest, hands up who hates her?
Whilst Marie clearly lived life to the fullest, her raison d’être was to create medical air ambulances. Marie had the idea in 1910 when air travel was in its infancy. It was also at its most dangerous – a thrill she enjoyed, but not one that people wanted to risk as a rescue venture. Nonetheless, she designed a prototype air ambulance with Louis Bechereau, an aviation engineer. She raised the money for this prototype to be built by the Deperdussin factory, but its owner embezzled funds in 1913 scuppering her aircraft. Undeterred, Marie, the stiff upper lip champion, just kept campaigning.
During the First World War, our intrepid Marie continued to impress – we would expect nothing less. Initially she disguised herself as a soldier and went to the front lines but she was discovered. She wasn’t home long before she was asked to take supplies to soldiers in the remote Dolomite Mountains using her superior skiing skills. During this time sh
e also trained as a nurse and served as a volunteer pilot engaging in an aerial bombardment. But her air ambulance proposals were still ignored.
After the war there was renewed interest in the idea of aviation rescue, and Marie worked like a dog to publicise the idea, raise funds and attended literally thousands of conferences and meetings for aviation and medical hob-nobs. Finally in 1934 the French government asked her to set up an air ambulance service in Morocco, for which she was – wait for it – awarded another medal. She then turned her hand to training the personnel that would man the aircraft. She never stopped – did the girl sleep? There simply isn’t the space to list all her inventions, achievements, firsts and adventures, she was extra-extraordinary.
Finally in 1955 the Fédération National d’Aéronautique at the Sorbonne presented her with possibly the medal she favoured most, for her exemplary work in medical aviation, despite her adversaries.
The quintessential adrenalin junkie and sportswoman extraordinaire, Marie continued to live life to the max. At the age of 80 she got her helicopter’s pilot’s licence and apparently flew in a US fighter jet that broke the sound barrier – why not, breaking barriers was her thing.
Mariya Oktyabrskaya (1905–44)
Mariya Oktybrskaya was a Soviet hero, the eponymous tank girl who bulldozed her way through the Nazis after her beloved husband died in battle during the Second World War.
Mariya was born in 1905 in the Crimean Peninsula to a poor peasant family. She embraced the communist revolution in Russia and when she married, in 1925, she and her husband (whose name has proven most elusive) changed their surname to Oktybrskaya in honour of Russia’s infamous October Revolution. Clearly she considered herself a comrade in arms with her husband.
It was not out of the ordinary for Soviet women to learn the tricks of their husbands’ trade if they were married to military men. Mariya was trained as a nurse but she also learned to shoot, handle weapons and drive vehicles and had joined the Military Wives Council.
When the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet name for the Eastern Front during the Second World War) began Mariya was evacuated to Tomsk in Siberia. Her husband who stayed to fight was struck down by the Nazi army in Kiev in 1941. However it took two years for Mariya to receive word of her husband’s death, and she was understandably furious and devastated in equal measures.
She channelled her fury into the Soviet war effort and sold everything she had to purchase a T-34 tank for the war, costing 50,000 roubles. When she wrote to Stalin she offered her tank with the stipulation that she would drive it and it would be called Boyevaya Podruga. This has been interpreted to mean Fighting Girlfriend or Frontline Female Comrade tank.
Did Maria really go to war just as retribution for her husband’s death, as is intimated in so many accounts? It seems a common theme to infer that women go to war to avenge their lovers’ deaths as opposed to male reasons such as freedom and justice. By all accounts she was a staunch communist and she would have been vehemently against the Nazi incursions. Surely she joined the war for a multitude of reasons. Given this possible hypothesis, it seems female comrade was more suited to her personality.
The Soviet government allowed her to join the 26th Tank Battalion for propaganda purposes. Most believed she was a joke and fodder for a publicity stunt. That changed quickly after her first mission in Smolensk in 1943. She bombarded her way through enemy lines taking out gun nests and artillery guns. The tank was hit by gunfire; she disobeyed orders and leapt out to fix it amidst flying bullets. From then on the men in her unit called her mother. She repeatedly showed exemplary courage in further raids. When the tank’s path was damaged, she jumped out and repaired its tracks whilst her crew covered fire from the turrets. Unfortunately it was during one such night raid in a village near Vitebsk when she leapt out to make repairs that she was hit in the head by shrapnel. She was taken to a military hospital near Kiev where she died. She was one of the few women to be awarded Russia’s highest medal for valour but, like so many brave soldiers, it was awarded after her death.
Mary Anning (1799–1847)
Mary Anning never went to school but is remembered as a brilliant palaeontologist – an expert in assessing and studying fossils to determine how and when they lived. She was born on 21 May 1799 to a very poor family in Lyme Regis, Dorset, the cliffs of which are rich in fossils from the Jurassic Period. The family couldn’t afford to provide Mary with a formal education so she taught herself to read, write and draw.
Fossil bones were originally referred to as dragon’s teeth and most people had little idea what they actually were, preferring instead to call them ‘curiosities’. Regarded as the best in the fossil business, little is known or has been shared about Mary – probably because she was a woman doing what was perceived as a man’s job, her family were poor and also because her astonishing finds, sold on to scientists, personal collections and museums, were rarely accurately attributed to her.
Mary’s father was a carpenter and keen fossil hunter, who passed on his passion to her during their long fossil-hunting walks along the shore. She and her brother were the only surviving children of nine. Together they discovered the first complete ichthyosaur, Greek for ‘fish lizard’, in around 1810/1811, which has been displayed at London’s Natural History Museum.
Mary was 10 when her father died in 1810, leaving them financially destitute. To make a living Mary sold fossils to visiting tourists, although the family was helped by several wealthy friends, including Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Birch, who sold his own fossil collection to provide for them. Mary would take over her father’s fossil shop when she was 20.
The discovery of fossils would have literally blown the minds of scientists at the time – forcing them to completely re-assess their view on the natural world. Let’s just say that Charles Darwin has a lot to thank Ms Anning for; her work led to the development of the Theory of Evolution. And many scientists wouldn’t take Mary’s work seriously until it was validated by (a man of course) anatomist Georges Cuvier, who confirmed its importance. She also discovered the first plesiosaurus (selling it for £100) which firmly established her reputation in the scientific world.
There’s a great and very telling 1824 diary entry from Lady Harriet Sivester, who after meeting Mary wrote:
The extraordinary thing in this young woman is that she has made herself so thoroughly acquainted with the science that the moment she finds any bones she knows to what tribe they belong. She fixes the bones on a frame with cement and then makes drawings and has them engraved … It is certainly a wonderful instance of divine favour – that this poor, ignorant girl should be so blessed, for by reading and application she has arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom.
In 1838 she would be awarded an annuity from the Geological Society of London and the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Although the Geological Society didn’t allow women members until 1904, they still recorded her death, of breast cancer, in 1847. The tongue-twister ‘She sells seashells on the seashore’, written around 1908, is thought to be about Mary and the fossilised coral Tricycloseris anningi is named in her honour.
Mary Edmonia Lewis (c. 1844–1907 or 1843–1911)
Born in Greenbush, New York, Mary’s Chippewa name was ‘Wildfire’ but she changed this as soon as she got to college.
Mary was the first professional African American sculptor. Her father was a free African-American and her mother a Chippewa Indian. Left as an orphan when she was young, she lived with her mother’s tribe until she was 12.
Her studies at Oberlin College in Ohio from 1859, when she was only 15, had been funded by her brother Samuel Lewis, also known as ‘Sunrise’, who had left the Chippewa tribe to become a gold miner in California. The college was rare in that it admitted women and women of colour, but n
ot everyone would welcome her. Mary wouldn’t get to complete her art studies; on 27 January 1862, she was falsely accused of poisoning the spiced wine of her two white Oberlin roommates.
With uncertainty about her sexuality still prevalent today, there remains suspicion that, in an attempt to seduce them, Mary had spiked the women’s drinks with an aphrodisiac. Although acquitted, she was beaten up by anti-abolitionists and left for dead. Her position at the college was untenable. She’d be a target for further abuse and harassment if she stayed.
Mary left for Boston to become a sculptor under the tutelage of Edward A. Brackett, who claimed prominent abolitionists amongst his clientele. Whilst there are very few surviving examples of her work, she was most famous for sculpting busts of famous abolitionists such as John Brown and Senator Charles Sumner; when seen through the prism of history and the fact that she was a black and famous artist at a time when slavery still persisted, her story and her art are all the more extraordinary.
Validated by her success, she travelled to Europe in 1865, settling in Rome, to work alongside an all-female group of sculptors. Her work was influenced by her Native American and African-American roots. She opened a showroom in Rome, was featured in prominent art magazines and was renowned for her work based on The Song of Hiawatha, the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would actually come to visit her in Italy.
Though there are very few surviving examples of her work, her most well-known sculpture was The Death of Cleopatra, now housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC.