by Historical Heroines- 100 Women You Should Know About (retail) (epub)
When Portuguese traveller Manuel Eynesso visited and proclaimed he could understand her language, he inadvertently provided her with a plausible and brilliant back story. He told the delighted gentry that this beautiful heroine was in fact a royal princess from the island of Javasu. She had been captured by pirates but daringly managed to escape and swim to nearby English shores. It was a fantastic concoction of a glamourous, tropical stranger blended with the snobbery of blue blood – a story Victorian society lapped up. Mary was staggeringly consistent, never uttering a word of English even when startled.
Alas the truth was far more prosaic and her fame would be her undoing. Mrs Neale, a landlady from Bristol, recognised Mary as an old lodger from one of her many portraits in the newspapers. It transpired that Mary came from the not so very far away land of Dorset, the daughter of a humble cobbler and had a truly chequered employment record. Previous employers, of which there were many, said she behaved very strangely and would often run away. In fact ‘Princess Caraboo’ was not the first of the many fantastical creations and strange situations that she invented for herself. (There was also an intrepid tale of being kidnapped by highwaymen.) Mary either suffered from poor mental health and may even have believed her fantasies or she was a cunningly clever con artist.
Consciously or not she brilliantly bought into the fervour surrounding orientalism and the eagerness of people to prove their knowledge and experience. People were desperate for Princess Caraboo to be real. Fortunately, after she fessed up, she wasn’t thrown to the wolves. The poorer members of society applauded her for ridiculing the high and mighty. Elizabeth sent her to Philadelphia in 1817 where her notoriety had spread and she gave performances as Princess Caraboo. She returned to England in 1824, performing until interest waned. In the end she married and got a job delivering leeches to hospitals. For all her earlier fame, rather sadly she ended up buried in an unmarked grave.
Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759–10 September 1797)
Mary was in a league of her own. Her achievements would be impressive for the modern woman of today; for a woman of the eighteenth century, they defied convention and were simply extraordinary.
A true intellectual, feminist, advocate for women’s education, philosopher, traveller, historian – her story is endlessly fascinating. She also tried every avenue available to a woman of the time (lady’s companion, governess, teacher) before finding her true calling as a writer and champion of the Enlightenment.
Born in London’s Spitalfields, the second child of seven, her life’s experiences would leave her with bouts of depression and shape her feminist outlook and views on marriage. She was the daughter of a drunk, abusive father and a mother who welcomed her death as a release from the restrictions of her life, and sister to an older brother Ned who would in contrast to his sisters enjoy an incredible education. Mary was a woman light years ahead of her time. She railed against life’s injustices against women and their place in society.
In 1784 she would set up a girls school with her sisters Eliza and Everina and close friend Fanny Blood. She would also help Eliza escape a suspected abusive marriage. She attempted life as a governess to the children of Irish nobles Lord and Lady Kingsborough, but she soon realised that a) she despised Lady Kingsborough and b) being a governess was not for her. Although in a bizarre twist of fate, in later years, Kingsborough’s daughter Margaret King would form a strong friendship with Mary’s own daughter Mary Shelley.
The experience inspired ‘Thoughts on the Education of Daughters’, a pamphlet published in 1787, after which she became a full-time writer. She learned French, Italian and German, contributed a considerable number of articles to the Analytical Review and translated many important works of European literature and philosophy.
At the heart of a vibrant literary, artistic and intellectual salon, she made her name by writing the ‘Vindication of the Rights of Men’ in 1790, a letter in response to a colleague’s book on the French Revolution; the first edition was published anonymously, only the second edition bearing her own name.
A ‘Vindication of the Rights of Woman’, two years later, was earth-shattering for its time. Translated into multiple languages, it confronted the leaders of the French Revolution head on, called for a revolution by women to enable them to have equal rights, independence and sovereignty over their own lives. Mary travelled to Revolutionary France, lived through the Terror and witnessed Louis XVI lose his head to Madame La Guillotine – an experience that haunted her.
Abandoned by her feckless American lover Gilbert Imlay, with whom she would have her first daughter, Fanny Imlay, she attempted suicide twice (the first with laudanum, the second time in the River Thames).
As for her famed love affair with political writer William Godwin, it was mutual dislike at first sight when they met in 1791 but better luck second time around. They lived together for a while but when Mary became pregnant decided, rather conversely for a feminist, that the scandal of being an unwed mother would be too much to bear. They married with little fuss on 29 March 1797 and created a living arrangement that Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton were probably inspired by. Godwin rented his own separate rooms to work in during the day and would return to their shared home in Somers Town in the evenings.
Mary went into labour on 30 August and in a tragically stupid set of circumstances when the placenta didn’t come out naturally, the attending doctor decided to rip it out himself. Infection soon set in and she died on 10 September 1797 at the age of 38. The heartbroken Godwin was too distraught to attend the funeral. Their daughter was Mary Shelley (1797–1851), author of Frankenstein. Her life was in many ways to mirror that of her mother.
She left unfinished ‘Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman’ (an unofficial follow-up to ‘Vindication of the Rights of Woman’) which marked a new direction in her feminist thinking. Writing through the voice of a prostitute, it expressed a desire for political and legal reform to better the lot of all women, regardless of their place or ranking in society. Because of her unorthodox lifestyle (pregnant twice whilst unmarried) it took a while for her legacy as a feminist, writer and philosopher to be properly recognised. She was a role model for the suffragettes and remains so today for the modern woman who navigates her own complicated path.
Mata Hari, or Margaretha Zelle (7 August 1876–15 October 1917)
The name Mata Hari seems to evoke associations of wanton sexual promiscuity used as a tool of betrayal. However in the same way that the name Mata Hari is made up, the associations also have a strong element of fiction to them. Most recently a new collection of letters written by the infamous Mata Hari herself cast new doubts on the image of her as a scheming seductress traitor.
The problem in detangling her story is the degree to which she invented numerous personas and stories herself. Combine this with a trial that based itself on circumstantial evidence as well as a large degree of embellishment, and her life emerges as an orchestrated piece of fiction. Sadly this fiction never had a happy ending and led her to a firing squad.
Born in Holland to a wealthy family, her father’s investments went belly up and he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Having being spoiled and cosseted by an adoring father, Margaretha (her actual name) suddenly found herself bereft as he left the family to try and restore his fortunes. The strain was too much and her parents divorced whilst he shacked up with another woman in Amsterdam. To compound her misery, when her mother died, she and her brothers were split up and sent to various relatives across the country.
Perhaps it’s not a great surprise that at just 17 she answered an ad for a wife from a Dutch officer twenty years her senior. Unfortunately the marriage was not the great romantic escape from dreary Holland that she hoped and nor was it a dream for her husband Rudolph Macleod. Both were bitterly unhappy in a relationship punctuated by vicious arguments, infidelity and tragedy. She also alleged that Rudolph was physically abusive and he was certainly a confirmed alcoholic.
A particularly tragic
and mysterious episode was the death of their 2-year-old son Norman who, along with his sister Nonnie, became violently ill from either food poisoning or, as some alleged, the nanny did it. Margaretha suggested the nanny was bitter following a liaison with Rudolph. Their marriage disintegrated shortly after. When he refused to pay her enough money to survive, she was forced to leave her daughter Nonnie with him whilst she tried to seek work.
And it was from this period after 1904, when Margaretha left her husband and before she emerged as Mata Hari in Paris, that the newly discovered letters are from. They show a woman devastated at leaving her daughter behind and desperately searching for work as a lady’s companion or riding horses in a circus, she tries everything until she concludes that her sexual allure is the best way for her to survive financially.
And she begins to invent a new persona. Having been maligned in Indonesia whilst married for being a half-caste thanks to her dark colouring, she turns it into an advantage. Riding on the wave of orientalism that is sweeping Parisians off their feet, she becomes an exotic oriental dancer called Mata Hari, sometimes the daughter of an eastern prince and sometimes a priestess. There’s no Google to betray her boring Dutch roots and Paris laps it up. She is the spicy toast of society, dressing erotically and often nude in theatres and private salons and performing Burlesque-style dances wearing sheer materials and shedding layers throughout her routine. Exotic music and scenery added to the atmosphere. She became famous for being a courtesan as well as for her sensual dances, travelling throughout Europe and living very well.
However, the outbreak of the First World War spelt the end of the good times. Mata Hari was in Germany when the news broke, and being considered French, they confiscated her assets leaving her to return to Amsterdam broke. Added to this the theatres were shutting down and the nation’s mood changed to a more serious tone no longer interested in the frivolous life she represented.
Her story becomes complex to unravel from this point. She claims she was asked to spy by the Germans who knew she had liaisons with important men and that she threw the invisible ink they gave her into the canal. She then says she agreed to become a double agent for France. When the Allies put her on trial it seemed a travesty of circumstantial evidence, missing witnesses, mistaken identities and possibly contrived documents. Did the French stitch her up to show they were capturing dangerous dissidents whilst the war bled the country dry on the battlefields; or was Germany playing a bluff by misdirecting the French to Mata Hari with false documents to divert their attention; or was Mata Hari trying to play off two countries in a naive and stupid way? Spies in novels may always be based on the Mata Hari idea of a beautiful temptress, anyone seen James Bond, but in reality the best spy fades into the crowd and is unremarkable. If Mata Hari was anything she was far from unremarkable.
When she was sentenced to execution she was in denial, her years in the jail were marked by desperation and despair but when she walked out to face the firing squad she blew kisses at the soldiers and refused a blindfold. She looked them straight in the eye as they shot her dead.
Maw Broon (Created 1936)
Many Scots would agree that their own creation Maw Broon from the Dudley Watkins comic strips deserves a place in this pantheon of women. She was the matriarch of the Broon family of Auchenstoggle and a metaphorical mother to many. All the fans feel a sense of reassurance and comfort when they cuddle up to this ‘braw’ family, especially devoted to the Scots dialect that permeates every story.
She may be fictional but she was also a representative, a blueprint of the ideal mother and woman especially in the 1930s when the comics began. Scotland’s Sunday Post and the cartoons creator’s have been accused of right-wing romanticism and feminists would have a thing or two to say about the character of Maw but there’s no escaping the historical context and the continuing love for these down-to-earth characters despite all this.
The Broons were a light-hearted picture of working class Scots in the pre-war period. They provided safe stories with many a slapstick and Aesopian moral woven into them to distract from the depression of the 1930s. Like so many cartoons, the Broons never age and their family life seems stuck in a halcyon past with a few modern gadgets thrown in over the years. They take Scotland through the war and all the decades that follow, only ever intending to be a cheery wee escape from real life.
She would never be chosen as a poster child for feminism. Her character was intended to embody quite parochial, right-wing values of the self-sacrificing matriarch who gets fair worn ‘oot’ from the housework, the cooking and her family acting like daft ‘galoots’ (idiots). She would be black-affronted (ashamed) by their antics. However she ends up being the voice of reason in most of the stories.
Most often it was the men’s’ pride in being machismo and their hare-brained schemes that inevitably led to humorous misunderstandings or crazy outcomes. In one tale the brothers and their father are showing off their muscles, each trying to outdo the other in the number of weights they can lift. In comes Maw exclaiming about the mess and she promptly lifts the entire box of weights and tidies them away.
Maw stood out as the calm and moral member of the family. Built like the robust figureheads on ships, she was indeed the stalwart captain who steered her wayward yet intrinsically good family.
She is a reassuring presence embedded in the culture of Scotland.
Maxine Elliot (5 February 1873–5 March 1940)
The captivating, world-famous actress Maxine Elliot was born Jessie Carolyn Dermott in Rockland, Maine in the US. Her father was an Irish-born naval captain. Her mother Adelaide Hill would suffer bouts of melancholy and depression before being committed to and eventually dying in a mental institution.
Pregnant at 14 by a local rake, Arthur Hall, she conveniently departed on a five-month trip to South America with her Irish father. The baby either died or she miscarried. On her return she was sent to boarding school. After visiting New York, she would marry a wealthy, flash 30-year-old lawyer, George A. McDermott. She was 16. It wasn’t a great marriage. He was an alcoholic gambler who would beat her and she returned home divorced and despondent, before leaving again at the age of 21 for New York to take to the stage, despite the disapproval of her father.
She would change her name to Maxine Elliot in 1889. Despite her lack of acting experience, she worked hard as part of a touring theatre group and climbed the acting ladder. She would marry comedian Nat C. Goodwin in 1898, who presented her with her own railroad car as a wedding gift. They would tour the country and star together in various plays to packed audiences and to public acclaim. They were hugely popular and successful celebrities. She mixed in high-society circles and on one visit to London was presented to King Edward VII. She and Goodwin would divorce in 1908, after which there are unsubstantiated rumours that she had an affair with the septuagenarian banker J.P. Morgan.
Having the acquaintance of J.P. Morgan didn’t hurt her financial prospects either. Together with Broadway impresarios the Shubert brothers, he put up half the money when in 1908 she bought and named her own 725-seat theatre, the Maxine Elliot Theatre on New York’s Broadway. She would be the only woman in the US to both own and manage her own theatre company. A savvy business woman, she negotiated profitable acting contracts for herself and made a fortune as an investor and stock trader with properties in both the US and England, one of them in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire.
In 1913 she began an affair with New Zealand tennis player Tony Wilding, fifteen years her junior. They were due to marry and she was utterly devastated by his death in the First World War at the age of 31. He was serving with the Royal Marines.
During the First World War she would channel her considerable talent, charms and fortune into humanitarian work. She enlisted with the Red Cross as a nurse and used much of her own money to finance rescue efforts for Belgian citizens trapped by the German invasion. She bought a huge barge (300 tonnes) and from February 1915 to May 1916 it travelled through the canals of Belgi
um providing essential medical, food and relief supplies to the starving and desperate populace. Belgium would award her the Order of the Crown for her philanthropic efforts.
She bought a stunning villa on the French Riviera, which welcomed guests including Winston Churchill and the Duke of Windsor. Prince Aly Khan would purchase it at the end of the war. She would return to acting in 1917 only to retire from the stage in 1920, determined as ever to do things her way and step down at the height of her powers.
She died in Cannes, the south of France, from a heart attack on 5 March 1940.
Messalina (AD 17–48)
You can’t help but relish in the utter depravity of the infamous Roman nymphomaniac Messalina, aka Emperor Claudius’s wife, as told in salacious tales from ancient Roman scholars to the more contemporary and hugely popular I Claudius by Robert Graves. However her true story is lost amidst political bias and the lurid minds of some very dirty old men.
It seems Roman men couldn’t decide the best way to destroy a woman’s name. One minute they were trying to erase Messalina from history by banishing and removing every trace of her. Then several years later Roman historians had resurrected her in their accounts as one of the most depraved and sexually deviant women to have graced Caesar’s palace. By making her so scandalous they assured her place in history, art and literature.
These historians included famous scholars such as Pliny the Elder, Tacitus and the poet Juvenal. They were likely motivated by a hatred for the Imperial royal bloodline, and a yearning for the glorious Republic. You’d be forgiven for thinking these stories belonged in a sex pamphlet, the type found in a sperm donor’s cubicle. Pliny wrote an exciting romp about the night Messalina challenged a prostitute to see who could sleep with the most men in a night. Apparently it was twenty-five – game set and match to Lady M.