Friday Five: Women In History
Think of this Friday Five as a list of five women I wish Timeless had the chance to do episodes about. Why? Because it’s the last Friday of Women’s History Month. In honor of all the women who made history, I’m spotlighting five who often get overlooked this week. These are women who don’t get taught about in schools because, instead, we learn about their male counterparts. Or, these are women who had a big influence on a particular market, but few people know their story.
I thought I’d start off with a woman that people are probably slightly familiar with, but maybe don’t know her full story. If her name sounds familiar, but you can’t place where you know her, that’s because she’s the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you went to high school in the U.S., or studied American Lit at all, you probably read at least one of his books, like The Great Gatsby. What you might not know is that Zelda was as good as, if not a better writer than, her husband.
Her husband regularly wrote down things she said when recounting stories to friends, stole her journal, and all around copied her work. She “inspired” all of his heroines. So, if you actually like his writing, chances are, you really like Zelda’s. She was trapped in a loveless marriage. He cheated on her, but wouldn’t allow her to have relationships with other men. He also attempted to drive her to a nervous breakdown so he could have her institutionalized. All around, not a great guy there.
Zelda actually got an offer to have her journals published at one point, but because of her husband, she couldn’t. She retaliated by publicly reviewing his writing, penning, “plagiarism begins at home.”
A lot of posts have gone around tumblr about the women who acted as spies and assassins during World War II lately. Andree Borrel didn’t go that route, but in her twenties, she was recruited to train members of the French resistance.
She actually started off trying to help in the war efforts on her own. She traveled from France to Spain to fight against Nazi work, but thought her efforts were meaningless, and made her way back to France. There, she took a nursing course offered by the Red Cross and became field certified to help in the hospitals. Since she was under 21 when she did it, the hospitals wouldn’t allow her to stay and volunteer. That is when she started working for the underground.
She started safehouses that helped British soldiers who were shot down, escaping Jews, and spies. Eventually, she and her friends had to leave France when their safehouses were compromised. They made their way to England where they gave full reports to MI5 and began working for the Special Operations Executive to help the French resistance.
Not only was she recruited for the French resistance, but when they sent her back to France to start her work, she was parachuted into the area. She (and her partner for the mission, of course) was the world’s first female paratrooper. She was excellent at her job, but she was eventually captured. Andree was executed in a French concentration camp in 1944.
Three: Willie Mae Thornton
Everybody remembers the names of the singers. The songwriters don’t get as much credit. Today, they get a little more because so many singers like to write (or assist in writing) their own music. In the day of Willie Mae Thornton though, she was the Big Mama (yes, that was her actual nickname) behind the curtain.
She first started singing in church, like so many people from the south. When her mom died, she had to drop out of school and get a job to help support her five siblings. Eventually, she left home to pursue a career in music. While she could supposedly “sing pretty,” if she wanted to, she preferred to make her voice “big” instead. In other words, she didn’t conform to what men in the music industry thought of as a feminine sound. She belted.
Willie Mae wrote and recorded music that other people made into hits. “Hound Dog,” made famous by Elvis Presley? She sang it first and it spent a few weeks at the top of the charts, but she didn’t see any real profit from it. Her record sold about 500,000 copies, which was big for its time. Elvis’ version became the hit, selling 10 million copies just a few years later. Likewise, she wrote “Ball n Chain,” which Janis Joplin made famous. She also didn’t get the profits from that because the record company owned the song, not her. Joplin, however, hired her to open for her as a way to give back what the record company took from her. (I feel like she should have split profits with her, but that’s just me.)
(Side note: I almost wrote about Rose Marie McCoy here instead. Like Willie Mae, she was a black woman who wrote hits for other artists. She also wrote songs for Elvis. By the end of her songwriting career, she wrote more than 800 songs, including commercial jingles. I think she’s a little bit more well known since NPR has featured specials on her in the past, but probably not by much.)
Since the other three lived and worked in relatively recent history, it seems prudent to go back a little farther - like way back. I’m talking fourth century. Hypatia was from Alexandria, you know, where the ancient library was that we all wish had survived disaster?
Hypatia was a scholar in the time that women weren’t really allowed to be scholars. All of the stories and historical accounts of the era paint men as the heroes in Greece and Rome, with women as the people on the sidelines being fought over or worshiping deities in temples. Hypatia’s father, Theon (not a Greyjoy, Game of Thrones fans) wanted her to have the same opportunities as men in their community, so he made sure she was educated in science, math, and astronomy. Eventually, Hypatia became a teacher.
Unfortunately for her, Hypatia lived at a time when Christianity was spreading throughout the ancient empires. Though she didn’t seem to subscribe to one religion over another, historians seem to consider her a pagan. She was tolerant of other religions, and was one of the people outraged when Jewish residents were ousted from Alexandria and Christians began targeting pagans. She was murdered by a group of angry Christians during Lent. She wasn’t just murdered either. She was stripped, had her eyes removed, and then pieces of her body were taken throughout the town and burned. For no reason other than she was seen as an enemy of the political leaders at the time.
I’ll admit that the first time I ever learned about her was a result of doing my own research after “Hypatia’s chariot” was an artifact in Warehouse 13. Despite the few things I’ve read recently calling her a famous ancient scholar, or a feminist icon, I doubt most people know her name.
For a time when I was a teenager, I was fascinated by the life of pirates. Not in the romance novel way, but more in the what-drove-a-person-to-piracy kind of way. I think most people, primarily as a result of Hollywood, become passingly familiar with pirates like Blackbeard and Anne Bonny. Glossed over is the Pirate Queen Sayyida al-Hurra, who actually held a long standing alliance with Blackbeard.
She was actually born into a wealthy Moroccan family and married a much older business man. She continued to run his business after his death. Her family, however, was forced to flee from Morocco when the Spanish declared themselves rules and Christianity started spreading through the region. (She was Muslim.) Eventually, she became the political leader of Tetouan and married a king. She didn’t even travel to marry, but instead, made him come to her, which was unheard of.
Holding onto her grudge against the Spanish empire for what they did to her people, she used her political standing to slowly build her pirate army and take on their ships. She made her little country rich with stolen merchandise and selling the Christians she captured into slavery in place of her people. She was also the foremost negotiator when it came to releasing Christian captives. She was the person European nations contacted to offer up ransoms, so she only sold people into slavery if the European nobles weren’t willing to pay. Sayyida ruled the western Mediterranean while Blackbeard ruled the east.
Sadly, history doesn’t know what happened to her. Though she remained queen after the death of her husband, her son in law overthrew her, and then… nothing. I’d love to see a movie speculating about her fate.
Obviously, there are thousands of women who were important to history. I picked five that I have found interesting, and ones who aren’t usually present in more mainstream pop culture (like the ladies of Hidden Figures, for example) for this list.
That’s it for this week! Tell me about a woman in history you think everyone should know about!
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